Quotes about Poetry

Softly the breezes from the forest came, Softly they blew aside the taper's flame; Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower; Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower; Mysterious, wild, the far-heard trumpet's tone; Lovely the moon in ether, all alone: Sweet too, the converse of these happy mortals, As that of busy spirits when the portals Are closing in the west; or that soft humming We hear around when Hesperus is coming. Sweet be their sleep.

The two divinest things the world has got— A lovely woman and a rural spot.

Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much. In modern sculpture, picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscellaneous; the artist works here and there, and at all points, adding and adding, instead of unfolding the unit of his thought.

If we examine the poems of Thérèse of Lisieux at all, they reveal themselves richer than we first thought. And this is the problem with her poetry: We have to go beyond the simple style, which is naturally and deliberately artless—as is fitting for a "Carmelite poem"—to discover the treasures it conceals.

For Thérèse, poetry was not "art for amusement," because she did not write for her own satisfaction but out of duty, or at least with a concern to serve, to help, and to encourage.6

History which is not professedly utilitarian, history which is didactic only as great poetry is unconsciously didactic, may yet possess that highest form of usefulness, the power to thrill the souls of men with stories of strength and craft and daring, and to lift them out of their common selves to the heights of high endeavor.

What is sweeter than lettered ease?

The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.