Paint here no draped despairs, no saddening clouds Where the soul rests, proclaims eternity. But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds This Time for… - Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great...Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun, and left the vivid air signed with their honor.

My single pair of eyes Contain the universe they see; Their mirrored multiplicity Is packed into a hollow body Where I reflect the many, in my one.'

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.