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I would pick Mendelssohn, Milton, Herbert, Donne, GM Hopkins, Robert and Elizabeth Browning, the Psalmists,Isaiah, Habakkuk, the rest of the prophets and Solomon against the so-called artists and find more wisdom, more texture, more insight into the human heart, more color, more vibrancy, more life than in any of these so-called genius artists of the past two centuries.

You're right. Isaiah 28 and Amos 9 form some of the most beautiful poetry I have ever seen--poetry focused on cultivation, seeing life as a farmer sees his soil: "good earth," to be tended and cared for rather than pressed, squeezed, and trampled.

Young, wild, and free is like setting a mad Bull loose among tender green shoots. Life comes by letting the "Heavenly Muse" brood over our lives like a loving mother hen, not by drowning Her in an intoxicating flood of dissipation.

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