“Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.”

“Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.Methinks, its motion in this hush of natureGives it dim sympathies with me who live,Making it a companionable form,Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling SpiritBy its own moods interprets, every whereEcho or mirror seeking of itself,And makes a toy of Thought.”

“Then all the charm Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape the other.”

“For I was reared in the great city, pent with cloisters dim,and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars.But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breezeBy lakes and sandy shores, beneath the cragsOf ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds,Which image in their bulk both lakes and shoresAnd mountain crags: so shall thou see and hearThe lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy GodUtters, who from eternity doth teachHimself in all, and al things in himselfGreat universal teacher! He shall moldThy spirit and by giving , make it ask.”

“And what if all of animated natureBe but organic harps diversely framed,That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweepsPlastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,At once the Soul of each, and God of All?”

“What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole,Its body brevity, and wit its soul.”

“Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.”