"Why do poets, generation after generation, time out of mind, repeat: The sea is beautiful; women are beautiful; the sun is beautiful? Because for each man it is new? No. Because for all men it is old. Because the loveliness, the poetry, is in the commonness, the recognition. Because it is the love, the wonder, that is poetry and not the object of the love or wonder. Generation after generation poetry has kept this record of the hearts of men."
– Archibald Macleish, “In Challenge Not Defense”
