When You Defile The Pleasant Streams, And

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.

When You Defile The Pleasant Streams, And The Wild Bird's Abiding Place, You Massacre A Million Dreams, And Cast Your Spittle In God's Face

There Can Be No Proof That Blake's Lyric Is Composed Of The Best Words In The Best Order; Only A Conviction, Accepted By Our Knowledge And Judgment, That It Is So.

If It Is An Imperfect Word, No External Circumstance Can Heighten Its Value As Poetry.

Poetry Being The Sign Of That Which All Men Desire, Even Though The Desire Be Unconscious, Intensity Of Life Or Completeness Of Experience, The Universality Of Its Appeal Is A Matter Of Course.