John Keats Quotes
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Wherein lies happiness? In that which becksOur ready minds to fellowship divine,A fellowship with essence; till we shine,Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. BeholdThe clear religion of heaven!
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As when, upon a tranced summer-night,Those green-rob’d senators of mighty woods,Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,Save from one gradual solitary gustWhich comes upon the silence, and dies off,As if the ebbing air had but one wave.
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Who are these coming to the sacrifice?To what green altar, O mysterious priest,Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
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Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.
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Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reachTo where the hurrying freshnesses aye preachA natural sermon o’er their pebbly beds;Where swarms of minnows show their little heads,Staying their wavy bodies ’gainst the streams,To taste the luxury of sunny beamsTemper’d with coolness.
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I scarcely remember counting upon happiness - I look not for it if it be not in the present hour - nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.
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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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'If I should die,' said I to myself, 'I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.'
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Time, that aged nurse,Rocked me to patience.
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This living hand, now warm and capableOf earnest grasping, would, if it were coldAnd in the icy silence of the tomb,So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nightsThat thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of bloodSo in my veins red life might stream again,And thou be conscience-calm'd - see here it is -I hold it towards you.
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I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more - I could be martyred for my religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that.
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I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.
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Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
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A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see the mystery of life - a life like the Scriptures, figurative... Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not figurative. Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it.
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The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.
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The music, yearning like a God in pain.
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There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.
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Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
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In spite of all,Some shape of beauty moves away the pallFrom our dark spirits.
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The silver snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.
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And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
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To SorrowI bade good-morrow,And thought to leave her far away behind;But cheerly, cheerly,She loves me dearly;She is so constant to me, and so kind:I would deceive herAnd so leave her,But ah! she is so constant and so kind.
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Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may findThee sitting careless on a granary floor,Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hookSpares the next swath and all its twined flowers.
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And there shall be for thee all soft delightThat shadowy thought can win,A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,To let the warm Love in!