Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
'The Builders'
"All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;...."

From the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
“Still as a slave before his lord,
The Ocean hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast—

If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim.
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him.”
I love this poem. It is about surviving a grievous error and making reparation; and it is done so beautifully. It is lyrically visual and exciting: epic.
I work mostly in inks and watercolour, and often (but not always) start off with an idea and then hit the page with spontaneous marks. From that point, I methodically build my image until it has given a sense of completion back to me and therefore created an authentic response. My initial ideas often come from poems or music or nature.