"Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. Awake, Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn."

"O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer, I worshipped the Invisible alone."

"Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines."

"Around thee and above, Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity!"

"Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, О sovran Blanc!"

"Often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow."

"Clothing the palpable and the familiar With golden exhalations of the dawn."

"The doing evil to avoid an evil Cannot be good."

"I've lived and loved."

"But still the heart doth need a language, still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names"

"The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanished. They live no longer in the faith of reason!"

"Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud — We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light."

"It is a flat'ning Thought, that the more we have seen, the less we have to say."

"Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not."

"The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise. Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where "I admire" is but a synonyme for "I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!"

"Moral obligation is to me so very strong a Stimulant, that in 9 cases out of ten it acts as a Narcotic. The Blow that should rouse, stuns me."

"He has no native Passion, because he is not a Thinker — & has probably weakened his Intellect by the haunting Fear of becoming extravagant."

"Never to see or describe any interesting appearance in nature, without connecting it by dim analogies with the moral world, proves faintness of Impression. Nature has her proper interest; & he will know what it is, who believes & feels, that every Thing has a life of it's own, & that we are all one Life."

"But metre itself implies a passion, i.e. a state of excitement, both in the Poet's mind, & is expected in that of the Reader."

"Metaphisics is a word that you, my dear Sir! are no great friend to / but yet you will agree, that a great Poet must be, implicitè if not explicitè, a profound Metaphysician. He may not have it in logical coherence, in his Brain & Tongue; but he must have it by Tact / for all sounds, & all forms of human nature he must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent Desart, the eye of a North American Indian tracing the footsteps of an Enemy upon the Leaves that strew the Forest — ; the Touch of a Blind Man feeling the face of a darling Child."

"God knows, it is as much as I can do to put meat and bread on my own table; & hourly some poor starving wretch comes to my door, to put in his claim for a part of it."

"I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark."

"From my early reading of Faery Tales, & Genii &c &c — my mind had been habituated to the Vast — & I never regarded my senses in any way as the criteria of my belief. I regulated all my creeds by my conceptions not by my sight — even at that age. Should children be permitted to read Romances, & Relations of Giants & Magicians, & Genii? — I know all that has been said against it; but I have formed my faith in the affirmative. — I know no other way of giving the mind a love of "the Great," & "the Whole." — Those who have been led by the same truths step by step thro' the constant testimony of their senses, seem to me to want a sense which I possess — They contemplate nothing but parts — and all parts are necessarily little — and the Universe to them is but a mass of little things. It is true, the mind may become credulous and prone to superstition by the former method; — but are not the experimentalists credulous even to madness in believing any absurdity, rather than believe the grandest truths, if they have not the testimony of their own senses in their favor? I have known some who have been rationally educated, as it is styled. They were marked by a microscopic acuteness; but when they looked at great things, all became a blank, and they saw nothing, and denied that any thing could be seen, and uniformly put the negative of a power for the possession of a power, and called the want of imagination judgment, and the never being moved to rapture philosophy."

"Your Sensibilities are tempestuous — you feel Indignation at Weakness — Now Indignation is the handsome Brother of Anger & Hatred — His looks are "lovely in terror" — yet still remember, who are his Relations."

"My next shall be a more sober & chastised Epistle — but you see I was in the humour for metaphors — and to tell thee the Truth, I have so often serious reasons to quarrel with my Inclination, that I do not chuse to contradict it for Trifles."

"I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz. that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert."

"I lay too many Eggs in the hot Sands of this Wilderness, the World! with Ostrich Carelessness & Ostrich Oblivion. The greater part, I trust, are trod underfoot, & smashed; but yet no small number crawl forth into Life, some to furnish Feathers for the Caps of others, & still more to plume the Shafts in the Quivers of my Enemies, of them that lie in wait against my Soul."

"O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed, While, and on whom, thou may'st — shine on! nor heed Whether the object by reflected light Return thy radiance or absorb it quite: And tho' thou notest from thy safe recess Old Friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air, Love them for what they are; nor love them less, Because to thee they are not what they were."

"Unchanged within, to see all changed without, Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt. Yet why at others' Wanings should'st thou fret? Then only might'st thou feel a just regret, Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light In selfish forethought of neglect and slight."

"Bloom, O ye Amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live."

"All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair — The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing — And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing."

"A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth."

"O lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live."

"I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within."

"I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!"

"Yon crescent Moon, as fix'd as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue."

"And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars."

"A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief In word, or sigh, or tear."

"Well! If the Bard was weatherwise, who made The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence."

"Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm."

"A little child, a limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds, and never seeks, Makes such a vision to the sight As fills a father’s eyes with light."

"They stood aloof, the scars remaining,— Like cliffs which had been rent asunder: A dreary sea now flows between."

"Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain."

"Each matin bell, the Baron saith, Knells us back to a world of death."

"Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!"

"That saints will aid if men will call: For the blue sky bends over all!"

"Behold! her bosom and half her side— A sight to dream of, not to tell!"

"Her gentle limbs did she undress, And lay down in her loveliness."

"Carv'd with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain."

"A lady so richly clad as she, Beautiful exceedingly!"