I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.

All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.

The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose.

(Title: To the Moon) Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,-- And ever-changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?

Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil