John Keats

“O aching time! O moments big as years!”

“My spirit is too weak--mortalityWeighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,And each imagin'd pinnacle and steepOf godlike hardship tells me I must dieLike a sick Eagle looking at the sky.”

“What is this world's delight,Lightening that mocks the night,Brief as even as bright”

“Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?---"On death”

“You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you: how I would die for one hour...”

“Thou art a dreaming thing,A fever of thyself.”

“Let us away, my love, with happy speed;There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,- Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead.Awake! arise! my love and fearless be,For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee.”

“And we will shadeOurselves whole summers by a river glade;And I will tell thee stories of the sky,And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy,My happy love will overwing all bounds!O let me melt into thee! let the soundsOf our close voices marry at their birth;Let us entwine hoveringly!”

“I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!How beautiful thou art!”

“Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreamsThe summer time away.”

“Softly the breezes from the forest came,Softly they blew aside the taper's flame;Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower;Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower;Mysterious, wild, the far-heard trumpet's tone;Lovely the moon in ether, all alone:Sweet too, the converse of these happy mortals,As that of busy spirits when the portalsAre closing in the west; or that soft hummingWe hear around when Hesperus is coming.Sweet be their sleep.”

“And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes.”

“Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,Lover of loneliness, and wandering,Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!Thee must I praise above all other gloriesThat smile us on to tell delightful stories.”

“O let me lead her gently o'er the brook,Watch her half-smiling lips and downward look;O let me for one moment touch her wrist;Let me one moment to her breathing list;And as she leaves me, may she often turnHer fair eyes looking through her locks auburne.”

“When it is moving on luxurious wings,The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings.”

“I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the thousand and first—‘t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.”

“t this is human life: the war, the deeds,The disappointment, the anxiety,Imagination's struggles, far and nigh,All human; bearing in themselves this good,That they are still the air, the subtle food,To make us feel existence, and to shewHow quiet death is.”

“Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain Clings cruelly to us.”

“I have a habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am now leading a posthumous existence.”

“The imagination may be compared to adams dream. He awoke and found it truth.”

“Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,Sylvan historian, who canst thus expressA flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shapeOf deities or mortals, or of both,In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheardAre sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leaveThy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shedYour leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;And, happy melodist, unwearied,For ever piping songs for ever new;More happy love! more happy, happy love!For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,For ever panting, and for ever young;All breathing human passion far above,That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.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?What little town by river or sea shore,Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?And, little town, thy streets for evermoreWill silent be; and not a soul to tellWhy thou art desolate, can e’er return.O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with bredeOf marble men and maidens overwrought,With forest branches and the trodden weed;Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thoughtAs doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!When old age shall this generation waste,Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woeThan ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

“tis very sweet to look into the fairand open face of heaven, - to breathe a prayerfull in the smile of the blue firmament.”

“I still don't know how to work out a poem. A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving into a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out, it is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery.”

“She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die: And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding Adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee mouths sips:”

“If I should die, 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.”

“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moors--No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,And so live ever--or else swoon to death. Glanzvoller Stern! wär ich so stet wie du,Nicht hing ich nachts in einsam stolzer Pracht!SchautŽ nicht mit ewigem Blick beiseite zu,Einsiedler der Natur, auf hoher WachtBeim Priesterwerk der Reinigung, das die See,Die wogende, vollbringt am Meeresstrand;Noch starrt ich auf die Maske, die der SchneeSanft fallend frisch um Berg und Moore band.Nein, doch unwandelbar und unentwegtMöchtŽ ruhn ich an der Liebsten weicher Brust,Zu fühlen, wie es wogend dort sich regt,Zu wachen ewig in unruhiger Lust,Zu lauschen auf des Atems sanftes Wehen -So ewig leben - sonst im Tod vergehen!”

“I have so much of you in my heart.”

“Love is my religion--I could die for it.”

“When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact’ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be”

“Nada es estable en el mundo. El tumulto es vuestra única música.”

“Nothing ever becomes real till experienced – even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it”

“My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.”

“You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.”

“I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.”

“Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thoughtAs doth eternity...”

“No one can usurp the heights...But those to whom the miseries of the worldAre misery, and will not let them rest.”

“I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen.”

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”

“Like a mermaid in sea-weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest.”

“I will clamber through the clouds and exist.”

“O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,Would all their colours from the sunset take:From something of material sublime,Rather than shadow our own soul's day-timeIn the dark void of night. For in the worldWe jostle, - but my flag is not unfurl'd...”

“For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, ‘Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’ Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.”

“I find I cannot exist without Poetry”

“There is an old saying "well begun is half done" - 'tis a bad one. I would use instead, "Not begun at all till half done;" so according to that I have not begun my Poem and consequently (a priori) can say nothing about it.”

“The open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown - the Air is our robe of state - the Earth is our throne, and the Sea a mighty minstrel playing before it.”

“We have woven a web, you and I, attached to this world but a separate world of our own invention.”

“The same that oft-times hath charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.”

“The air is all softness.”

“Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they? Think not of them; thou has thy music too.”

“I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.”