Quotes from John Keats

Where long ago a giant battle was; And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass In every place where infant Orpheus slept.

Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self. There was a listening fear in her regard, As if calamity had but begun; As if the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear 40 Was with its stored thunder labouring up.

I'll feel my heaven anew

La vita è un'avventura da vivere, non un problema da risolvere.

Into the wide stream came of purple hue— 'Twas Bacchus and his crew! The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills From kissing cymbals made a merry din— 200 'Twas Bacchus and his kin!

I am a shadow now, alas! alas! Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling Alone: I chant alone the holy mass, While little sounds of life are round me knelling, And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass, And many a chapel bell the hour is telling, 310 Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me, And thou art distant in Humanity.

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 Have Fears that I May Cease to Be

Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!

Pale wox I, and in vapours hid my face. Art thou, too, near such doom? vague

There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't, And a blush for having done it: There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught, And a blush for just begun it.

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.

A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity--he is continually in for--and filling some other Body--The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute--the poet has none; no identity--he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures. If then he has no self, and if I am a Poet, where is the Wonder that I should say I would write no more?