Donne, I suppose, was such another Who found no substitute for sense; To seize and clutch and penetrate, Expert beyond experience ... Suppose we say, then, that Mr. Eliot is himself. He may, as a transplanted American, have moments of contemporary sympathy with modernist English poets, but he is, in the main, uniquely himself. But what if we are suddenly confronted, in the work of an American poet, Allen Tate, who has not been transplanted, with lines like the following from a poem called “Non Omnis Moriar”: I ask you: Has the Singer sung The drear quintessence of the Song? John Ford knew more than I of death-- John Ford to death has passed along. I ask you: Has the Singer said Wherefore his spirit is not dust? Marlowe went muttering to death When he had done with song and lust. As the volume in which Mr. Eliot’s poem appeared was published in 1920 and as Mr. Tate’s poem was not printed until 1922 and then in a magazine, Mr. Eliot must be accorded priority rights in the manner in which both poems are written. Yet we know directly from Mr. Tate that he was writing in this manner long before he was aware that Mr. Eliot was also writing in this manner. Since to an American poet who has not been transplanted an American poet transplanted to England is as good as an English poet, the complicated situation now reads something like this: between Mr. Osbert Sitwell, an English poet and Mr. T. S. Eliot, an American poet transplanted to England, there exists a contemporary sympathy, stronger on Mr. Eliot’s side because he is the transplanted one; but Mr. Eliot’s contemporary sympathies with modernist English poets, shall we say, are only incidental in his work--he is, in the main, inimitably himself; yet not entirely so, for other poets have contemporary sympathies with him, which he cannot help, but which nevertheless detract from his inimitability; in fact, at least one American poet has had a contemporary sympathy with him as a modernist English poet (of whom he was not, at a time when the sympathy was strong, aware), not as a transplanted American poet or a resident American poet with whom a contemporary sympathy might have existed without detracting from the inimitability of either; finally, the situation is further complicated by the fact that a certain contemporary sympathy did exist at the time of the poem “Non Omnis Moriar”, between Mr. Tate and Mr. Davidson and Mr. Ransom, without, as it later appeared, detracting from the inimitability of any one of these in relation to any other--which makes an unconscious accidental contemporary sympathy more significant than a sympathy derived from conscious personal association. So the circle is tied, and so it might be tied over and over again in contemporary poetry without making the situation read more clearly.