In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

Genius doth catch the music of the spheres,
Which mortal ear was never meant to know.
Genius can penetrate the mysteries
Of feeling, all unknown to other hearts;
A power hath entered in the inmost soul,
Whose presence may not be contained.

What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet.

Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.

The exquisite and finely wrought susceptibility invariable marks the temperament of the poet. The cast of originality is the stamp and testimony of genius.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.

For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...

I esteemed Eloquency highly, and was in raptures with poesy; but I thought that both were gifts of nature rather than fruits of study. Those in whom the faculty of Reason is predominant, and who most skillfully dispose their thoughts with a view to render them clear and intelligible, are always the best able to persuade others of the truth of what they lay down, though they should speak only in the language of Lower Brittany, and be wholly ignorant of the rules of Rhetoric; and those whose minds are stored with the most agreeable fancies, and who can give expression to them with the greatest embellishment and harmony, are still the best poets, though unacquainted with the Art of Poetry.

Yet if a Poem have a Genius, it will force its own reception in the World.