I Came To Feel How Far Above

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.

You Speak Of Lord Byron And Me; There Is This Great Difference Between Us. He Describes What He Sees I Describe What I Imagine. Mine Is The Hardest Task.

Poetry Should Surprise By A Fine Excess And Not By Singularity, It Should Strike The Reader As A Wording Of His Own Highest Thoughts, And Appear Almost A Remembrance.

I Have Good Reason To Be Content, For Thank God I Can Read And Perhaps Understand Shakespeare To His Depths.

This Grave Contains All That Was Mortal Of A Young English Poet Who On His Death Bed In The Bitterness Of His Heart At The Malicious Power Of His Enemies Desired These Words To Be Engraved On His Tomb Stone "here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Water."