Note 118 — Chapter II · RHYTHM AS THE ESSENTIAL FACT OF POETRY

It would be more to the purpose if one went to the sources of poetry and religion and studied the survivals of primitive rite. At seed-time in Brandenburg, the women still go out to the fields and unbind their hair in sign that the flax may grow as long as their tresses. With such a ritual act goes nearly always a song, a repeated shout, a cry to the powers of growth; and this, if one please, is poetry in its making, while it is easy to think that the symbol would sooner or later force itself into the words—“make our flax like this hair.”