It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to

wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment

it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound – that he will never get

over it.

  That is to say, permanence in poetry, as in love, is perceived instantly.

It hasn’t to await the test of time. The proof a poem is not that we have

never forgotten it, but we knew at sight we never could forget it.

	

-Robert Frost-