Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?
Swans sing before they die – ’twere no bad thing did certain persons die before they sing.
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in the best order.
A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.
Poetry: the best words in the best order.
Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house.
The Poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of a man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, […]
Pity is best taught by fellowship in woe.
