Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
From “An Essay on Criticism”
by Alexander Pope (1711)
... Those RULES of old discover'd, not devis'd,Are Nature still, but Nature methodis'd;Nature, like liberty, is but restrain'dBy the same laws which first herself ordain'd…. ... You then whose judgment the right course would steer,Know well each ANCIENT'S proper character;His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page;Religion, country, genius of his age:Without all these at once before your eyes,Cavil you may, but never criticise.Be Homer's works your study and delight,Read them by day, and meditate by night;Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,And trace the Muses upward to their spring;Still with itself compar'd, his text peruse;And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse… Some beauties yet, no precepts can declare,For there's a happiness as well as care.Music resembles poetry, in eachAre nameless graces which no methods teach,And which a master-hand alone can reach….… Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,Which, without passing through the judgment, gainsThe heart, and all its end at once attains…....But tho' the ancients thus their rules invade,(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made)Moderns, beware! or if you must offendAgainst the precept, ne'er transgress its end;Let it be seldom, and compell'd by need,And have, at least, their precedent to plead.The critic else proceeds without remorse,Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force. ...I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughtsThose freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults.Some figures monstrous and misshap'd appear,Consider'd singly, or beheld too near,Which, but proportion'd to their light, or place,Due distance reconciles to form and grace.A prudent chief not always must displayHis pow'rs in equal ranks, and fair array,But with th' occasion and the place comply,Conceal his force, nay seem sometimes to fly.Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. …
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
by William Wordsworth (1804?)
I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but theyOut-did the sparkling waves in glee:A poet could not but be gay,In such a jocund company:I gazed—and gazed—but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.
Ars Poetica
by Archibald MacLeish (1926)
A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, DumbAs old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stoneOf casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as the moon releasesTwig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind— A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs. * A poem should be equal to:Not true. For all the history of griefAn empty doorway and a maple leaf. For loveThe leaning grasses and two lights above the sea— A poem should not mean But be.