You know how it is, being yourself a poet—one writes such and such a narrative, and thinks as one goes along—here’s a good touch—this concept modifies that—will it not be too obvious to the generality?—too thick an impasto of the Obvious—one has almost a disgust at the too-apparent meaning—and then the general public gets hold of it, and pronounces it at the same time too heartily simple and too loftily incomprehensible—and it is clear only that whatever one had hoped to convey is lost in mists of impenetrability—and slowly it loses its life—in one’s own mind, as much as in its readers’.
