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.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

A poet not in love is out at sea;
He must have a lay-figure.

A poet not in love is out at sea;
He must have a lay-figure.

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.

I have never yet known a poet who did not think himself
super-excellent.
[Lat., Adhue neminem cognovi poetam, read more

I have never yet known a poet who did not think himself
super-excellent.
[Lat., Adhue neminem cognovi poetam, qui sibi non optimus
videretur.]

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned read more

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect

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.

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.

Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared,
And ages ere the Mantuan Swan was heard;
To carry nature read more

Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared,
And ages ere the Mantuan Swan was heard;
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.