Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.

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

It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.

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.

There can be no proof that Blake's lyric is composed of the best words in the best order; only a conviction, accepted by our knowledge and judgment, that it is so.

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.

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