Quote of the Day (Percy Bysshe Shelley, on Inspiration)

“[W]hen composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.” —Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), “A Defence of Poetry,” in Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments (1840)