SOURCE: "Arts and Letters: The True Legendary Sound," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXV, No. 2, Spring, 1967, pp. 317-24.

In the following essay, Merton discusses Muir's poetry in relation to the views advanced in his critical writings and lectures.

A recent popular survey of English philosophy since 1900 gives us a useful appraisal of the respectable grammarians of our day. It also includes, as an afterthought, a chapter on metaphysics. The chief purpose of this chapter is, of course, to remind us that there are no metaphysicians in England. At the same time the author gives us to understand that there is no justification for metaphysics anyway. Of such an attitude Edwin Muir would have said that it was a "denial of the roots"—and he would have added that such a denial cannot be made without cost.

Muir is one of those who intuitively realize that the giving of...