The thoughts of poets.

November18. 

Conchologists call those shells "which are fished up from the depths of the ocean" and are never seen on the shore, which are the rarest and most beautiful, Pelagii, but those which are cast on shore and are never so delicate and beautiful as the former, on account of exposure and abrasion, Littorales. 

So it is with the thoughts of poets: some are fresh from the deep sea, radiant with unimagined beauty, — Pelagii; but others are comparatively worn, having been tossed by many a tide, — Littorales, — scaled off, abraded, and eaten by worms.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 18, 1853