6 quotes
You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.
Journals (1838)
There is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.
Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)