A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men.

Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.

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

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being. Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.

Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age.

Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.

A story of particular facts is a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which it distorts.