Elfin Dreams and Tired Eyes

Literature can only be profound because life is profound. If, as for the Romantics (I entreat your patience and forgiveness, those who bear that appellation proudly, I was once of your number), there be too enlarged a difference between the elfin dreams of sunny days and that which can be discerned in the hooded eyes of tired men, poetry will suffer.

The world of the imagination, while swiftly joyous with the good scents of the Western Baths that lie beyond the stars, must also have its anchor in “a local habitation and a name.”

The truest and sharpest poetical attitude is that of the Christian, who sees in all men, however debased by choice or circumstance, the image of the super-essential God.

Here the stars wheel about two firm-planted feet; the ladder of fancy is populous with angels, not only ascending, but descending.