The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always.

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

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

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

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

No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.

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.