It appears to me that men are hired to run down men of genius under the mask of translators, but Dante gives too much of Caesar: h...e is not a republican.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante unde...rstands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common thi...ngs ... or it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves, by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from their very birth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd... With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent... And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent And round his heart one strangling golden hair.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O love, my love! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,... Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,-- How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, The wind of Death's imperishable wing?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky--... So this winged hour is dropped to us from above. Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, This close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell:... I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »