Prophetic beauty of the sunset storm,
Transfigured into color and to form
Across the sky. O wondrous changing rain!
Changeful and full of temper as man's life;
Impetuous, fierce, unpitying, kind again,
Prophetic, beauteous, soothing, full of strife:
Through all thy changing passions hear not we
Th' eternal note of the Unchanging Sea?
—Laura Spencer Portor
Nothing is worse than bad poetry, unless it be bad art of every kind, of which the world today is having a surfeit. That we find a greater abundance of wretched verse, however, than of wretched painting and sculpture, and that there are still those who think that the poet's equipment need consist of little more than an unbalanced emotionalism, we may attribute perhaps to the fact that the pen and ink are readier to hand with the majority than palette and brush or calipers and modeling tool. Conceit and ignorance, working together, have made "to write poetry" almost a reproach.