You May Also Like / View all maxioms
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.
Poets are all who love,--who feel great truths,
And tell them.
Poets are all who love,--who feel great truths,
And tell them.
Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; read more
Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.
"There's nothing great
Nor small," has said a poet of our day,
Whose voice will ring beyond read more
"There's nothing great
Nor small," has said a poet of our day,
Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve
And not be thrown out by the matin's bell.
Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.
Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.
They best can judge a poet's worth,
Who oft themselves have known
The pangs of a poetic read more
They best can judge a poet's worth,
Who oft themselves have known
The pangs of a poetic birth
By labours of their own.
Greece, sound, thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name,
But England's Milton equals both in fame.
Greece, sound, thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name,
But England's Milton equals both in fame.
There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only poets know.
There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only poets know.
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."