Quotations on poetry

The poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or "with the flower of the mind"... not with the intellect alone but with the intellect inebriated with nectar.
     Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

Assist me some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonneteer. Devise, wit, write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.
     William Shakespeare - Love’s Labour’s Lost

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley

References: See Stephen Denning, Sonnets 2000(iUniverse, October 2000)