“Inert Perfection, let me chip your shell.
You cannot break it through with that soft beak.
What if you broke it never, and it befell
You should not issue thence, should never speak?”

Perfection in the egg, a fluid thing,
Grows solid in due course, and there exists;
Knowing no urge to struggle forth and sing;
Complete, though shell-bound. But the mind insists

It shall be hatched ... to this ulterior end:
That it be bound by Function, that it be
Less than Perfection, having to expend
Some force on a nostalgia to be free.

Still must the poet as of old, 
In barren attic bleak and cold, 
Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to 
Such things as flowers and song and you;

Still as of old his being give 
In Beauty’s name, while she may live,
Beauty that may not die as long 
As there are flowers and you and song.