" Wordsworth or as modest as Hardy; as rich as Byron or as poor as Francis Thompson; as religious as Cowper or as pagan as Carew. It doesn’t matter what you believe; Shelley believed every lunatic idea under the sun. Keats was certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections. And I’m willing to bet, my dear Sally, that you could pass Shakespeare on the way to work every morning for twenty years without noticing him once…Good Lord, this is developing into a lecture.’ ‘Still, poets must be alike in some way.’ ‘Certainly they are. They all write poetry. "

― Edmund Crispin , The Moving Toyshop (Gervase Fen, #3)