The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!

What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.

The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.

But we shall not know the world by looking at it; we know it by looking at the hovering fly.

In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.

Men expect too much, do too little.

Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them.