Coming by evening through the wintry city
We said that art is out of love with life.
Here we approach a love that is not pity.
This antique discipline, tenderly severe,
Renews belief in love yet masters feeling,
Asking of us a grace in what we bear.
Form is the ultimate gift that love can offer -
The vital union of necessity
With all that we desire, all that we suffer.
A too-compassionate art is half an art.
Only such proud restraining purity
Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart.
This poem’s last two lines invite a discussion about the sublime integrity of the artist. Rich speaks of an all too real notion of “too-compassionate art”, giving light to her awareness that for artists, emotions can restrain the artist’s conscious and slow the juices of delibrate creation.
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