Remorse is as the heart in which it grows; If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy, It is the poison tree, that pierced to the inmost, Weeps only tears of poison.
Not the poem which we have read , but that to which we return , with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry .
We are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference.
Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that every Thing has a Life of its own, and that we are all one Life.
The history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it.
Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:–for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty.
