“If you would have the heart of the world with you, put heart in your work, taking care that you do not try to pass brass for gold.”

Demands sincerity as the price of a reader's trust · Prefatory notes on poetry

• Heart
• Sincerity
• Writing

“The poet is, must be, as sensitive as a child, and his work wears and wears till his nerves are so threadbare that he dares not take up a newspaper lest he may see something ugly.”

Describes the cost of a temperament that cannot look away · Preface, Complete Poetical Works

• Poets
• Sensitivity
• Suffering

“The world has no use for two Homers, or even a second Shakespeare, were he possible.”

Urges originality of theme rather than imitation of the great · Advice to a young writer, later reprinted in Oregon Literature

• Advice
• Originality
• Writers