In this context I might cite the views of J R R Tolkien, who was himself responsible for the perpetration of a poem entitled "Goblin Feet" in his early career, a poem very much in the Allingham tradition. At the end of his life however he wrote of it: "I wish the unhappy little thing, representing all thast I came (so soon after) to fervently dislike, could be buried for ever." I very much feel in sympathy with that view.
That does not mean of course that bad verse cannot inspire good, or even great music. And I did observe in my review that this happened in the third of Stanford's settings, where the musical inspiration takes over from the words and rises to heights than cannot possibly be justified as a simple response to the poetry.
Otherwise, to quote from the third section of Fairy Day: "When broadens the moonlight, we frolic and jest; when darkles [sic] the forest, we sink into rest."
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