The poet is the man made to solve the riddle of the universe who brings the whole soul of man into activity.

That gracious thing, made up of tears and light.

The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.

A savage place! As holy and enchanted/As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted/By woman wailing for her Demon Lover!

Creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and with such co-presence of the whole picture flash'd at once upon the eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. (Describing his poetic ideal, 1817)

Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word.

Nature never deserts the wise and pure; no plot so narrow, be but nature there; no waste so vacant, but may well employ each faculty of sense, and keep the heart awake to love and beauty.