If the novelist seeks the mot propre, how much more so the poet. His words are isolated, arranged in a metrical pattern, where not only the value, or values, of each single word must be considered, but also the close interdependence of one upon the other: for every word is quick to take colour from its companion, and will gain or lose in emphasis according to its position in the line. The adjustment is very delicate, the labour painful. A lyric by Wordsworth dances gaily enough: yet that stolid figure would first pace for many days up and down the back garden, "humming and booing about", and scattering scraps of paper as he went.
—George H W Rylands, Words and Poetry (The Hogarth Press, 1928)
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