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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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John Drinkwater
Age: 54 †
Born: 1882
Born: June 1
Died: 1937
Died: March 25
Playwright
Poet
Poet
Poetry
Anything
May
Inessential
Even
Delightful
Something
Entertaining
Certainly
Concerned
More quotes by John Drinkwater
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
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
And not a girl goes walking Along the Cotswold lanes But knows men's eyes in April Are quicker than their brains.
John Drinkwater
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
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
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
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
It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.
John Drinkwater
This be my pilgrimage and goal Daily to march and find The secret phrases of the soul, The evangels of the mind.
John Drinkwater
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
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
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
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
But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.
John Drinkwater
The written word is everything.
John Drinkwater
If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.
John Drinkwater
