In his essay on Coleridge, Francis Thompson says: "There is not one great poet who has escaped the charge of obscurity, fantasticalness, or affectation of utterance," but we may ask, Is there one great poet who has not deserved the charge of obscurity? If we limit the charge to that kind of obscurity that we have called the obscurity of Nature or of Mystery, then to our knowledge there is none. Certainly is some of his poems Mr. MacDonagh deserves the charge. Much of The Book of Images is difficult if not impossible to interpret, but the Vision is not less clear for that, and the one thing that we must insist on is clarity of Vision. Without clarity of Vision there can be no certainty of inspiration. It is only in utterance that the great poet is obscure. And it is only in utterance that Mr. MacDonagh is obscure. That is not because he does not speak plainly, it is because he speaks too plainly to be understood. Nor is it because all utterance is inadequate. It is not that his words do not mean enough. It is that they mean too much. When he says:
