[1031] Wild Strawberries

Strawberries that in gardens grow
   Are plump and juicy fine,
But sweeter far as wise men know
   Spring from the woodland vine.

No need for bowl or silver spoon,
   Sugar or spice or cream,
Has the wild berry plucked in June
   Beside the trickling stream.

One such to melt at the tongue's root,
   Confounding taste with scent,
Beats a full peck of garden fruit:
   Which points my argument.

May sudden justice overtake
   And snap the froward pen,
That old and palsied poets shake
   Against the minds of men.

Blasphemers trusting to hold caught
   In far-flung webs of ink,
The utmost ends of human thought
   Till nothing's left to think.

But may the gift of heavenly peace
   And glory for all time
Keep the boy Tom who tending geese
   First made the nursery rhyme.

 	-- Robert Graves

Graves fires another salvo in the long-running battle between the craftsman
and the mystic, and it's quite clear on which side his sympathies lie. He
prefers the natural, unaffected ease of the nursery rhyme to the
artificiality of the "far-flung webs of ink" penned by "old and palsied
poets"; he contends that the constraints of the latter strangle both thought
and word.

I disagree.

Overly deliberate verse can be a frightful bore at times - plodding, insipid
and dull. But the opposite tendency can be (and often is) just as bad -- far
too many poets use 'naturalness' as an excuse for laziness. The answer?
Simple: recognize that there is no 'right way' and no 'wrong way' to write
poetry; there are merely good and bad poems.

thomas.

[Minstrels Links]

This particular opposition has been explored on the Minstrels before:
Poem #186, By-the-Way  -- Patrick MacGill
Poem #187, Poetry for Supper  -- R. S. Thomas
Poem #190, Young Poets  -- Nicanor Parra

Robert Graves:
Poem #55, Welsh Incident
Poem #298, The Cool Web
Poem #467, Like Snow
Poem #515, The Persian Version
Poem #564, Warning to Children
Poem #663, A Child's Nightmare
Poem #763, Love Without Hope
Poem #840, The Travellers' Curse after Misdirection
Poem #1031, Wild Strawberries

And finally, strawberries:
Poem #274, This Is Just To Say  -- William Carlos Williams
Poem #827, Strawberries -- Edwin Morgan
Poem #1031, Wild Strawberries -- Robert Graves