Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature. Hare.
Poetry is the language of feeling. W. Winter.
Poetry is the morning dream of great minds. Lamartine.
Poetry is the music of the soul; and, above all, of great and feeling souls. Voltaire.
Poetry is the offspring of the rarest beauty, 20 begot by imagination upon thought, and clad by taste and fancy in habiliments of grace. Simms.
Poetry is the only verity, the expression of a sound mind speaking after the ideal, and not after the apparent. Emerson.
Poetry is the perpetual endeavour to express the spirit of the thing; to pass the brute body, and search the life and reason which cause it to exist; to see that the object is always flowing away, whilst the spirit or necessity which causes it subsists. Emerson.
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. Shelley.
Poetry is the utterance of truth,—deep, heartfelt truth. The true poet is very near the oracle. Chapin.
Poetry is the worst mask in the world behind 25 which folly and stupidity could attempt to hide their features. Bryant.