JF Kennedy at the dedication of the Robert Frost library at Amherst
Now there's a politician who knows the worth of poetry, though I realise the words were probably written for him. However, makes me wonder how many anthologies and collections our present disreputable crew are in need of. Perhaps just a few lines from the redoubtable Edith Sitwell would do as an anthem for our times (though it was published in 1945!):
How we should pity the High Priests of the god of this world, the saints of Mammon,
The cult of gold! For see how these, too, ache with the cold
From the polar wastes of the heart. ...See all they have given
Their god! Are not their veins grown ivy-old,
And have they not eaten their own hearts and lives in their famine?
Extract 'A Song of the Cold'
