
“It’s a cauld barren blast that blaws nobody good.” - title of poem.”
The Harp of Zion (1853)
It has been dated to at least 1927 http://www.fun-with-words.com/shortest_poem.html, as published in the Mt Rainier Nature News Notes (1 July 1927).
Misattributed
Adam Had 'em.
Misattributed
“It’s a cauld barren blast that blaws nobody good.” - title of poem.”
The Harp of Zion (1853)
“A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul.”
The Poetic Principle (1850)
1950-07-06
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Poetic Principle (1850)
Context: I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length.
Dedication 'You and I' Macmillan, New York October 1914
Other Quotes
“Poem: Lines on the Death of my Husband”
Source: The Bhagavadgītā (1973), p. 18. (12. The composition of the Bhagavadgītā)
The Poetic Principle (1850)