for example, his obstinancy and intransigence--his
refusal to accord to convention the smallest grain of
Chinese politeness--and relate this occasional un-
graciousness to his dedicated task, we shall find it hard
to separate from a high ideal of functional purity. He
had decided to be a poet, and was determined that life
should not succeed in making him anything else.
Neither would he let it over-lay his chosen role, nor
subtly corrupt, deflect, or prostitute it.

I have spoken of Thomas' choice in this matter--of
his conscious self-appointment to the office of poet--
and feel my words call for qualification. We all know
Horace's tag about the poet being born, not made;
and remember how Shelley remarked that no man,
by taking thought, can say to himself "I will be a
poet". But once given this gift at birth, a man can take
thought as to how he shall use it. Most of those who
feel poetic stirrings, together with some earnest of a
talent in verse, depart from the pure and single idea of
acting the poet, and nothing but the poet, any time
between their twenties and their thirties. The first
descent is usually marked when they begin to think of
themselves as 'poet and critic'; and from this they pass
to a lower level whereon they justify their dissipated
powers by calling themselves 'men of letters'. These
practical, convenient, and profitable off-shoots of the
poetic gift, Thomas refused to cultivate in any save a
poetic spirit. If he wrote for broadcasting, he did not
believe that such sort of work excused him from aiming
at standards of perfection. Whatever he committed, in
verse or in prose, was executed consciously: by a
poet, observant of the standards of a poet, and not as
so much journalistic script. Like Cardinal Newman, he
could claim: "Every thought I think is thought, and
every word I write is writing."

By this, I do not mean that his literary ideal kept
him on a pedestal or from gaily unbending. In writing,

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