Explore "On Tradition" by Franklin P. Adams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
LINES PROVOKED BY HEARING A YOUNG MAN / WHISTLING
No carmine radical in Art, / I worship at the shrine of Form; / Yet open are my mind and heart / To each departure from the norm.
When Post-Impressionism emerged, / I hesitated but a minute / Before I saw, though it diverged, / That there was something healthy in it.
And eke when Music, heavenly maid, / Undid the chains that chafed her feet, / I grew to like discordant shade -- / Unharmony I thought was sweet.
When verse divorced herself from sound, / I wept at first. Now I say: "Oh, well, / I see some sense in Ezra Pound, / And nearly some in Amy Lowell."
Yet, though I storm at every change, / And each mutation makes me wince, / I am not shut to all things strange -- / I'm rather easy to convince.
But hereunto I set my seal, / My nerves awry, askew, abristling: / _I'll never change the way I feel_ / _Upon the question of Free Whistling._