Read it through once

The language of conversation when elevated and refined by firm and well-chosen imagery, becomes the natural language of poetry. It will be proper, therefore, in the poems here presented, to make use of such expressions as are found in the common language of men, but to employ them in such a manner as to clothe them with consistent and vivid imagery, and to give to them, by the unity of moral effect, that elevated tone which merges the local into the universal.