If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all

Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.