...in song the words tend to lose their significance, do often lose it, while at the other extreme, in current prose it is the musical value that tends to disappear - so that verse stands symmetrically, as it were, between song, on the one hand, and prose on the other - and is thus admirably and delicately balanced between the sensual and the intellectual power of language.
Paul ValeryA man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas.
Paul ValeryThe power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
Paul Valery