The struggle on the part of poets to make subject-matter and form coincide in spite of criticism is an old one, as old, perhaps, as the first critic. It should not be confused with attempts to make form suit subject-matter (as the Pindaric Ode was cast to contain any stately flattery); or to suit subject-matter to a popular form (as the sonnet has become a general utility form designed to do for a variety of subjects). The whole trend of modern poetry is toward treating poetry like a very sensitive substance which succeeds better when allowed to crystallize by itself than when put into prepared moulds: this is why modern criticism, deprived of its discussions of questions of form, tries to replace them by obscure metaphysical reflections. Modern poetry, that is, is groping for some principle of self-determination to be applied to the making of the poem--not lack of government, but government from within. Free verse was one of the largest movements toward this end. But it has too often meant not self-government but complete laissez-faire on the part of the poet, a licence to metrical anarchy instead of a harmonious enjoyment of liberty. Strangely enough, when we come upon an example of free verse that shows clearness and restraint and proportion, we do not think of it as free verse, though we do not think of it, on the other hand, as poetry of a traditional form. And this is as it should be. An example is the opening of a poem by Hart Crane, _Passage_: Where the cedar leaf divides the sky I heard the sea. In sapphire arenas of the hills I was promised an improved infancy. The rhyme between _sea_ and _infancy_ is not strong enough to mislead one into construing this as a regular stanza. The impression of regularity comes from a careful alternation of images, from a regularity of design more fundamental than mere verse regularity. The authorized version of the Bible, in passages where the original text was in poetic form, is the most familiar example of this: The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: How are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, Publish it not in the streets of Askelon; Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.