... all ugliness passes, and beauty endures, excepting of the skin.
It is part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
I may say that I think greed about poetry is the only permissible greed - it is, indeed, unavoidable.
As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality.
My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.
By 'happiness' I do not mean worldly success or outside approval, though it would be priggish to deny that both these things are most agreeable. I mean the inner consciousness, the inner conviction that one is doing well the thing that one is best fitted to do by nature.