L. Untermeyer

The ordinary man lives by the creative spirit. He thinks in images and dreams
in fantasy; he lives by poetry. Yet he seems to distrust it.

H. Matisse- Woman Before a Fish Bowl

W. H. Auden – In Memory of W.B. Yeats

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

W. H. Auden

And ruled by dead men never met,
By pious guess deluded,
Upon the stool of madness set
Or stool of desolation,
Sits murderous and clear-headed;
Enormous beauties round him move,
For grandiose is his vision
And grandiose his love.

 

H. Fuseli – The Nightmare

Ch. Baudelaire – To a Madonna

If I can’t, in spite of all my painstaking art,
Carve a Moon of silver for your Pedestal,
I shall put the Serpent which is eating my heart
Under your heels, so that you may trample and mock,
Triumphant queen, fecund in redemptions,
That monster all swollen with hatred and spittle.

[Si je ne puis, malgré tout mon art diligent
Pour Marchepied tailler une Lune d’argent
Je mettrai le Serpent qui me mord les entrailles
Sous tes talons, afin que tu foules et railles
Reine victorieuse et féconde en rachats
Ce monstre tout gonflé de haine et de crachats.]

O. Redon – Onnes (Christ and the Serpent)

W. Whitman – Leaves of Grass

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much?

Have you reckon’d the earth much?

Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

G. F. Watts – Happy Warrior

Byron – Don Juan

Some kinder casuists are pleased to say,
     In nameless print—that I have no devotion;
But set those persons down with me to pray,
     And you shall see who has the properest notion
Of getting into heaven the shortest way;
     My altars are the mountains and the ocean,
Earth, air, stars,—all that springs from the great Whole,
Who hath produced, and will receive the soul.

J. Ashbery – The New Spirit

“You born today,” he could not resist murmuring although there was no one within earshot, “a life of incredulity and magnanimity opens out around you, incredulity at the greatness of your designs and magnanimity that turns back to support these projects as they flag and fail, as inevitably happens. But draw comfort meanwhile from the fact that the planets have congregated to haruspicate at your birth; they can no longer disentangle themselves but are fixed over you, showering down material and immaterial advantages on whoever has the patience to remain immobile for a while, mindless of the efforts of his coevals to better themselves at the expense of humankind in general.”

Ch. Baudelaire – The Giantess

In times of old when Nature in her glad excess
Brought forth such living marvels as no more are seen,
I should have loved to dwell with a young giantess,
Like a voluptuous cat about the feet of a queen;