“The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.”
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A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.
It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.
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.
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.
