summer-saulting

Updated: June 29, 2025

Even in the peculiarly limited sensuous verse of the present the third element is implicit. Other poets, no less than Joyce Kilmer, have a dim sense that in their physical experiences they are really tasting the eucharist, as Kilmer indicates in his warning, Summer-saulting for God's sake. Only the poet seems to possess the secret of the fusion of sense and spirit in the world.

Elizabeth Atkins - The Poet's Poet : essays on the character and mission of the poet as interpreted in English verse of the last one hundred and fifty years