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
But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry. – John Drinkwater
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
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. – John Drinkwater