And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

In the Heaven's above, the angels, whispering to one another, can find, among their burning terms of love, none so devotional as that of 'Mother.

A poem in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth.

Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.

There is no beauty without some strangeness

...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.

Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.