Quotes from John Keats

Be careful to let no fretting injure your health as I have suffered it—health is the greatest of blessings—with health and hope we should be content to live, and so you will find as you grow older.

forgotten? Yes, a schism Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, Made great Apollo blush for this his land.

Easy was the task: A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race!

To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune, And still it cried, 'Apollo! young Apollo! The morning-bright Apollo! young Apollo!

Aí de quando a paixão é simultaneamente modesta e arrebatada!

Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.

O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth! O unconfin'd Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy, Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves, Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world 460 Of silvery enchantment!–who, upfurl'd Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour, But renovates and lives?–

Oh, sweet Fancy! Let her loose; Everything is spoilt by use (...) Let the winged Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home

for anon, 640 I felt upmounted in that region Where falling stars dart their artillery forth, And eagles struggle with the buffeting north That balances the heavy meteor-stone;– Felt too

yet I must not forget Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet: For what there may be worthy in these rhymes I partly owe to him:

How could I sleight you? How threaten to leave you? not in the spirit of a Threat to you -- no -- but in the spirit of Wretchedness in myself.

Endymion received mostly negative criticism after its release and Keats himself admitted its diffuse and unappealing style. It was damned by many critics, giving rise to Byron's quip that Keats was ultimately "snuffed out by an article", suggesting that he never truly got over the criticism the poem received.

John Gibson Lockhart, writing in Blackwood's Magazine, described Endymion as "imperturbable drivelling idiocy". With biting sarcasm, Lockhart advised, "It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes

I'll tell you how to burn

My restless spirit never could endure To brood so long upon one luxury, Unless it did, though fearfully espy A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, Majesties, sovran voices, agonies, Creations and destroyings, all at once Pour into the wide hollows of my brain, And deify me, as if some blithe wine Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk, And so become immortal.

Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine — Unweave a rainbow

Then Lamia breath'd death breath; the sophist's eye, Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly, 300 Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging: she, as well

In the fam'd memoirs of a thousand years, Written by Crafticant, and published By Parpaglion and Co., (those sly compeers Who rak'd up ev'ry fact against the dead,) In Scarab Street, Panthea, at the Jubal's Head.

Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds Along the pebbled shore of memory! Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride, And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry.

On the green of the hill We will drink our fill Of golden sunshine, Till our brains intertwine With the glory and grace of Apollo!

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen Their baaing vanities, to browse away The comfortable green and juicy hay From human pastures; or, O torturing fact! Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes.

I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled. My fever'd parchings up, my scathing dread Met palsy half way: soon these limbs became 640 Gaunt, wither'd, sapless, feeble, cramp'd, and lame.