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If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.
It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.
Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.
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.
The musician – if he be a good one – finds his own perception prompted by the poet’s perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.
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.
We recognise in the finished art, which is the result of these conditions, the best words in the best order – poetry and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible.
Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.
There are men who can write poetry, and there are men who can read balance sheets. The men who can read balance sheets cannot write.
What we know is that Shakespeare wrote perhaps the most remarkable body of passionate love poetry in the English language to a young man.