Consider his life which was valueless In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files. Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man. Ask. Was s… - Stephen Spender

Yet supposing that a bomb should dive Its nose right through this bed, with me upon it? The thought is obscene. Still, there are many To whom my death would only be a name, One figure in a column. The essential is That all the 'I's should remain separate Propped up under flowers, and no one suffer For his neighbour. Then horror is postponed For everyone until it settles on him And drags him to that incommunicable grief Which is all mystery or nothing.

Death is another milestone on their way. With laughter on their lips and with winds blowing round them They record simply How this one excelled all others in making driving belts.

Critics of visual arts and of music describe in words — that is to say, a system of signs other than those made by brushes on canvas or chisels into stone or notes of music — those characteristics of painting or sculpture or music which can be described or analysed. Visual artists and composers can disregard critics on the ground that the medium of verbal criticism bears so indirect a relation to the medium in which they make something. Poets are in a different situation. With the development of so-called scientific methods of criticism they are made ever conscious that criticism of poetry is in the same medium of work as the art which they practise. “Close analysis” is useful to critics and readers. But for the poet there is the danger of disintegration of poetry into paraphrase, examination of technique, influences, all analysed in the language of criticism.