I Find I Cannot Exist Without Poetry

We Hate Poetry That Has A Palpable Design Upon Us - And If We Do Not Agree, Seems To Put Its Hand In Its Breeches Pocket. Poetry Should Be Great & Unobtrusive, A Thing Which Enters Into One's Soul, And Does Not Startle It Or Amaze It With Itself But With Its Subject. - How Beautiful Are The Retired Flowers! How Would They Lose Their Beauty Were They To Throng Into The Highway Crying Out, "admire Me I Am A Violet! Dote Upon Me I Am A Primrose!"

Ask Yourself My Love Whether You Are Not Very Cruel To Have So Entrammelled Me, So Destroyed My Freedom. Will You Confess This In The Letter You Must Write Immediately, And Do All You Can To Console Me In It — Make It Rich As A Draught Of Poppies To Intoxicate Me —write The Softest Words And Kiss Them That I May At Least Touch My Lips Where Yours Have Been. For Myself I Know Not How To Express My Devotion To So Fair A Form: I Want A Brighter Word Than Bright, A Fairer Word Than Fair.

I Would Jump Down Etna For Any Public Good - But I Hate A Mawkish Popularity.

Neither Poetry, Nor Ambition, Nor Love Have Any Alertness Of Countenance As They Pass By Me.

...i Leaped Headlong Into The Sea, And Thereby Have Become More Acquainted With The Soundings, The Quicksands, And The Rocks, Than If I Had Stayed Upon The Green Shore, And Piped A Silly Pipe, And Took Tea And Comfortable Advice.