Poetic diction

“ Here again, however, all the shades of expression, all the delicacy, all the depth is our work. The thing essentially poetic is the destiny of man; his melancholy moods, his restless search after causes, his just complaint to heaven. ”

“ There is not, throughout the piece, a single situation to excite curiosity, and raise a conflict of passions. The diction is nervous, rich, and elegant; but splendid language, and melodious numbers, will make a fine poem—not a tragedy. The sentiments are beautiful, always happily expressed, but seldom appropriated to the character, and generally too philosophic. ”

“ Man's aspiration, his sense of imperfection, his yearning for a sustaining truth and reality, as the life within and over all things, find expression in poetry; because it offers the fittest medium of interpretation for these higher movements of soul. Whenever the soul feels deeply, or is stirred by a great thought, the poetic form of [Pg 7] utterance at once becomes the most natural and desirable for its loving and faithful interpretation. ”

“ Where grief, love and a hope to give earthly immortality to the object of his affection move the poet, we expect the finest efforts of his genius. These elegies include some of the grandest, the most perfect productions of poetic skill. ”

“ A fine thought, to become poetry, must be seasoned in the upper warm garrets of the mind for long and long, then it must be brought down and slowly carved into words, shaped with emotion, polished with love. ”

“ In soundness of judgment, in tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description, in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works of genius. ”

“ With a broader and deeper background of experience and environment, which by some divine special privilege belongs to the poetic imagination, it is easier to set apart and contrast these opposing words and sympathies in a poet ”

“ Thought cherished in the mind becomes earnest; then expressed in words, it becomes poetry. The feelings move inwardly, and are embodied in words. When words are insufficient for them, recourse is had to sighs and exclamations. ”

“ But if by "poetry" is meant what should be meant—the vivid, impassioned and rhythmical expression of rare emotions and exquisite thoughts, the revelation by genius of the ideal and spiritual side of things, the crystallizing of the floating and fugitive sentiments and aspirations of the contemporary mind into clear aim and purpose by words of luminous beauty; if there is meant a power which seizes and utters subtle truths "of man, of nature, and of human life" ”

“ I have attempted to symbol the course of a Poet's mind from a state wherein thought is disordered, barren and uncultivated, to that which is ordered and swayed by the true Spirit of Poetry, and holds its perfect creed. ”

“ And Poetry, whether old or new, streaming from the heart moved by the powerful spirit of love, has influence on the heart public and individual, and thence on the manners, laws, and institutions of nations. ”

“ And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Make heaven drowsy with the harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write Until his ink were temp'red with Love's sighs; O, then his lines would ravish savage ears, And plant in tyrants mild humility. ”

“ It has always been our opinion, that the very essence of poetry—apart from the pathos, the wit, or the brilliant description which may be imbodied in it, but may exist equally in prose—consists in the fine perception and vivid expression of the subtle and mysterious analogy which exists between the physical and the moral world—which makes outward things and qualities the natural types and emblems of inward gifts and emotions, or leads us to ascribe life and sentiment to every thing that interests us in the aspects of external nature. ”

“ That wraps her spirit in such ecstasy.
⁠Then had you known what 'tis to feel the charm
Of all that's beautiful in our fair earth;
⁠For her mind fed on loveliness, nor form,
Real nor spiritual, that has its birth,
⁠But was familiar to her delicate eye,
Until her spirit became poetry!
⁠And her I loved for beauty that is given
⁠To make us less of earth and more of heaven. ”

“ Granted this sincerity, however, we may say that that greatest poetry is that which gathers into itself and radiates the most of reality, that which discloses the deepest insight into life, and is charged with the fullest intensity of emotion, matched by the greatest fitness and power of expression. ”

“ Again, poetry is our element, for the essence of poetry is will and passion. ”

“ An unknown sphere more real than I dream’d, more direct, darts awakening rays about me, So long!
Remember my words, I may again return.”
Neither rhyme nor verse are essential to true poetry. Even words are but its vehicle, and not the poetry itself. Poetry is that manifestation of the mind which excites the imagination and arouses in responsive minds a sense of beauty. ”

“ By its discouragement of the development of human emotion, aspiration, and benefit, the range of subjects and reflection is narrowed, and in the later poets the repetition of the same types, epithets, and metaphors, issues in sameness, conventional diction, and fossil thought. ”

“ Among those high qualities which give her beyond doubt, a title to the sacred name of poet, are an acute sensibility to natural loveliness—a quick and perfectly just conception of the moral and physical sublime—a calm and unostentatious vigor of thought—a mingled delicacy and strength of expression—and above all, a mind nobly and exquisitely attuned to all the gentle charities and lofty pieties of life. ”

“ In the meantime, if you demand on one hand, in defiance of their opinion— the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is, on the other hand, genuine then you are interested in poetry. ”

“ Who but a mighty poet, one seeing with ‘the vision and the faculty divine’—what, but a transfusing, all-conquering imagination—would have dared the attempt to compose another poem on the same subject, or to carry this to a greater hight of sublimity, by melting it down anew, so to speak, and pouring it out into a vaster, more glorious mold? ”

“ Take the poet. On the one hand, I believe that a person with the poetical faculty finds material everywhere. The grandest objects of sense and thought are common to all climates and civilizations. The sky, the woods, the waters, the storms, life, death love, the hope and vision of eternity,—these are images that write themselves in poetry in every soul which has anything of the divine gift. ”

“ Poetry and art are the breath of life to her. ”

“ Then, too, there are others who blush, but with pleasure, at the thought that, without being poets, they have written something out of their own heads which, to them at all events, reads just like poetry. ”

“ All that is in man, his mysteries of soul, his thoughts and emotions—deep, wise, holy, loving, touching, and fearful,—or in the world, beautiful, vast, ponderous, gloomy, and awful, moved with rhythmic harmonious utterance—that is Poetry. ”

“ But, you may object, poetry does the very same; it also expresses, strengthens, brings home our human, momentary, individual emotions, instead of uniting with the arts of visible form, with the harmonious things of nature, to create for us another kind of emotion, the emotion of the eternal, unindividual, universal life, in whose contemplation our souls are healed and made whole after the disintegration inflicted by what is personal and fleeting. ”

“ His scornful lips upon the instant sing,
⁠And all his pulses leap with ecstasies.
'Tis love the poet wants; he cannot live
Without caressing and without caress,
⁠Which all to charity his fellows give;
But I will wrap his soul in tenderness,
⁠And straightway from his lips will burst a song
⁠All loving hearts shall echo and prolong.
POET.
O Earth, and Sky, and Flowers, and Streams agushing,
⁠God made ye beautiful to make us blest:
O bright-winged Songsters through the blue air rushing ”

“ The simple grandeur of this poem as a whole, must be felt by every one, while each line and thought will be found worthy of earnest contemplation and satisfaction after the most earnest life and thought. ”

“ In reading dramatic poetry, we are apt to resign ourselves to the emotion which the general idea of the passion of the speaker excites, without pausing scrupulously to weigh each word of the phrase in which his sentiment is expressed. ”

“ In the meanwhile the poet was awakening within him, and the poetic pabulum was becoming, every day, more and more necessary to his{45} existence. His fine receptive spirit stored up all the forms and influences of nature ”

“ They were, in truth, beautiful poems in color, to feast the eye, elevate and refine the thought—"songs without words," to make glad and uplift all who were able to appreciate in any degree the divinity of art. ”

“ May fancied pain and fancied pleasure fly,
And I, as from me all thy dreams depart,
Be to my wayward destiny subdued:
Nor seek perfection with a poet's eye,
Nor suffer anguish with a poet's heart! ”

“ Beauty and wit, too sad a truth,
Have always been confined to youth;
The god of wit, and beauty’s queen,
He twenty-one, and she fifteen;
No poet ever sweetly sung.
Unless he were like Phœbus, young;
Nor ever nymph inspired to rhyme,
Unless like Venus in her prime.
At fifty-six, if this be true,
Am I a poet fit for you;
Or at the age of forty-three,
Are you a subject fit for me?
Adieu bright wit, and radiant eyes;
You must be grave, and I be wise.
Our fate in vain we would oppose,
But I’ll be still your friend in prose;
Esteem and friendship to express,
Will not require poetic dress; ”

“ The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight which a verse gives in happy quotation than in the poem. ”

“ And reason pleads in vain,
Even then the poet's words will reach
The heart and soothe its pain:
There's no dark corner of the soul
The poet may not scan—
Philosophers see part—the whole
Only the poet can. ”

“ But the species of poetry which I now recommend, is peculiarly adapted to soften the passions, excite sympathy, and meliorate the affections. It soothes the jarring cares of life, and, pervading the secret recesses of the soul, serves to rouse and animate its dormant powers. ”

“ My reason in quoting these fine and tender lines is to point out how simple a thing poetry can be; how easily we, at any rate for a few moments—even the most material, the most world-brutalized of us,—can become poets too. ”

“ Unmistakable genius rings in every line.'—Times.
'The ballads teem with imagination, they palpitate with emotion. We read them with laughter and tears: the metres throb in our pulses, the cunningly ordered words tingle with life; and if this be not poetry, what is?'—Pall Mall Gazette. ”

“ Of their absolute genuineness there can be no question. They have all the internal evidence in their construction and language, the simplicity and abruptness of thought, the imperfection of utterance combined with untaught eloquence and strength, the occasional vulgarity by the side of an equally great delicacy, the simple and powerful melody, and all the characteristics of popular poetry, which are as unmistakable as the perfumes of the flowers of the field. ”

“ It were easy for me, with a little study and application, to express in verse the hackneyed ideas that have already been employed by other poets, but where shall I find the glowing words in which to tell thee all that thy beauty inspires within my heart? ”

“ Why does the poet, the man of genius and fancy, or the philosopher of mind and nature, seat himself at their base, and with strange and undefined emotions, pause and ponder, amid the loneliness that slumbers around? ”

“ I think the use or value of poetry to be the suggestion it affords of the flux or fugaciousness of the poet. The mind delights in measuring itself thus with matter, with history, and flouting both. A thought, any thought, pressed, followed, opened, dwarfs matter, custom, and all but itself. ”

“ The true poem is the poet's mind; ”

“ The reason is that Poetry—the hymn which should elevate the soul in Nature-worship—instead of reflecting in every simile, every image, directly or indirectly, the deep mystery of life which intuitively associates with itself that of love and all loveliness, is satisfied with mere comparisons based on casual and petty resemblance. ”

“ It was my wish in this poem to shew the manner in which such men cleave to the same ideas; and to follow the turns of passion, always different, yet not palpably different, by which their conversation is swayed. ”

“ Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change ”

“ Let some sudden emotion fill his soul, and he will rise again, not in the mist this time, but in the rays of the sun; he will soar aloft, and we will wonder at the grandeur of his eloquence. Whatever be his subject, he will coin a word, or distort a meaning, or cram into an idiom more meaning than grammar, custom, or dictionary allow, rather than leave a gap between word and thought ”