“If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.”

“It ought to come like the leaves to the trees, or it better not come at all.”

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”

“I find I cannot exist without Poetry”

“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.”

“Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance".”

“No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasuresThan I began to think of rhymes and measures:The air that floated by me seem'd to say'Write! thou wilt never have a better day.”