The many men, so beautiful!And they all dead did lie:And a thousand thousand slimy thingsLived on; and so did I.

An orphans curse would drag to hellA spirit from on high;But oh! How more horrible that thatIs the curse in a dead man’s eye!

To be loved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.

IIA grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, or sigh, or tear — O Lady! in this wan and heartless...

What if you slept?What if you slept And what if In your sleep You dreamed And what if In your dream You went to heaven And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower And what...

Men, I still think, ought to be weighed, not counted. Their worth ought to be the final estimate of their value.

A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

In nature there is nothing melancholy

Water, water, everywhere,And all the boards did shrink;Water, water, everywhere,Nor any drop to drink.

As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.- (1772-1834)

An orphan’s curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man’s eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And...

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you...

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase)...

But yester-night I prayed aloud In anguish and in agony, Up-starting from the fiendish crowd Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: A lurid light, a trampling throng, Sense of intolerable wrong, And whom I...

The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited...

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

Our own heart, and not other men’s opinions, forms our true honor.

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

Day after day, day after day,We stuck, nor breath nor motion;As idle as a painted shipUpon a painted ocean.

Where true Love burns Desire is Love’s pure flame;It is the reflex of our earthly frame,That takes its meaning from the nobler part,And but translates the language of the heart.

Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.

In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, ‘Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody...

Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.

I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors.

In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

He was, as every truly great poet has ever been, a good man; but finding it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in religion or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to...

He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,Which finds no natural outlet or relief,In word, or sigh, or tear.

Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legsUpon the slimy sea.

Weave a circle round him thrice,And close your eyes with holy dread.For he on honey-dew hath fed.And drunk the milk of paradise.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned...

Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.

Readers may be divided into four classes:1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get...

Silence does not always mark wisdom.

A man’s desire is for the woman, but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung.

There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hourglass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like...

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only...

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his...

Then all the charm Is broken–all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape the other.

For I was reared in the great city, pent with cloisters dim,and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars.But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breezeBy lakes and sandy shores, beneath the cragsOf...