May I own no unleavened egotism.
May I own no egotism that is not sensitive and poignant and vibrant:
a harp of Worn Strings.
The surprising world is full of non-analytic persons of ox-eyed
vision and hen-headed mental caliber whose egotism is a stupendous
impregnable armor: those who burned the Maid of Orleans: those who
crucified the prophet of Nazareth: those who killed John Keats.
They inherit the earth, which is a Golden-Green earth, but never look
at it.
They accept this life, which is Intoxicating life, but never feel its
texture with their fingers.
They gather a Blue iris by a marsh-edge and let it die in their
sweating hands, or let it fall to the ground as they walk, or throw
it away when the Blue petals droop: without looking at it and
breathing it and knowing it: without sensing the tremulous Blue to be
lovelier in its wilting.
Theirs is the thick fat solidly-fierce egotism of an emperor or an
infant whose main metaphysic concept is that _he_ is alive, and will
remain alive, and must be alive, though all around him bleed drop by
drop to their death.