Do your heart and head keep pace? When does hoary Love expire, When do frosts put out the fire? Can its embers burn below All that chill December snow?

Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence.

Genius does not need a special language; it uses newly whatever tongue it finds.

A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus become his best encourager.

Look on this cast, and know the hand That bore a nation in its hold; From this mute witness understand What Lincoln was - how large of mould.

The critic's first labor is the task of distinguishing between men, as history and their works display them, and the ideals which one and another have conspired to urge upon his acceptance.

The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.