The Rhymester, or the Rules of Rhyme - A Guide to English Versification #227778

With this conviction, I have discarded the title of a guide for poets, feeling that there is much real poetry that is not in verse, and a vast deal of verse that is not poetry; and that, therefore, a hard and fast line was of the first importance to mark the boundary of my undertaking. Poetry is far less a question of manner than Of matter, whereas versification is purely a question of form. I will even venture to say that some of our noblest poems are in prose; and that many great poets have been but inferior versifiers. But what these last wrote has possessed qualities compared with which the mere mechanism of their verse is as nothing. The poet gives to the world in his sublime thoughts diamonds of the pur est water. It would be idle to quibble about minor points of the polishing and setting of such gems — they would lose in the process! But the writer of verse does not — and should not — pretend to give us diamonds. He offers paste brilliants; and therefore it the more be hooves him to see to the perfection of the cut ting, on which their beauty depends.