both superb poems, but who shall say that Shelley might not have written
the former in the short-measured nine-line stanzas and the latter in his
_terza-rima_, and yet have embodied his poetic emotion as completely
as he has done? It need hardly be added that it does not follow that,
because a simple metrical outline may easily and justly be chosen, it can
easily be used. So plain a measure as the six-line octo-syllabic stanza may
be the merest unintelligent jog-trot, or it may be:

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

We may now consider this question of the subject-matter and its expression
in words. When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is
endowing the word with life. He has something in his mind, subjected to
his poetic vision, and his problem is to find words that will compel us to
realise the significance of that something. To solve this problem is his
last and most exacting difficulty, demanding a continual wariness and the
closest discipline. When Homer nodded, another man's word came to his lips,
and when that happens the poet may as well be silent. No poet has been
wholly blameless of this relaxation or escaped its penalties, but it is by
his vigilance in this matter that we measure his virility.

I suppose everyone knows the feeling that sometimes calls us to a life
where we fend and cater for ourselves in the fields and rivers, such as
William Morris knew when he shot fieldfares with his bow and arrow and
cooked them for his supper. Shakespeare knew it too, in the mind of