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, differi…

- 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 …

- 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 fa…

- 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 …

- 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

When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is endowing the word with life.

- John Drinkwater

The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception …

- John Drinkwater

Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.

- 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 …

- John Drinkwater