“There is eloquence in the tonguelesswind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of thereeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to somethingwithin the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathlessrapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, likethe enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one belovedsinging to you alone.”

“Perhaps the only comfort which remainsIs the unheeded clanking of my chains,The which I make, and call it melody.”

“Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.”

“[Poetry] strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bear the naked and sleeping beauty which is the spirit of its forms.”

“Nothing in the world is single;All things by a law divineIn one spirit meet and mingle.Why not I with thine?”

“Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep - He hath awakened from the dream of life”

“I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within their own eternity.”