If I venture to displace ... the microscopical speck of dust... on the point of my finger,... I have done a deed which shakes the Moon in her path, which causes the Sun to be no longer the Sun, and which alters forever the destiny of multitudinous myriads of stars.

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.

The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow

To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of Despair