It Is Commonly Asserted And Accepted That

But In The Finished Art Of The Song The Use Of Words Has No Connection With The Use Of Words In Poetry.

For While The Subjects Of Poetry Are Few And Recurrent, The Moods Of Man Are Infinitely Various And Unstable. It Is The Same In All Arts.

Great Men Are Rare, Poets Are Rarer, But The Great Man Who Is A Poet, Transfiguring His Greatness, Is The Rarest Of All Events.

So It Is In Poetry. All We Ask Is That The Mood Recorded Shall Impress Us As Having Been Of The Kind That Exhausts The Imaginative Capacity; If It Fails To Do This The Failure Will Announce Itself Either In Prose Or In Insignificant Verse.

To Know Anything Of A Poet But His Poetry Is, So Far As The Poetry Is Concerned, To Know Something That May Be Entertaining, Even Delightful, But Is Certainly Inessential.