“Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.”

“Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.”

“The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;He has devoured the infant child.The infant child is not awareIt has been eaten by a bear.""Infant Innocence”

“When I examine my mind and try to discern clearly in the matter, I cannot satisfy myself that there are any such things as poetical ideas. No truth, it seems to me, is too precious, no observation too profound, and no sentiment too exalted to be expressed in prose. The utmost I could admit is that some ideas do, while others do not, lend themselves kindly to poetical expression; and that those receive from poetry an enhancement which glorifies and almost transfigures them, and which is not perceived to be a separate thing except by analysis.”

“Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.”

“Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?Oh they're taking him to prison for the color of his hair.”

“The time you won your town the raceWe chaired you through the market-place;Man and boy stood cheering by,And home we brought you shoulder-high.Today, the road all runners come,Shoulder-high we bring you home,And set you at your threshold down,Townsman of a stiller town.Smart lad, to slip betimes awayFrom fields where glory does not stay,And early though the laurel growsIt withers quicker than the rose.Eyes the shady night has shutCannot see the record cut,And silence sounds no worse than cheersAfter earth has stopped the ears.Now you will not swell the routOf lads that wore their honours out,Runners whom renown outranAnd the name died before the man.So set, before its echoes fade,The fleet foot on the sill of shade,And hold to the low lintel upThe still-defended challenge-cup.And round that early-laurelled headWill flock to gaze the strengthless dead,And find unwithered on its curlsThe garland briefer than a girl’s.”