[BNP/E3, 31A – 14]

17-9-1916

If I could carve my poems in wood,

By children they would be understood.

So near to the sense things have in God

Are both my poems and {…} children's

For a child knows[1] that logic and meaning

Is only nothing nothing screening,

And a child is one divinely aware

That all things are toys and all things are fair,

That a thimble, a stone and a cotton‑reel

Are things we can quite divinely feel

And that, if we make men out of those things,

They are really men, not imaginings.

But all that I want is what I neer have

So I must be the child {…}

[14v]

And, playing with their toys and in my verse incurled[2]

Lightly err the visible world.

_____________________________________________

I would therefore I could take my verse

Out of mere ideas and better it worse

To visible carving or drawing or what

My verses could be resembling that.

Then would I be the children's poet,

And though perhaps I might never know it

In every innocent face made brighter[3]

God would be giving my soul the sense,

Of his only real and good recompense –[4]

The sense of children more children still

When acting my poems at their void will.

 
[1] knows /feels\
[2] incurled /with legs incurled\
[3] In every innocent face made brighter /sadder\ /With the outer thing sense that makes life sadder\
[4] Of his only real and good recompense – /Lost back of knowledge, of recompense\