Conrad Aiken Quote

Let us describe the evening as it is:—
The stars disposed in heaven as they are:
Verlaine and Shakespeare rotting, where they rot,
Rimbaud remembered, and too soon forgot;
Order in all things, logic in the dark;
Arrangement in the atom and the spark;
Time in the heart and sequence in the brain—
Such as destroyed Rimbaud and fooled Verlaine.
And let us then take godhead by the neck—
And strangle it, and with it, rhetoric.


Preludes for Memnon (1935)


Let us describe the evening as it is:— The stars disposed in heaven as they are: Verlaine and Shakespeare rotting, where they rot, Rimbaud...

Let us describe the evening as it is:— The stars disposed in heaven as they are: Verlaine and Shakespeare rotting, where they rot, Rimbaud...

Let us describe the evening as it is:— The stars disposed in heaven as they are: Verlaine and Shakespeare rotting, where they rot, Rimbaud...

Let us describe the evening as it is:— The stars disposed in heaven as they are: Verlaine and Shakespeare rotting, where they rot, Rimbaud...