“The objects of artificial life are, per se, less fitted for the purposes of poetry than those of nature, and than the passions of the human heart.”

His summary of why satires of manners stand below nature and passion · Writings in the Pope controversy

• Art
• Nature
• Poetry

“We have been so often told that poetry exists in inanimate objects, that we seem to believe it, and thus become the dupes of our own phraseology.”

A warning against treating picturesque objects as if they were themselves the source of verse · Prose on poetry in the Pope controversy

• Language
• Nature
• Poetry

“In the highest kinds of poetry the themes or passions handled should be of the general or elemental kind, and not the transient manners of any society.”

He ranks enduring human passion above the polish of a particular age · Critical writings on the principles of poetry

• Passion
• Poetry
• Society

“Images drawn from nature are poetically finer than those drawn from art.”

The brief formula that set him against Byron, Campbell and the Pope party · Critical writings on Pope and the principles of poetry

• Art
• Nature
• Poetry

“They have been distinguished for pourtraying the passions of the human heart, rather than manners of particular periods of society.”

Great poetry, for him, treats elemental feeling rather than fashionable social types · The Invariable Principles of Poetry, 1819

• Humanity
• Passion
• Poetry

“Those who have attained the highest rank in poetry, as Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton, will be found invariably to have drawn their poetical imagery more from nature than from art.”

The central claim of his long controversy over Pope and poetic rank · The Invariable Principles of Poetry, letter to Thomas Campbell, 1819

• Art
• Nature
• Poetry

“It is a consolation that, from youth to age, I have found no line I wished to blot, or departed a moment from the severer taste which I imbibed from the simplest and purest models of classical composition.”

Late in life he claims a lifelong fidelity to classical restraint · Preface to St John in Patmos, 1832

• Integrity
• Poetry
• Taste

“I thought nothing about the strict Italian model; the verses naturally flowed in unpremeditated harmony, as my ear directed.”

He privileges ear and unity of feeling over inherited sonnet rules · Introduction, Scenes and Shadows of Days Departed, 1837

• Music
• Originality
• Poetry

“I confined myself to fourteen lines, because fourteen lines seemed best adapted to unity of sentiment.”

The sonnet is chosen as a vessel for one mood rather than as an Italian formal exercise · Introduction, Scenes and Shadows of Days Departed, 1837

• Feeling
• Form
• Poetry

“But there is a great difference between natural and fabricated feelings, even in poetry.”

A brief critical axiom from his defence of the early sonnets as lived emotion · Preface to the Sonnets, 1805

• Feeling
• Honesty
• Poetry

“This may serve in some measure to obviate the common remark on melancholy poetry, that it has been very often gravely composed, when possibly the heart of the writer had very little share in the distress he chose to describe.”

He distinguishes genuine sorrow from the fashionable pose of literary melancholy · Preface to the Sonnets, 1805

• Melancholy
• Poetry
• Sincerity

“The greater part of those originally committed to the press were written down, for the first time, from memory.”

He insists the printed sonnets were recovered afterwards, not composed on the spot · Preface to the Sonnets, 1805

• Memory
• Poetry
• Writing

“Numberless poetical trifles of the same kind have occurred to him, when perhaps, in his solitary rambles, he has been chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy; but they have been forgotten as he left the places which gave rise to them.”

Memory and place decide which fleeting thoughts survive as verse · Preface to the Sonnets, 1805

• Memory
• Solitude
• Writing

“They were, therefore, in general, suggested by the scenes before them; and wherever such scenes appeared to harmonise with his disposition at the moment, the sentiments were involuntarily prompted.”

Landscape and mood are treated as partners that call the poem into being without calculation · Preface to the Sonnets, 1805

• Inspiration
• Nature
• Poetry

“They can be considered in no other light than as exhibiting occasional reflections which naturally arose in his mind, chiefly during various excursions, undertaken to relieve, at the time, depression of spirits.”

He presents the early sonnets as private feeling prompted by travel rather than as studied literary display · Preface to the Sonnets, ninth edition, 1805

• Feeling
• Melancholy
• Poetry

“The language of poetry should be the language of nature and passion.”

Advocating direct, emotionally truthful poetic diction · Essay, The Invariable Principles of Poetry

• Poetry
• Truth

“The passions are best described by those circumstances which naturally call them forth.”

Linking emotional truth with recognisable human situations · Essay, The Invariable Principles of Poetry

• Poetry
• Truth

“The poet should never introduce images which are not associated with the subject.”

Emphasising relevance and emotional coherence in poetic imagery · Essay, The Invariable Principles of Poetry

• Poetry
• Truth

“The images in poetry should always be drawn from nature, and not from art.”

Defending natural imagery as the foundation of poetic expression · Essay, The Invariable Principles of Poetry

• Nature
• Poetry