A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the…

I asked if I got sick and died, would you With my black funeral go walking too, If you’d stand close to hear them talk or pray While I’m let down in that steep bank of clay.

I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds, The gray and wintry sides of many glens, And did but half remember human words, In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.

In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest—usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation—and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is …

I’m a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

What is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?

Lord, confound this surly sister, Blight her brow with blotch and blister, Cramp her larynx, lung and liver, In her guts a galling give her.