If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.

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.

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.

The written word is everything.

If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.