I am the son of a poet, and I have tried very hard all my life not to be a poet myself, if poet means a man who tries to make his thoughts dance gracefully in the chains of metre and rhyme. In my own very prosaic work I have had to suffer all my life from suppressed poetry, as one suffers from suppressed gout. Poets will, no doubt, protest most emphatically against so low a view of their art. They assure us that they never feel their chains, and that they are perfectly free in giving expression to their thoughts in rhyme and metre. Some of the more honest among them have even gone so far as to confess that their best thoughts had often been suggested to them by the rhyme. Platen may be quite right when he says: Was stets und aller Orten sich ewig jung erweist Ist in gebundenen Worten ein ungebundener Geist. (What proves itself eternal in every place and time Is an unfettered spirit, free in the chains of rhyme.) True, very true. You may get that now and then, but in our modern languages it is but seldom that thought soars up quite free on the wings of rhyme. Many and many a thought sinks down because of the weight of the rhyme, many and many a thought remains altogether unspoken because it will not submit to the strait jacket of the rhyme; many and many a poor thought is due entirely to an irrepressible rhyme; and if some brilliant thoughts have really been suggested by the rhyme, would it not be better if they had been suggested by something else, whether you call it mind or soul? The greatest masters of rhyme, such as Browning in English or Rückert in German, and even H. Heine, often fall victims to their own mastery. They spoil their poems in order to show that they can find a rhyme for anything and everything, however grotesque the rhyme may be. I remember once being bold enough to ask Tennyson what was the use or excuse of rhyme. He was not offended, but was quite ready with his answer: “Rhyme helps the memory,” he said—and that answer was as honest as it was true. But what is useful for one purpose, for the purpose of recollecting, may be anything but useful for other purposes, it may be even hurtful, and in our case it has certainly proved hurtful again and again to the natural flow and expression of thought and feeling.