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Was it a vision, or a waking dream?Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?
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Open afresh your round of starry folds,Ye ardent marigolds!
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But strength alone though of the Muses bornIs like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchresDelight it; for it feeds upon the burrs,And thorns of life; forgetting the great endOf poesy, that it should be a friendTo sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.
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But when the melancholy fit shall fallSudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,And hides the green hill in an April shroud;Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.
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My restless spirit never could endureTo brood so long upon one luxury,Unless it did, though fearfully, espyA hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
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He ne'er is crowned with immortality Who fears to follow where airy voices lead.
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I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of - I am, however young, writing at random - straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness - without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?
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You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.
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Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degreesHer rich attire creeps rustling to her knees.
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'Tis the pestOf love, that fairest joys give most unrest.
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At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
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Asleep in lap of legends old.
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My chest of books divide amongst my friends.
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Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.
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Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
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Nought but a lovely sighing of the windAlong the reedy stream; a half-heard strain,Full of sweet desolation-balmy pain.
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I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.
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Love is my religion - I could die for it.
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The poetry of the earth is never dead.
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I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
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There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.
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None can usurp this height...But those to whom the miseries of the worldAre misery, and will not let them rest.
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A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity - he is continually informing - and filling some other body.
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Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel.