Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join'd the former two.

To so perverse a sex all grace is vain.

For secrets are edged tools, And must be kept from children and from fools.

Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy, Thou tyrant of the mind!

A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind.

Deathless laurel is the victor's due.

What judgment I had increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or reject; to run them into verse or to give them the other harmony of prose.