Page:Spring and all - William Carlos Williams.djvu/21

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— 15 —


The imagination, freed from the handcuffs of „ art ", takes the lead ! Her feet are bare and not too delicate. In fact those who come behind her have much to think of. Hm. Let it pass.

CHAPTER I

Samuel Butler

The great English divine, Sam Butler, is shouting from a platform, warning us as we pass : There are two who can invent some extraordinary thing to one who can properly employ that which has been made use of before.

Enheartened by this thought THE TRADITIONALISTS OF PLAGIARISM try to get hold of the mob. They seize those nearest them and shout into their ears : Tradition ! The solidarity of life !

The fight is on: These men who have had the governing of the mob through all the repetitious years resent the new order. Who can answer them? One perhaps here and there but it is an impossible situation. If life were anything but a bird, if it were a man, a Greek or an Egyptian, but it is only a bird that has eves and wings, a beak, talons and a cry that reaches to every rock's center, but without intelligence? —