"With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue, Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw."

"Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea."

"To know, to esteem, to love—and then to part, Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!"

"Never, believe me, Appear the Immortals, Never alone."

"The knight's bones are dust, And his good sword rust; His soul is with the saints, I trust."

"The imagination ... that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors."

"I stood in unimaginable trance And agony that cannot be remembered."

"I have heard of reasons manifold Why Love must needs be blind, But this the best of all I hold,— His eyes are in his mind.What outward form and feature are He guesseth but in part; But what within is good and fair He seeth with the heart."

"And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you, How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you."

"And in Life's noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy. You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within."

"Iambics march from short to long;— With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng."

"Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks."

"I could not know, Whether I suffered, or I did: For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe, My own or others still the same Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame!"

"What is an Epigram? a dwarfish whole, Its body brevity, and wit its soul."

"But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love, The green fields below him, the blue sky above, That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he— 'I love my Love, and my Love loves me!'"

"Tranquillity! thou better name Than all the family of Fame!"

"A charm For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom No sound is dissonant which tells of life."

"When the last rook Beat its straight path along the dusky air"

"Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison!"

"Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn."

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame."

"In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back."

"Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows, Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean."

"As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw A solitary cell; And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint For improving his prisons in Hell."

"He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility; And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes humility."

"He saw a Lawyer killing a viper On a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother, Abel."

"His jacket was red and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where the tail came through."

"And backward and forward he switched his long tail As a gentleman switches his cane."

"From his brimstone bed at break of day, A walking the Devil is gone, To look at his snug little farm the earth, And see how his stock goes on."

"Lingering he raised his latch at eve, Though tired in heart and limb: He loved no other place, and yet Home was no home to him."

"‘Alas!’ said she, ‘we ne’er can be Made happy by compulsion.’"

"Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place (Portentous-sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing an obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, "Where is it?""

"Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreasts sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while all the thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw: whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet moon."

"Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing."

"Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams!"

"The frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind."

"Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there."

"Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea! every thing that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, whereso'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty."

""Most musical, most melancholy" bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself, And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain."

"So for the mother’s sake the child was dear, And dearer was the mother for the child."

"And this reft house is that the which he built, Lamented Jack!"

"O! I do love thee, meek Simplicity!"

"And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversly fram'd, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of All?"

"O! the one Life, within us and abroad, Which meets all Motion, and becomes its soul, A Light in Sound, a sound-like power in Light, Rhythm in all Thought, and Joyance every where."

"Blest hour! it was a luxury — to be!"

"Poor little foal of an oppressèd race! I love the languid patience of thy face."

"Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there."

"Hugo, optimism incarnate, the vatic poet, recognised by God as the only worthy interlocutor, the courageous defender of the Communards...this cantor of the poor, the only one who was- and still is- read by the working classes,... this astonishing man: half priest and half anarchist, incontestable sovereign of the century."

"I was exposed to Dickens, Dumas, Victor Hugo, de Maupassant, Balzac."

"The first romantics were seers without even really realizing it: their soul's education began by accident: abandoned trains still smoking, occasionally taking to the tracks. Lamartine was a seer now and again, but strangling on old forms. Hugo, too pigheaded, certainly saw in his most recent works: Les Misérables is really a poem. I've got Les Chatiments with me; Stella gives some sense of Hugo's vision. Too much Belmontet and Lamennais with their Jehovahs and colonnades, massive crumbling edifices."