Souls of poets dead and gone, / What Elysium have ye known, / Happy field or mossy cavern, / Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? / Have ye tippled drink more fine / Than mine host's Canary wine?

The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thought and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains.

The poet and the politician have this in common: their greatness depends on the courage with which they face the challenges of life

Sure there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose Those made not poets, but the poets those.

He [Shakespeare] was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul . . . He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.

We all write poems; it is simply that the poets are the ones who write in words