For rhyme the rudder is of verses.
With which, like ships, they steer their courses.
Hudibras, Pt. I. DR. S. BUTLER.
And he whose fustian 's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad.
Prologue to Satires. A. POPE.
I had rather be a kitten, and cry, mew,
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers;
I had rather hear a brazen can stick turned,
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree;
And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry:
'T is like the forced gait of a shuffling nag.
King Henry IV., Pt. I. Act iii. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.
Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.
Essay on Criticism, Pt. II. A. POPE.
Unjustly poets we asperse;
Truth shines the brighter clad in verse,
And all the fictions they pursue
Do but insinuate what is true.
To Stella. J. SWIFT.
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares,—
The Poets! who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!
Personal Talk. W. WORDSWORTH.
POETRY.
Wisdom married to immortal verse.
The Excursion, Bk. VII. w. WORDSWORTH.
Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well;
No writing lifts exalted man so high
As sacred and soul-moving poesy.
Essay on Poetry. SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
Poetry is itself a thing of God;
He made his prophets poets; and the more
We feel of poesie do we become
Like God in love and power.—under-makers.
Festus: Proem. P.J. BAILEY.