He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely. - Percy Bysshe Shelley

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea
What are all these kissings worth -
If thou kiss not me?