“The principal point is invention, which comes as much from a good nature as from the reading of good and ancient authors.”

Original: Car le principal poinct est l'invention, laquelle vient tant de la bonne nature, que par la leçon des bons et anciens autheurs. — Genius and study must work together · Abrégé de l'art poétique français, 1565 (French)

• Creativity
• Learning
• Poetry

“In the first age poetry was only an allegorical theology, to bring into the minds of coarse men, by pleasant and coloured fables, the secrets they could not grasp when truth was shown too openly.”

Original: Car la Poésie n'estoit au premier âge qu'une theologie allegorique, pour faire entrer au cerveau des hommes grossiers, par fables plaisantes et colorées, les secrets qu'ils ne pouvoient comprendre, quand trop ouvertement on leur descouvroit la vérité. — Myth and verse as a veiled way of teaching truth · Abrégé de l'art poétique français, 1565 (French)

• Myth
• Poetry
• Truth

“Above all things you will hold the Muses in reverence, even in singular veneration, and never make them serve dishonest things, jests, or injurious libels.”

Original: Sur toutes choses tu auras les Muses en reverence, voire en singuliere veneration, et ne les feras jamais servir à choses des-honnestes, à risées, ny à libelles injurieux. — The poet's calling is sacred and not to be cheapened · Abrégé de l'art poétique français, 1565 (French)

• Integrity
• Poetry
• Sacred

“Although the art of poetry cannot be grasped or taught by precepts, being more a matter of the mind than of tradition, human craft, experience and labour can still permit a few rules.”

Original: Combien que l'art de Poësie ne se puisse par preceptes comprendre ny enseigner pour estre plus mental que traditif, toutesfois d'autant que l'artifice humain, experience et labeur le peuvent permettre, j'ay bien voulu t'en donner quelques reigles icy. — Poetry treated as a gift of mind first, then of discipline · Abrégé de l'art poétique français, 1565 (French)

• Craft
• Learning
• Poetry

“Nothing can have a better influence towards the revival of poetry than the choosing of great and serious subjects, such as at once amuse the fancy, enlighten the head, and warm the heart.”

Calls for serious subject-matter as the way to restore poetry · Preface to Winter, 1726

• Imagination
• Poetry
• Purpose

“As this poem grew up under your encouragement, it has therefore a natural claim to your patronage.”

Patronage framed as the natural consequence of encouragement · Dedication letter of Spring to the Countess of Hertford, 1728

• Gratitude
• Patronage
• Poetry

“Mr. Riccaltoun's poem on Winter, which I still have, first put the design into my head—in it are some masterly strokes which awakened me.”

Acknowledges the spark that started The Seasons · Letter to Dr Cranstoun, September 1725

• Influence
• Inspiration
• Poetry

“It is declaring against the most charming power of imagination, the most exalting force of thought, the most affecting touch of sentiment.”

Contempt of poetry treated as contempt of imagination itself · Preface to Winter, 1726

• Imagination
• Poetry
• Thought

“That any man should seriously declare against that divine art is really amazing.”

Poetry defended as a divine art against fashionable contempt · Preface to Winter, 1726

• Art
• Criticism
• Poetry

“But there is no thinking of these things without breaking out into poetry; which is, by the bye, a plain and undeniable argument of their superior excellence.”

Poetry as the natural overflow of attention to nature · Preface to Winter, 1726

• Inspiration
• Nature
• Poetry

“I know no subject more elevating, more amusing, more ready to awake the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of Nature.”

A defence of nature as the highest subject for poetry, philosophy, and moral feeling · Preface to the second edition of Winter, 1726

• Inspiration
• Nature
• Poetry

“Into my poems I poured the longing for music.”

Links the cadence of her lyrics to an unsung musical ambition · Quoted autobiographical remark on her verse

• Longing
• Music
• Poetry

“This book is the child of a bitter earth-wound. I sit on the earth and sing—sing out, and of, my sorrow.”

Presents the racial volume as grief given voice rather than mere protest verse · Author's Note, Bronze (1922)

• Poetry
• Race
• Sorrow

“The poetry of solitude stalks embodied as a sylvan toxophilite who goes alone into a primeval grove.”

The solitary archer as a walking figure of lyric isolation · Essay, An Archer on the Kankakee

• Nature
• Poetry
• Solitude

“The craftsmanship of the true fletcher is next to the poet's.”

Arrow-making set beside verse as a precision art · Essay, An Archer on the Kankakee

• Craft
• Poetry
• Skill

“In a certain way, indeed, the birds are true poets, singing forth the influence of their environments—just as Burns sang his, just as Millet painted his.”

Bird-song ranked with human art as an answer to place · Essay, The Motif of Bird-Song, in Sylvan Secrets

• Animals
• Nature
• Poetry

“The poet who does not truly sing himself is like Eutychus, the painter in the epigram, who begat twenty sons and never got a single likeness, even among his children.”

Impersonal verse dismissed as a family without faces · Essay, The Personal Note

• Individuality
• Poetry
• Poets

“He was annoyed by my wanting to talk about Black and Tan terriers instead of poetry, but his Black and Tan is poetry.”

Dogs ranked with verse as a serious subject · Remark to Siegfried Sassoon about Arthur Quiller-Couch

• Animals
• Conversation
• Poetry

“It's not manufactured. He was rather like a cup under a sparkling fountain.”

Poetry treated as reception rather than manufacture · Conversation on Walter de la Mare, reported in Time magazine, 1958

• Inspiration
• Poetry
• Poets

“We soon reach the limits of possible analysis based on simple observation 'by ear' or by our 'sense' of rhythm.”

Why she counted syllables instead of trusting impression alone · Essay, A Study in English Metrics

• Analysis
• Poetry
• Rhythm

“Scansion isolates, for the sake of analysis, the basic metrical units of verse—feet; the same analytical scrutiny must, I believe, be given to the basic phonetic units of speech.”

Words weighed as carefully as feet in a line · Essay, A Study in English Metrics

• Language
• Poetry
• Precision

“Is it necessary to say that one is of course all the time working 'by ear'—but by a reasoned and tested hearing?”

Ear and measurement treated as one discipline · Essay, A Study in English Metrics

• Perception
• Poetry
• Study

“It is my object in the present discussion to venture the suggestion that an important application of phonetics to metrical problems lies in the study of phonetic word-structure.”

The thesis of the technical work she ranked above her poems · Essay, A Study in English Metrics

• Analysis
• Language
• Poetry

“Don't be disturbed if you don't know much what prosody is. Hardly anyone does.”

A dry scholar's joke about the obscurity of the science she treated as her life's work · Letter to her parents

• Learning
• Poetry
• Scholarship