The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus read more

Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn
Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample;
But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one
Being with "Formosum Pastor Corydon."

Poets are all who love,--who feel great truths,
And tell them.

Poets are all who love,--who feel great truths,
And tell them.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only poets know.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only poets know.

Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.

Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.

A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If read more

A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland.

The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the read more

The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.

Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; read more

Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those.

A Poet without Love were a physical and metaphysical
impossibility.

A Poet without Love were a physical and metaphysical
impossibility.