Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it.
Some feelings are quite untranslatable; no language has yet been found for them. They gleam upon us beautifully through the dim twilight of fancy, and yet when we bring them close to us, and hold them up to the light of reason, lose their beauty all at once, as glow worms which gleam with such a spiritual light in the shadows of evening, when brought in where the candles are lighted, are found to be only worms like so many others.
Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts.
An enlightened mind is not hoodwinked; it is not shut up in a gloomy prison till it thinks the walls of its dungeon the limits of the universe, and the reach of its own chain the outer verge of intelligence.
I have a passion for ballad. . . . They are the gypsy children of song, born under green hedgerows in the leafy lanes and bypaths of literature,--in the genial Summertime.
But ah! what once has been shall be no more! The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations never rise again.