It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea: Listen! the mighty being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thundereverlastingly.

That best portion of a man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything.

I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, wherever nature led.

Provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke.

A great poet ought to a certain degree to rectify men's feelings... to render their feelings more sane, pure and permanent, in short, more consonant to Nature.