Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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After this hour, telling you

He sat all night and burrowed through

Your book…. Oh, you’ll be coy and he

Will simulate precosity,

And pedants both, you’ll smile and smirk,

And leer, and hasten back to work….

’Twas this day week, sir, you returned

A theme of mine, from which I learned

(Through various comment on the side

Which you had scrawled) that I defied

The highest rules of criticism

For cheap and careless witticism….

‘Are you quite sure that this could be?’

And

‘Shaw is no authority!’

But Eager Ass, with what he’s sent,

Plays havoc with your best per cent.

Still—still I meet you here and there …

When Shakespeare’s played you hold a chair,

And some defunct, moth-eaten star

Enchants the mental prig you are …

A radical comes down and shocks

The atheistic orthodox?—

You’re representing Common Sense,

Mouth open, in the audience.

And, sometimes, even chapel lures

That conscious tolerance of yours,

That broad and beaming view of truth

(Including Kant and General Booth …).

And so from shock to shock you live,