There's an essential element I haven't discussed so far and am unable to define. Yet I am dedicated to it side by side with my classicism in a synthesis of antitheses. The title Terror and Decorum and lines like "What terror crowns the sweetness of all song?" formulate this dualism of what Nietzsche called the Dionysian and the Appolonian; also the dualism of the primordial "dark gods" of the unconscious and the more rational, civilized conscious mind. The creative tension of these antitheses is in the shiver of holy dread, the tragic exaltation which makes the hair stand on end and is the difference between poetry and verse.

My nearest approach to catching this element is in "Some Lines In Three Parts." The poem describes the attempt of the ego, trapped in its vulnerable mortal skull, to burst free by means of song. Completed after Terror and...