Authors:

What demon is our god? What name subsumes That act external to our sleeping selves? Not pleasure - it is much too broad and narrow, - Not sex, not for the moment love, but pride, And not in prowess, but pride undefined, Autonomous in its unthought demands, A bit of vanity, but mostly pride.

"In a Few Days Now When Two Memories Meet (1964)". "Poems Of J.V. Cunningham". Book edited by Timothy Steele, 1997.
What demon is our god? What name subsumes That act external to our sleeping selves? Not pleasure - it is much too broad and narrow, - Not sex, not for the moment love, but pride, And not in prowess, but pride undefined,