The critic’s first labor is the task of distinguishing between men, as history and their works display them, and the ideals which one and another have conspired to urge upon his acceptance.

Look on this cast, and know the hand That bore a nation in its hold; From this mute witness understand What Lincoln was – how large of mould.

Yes, there’s a luck in most things; and in none more than being born at the right time.

Men are egotists, and not all tolerant of one man’s selfhood; they do not always deem the amities elective.

Faith and joy are the ascensive forces of song.

Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music; the same faults are engendered by over-study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible impulse in both the poet and the, composer.

Give us a man of God's own mould Born to marshall his fellow-men; One whose fame is not bought and sold At the stroke of a politician's pen. Give us the man of thousands ten, Fit to do as well as to plan; Give us a rallying-cry, and then Abraham Lincoln, give us a Man.

Lo, as I gaze, the statured man, Built up from you large hand appears: A type that nature wills to plan But once in all a people's years.

A poet must sing for his own people.

The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.