Poetry Quotes — page 7

We hear of the dead past and the living present: we are bid (and we do well to remember that it is an American poet who so adapts the words) to let the dead past bury its dead. But surely the past lives in the present, the process by which …

Yours is the guilt of all, who, judging wrong, Mistake tuned nonsense for the poet's song! Provoking dulness!—what a soul has he Who fancies rhyme, and measure, poetry!— He thinks, profanely, that this generous art Stops at the ear—with …

The Poet gathers fruit from every tree, Yea, grapes from thorns and figs from thistles he. Pluck'd by his hand, the basest weed that grows Towers to a lily, reddens to a rose.

A poem, of whatever length, should start vividly, so as to wind up the ear and set the mind ticking.

As it is generally seen, blank verse seems to be only a laborious and doubtful struggle to escape from the fangs of prose... if it ever ventures to relax into simple and natural phraseology, it instantly becomes tame and the prey of its …

Poetry’s a mere drug, Sir.

O Poverty! thou source of human art, Thou great inspirer of the poet’s song!

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse — and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness — And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

A poet’s Mistress is a hallowed thing.

How fast we learn in the day of sorrow! Scripture shines out in a new effulgence; every verse seems to contain a sunbeam, every promise stands out in illuminated splendor; things hard to be understood become in a moment plain.

Sophocles, the poet loved and feared, Whose mighty voice once called out of her lair The Dorian muse severe, with braided hair, Who loved the thyrsus and wild dances weird.

The general opinion appears to be that it is very funny to make yourself out as fast or as foolish as possible; though even worse than this is the painful orthodoxy of those individuals who claim Shakespeare for their favourite poet, …

For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.

Before the conquest, the Filipinos had a literature written in characters of their own, and its manifestation in verse constituted of maxims, proverbs, boat-songs, nuptial-songs, war songs, love-songs, and the like.

The reason there are no great poets and writers now is because there are no great deeds or heroes to write about. The world is becoming tame and sad and dreary.

Oh to be my verse an answering gleam from higher radiance caught

A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

We may have an excellent Ear in Musick, without being able to perform in any kind. We may judg well of Poetry, without being Poets, or possessing the least of a Poetick Vein: But we can have no tolerable Notion of Goodness, without being …

Special qualities are required of the essayist. A poem or a novel may spring from the inner consciousness of an author.. reasoning powers must be brought to reinforce imagination.

Nations are born in the hearts of poets; they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.

The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man.

Our Poets make us laugh at Tragœdy, And with their Comoedies they make us cry.

Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven.