“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,      Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;      ’T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses Instead of speech, may form a lasting link      Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, when paper — even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his.”

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,Falling, like dew, upon a thought producesThat which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”

“A drop of ink may make a million think.”

“T is sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels,By blood or ink; 't is sweet to put an endTo strife; 't is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,Particularly with a tiresome friend:Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;Dear is the helpless creature we defendAgainst the world; and dear the schoolboy spotWe ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,Is first and passionate Love—it stands alone,Like Adam's recollection of his fall;The Tree of Knowledge has been plucked—all 's known—And Life yields nothing further to recallWorthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,No doubt in fable, as the unforgivenFire which Prometheus filched for us from Heaven.”

“Nothing so difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end; For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, Like Lucifer when hurled from Heaven for sinning; Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend, Being Pride, which leads the mind to soar too far, Till our own weakness shows us what we are. But Time, which brings all beings to their level, And sharp Adversity, will teach at last Man,—and, as we would hope,—perhaps the Devil, That neither of their intellects are vast: While Youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel, We know not this—the blood flows on too fast; But as the torrent widens towards the Ocean, We ponder deeply on each past emotion.”

“But suppose it past,—suppose one of these men, as I have seen them meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame ; suppose this man surrounded by those children for whom he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about to be torn for ever from a family which he lately supported in peaceful industry, and which it is not his fault than he can no longer so support; suppose this man—and there are ten thousand such from whom you may select your victims,—dragged into court to be tried for this new offence, by this new law,—still there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him, and these are, in my opinion, twelve butchers for a jury, and a Jefferies for a judge!”

“‎Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world, a boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence. Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality; and dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy. They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, they take a weight off our waking toils. They do divide our being; they become a portion of ourselves as of our time, and look like heralds of eternity. They pass like spirits of the past—they speak like sibyls of the future; they have power— the tyranny of pleasure and of pain. They make us what we were not—what they will, and shake us with the vision that’s gone by, the dread of vanished shadows—Are they so? Is not the past all shadow?—What are they? Creations of the mind?—The mind can make substances, and people planets of their own, with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recall a vision which I dreamed, perchance in sleep—for in itself a thought, a slumbering thought, is capable of years, and curdles a long life into one hour.”