A poet is a nightingale, who sits in the darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. – Percy Bysshe Shelley

In many cases these verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed. – Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Preface to Poems by Emily Dickinson Edited by Two of