Here, here is certitude, you swore, below this lightning-blasted tree, where once it strikes, it strikes no more.

Fool, and you sang, Here is a three, and in this three love lies unshaken, as now so must it always be.

You sang with harsh notes to awaken that ancient toad who sits immured

within your hearthstone, light-forsaken. He knows that limits long endured must open out in vanity,

that gates by bolts of gold secured must open out in vanity.

Welcome to S to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

My name is Robert Hamm.

And I am Joe McCormick, and we are back with part two in our series on The Fireplace and the Harth.

That reading at the opening was an excerpt from, not the whole poem, but an excerpt from a poem called essay on knowledge by the poet Robert Graves, the author of I. Claudius, or as some might call it,

i. clavdives. And so this poem, we were a little confused because, Rob, you dug this up, and I'd

never read it before, but I really liked it. But we were confused because we were finding multiple versions of the same poem. And it

turns out that's not an error. There actually are multiple versions of this poem. So it's kind of

like with some of these Walt Whitman poems where like, you know, he published multiple drafts of the

same work. That's going on here. Graves published an early version of the poem called essay on

knowledge and then a later one called Vanity. Yeah. But it's an early version of the poem called essay on knowledge,

and then a later one called Vanity. Yeah, but it's, I mean, it's really getting into

some stuff to blow your mind territory, because not only do we have a hearthstone with an ancient

toad beneath it, we also have a lightning blasted tree. Yeah, it's an unintended resonance there.

But as I said, I'd never read this before.

I really love it now.

It seems to describe the poet's internal struggle between reason and passion.

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