I have in mind one by Aldrich in which the word 'nostrils' occurs in the very first verse, and one cannot do anything with it.

Much of the finest poetry--for instance, the wonderful writings of Whitman--proves unsuitable, yet it has been undertaken....
"A song, if at all dramatic, should have climax, form, and plot, as does a play.

Words to me seem so paramount and, as it were, apart in value from the musical setting, that, while I cannot recall the melodies of many of the songs that I have written, the words of them are so indelibly impressed upon my mind that they are very easy of recall....

Music and poetry cannot be accurately stated unless one has written both." It is clear that these are the views of a composer who placed veracious declamation of the poetic idea very much to the front in his conception of the art of the song-writer.

They explain in part, also, the fact that MacDowell himself wrote the words of many of his songs, though, quite characteristically, he did not avow the fact in the printed music.