Where skill will no longer languish nor energy be trammelled To competition and graft, Exploited in subservience but not allegiance To an utterly los… - Louis MacNeice

It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.

In my own prejudice ... I would have of a poet ... whose worlds would not be too esoteric ... fond of talking ... capable of pity and laughter ... appreciative of women ... involved in personal relationships ... susceptible to physical impressions...

Though patriotism includes a sentimental, as it were a family, feeling for place, we can distinguish the ethical motive from the sentimental. At certain times in certain countries there has been a moral urgency to be patriotic when the actual or ideal policy of a man’s nation has been a sine qua non for his conscience. But to-day patriotism, in so far as it means subordination to a specifically national policy, is superannuated. This war, we assume, is not being fought-not by most of us-for any merely national end; we are fighting it, primarily and clearly, for our lives, and secondarily, and, alas! vaguely, for a new international order.