Quotes from John Keats

When by my solitary hearth I sit, When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit, And the bare heath of life presents no bloom; Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head.

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.

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 glories That smile us on to tell delightful stories.

X. I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—"La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!" XI. I saw their starved lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill's side. XII. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.

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.

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.

Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!

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.

I am profoundly enchanted by the flowing complexity in you.

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

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

The air is all softness.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death...

The world is too brutal for me—I am glad there is such a thing as the grave—I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there.

I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.

And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes.

I find I cannot exist without Poetry

Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine— Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade

Scenery is fine -but human nature is finer

Already with thee! tender is the night. . . But here there is no light. . .

My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it.... I never felt my mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment- upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,—- That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes.

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