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
If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry. – John Drinkwater
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. – 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