The soldier is poor without the poet's lines, His petty syllabi, the sounds that stick,
Inevitably modulating, in the blood.
And war for war, each has its gallant kind. How simply the fictive hero becomes the real;
How gladly with proper words the solider dies,
If he must, or lives on the bread of faithful speech.


Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942) - It Must Give Pleasure

Wallace Stevens Quotes

The soldier is poor without the poet's lines, His petty syllabi, the sounds that stick, Inevitably modulating, in the blood. And war for war, each...

The soldier is poor without the poet's lines, His petty syllabi, the sounds that stick, Inevitably modulating, in the blood. And war for war, each...

The soldier is poor without the poet's lines, His petty syllabi, the sounds that stick, Inevitably modulating, in the blood. And war for war, each...

The soldier is poor without the poet's lines, His petty syllabi, the sounds that stick, Inevitably modulating, in the blood. And war for war, each...