Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

Ne'er Was flattery lost on poet's ear; A simple race! they waste their toil For the vain tribute of a smile.

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

Poets of course are even more unpredictable than other writers, overwhelmed as they are by the moment they inhabit and finding it difficult to connect yesterday with tomorrow.

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong. They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.

Not by wisdom do they [poets] make what they compose, but by a gift of nature and an inspiration similar to that of the diviners and the oracles.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.