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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.
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The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.
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They will explain themselves - as all poems should do without any comment.
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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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Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
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Stop and consider! life is but a day;A fragile dew-drop on its perilous wayFrom a tree’s summit.
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Shed no tear! O shed no tear!The flower will bloom another year.Weep no more! O weep no more!Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
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Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may findThee sitting careless on a granary floor,Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hookSpares the next swath and all its twined flowers.
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Deep in the shady sadness of a valeFar sunken from the healthy breath of morn,Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,Still as the silence round about his lair;Forest on forest hung about his headLike cloud on cloud.
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'If I should die,' said I to myself, 'I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.'
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I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise.
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Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.
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Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
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And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
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Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.
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The Public - a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.
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And there shall be for thee all soft delightThat shadowy thought can win,A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,To let the warm Love in!
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Sometimes goldfinches one by one will dropFrom low hung branches; little space they stop;But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek;Then off at once, as in a wanton freak:Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wingsPausing upon their yellow flutterings.
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The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast.
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Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mournAmong the river sallows, borne aloftOr sinking as the light wind lives or dies.
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O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
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The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.
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The silver snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.
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But were there ever anyWrith'd not of passed joy?The feel of not to feel it,When there is none to heal it,Nor numbed sense to steel it,Was never said in rhyme.