Performances
If it were these that really mattered most —
The personal performance and the voice —
If it were these that powered poetry,
Then Shakespeare long would have been lost to us
With all past poets silenced by dumb death
From voicing their own verses here and now.
Fine poetry lives in the written word
More durably than in the spoken phrase.
High quality of thought, aptly expressed
In telling composition, has more worth
Than oratorical charades performed
Persuasively by authors’ tutored tongues.
No cheap vulgarity nor specious wit
Can compensate for patent lack of class,
Or weakness of unprincipled technique,
When laid exposed to intellect’s critique
Upon an uninterpretive white sheet.
The language, not the accent, fixes tone
And style, not mannerism, makes it great.
When shall we learn again the lessons taught
By those practitioners who knew their art,
(And how to word it rightly on the page),
So that their finest poetry lives on
Long after they — who crafted it so well —
Have quit the stage of posed performances to find
Themselves immortalised in what they left behind?.
