“Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true”

“The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within...could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the result; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline; and the most glorious poetry that has been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.”

“Whatever may be his [man's] true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution (change and extinction). This is the character of all life and being - each is at once the centre and the circumference; the point to which all things are contained. - "On Life”

“One word is too often profanedFor me to profane it,One feeling too falsely disdain'dFor thee to disdain it.One hope too like dispairFor prudence to smother,I can give not what men call love:But wilt thou accept notThe worship the heart lifts aboveAnd heaven rejects not:The desire of the moth for the star,The devotion of something afarFrom the sphere of our sorrow?”

“Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burden of the curse of Babel.”

“Whether that lady's gentle mind, No longer with the form combinedWhich scattered love, as stars do light, Found sadness where it left delight,I dare not guess; but in this lifeOf error, ignorance, and strife,Where nothing is, but all things seem,And we the shadows of the dream,It is a modest creed, and yetPleasant if one considers it,To own that death itself must be,Like all the rest, a mockery.That garden sweet, that lady fair,And all sweet shapes and odors there,In truth have never passed away:'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death or change: their mightExceeds our organs, which endureNo light, being themselves obscure.(--Conclusion, Autumn - A Dirge)”

“(Title: To the Moon)Art thou pale for wearinessOf climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,Wandering companionlessAmong the stars that have a different birth,--And ever-changing, like a joyless eyeThat finds no object worth its constancy?”