Know what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of Baptism; it is to believe in belief; it is to be so little that elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child had its fairy godmother in its soul.

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone. But grief returns with the revolving year.

His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it.

Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.

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

[L]ike thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough year just awake In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring, Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn To hoar February born.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.