The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed

The poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low that the common influences should delight him

The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, "with the flower of the mind;" not with the intellect, used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction fro