NOTES ON CULTURE
157
on the subject of culture, between the essential and the accidental,
the permanent and the transitory, the true and the false-an effort
requiring fresh judgments and decisions in constantly changing situa–
tions--we shall be both the most wisely conservative and the most
radically revolutionary, because we shall be working for those changes
which really matter, instead of those which are mer.ely spectacular.
[In the1 Summer issue of
PARTISAN REVIEW
several writers will parti-
cipate in a discussion of Mr. Eliot's argument in this essay.]
THE AMBITIOUS RABBIT
We in bed are left clinging to shadows of warmth beneath us,
But the mind, our most apparent faculty, the rabbit,
Leaps as the hunter approaches, the daylight, the pattern of boxes–
Quivering, leaps from the clover patches or the mire
Where darkness had overtaken, and hopping into vantage
Rues the bed he slept, was caught, suspended in,
To dream of life with quickness weighted and no vantage.
The hunter's horn! horrors of whiteness foretelling his order,
Spaced, advancing behind him; bags and barrels, pointed
Objects, bristling crowns, ropes and traps to set-
And over all the morning sun, uncompromising:
Here is the equipage of tempest and wicker baskets
(For lunches), and here is the rabbit in their sight.
He knows the tactics, he is intelligent, having observed his bed
He widens
his
eyes and folding his senses to his head
Charges onto the hunter's train; the rabbit leaps
Between the legs, out of a box and into a barrel,
He memorizes mechanisms of the traps,
,
And steals the hunter's lunches packed in colored papers.
The rabbit's strategy reverses persecution:
Sobbing now, confused, out-done, the hunters, huddling,
Dust their breeches and prepare the following day's advance.
The sleeper rises to follow the rabbit,
His shadow is stiffened and cold,
"The longer the window is open the longer–
The longer the egg-the clock-"
J UNE CANNAN
