Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.

Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure.

Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.

Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.

The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.

A moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.