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Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.

John Drinkwater

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John Drinkwater
Age: 54 †
Born: 1882
Born: June 1
Died: 1937
Died: March 25
Playwright
Poet
Greatness
Poet
Poetry
Events
Great
Rarer
Men
Rarest
Poets
Rare

More quotes by John Drinkwater

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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.
John Drinkwater
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To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.
John Drinkwater
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Any long work in which poetry is persistent, be it epic or drama or narrative, is really a succession of separate poetic experiences governed into a related whole by an energy distinct from that which evoked them.
John Drinkwater
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The written word is everything.
John Drinkwater
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This be my pilgrimage and goal Daily to march and find The secret phrases of the soul, The evangels of the mind.
John Drinkwater
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In the corridors under tehre is nothing but sleep. And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep On moon-washed apples of wonder.
John Drinkwater
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If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.
John Drinkwater
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It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.
John Drinkwater
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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.
John Drinkwater
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Grant us the wil1 to fashion as we feel, Grant us the strength to labor as we know, Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel, To strike the blow.
John Drinkwater
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When you defile the pleasant streams, And the wild bird's abiding place, You massacre a million dreams, And cast your spittle in God's face
John Drinkwater
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And not a girl goes walking Along the Cotswold lanes But knows men's eyes in April Are quicker than their brains.
John Drinkwater
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But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.
John Drinkwater
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The poet's perfect expression is the token of a perfect experience what he says in the best possible way he has felt in the best possible way, that is, completely.
John Drinkwater
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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.
John Drinkwater
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To take an analogy: if we say that a democratic government is the best kind of government, we mean that it most completely fulfills the highest function of a government - the realisation of the will of the people.
John Drinkwater