Fuess and Stearns, comps. The Little Book of Society Verse. 1922.
By. T. S. EliotConversation Galante
I
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prester John’s balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress.”
She then: “How you digress!”
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
The night and moonshine; music which we seize
To body forth our vacuity.”
She then: “Does this refer to me?”
“Oh, no, it is I who am insane.”
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your aid indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—”
And—“Are we then so serious?”