Charles Williams was the 'third Inkling', friend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Hiswork was also admired by T. S. Eliot, Dorothy L. Sayers and W. H Auden among others. These essays have been gathered from books, pamphlets and periodicals all long out of print and none of them has previously been collected. They cover nearly all his literary interests and the nal one shows his sympathy for left-wing political ideas arising from his own poverty-ridden childhood. The title essay develops Williams's theory of poetry but is also a covert homage to the woman who was his second and unacknowledged love.