20 • The Thinker as Poet
If in thinking there were already
adversaries and not mere
opponents, then thinking's case
would be more auspicious.
* * *
When through a rent in the rain-clouded
sky a ray of the sun suddenly glides
over the gloom of the meadows ....
We never come to thoughts. They come
to us.
That is the proper hour of discourse.
Discourse cheers us to companionable
reflection. Such reflection neither
parades polemical opinions nor does it
tolerate complaisant agreement. The sail
of thinking keeps trimmed hard to the
wind of the matter.
From such companionship a few perhaps
may rise to be journeymen in the
craft of thinking. So that one of them,
unforeseen, may become a master.
* * *
When in early summer lonely narcissi
bloom hidden in the meadow and the
rock-rose gleams under the maple ....
The splendor of the simple.
Only image formed keeps the vision.
Yet image formed rests in the poem.
How could cheerfulness stream
through us if we wanted to shun
sadness?