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Quotes about poetry

150 quotes from 90 people

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In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834Kubla Khan (1816), Kubla KhanIn context
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread:
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drank the milk of Paradise.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834Kubla Khan (1816), Kubla KhanIn context
- Genius
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822To a Skylark (1820)In context
- Music
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse⁠—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness⁠—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
Omar Khayyam1048–1131The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859)In context
- Happiness
- Love
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Joyce Kilmer1886–1918Trees (1913)In context
- Nature
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Countee Cullen1903–1946Yet Do I Marvel (1925)In context
- Race
Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.
Homer900–800 BCThe Odyssey (8th century BC), Book IIn context
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
William Shakespeare1564–1616Sonnet 55 (1609)In context
That you are here⁠—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
Walt Whitman1819–1892O Me! O Life! (1867)In context
- Life & Death
- Motivation & Goals
“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Chapter IIn context
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
John Keats1795–1821On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer (1816)In context
- Reading
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer1886–1918Trees (1913)In context
- God
I had rather be a kitten, and cry “mew”
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers
William Shakespeare1564–1616Henry IV, Part 1 (c. 1597), Act III, Scene I, spoken by HotspurIn context
- Clever Jabs
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate,
And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate,
Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore.
Virgil70–19 BCThe Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IIn context
- War & Peace
Should you ask me, whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest,
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations,
As of thunder in the mountains?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882The Song of Hiawatha (1855), IntroductionIn context
- Nature