Literature and Words

[Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge:] I wish he would explain his explanation.

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth.

The poetry of speech.

Let these describe the undescribable.

Better to err with Pope, than shine with Pye.

With just enough of learning to misquote.

A man must serve his time to every trade Save censure—critics all are ready-made.

’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print; A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in ’t.

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots.

Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks.

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

Scorn not the sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honors; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart.

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

And mighty poets in their misery dead.

Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach Of ordinary men.

Perhaps it may turn out a sang, Perhaps turn out a sermon.

Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, and Future sees, Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walk’d among the ancient trees.

You write with ease to show your breeding, But easy writing’s curst hard reading.

Who wants to understand the poem Must go to the land of poetry; Who wishes to understand the poet Must go to the poet’s land.

For I bless God in the libraries of the learned and for all the booksellers in the world.

When learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose; Each change of many-color’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.

If you would not be forgotten, As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worthy reading, Or do things worth the writing.