“No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.”

—  Alfred Austin

Prose Papers on Poetry (1910)

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Alfred Austin56
British writer and poet 1835–1913

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“The most generous of critics, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry. But on a very thin thread of meaning poetry, or a very fair imitation of it, may be hung by the aid of musical sound.”

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