Great Men Are Rare, Poets Are Rarer,

Great Men Are Rare, Poets Are Rarer, But The Great Man Who Is A Poet, Transfiguring His Greatness, Is The Rarest Of All Events.

Poetry Being The Sign Of That Which All Men Desire, Even Though The Desire Be Unconscious, Intensity Of Life Or Completeness Of Experience, The Universality Of Its Appeal Is A Matter Of Course.

It Is Commonly Asserted And Accepted That Paradise Lost Is Among The Two Or Three Greatest English Poems; It May Justly Be Taken As The Type Of Supreme Poetic Achievement In Our Literature.

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.

We Recognise In The Finished Art, Which Is The Result Of These Conditions, The Best Words In The Best Order - Poetry; And To Put This Essential Poetry Into Different Classes Is Impossible.