Page:Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (1922).djvu/32

 same with all people, no matter what their condition) to be terribly tragic. You are the victim of a horrible conspiracy; everything is unfair. The gods have either forgotten you or made you a sort of scapegoat to bear all the punishment. I believe, however hard one's lot is, one ought to try and accommodate oneself to the conditions; and except in a case of purely physical pain, I think it can be done. Why not make the very utmost of our lives?... I’m a practical economist in this respect. I endeavour to waste nothing.... Waste words! Not to talk is to waste words....

"To most people life is a musical instrument on which they are unable to play: but in the musician's hands it becomes a living thing.... The artist can see beauty everywhere, anywhere...."

In what is perhaps an earlier letter he excuses his neglect of serious reading by his lack of leisure and the worries that make him crave for amusing books as an antidote:

"You mustn't forget the circumstances I have been brought up in, the little education I have