A mistake commonly committed by novices is to make up their minds what it is they are going to say before they begin. This is superfluous effort, tending to cramp the style. It is permissible, if not essential, to select a _subject_--say, MUD--but any detailed argument or plan which may restrict the free development of metre and rhyme (if any) is to be discouraged. With that understanding, let us now write a poem about MUD. I should begin in this sort of way:-- Mud, mud, Nothing but mud, O my God! It will be seen at once that we are not going to have much rhyme in this poem; or if we do we shall very soon be compelled to strike a sinister note, because almost the only rhymes to _mud_ are _blood_ and _flood_; while, as the authors of our hymns have discovered, there are very few satisfactory rhymes to _God_. They shamefully evaded the difficulty by using words like _road_, but in first-class poetry one cannot do that. On the whole, therefore, this poem had better be _vers libre_. That will take much less time and be more dramatic, without plunging us into a flood of blood or anything drastic like that. We now go on with a little descriptive business:-- Into the sunset, swallowing up the sun, Crawling, creeping, The naked flats---- Now there ought to be a verb. That is the worst of _vers libre_; one gets carried away by beautiful phrases and is brought up suddenly by a complete absence of verbs. However at a pinch one can do without a verb; that is the best of _vers libre_:-- Amber and gold, Deep-stained in mystery And the colours of mystery, Inapprehensible, Golden like wet-gold, Amber like a woman of Arabia That has in her breast The forsaken treasures of old Time, Love and Destruction, Oblivion and Decay, And bully-beef tins, Tin upon tin, Old boots, and bottles that hold no more Their richness in them. And I---- We might do a good deal more of this descriptive business, bringing in something about dead bodies, mud of course being full of dead bodies. But we had better get on. We strike now the personal note:-- And I, I too am no more than a bottle, An empty bottle, Heaving helpless on the mud of life, Without a label and without a cork, Empty I am, yet no man troubles To return me. And why? Because there is not sixpence on me. Bah! The sun goes down in the West (Or is it the East?) But I remain here, Drifting empty under the night, Drifting----