The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age.

For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality.

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.

The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

How to tell students what to look for without telling them what to see is the dilemma of teaching.

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.