most accurate instrument

To speak of Poetry is to speak of the most subtle, the most delicate, and most accurate instrument by which to measure Life.

H.T. Tobias A. Wright's introduction to the Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1918), translated by Jessie Lamont.

wild flower

When we talk of wild poetry, we sometimes forget the parallel of wild flowers. They exist to show that a thing may be more modest and delicate for being wild.

—G. K. Chesterton, Chaucer (1932), Collected Works Vol. XVIII