I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, when the winds are breathing low, and the stars are shining bright.
I love snow, snow, and all the forms of radiant frost.
Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, – To the silent wilderness, Where the soul need not repress Its music.
There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.
Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine, In one spirit meet and mingle-Why not I with thine?
All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially.
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being. Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.
Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you Ye are many-they are few.
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Joy, once lost, is pain.
Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.
Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being.
I am convinced that there can be no regeneration of mankind until laughter is put down.
A story of particular facts is a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which it distorts.
The practice of utter sincerity towards other men would avail to no good end, if they were incapable of practising it towards their own minds. In fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.
When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield, That, blind, they there may dig each other’s graves, And call the sad work glory...
Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes – are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.