Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.

Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.

There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.

Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.

With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.

The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude.