“I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter.”

“You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.”

“Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,Lover of loneliness, and wandering,Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!Thee must I praise above all other gloriesThat smile us on to tell delightful stories.”

“My spirit is too weak--mortalityWeighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,And each imagin'd pinnacle and steepOf godlike hardship tells me I must dieLike a sick Eagle looking at the sky.”

“Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,And fright him as the morning frightens night!”

“Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not”

“O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,— Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee, Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.To Solitude”