Struggling to create -- slave and master . . .

      In the sonnet below, Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) speaks of the enslavement of a writer of poetry in the effort to explain ideas in a perfect form . . . an enslavement perhaps (or not) also shared by mathematicians.     Food for thought!

       SONNET     by Edward Arlington Robinson

       The master and the slave go hand in hand,
       Though touch be lost.  The poet is a slave,
       And there be kings do sorrowfully crave
       The joyance that a scullion may command.
       But, ah, the sonnet-slave must understand
       The mission of his bondage, or the grave
       May clasp his bones, or ever he shall save,
       The perfect word that is the poet's wand.

       The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes
       Are for Thought's purest god the jewel-stones;
       But shapes and echoes that are never done
       Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes
       Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones
       The crash of battles that are never won.

From Robinson's COLLECTED POEMS:  THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, CAPTAIN CRAIG (Macmillan, New York, 1915)