"I do hate the bilge and bunkum about composers trying to 'add' to a poem - that a fine poem is complete in itself, and to set it is only to gild the lily, and so on ... I rather expected it [over the setting of two Milton Sonnets] and expect it still more when the Intimations [of Immortality] is finished . . . Obviously a poem may be unsatisfactory in itself for setting, but that is a purely musical consideration - that it has no architectural possibilities - no broad vowels where climaxes should be, and so on. But the first and last thing is that a composer is (presumably) moved by a poem and wishes to identify himself with it and share it." Gerald Finzi