Quotes
Quotes about Poets
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had. (Said of Marlowe.)
How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown,
Within whose circuit is Elysium
And all that poets feign of bliss and joy!
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer.... Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best.
Love is a boy by poets styl'd;
Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
And poets by their sufferings grow,--
As if there were no more to do,
To make a poet excellent,
But only want and discontent.
Poets that lasting marble seek
Must come in Latin or in Greek.
Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd;
The next, in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go;
To make a third, she join'd the former two.
Is she not more than painting can express,
Or youthful poets fancy when they love?
While pensive poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep.
There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough, along the mountain-side.
By our own spirits we are deified;
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
And mighty poets in their misery dead.
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!--
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths,--all these have vanished;
They live no longer in the faith of reason.
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,--words in their best order; poetry,--the best words in their best order.
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.
Alone!--that worn-out word,
So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing and grief hath known
Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word ALONE!
Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hope,
Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state,
Good patriots, who for a theory risked a cause.
Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
With awe and something of fear, John felt as if he were being instructed by the dead in person, souls of poets dead and gone. Doors were being opened. Welcome to long life and further revelations
Priests live by the letter and poets by the word
