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

This be my pilgrimage and goal Daily to march and find The secret phrases of the soul, The evangels of the mind.

And not a girl goes walking Along the Cotswold lanes But knows men's eyes in April Are quicker than their brains.

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.

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.

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.