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

“Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.”

“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”

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”

“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!”

“I find I cannot exist without Poetry”

“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.”