(This is the last paragraph of Chesterton`s essay: `The slavery of free verse`... It is
a challenge to produce a poetic (beautiful?) effect in free verse...Surely - in these
days of almost universal free verse - it can easily be met......any offers?)

`It is certain that words such as ” birds ” and ” sweet,” which are as plain as ” fish ” or ” stone,” can be combined in such a miracle as ” Bare ruined quires where late the sweet birds sang.” So far as I can follow my own feelings, the metre and fall of the feet, even the rhyme and place in the sonnet, have a great deal to do with producing such an effect. I do not say there is no other way of producing such an effect. I only ask, not without longing, where else in this wide and weary time is it produced? I know I cannot produce it ; and I do not in fact feel it when I hear vers libres. I know not where is that Promethean heat; and, even to express my ignorance, I am glad to find better words than my own.)