Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.

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

Grant us the wil1 to fashion as we feel, Grant us the strength to labor as we know, Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel, To strike the blow.

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.

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

When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is endowing the word with life.

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.