And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure, Didst tread on earth unguess’d at. Better so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure, All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.
What shelter to grow ripe is ours? What leisure to grow wise?
For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!
Miracles do not happen.
For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
Saw life steadily and saw it whole.
The brave, impetuous heart yields everywhere to the subtle, contriving head.
All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men.
Six years-six little years-six drops of time.
ForTime, not Corydon, hath conquered thee.
The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;- on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again. For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.
Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o’er the starlit sea.
And each day brings it’s pretty dust, Our soon-choked souls to fll And we forget because we must, And not because we will.
Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.
Still bent to make some port he knows not where, still standing for some false impossible shore.
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.
Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.
I am bound by my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.