One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it.

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

Contemporary criticism only represents the amount of ignorance genius has to contend with. . . . Time will reverse the judgement of the vulgar.

The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?

Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.

What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats, tho' unseen, amongst us.