Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. - Percy Bysshe Shelley

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

Death is here and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere,
All around, within, beneath,
Above is death - and we are death.

Death has set his mark and seal
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear,

First our pleasures die - and then
Our hopes, and then our fears - and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust - and we die too.

All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot -
Love itself would, did they not.

Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.