John Keats Quotes
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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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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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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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'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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As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.
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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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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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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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Time, that aged nurse,Rocked me to patience.
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Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.
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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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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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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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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... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
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The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.
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There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.
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I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
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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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Sometimes goldfinches one by one will dropFrom low hung branches; little space they stop;But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek;Then off at once, as in a wanton freak:Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wingsPausing upon their yellow flutterings.
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The music, yearning like a God in pain.
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Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forgetWhat thou among the leaves hast never known,The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, where men sit and hear each other groan;Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;Where but to think is to be full of sorrowAnd leaden-eyed despairs.
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Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
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And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?