You need not attempt to shake off or to banter off Romance. It is an evil you will never get rid of to the end of your days. It is a part of yourself ... of your soul. Age will only mellow it a little, and give it a holier tone.

You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

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

Leave my loneliness unbroken

Tell me truly, I implore-- Is there-- is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!

I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.