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What is this poetry ? A mortal mind
Made visible;a caged bird?
Nay more:it is a spiritleft behind
Nailed by the piercing word.

— William Soutar

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Poetry

More quotes by William Soutar

My life's purpose is to write poetry — but behind the poetry must be the vision of a fresh revelation for men.

Art is for all — and the greatest art proves it.

Accept the shout or silence of your peers
As if a fabled legacy or loss;
Their praiseand blame are but the winds which toss
Your seed into the winter of the years.

All William Soutar quotes →

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Soutar (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.