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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117138" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">"How shall I be a poet?<br>How shall I write in rhyme?<br>You told me once 'the very wish<br>Partook of the sublime.'<br>Then tell me how! Don't put me off<br>With your 'another time'!"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The old man smiled to see him,<br>To hear his sudden sally;<br>He liked the lad to speak his mind<br>Enthusiastically;<br>And thought "There's no hum-drum in him,<br>Nor any shilly-shally."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"And would you be a poet<br>Before you've been to school?<br>Ah, well! I hardly thought you<br>So absolute a fool.<br>First learn to be spasmodic -<br>A very simple rule.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"For first you write a sentence,<br>And then you chop it small;<br>Then mix the bits, and sort them out<br>Just as they chance to fall:<br>The order of the phrases makes<br>No difference at all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Then, if you'd be impressive,<br>Remember what I say,<br>That abstract qualities begin<br>With capitals alway:<br>The True, the Good, the Beautiful -<br>Those are the things that pay!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Next, when you are describing<br>A shape, or sound, or tint;<br>Don't state the matter plainly,<br>But put it in a hint;<br>And learn to look at all things<br>With a sort of mental squint."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"For instance, if I wished, Sir,<br>Of mutton-pies to tell,<br>Should I say 'dreams of fleecy flocks<br>Pent in a wheaten cell'?"<br>"Why, yes," the old man said: "that phrase<br>Would answer very well.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Then fourthly, there are epithets<br>That suit with any word -<br>As well as Harvey's Reading Sauce<br>With fish, or flesh, or bird -<br>Of these, 'wild,' 'lonely,' 'weary,' 'strange,'<br>Are much to be preferred."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"And will it do, O will it do<br>To take them in a lump -<br>As 'the wild man went his weary way<br>To a strange and lonely pump'?"<br>"Nay, nay! You must not hastily<br>To such conclusions jump.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Such epithets, like pepper,<br>Give zest to what you write;<br>And, if you strew them sparely,<br>They whet the appetite:<br>But if you lay them on too thick,<br>You spoil the matter quite!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Last, as to the arrangement:<br>Your reader, you should show him,<br>Must take what information he<br>Can get, and look for no im-<br>mature disclosure of the drift<br>And purpose of your poem.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Therefore, to test his patience -<br>How much he can endure -<br>Mention no places, names, or dates,<br>And evermore be sure<br>Throughout the poem to be found<br>Consistently obscure.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"First fix upon the limit<br>To which it shall extend:<br>Then fill it up with 'Padding'<br>(Beg some of any friend):<br>Your great SENSATION-STANZA<br>You place towards the end."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"And what is a Sensation,<br>Grandfather, tell me, pray?<br>I think I never heard the word<br>So used before to-day:<br>Be kind enough to mention one<br>'EXEMPLI GRATIA.'"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the old man, looking sadly<br>Across the garden-lawn,<br>Where here and there a dew-drop<br>Yet glittered in the dawn,<br>Said "Go to the Adelphi,<br>And see the 'Colleen Bawn.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The word is due to Boucicault -<br>The theory is his,<br>Where Life becomes a Spasm,<br>And History a Whiz:<br>If that is not Sensation,<br>I don't know what it is.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Now try your hand, ere Fancy<br>Have lost its present glow - "<br>"And then," his grandson added,<br>"We'll publish it, you know:<br>Green cloth - gold-lettered at the back -<br>In duodecimo!"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then proudly smiled that old man<br>To see the eager lad<br>Rush madly for his pen and ink<br>And for his blotting-pad -<br>But, when he thought of PUBLISHING,<br>His face grew stern and sad.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Lewis+Carroll">Lewis Carroll</a> from <i>Phantasmagoria and Other Poems</i><div class=q>
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