What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth. There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. Should ever the fine-eyed maid to me be kind; Ah! surely it must be whenever I find; Some flowery spot, sequestered, wild, romantic; That often must have seen a poet frantic. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. 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. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song! I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest. I would jump down Etna for any public good - but I hate a mawkish popularity. Health is my expected heaven. | 
