“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”

“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.”

“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.”

“In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.”

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

“If truth in hearts that perishCould move the powers on high,I think the love I bear youShould make you not to die.Sure, sure, if steadfast meaning,If single thought could save,The world might end to-morrow,You should not see the grave.This long and sure-set liking,This boundless will to please,-Oh, you should live for everIf there were help in these.But now, since all is idle,To this lost heart be kind,Ere to a town you journey Where friends are ill to find.”

“Diffugere NivesHorace, Odes, iv, 7The snows are fled away, leaves on the shawsAnd grasses in the mead renew their birth,The river to the river-bed withdraws,And altered is the fashion of the earth.The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fearAnd unapparelled in the woodland play.The swift hour and the brief prime of the yearSay to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of springTreads summer sure to die, for hard on hersComes autumn with his apples scattering;Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;Come we where Tullus and where Ancus areAnd good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall addThe morrow to the day, what tongue has told?Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has hadThe fingers of no heir will ever hold.When thou descendest once the shades among,The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chainThe love of comrades cannot take away.”