Last night I found the slim volume, Kingsley Amis' "A Look Round the Estate -- Poems 1957-67".
The poem in question, "Sight Unseen", and the verse
Love at first sight - by this we meanShrinking World Syndrome: no sooner do I trace the Amis poem than I come across this exchange in Somerset Maugham's short story, 'The Book-Bag':
A stellar entrant thrown
Clear on the psyche's radar-screen,
Recognised before known
You only believe in love at first sight?'Bestir' ourselves, indeed. Where did all the language go?'Well, I suppose I do, but with the proviso that people may have met twenty times before seeing one another. "Seeing" has an active side and a passive one. Most people we run across mean so little to us that we never bestir ourselves to look at them. We just suffer the impression they make on us.
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