CONSERVATISM RECRUDESCENT
523
digm. Therefore, they are led to create a disembodied aristocracy, an
aristocracy of the spirit. Their pathos, then, is contained in this
ironic situation: that in their great concern over rootlessness they
are men without roots, the true
deracines.
To sum up, some major deficiencies of conservative thought
are the tendency to substitute myth for reason, the confusion of piety
with religion and the false conclusions drawn from the idea of orig–
inal sin, the logical and. ethical errors of traditionalism and histori–
cism, and the errors of its psychology and anthropology (which are
really implied in its rigid conception of man, society, and especially
of human freedom). These weaknesses are, I believe, among those
that will lead neo-conservatism to fail in its bid for intellectual
leadership.
Louis O. Coxe
WATCHING WATER
Who waits by water looking down
Shall fastened to his image stay-
A seaman with a sky to drown,
Flukes in the heavens, limbs aweigh.
Unshifting, windless, afternoon
Decants
him
filling up the hours:
Evening unseals a tumbler moon
And sluices daylight out in showers.
And livelong lying all night long
He feels tomorrow soak the grass
While submarine the white-throat's song
Bells like a secret under glass.
