As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.

Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.