It is always the savage lads, with their love of excitement, who head the riot - reckless to what bloodshed it may lead.
The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow...
I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this:...
They changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell.
The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.
Of cats' first disobedience, and the heightOf that forbidden tree whose doom'd ascentBrought man into the world to help us downAnd made us subject to his moods and whims,For though we may have knock'd...