The last stanza I usually find the most challenging. To neatly conclude the theme of the poem in gently alighting lines is to me a fount of distress.

As the multi-stanza direction (that is, the lyrical ballad) of “Mist from the Mountains” nears completion, two things become clear: that the other directions I wished to explore have become redundant, so integrated into its stanzas that they now strike me as academic, and that the title of the poem must be shortened to “Mist”, as “Mist from the Mountains” strikes me as needlessly long.

Months after completing a poem, I find myself reciting it on just such an occasion as the one that inspired it, and whilst enraptured in the declamation, a word I had previously rejected inadvertently slips into a line. I pause and think: hum, I know why I rejected this word in the final draft, but it is better after all!