“I still don't know how to work out a poem. A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving into a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out, it is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.”

“Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.”

“I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.”

“X.I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!” XI.I saw their starved lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill’s side. XII.And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.”

“When it is moving on luxurious wings,The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings.”

“O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!”

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”