Read it through once

This discipline, though severe, was a relief. What I had to do was to submit to certain forms and conventions; and by submitting to them I was enabled to express what I had to express with economy and with a kind of dignity. The more strictly I adhered to these conventions the more independent, the more personal, the thing that I wrote seemed. There is, I think, a sort of humility in good composition: the poet recognises that he has not a new manner of saying everything; he recognises that what he has to say must be said within certain limits laid down by the practice of literature.