Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity. — Emerson. The end of poetry is to please; and the name, we think, is strictly applicable to every metriIcal composition from which we derive pleasure without any laborious exercise of the understanding. -Jeffrey. Nothing which does not transport is poetry. Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above The lyre is a winged instrument. - Joubert. all, of great and feeling souls. Voltaire. God's prophets of the beautiful these poets were. O brave poets! keep back nothing, nor mix falsehood with the whole; look up Godward; Bishop Ken styled poetry "thought in speak the truth in worthy song from earnest blossom."-William Winter. soul; hold, in high poetic duty, truest truth the fairest beauty! - Mrs. Browning. None ever was a great poet that applied him- For observe that the poets of the grander self much to anything else. Sir W. Temple.and more comprehensive kind of genius have Poetry is not made out of the understanding. The question of common sense is always, "What is it good for?". a question which would abolish the rose and be triumphantly answered by the cabbage. Lowell. in them two separate men, quite distinct from each other, - the imaginative man, and the practical, circumstantial man; and it is the happy mixture of these that suits diseases of the mind, half imaginative and half practical. Bulwer-Lytton That poets have not always practised what they have preached only shows how hard it is for a man to act up to his best ideals. Epes Sargent. You speak as one who fed on poetry. Bulwer-Lytton. Virtue penetrates deepest into our sensibilities through the charms of poetry. W. R. Alger. The intellect colored by the feelings. Professor Wilson. There are so many tender and holy emotions flying about in our inward world, which, like angels, can never assume the body of an outward act; so many rich and lovely flowers spring up which bear no seed, that it is a happiness poetry was invented, which receives into its limbus all these incorporated spirits and the perfume of all these flowers. Richter. "Poets, like race-horses," said Charles IX., both truly and facetiously, must be fed, but not fattened.". Whipple. All men are poets at heart. Emerson. I fancy the character of a poet is in every country the same, - fond of enjoying the pres ent, careless of the future; his conversation that of a man of sense, his actions those of a fool. — Goldsmith. There is a pleasure in poetic pains, which only poets know. Wordsworth. There is nothing of which Nature has been more bountiful than poets. They swarm like the spawn of codfish, with a vicious fecundity that invites and requires destruction. To publish verses is become a sort of evidence that a man wants sense; which is repelled, not by writing good verses, but by writing excellent verses. - Sydney Smith. It was Goethe who let out a secret of the craft The most active principle in our mind is the by acknowledging that modern poets mix too imagination; to it a good poet makes his court much water in their ink. — J. G. Saxe. - Joubert. perpetually, and by this faculty takes care to gain it first. Steele. One merit of poetry few persons will deny : it says more and in fewer words than prose. Voltaire. An artist that works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe; but the man who moulds his thoughts in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling.-O. W. Holmes. The elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy. Shakspeare. Poetry is found to have few stronger concepmind than those in which it presents the movtions by which it would affect or overwhelm the ing and speaking image of the departed dead to the senses of the living. Daniel Webster. Shakspeare. The devil knew what he did when he made Poets are the hierophants of an unappremen politic; he crossed himself by it. hended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present. Shelley. Honesty is the best policy, says the familiar axiom; but people who are honest on that prin James A. Garfield. Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glitter-ciple defraud no one but themselves. ing expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry. - Pope. True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age. Mme. Swetchine. In all ages poets have been in special reputation, and methinks not without great cause; for besides their sweet inventions and most witty lays, they have always used to set forth the praises of the good and virtuous. Spenser. The policy of adapting one's self to circumstances makes all ways smooth. — Lavater. It is easiest to "be all things to all men,' but it is not honest. Self-respect must be sacrificed every hour in the day. Abraham Lincoln. In a troubled state we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water; but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can. — - Selden. |