will it be possible for such personalities, completely devoted to the lyric art, to exist in our time, in our new forms of life, which drive men out murderously from all inner contemplation as a forest fire drives wild animals from their hidden lairs? I know full well that the miracle of a poet repeats itself in all times, and Goethe’s moving consolation in his elegy on Lord Byron remains eternally true: “For the Earth will conceive them again, as she has always conceived them.” Again and again such poets will arise in blessed recurrence, for from time to time immortality lends so precious a
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