poetry (n.)
Angling is somewhat like poetry,—men are to be born so.
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,—words in their best order; poetry,—the best words in their best order.
Simonides calls painting silent poetry, and poetry speaking painting.
The gloomy companions of a disturbed imagination, the melancholy madness of poetry without the inspiration.
Letters of Junius. Letter vii. To Sir W. Draper.
Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
Made poetry a mere mechanic art.
The poetry of earth is never dead.
From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness,—a system in which the two great commandments were to hate your neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife.
The poetry of speech.
Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning;
And he whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad.
Ornate rhetorick taught out of the rule of Plato. . . . To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.
Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower
Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour
Have passed away; less happy than the one
That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove
The tender charm of poetry and love.
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence, and poetry;
Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.
