“Besides, for poets it wasn’t lying, it was art.”

On starting off in poetry (as quoted in the book “Race and the Modern Artist” https://books.google.com/books?id=4XY8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA208&lpg=PA208&dq)

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

No. 12, st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Part I

The Decay of Lying (1889)

Acts 26:24.<br>And so say all the world, the men who know not God, of all that are of Paul’s religion: of every one who is so a follower of him as he was of Christ. It is true, there is a sort of religion, nay, and it is called Christianity too, which may be practised without any such Imputation, which is generally allowed to be consistent with common sense, —that is, a religion of form, a round of outward duties, performed in a decent, regular manner. You may add orthodoxy thereto, a system of right opinions, yea, and some quantity of heathen morality; and yet not many will pronounce, that “much religion hath made you mad.” But if you aim at the religion of the heart, if you talk of “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,” then it will not be long before your sentence is passed, “Thou art beside thyself.” <br class="br"> Sermon 37 &quot;The Nature of Enthusiasm&quot; http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wesley/sermons.v.xxxvii.html <br class="br">Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)

Source: City of Ashes

Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. IV (1928)

The Unexpressed.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)