“If they won't write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves.”
-C.S. Lewis to J.R.R. Tolkien
If I cannot read epics made today,
I shall not read at all. What is the point?
If authors are not brave enough to say
adventure in a verse, I say, anoint
a newfound Homer, make Virgil reborn,
let Ariosto dream another dream,
carve from you Shakespeare from his coffin shorn,
call Coleridge again, let his quill gleam!
I’ll have no novel! Never! Not again
shall be my thoughts confounded by pith prose!
I’ll have my meter and my rhyme, my pen
engrossed in gleaming music as it goes!
Lewis and Tolkien wrote what they would read—
allow me to arise and take their lead.