'this hard, gemlike flame'

mined poetry: text by Walter Horatio Pater

Here I present another ‘erasure’ poem, so-called. But considering the source text, two paragraphs from the ‘Conclusion’ of the Victorian writer Walter Pater’s The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1877), the use of the word ‘erasure’ feels something like a desecration. Who am I to ‘erase’ another writer’s exquisite prose in favour of my own dubious effort? I think calling it ‘mined’ poetry ie. composed of the gems one might ‘extract’ from a text, seems more fitting, more respectful. Of course, it’s the readers who will decide whether that is the case.

Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894) photo by Elliott and Fry, c. 1890s

two paragraphs from the Conclusion of Walter Pater’s The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1877)

<from Walter Pater’s Conclusion to The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry> 

Spirit rouses life. 
Every moment grows the sea,
experience the end. 

Pulses given to us 
pass swiftly, present always— 
a pure gemlike flame.

Failure is habits, 
a stereotyped world the rough eye. 

We may well grasp a lifted horizon, 
a stirring of dyes, hands, 
the face of one’s friend.

Not to is to sleep before evening—
splendour unregarded, sacrificed.