may contain enough suggestion for four pages of music; but to found a
song on those four words would be impossible. For this reason the
paramount value of the poem is that of its suggestion in the field of
instrumental music, where a single line may be elaborated upon....
To me, in this respect, the poem holds its highest value of
suggestion.... A short poem would take a lifetime to express; to do
it in as many bars of music is impossible. The words clash with the
music, they fail to carry the full suggestion of the poem ...

"Many poems contain syllables ending with _e_ or other letters not
good to sing. Some exceptionally beautiful poems possess this
shortcoming, and, again, words that prove insurmountable obstacles. I
have in mind one by Aldrich in which the word 'nostrils' occurs in the
very first verse, and one cannot do anything with it. Much of the
finest poetry--for instance, the wonderful writings of Whitman--proves
unsuitable, yet it has been undertaken....

"A song, if at all dramatic, should have climax, form, and plot, as
does a play. Words to me seem so paramount and, as it were, apart in
value from the musical setting, that, while I cannot recall the
melodies of many of the songs that I have written, the words of them
are so indelibly impressed upon my mind that they are very easy of
recall.... Music and poetry cannot be accurately stated unless one has
written both."

It is clear that these are the views of a composer who placed
veracious declamation of the poetic idea very much to the front in his
conception of the art of the song-writer. They explain in part, also,
the fact that MacDowell himself wrote the words of many of his songs,
though, quite characteristically, he did not avow the fact in the