The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject. - Matthew Arnold

And amongst us one, Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedly His seat upon the intellectual throne.

For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.

What is the course of the life Of mortal men on the earth?— Most men eddy about Here and there—eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurl’d in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and, then they die— Perish; and no one asks Who or what they have been, More than he asks what waves In the moonlit solitudes mild Of the midmost Ocean, have swell’d, Foam’d for a moment, and gone.