What! Did Sir W[alter] R[aleigh] believe that a male and female ounce (and, if so, why not two tigers and lions, etc?) would have produced, in a course of generations, a cat, or a cat a lion? This is Darwinizing with a vengeance.

About, about, in reel and rout the death fires danced at night.

When thieves come, I bark; when gallants, I am still - So perform both my master's and mistress's will.

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to meter. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

If you wish to assured of the truth of Christianity, try it. Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of thy belief.

That agony returns; And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.