Obscurity

"That it has pleased God to make Holy Scripture obscure in certain places lest, if it were perfectly clear to all, it might be vulgarized and subjected to disrespect or be so misunderstood by people of limited intelligence as to lead them into error."

"Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent Of odours in unhaunted deserts."

"Yet was he but a squire of low degree."

"As night the life-inclining stars best shows, So lives obscure the starriest souls disclose."

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

"Ut sæpe summa ingenia in occulto latent!"

"Yet still he fills affections eye, Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind."

"Content thyself to be obscurely good."

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love."

"Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie."

"Now, in our opinion, no author should be blamed for obscurity; nor should any pains be grudged in the effort to understand him, provided that he has done his best to be intelligible. Difficult thoughts are quite distinct from difficult words. Difficulty of thought is the very heart of poetry."

"Some write their wrongs in marble: he more just, Stoopd down serene and wrote them on the dust, Trod under foot, the sport of every wind, Swept from the earth and blotted from his mind, There, secret in the grave, he bade them lie, And grieved they could not scape the Almighty eye."