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Nought but a lovely sighing of the windAlong the reedy stream; a half-heard strain,Full of sweet desolation-balmy pain.
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Love is my religion - I could die for it.
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There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.
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I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
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There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.
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A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing.
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A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity - he is continually informing - and filling some other body.
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Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel.
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I scarcely remember counting upon happiness - I look not for it if it be not in the present hour - nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.
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A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see the mystery of life - a life like the Scriptures, figurative... Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not figurative. Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it.
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With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
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You are always new, the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.
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This living hand, now warm and capableOf earnest grasping, would, if it were coldAnd in the icy silence of the tomb,So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nightsThat thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of bloodSo in my veins red life might stream again,And thou be conscience-calm'd - see here it is -I hold it towards you.
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The poetical character... is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it fair or foul, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated. - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philospher, delights the camelion poet.
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Works of genius are the first things in this world.
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Souls of Poets dead and gone,What Elysium have ye known,Happy field or mossy cavern,Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
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O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth.Tasting of Flora and the country green,Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!O for a beaker full of the warm South,Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,And purple-stained mouth.
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I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.
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Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
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Who are these coming to the sacrifice?To what green altar, O mysterious priest,Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
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I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you!
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They will explain themselves - as all poems should do without any comment.
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Time, that aged nurse,Rocked me to patience.
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Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.