I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.

Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again.

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away... and the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.

Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

Let the minor genius go his light way and enjoy his life - the great nature cannot so live, he is never really in holiday mood, even though he often plucks flowers by the wayside and ties them into knots and garlands like little children and lays out on a sunny morning.