If a man can say of his life or <br />any moment of his life, There is <br />nothing more to be desired! his state <br />becomes like that told in the famous <br />double sonnet--but without the <br />sonnet’s restrictions. Let him go look <br />at the river flowing or the bank <br />of late flowers, there will be one <br />small fly still among the petals <br />in whose gauzy wings raised above <br />its back a rainbow shines. The world <br />to him is radiant and even the fact <br />of poverty is wholly without despair. <br /> <br />So it seems until these rouse <br />to him pictures of the systematically <br />starved--for a purpose, at the mind’s <br />proposal. What good then the <br />light winged fly, the flower or <br />the river--too foul to drink of or <br />even to bathe in? The 90 story building <br />beyond the ocean that a rocket <br />will span for destruction in a matter <br />of minutes but will not <br />bring him, in a century, food or <br />relief of any sort from his suffering. <br /> <br />The world too much with us? Rot! <br />the world is not half enough with us-- <br />the rot of a potato with <br />a healthy skin, a rot that is <br />never revealed till we are about to <br />eat--and it revolts us. Beauty? <br />Beauty should make us paupers, <br />should blind us, rob us--for it <br />does not feed the sufferer but makes <br />his suffering a fly-blown putrescence <br />and ourselves decay--unless <br />the ecstasy be general.<br /><br />William Carlos Williams<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-mind-s-games/
