Every Poem Should Remind The Reader That

It May Well Be Doubted Whether Human Ingenuity Can Construct An Enigma... Which Human Ingenuity May Not, By Proper Application, Resolve.

I Am Excessively Slothful, And Wonderfully Industrious-by Fits. There Are Epochs When Any Kind Of Mental Exercise Is Torture, And When Nothing Yields Me Pleasure But The Solitary Communion With The 'mountains & The Woods'-the 'altars' Of Byron. I Have Thus Rambled And Dreamed Away Whole Months, And Awake, At Last, To A Sort Of Mania For Composition. Then I Scribble All Day, And Read All Night, So Long As The Disease Endures.

False Hope Is Nicer Than No Hope At All.

It Is Clear That A Poem May Be Improperly Brief. Undue Brevity Degenerates Into Mere Epigrammatism. A Very Short Poem, While Now And Then Producing A Brilliant Or Vivid, Never Produces A Profound Or Enduring, Effect. There Must Be The Steady Pressing Down Of The Stamp Upon The Wax.

And Now Have I Not Told You That What You Mistake For Madness Is But Overacuteness Of The Senses?