... Dickinson's memoranda have a certain something which, for want of a more precise name, we term quality, is not to be denied. But the incoherence and shapelessness of the greater part of her verse are fatal. On nearly every page one lights upon an unsupported exquisite line or a lonely happy epithet; but a single happy epithet or an isolated exquisite line does not constitute a poem. What Lowell says ... — Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... suggested that he might, changing the outward occurrences, and the description of the persons to whom they happened, in such fashion that there could be no identification of them, tell the very tale of how Annie and he came to know and love each other, taking especial care to muffle up to shapelessness, or at least featurelessness, the part his mother had taken in their story. This seeming to Hector a thing possible, he took courage, and set about it at once, gathering interest as he proceeded, and writing faster and faster as he grew in ... — Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
...
