If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. - W. H. Auden

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water,
And the expensive ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.