Surely we have no right to condemn the poet because a perfect expression
of his thought is not immediately forthcoming. Like any other artist, he
works with tools, and is handicapped by their inadequacy. According to
Plato, language affords the poet a more flexible implement than any
other artist possesses, [Footnote: See _The Republic_, IX, 588 D.]
yet, at times, it appears to the maker stubborn enough. To quote Francis
Thompson,

Our untempered speech descends--poor heirs!
Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's brick-layers;
Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit,
Strong but to damn, not memorize a spirit!
[Footnote: _Her Portrait_.]

Walt Whitman voices the same complaint:

Speech is the twin of my vision: it is unequal to measure itself;
It provokes me forever; it says sarcastically,
"Walt, you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?"
[Footnote: _Song of Myself_.]

Accordingly there is nothing more common than verse bewailing the
singer's inarticulateness. [Footnote: See Tennyson, _In Memoriam_,
"For words, like nature, half reveal"; Oliver Wendell Holmes, _To my
Readers_; Mrs. Browning, _The Soul's Expression_; Jean Ingelow, _A Lily
and a Lute_; Coventry Patmore, _Dead Language_; Swinburne, _The Lute and
the Lyre, Plus Intra_; Francis Thompson, _Daphne_; Joaquin Miller,
_Ina_; Richard Gilder, _Art and Life_; Alice Meynell, _Singers to Come_;
Edward Dowden, _Unuttered_; Max Ehrmann, _Tell Me_; Alfred Noyes, _The