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

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow

The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within...could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the result; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline; and the most glorious poetry that has been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.

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.

I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.

...Ere midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace may meet.

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