"Poets" 


Four poets were sitting around a bowl of punch that stood on a table. 

Said the first poet, "Methinks I see with my third eye the fragrance of this wine hovering in
space like a cloud of 
birds in an enchanted forest." 

The second poet raised his head and said, "With my inner ear I can hear those mist-birds
singing. And the melody 
holds my heart as the white rose imprisons the bee within her petals." 

The third poet closed his eyes and stretched his arm upwards, and said, "I touch them with my
hand. I feel their 
wings, like the breath of a sleeping fairy, brushing against my fingers." 

Then the fourth poet rose and lifted up the bowl, and he said, "Alas, friends! I am too dull of
sight and of hearing 
and of touch. I cannot see the fragrance of this wine, nor hear its song, nor feel the beating of
its wings. I perceive 
but the wine itself. Now therefore must I drink it, that it may sharpen my senses and raise me
to your blissful 
heights." 

And putting the bowl to his lips, he drank the punch to the very last drop. 

The three poets, with their mouths open, looked at him aghast, and there was a thirsty yet
unlyrical hatred in their 
eyes.