John Keats
The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.Collection: Happiness
Should Disappointment, parent of Despair, Strive for her son to seize my careless heart; When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air, Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart: Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright, And fright him as the morning frightens night!Collection: Sweet
O, sorrow! Why dost borrow Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?Collection: Heart
Though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though the carpet were of silk, the curtains of the morning clouds; the chairs and sofa stuffed with cygnet's down; the food manna, the wine beyond claret, the window opening on Winander Mere, I should not feel -or rather my happiness would not be so fine, as my solitude is sublime.Collection: Happiness
Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately, and do all you can to console me in it — make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me —write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair.Collection: Writing
Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.Collection: Dream
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with essence; till we shine, Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold The clear religion of heaven!Collection: Lying
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,-- Nature's observatory--whence the dell, In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.Collection: Rivers
Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or notCollection: Beauty
Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth.Collection: Divine
Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From 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 wings Pausing upon their yellow flutterings.Collection: Space
When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.Collection: Men
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine - Unweave a rainbow.Collection: Philosophy
To Sorrow I 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.Collection: Love
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.Collection: Friendship
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.Collection: Sweet
Wine is only sweet to happy men.Collection: Happiness
... for, by all the stars That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars That kept my spirit in are burst - that I Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!Collection: Beautiful
Works of genius are the first things in the world.Collection: Genius
I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave - thank God for the quiet graveCollection: Death
I Cannot Exist Without You. I Am Forgetful Of Everything But Seeing You Again.Collection: Love
Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die.Collection: Cheer
We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us - and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject. - How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, "admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose!"Collection: Beautiful
I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving.Collection: Sexy
Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.Collection: Men
Soft closer of our eyes! Low murmur of tender lullabies!Collection: Sleep
Dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth! On for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth.Collection: Song
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!Collection: Kings
I stood tip-toe upon a little hill, The air was cooling, and so very still, That the sweet buds which with a modest pride Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, Had not yet lost those starry diadems Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.Collection: Sweet
How I like claret!...It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness, then goes down to cool and feverless; then, you do not feel it quarrelling with one's liver. No; 'tis rather a peace-maker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal part mounts into the brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments, like a bully looking for his trull, and hurrying from door to door, bouncing against the wainscott, but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace, so gently that you do not feel his step.Collection: Queens
Load every rift with ore.Collection: Rift
All my clear-eyed fish, Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish, Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze... My charming rod, my potent river spells.Collection: Rivers
Many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death.Collection: Half
Or thou might'st better listen to the wind, Whose language is to thee a barren noise, Though it blows legend-laden through the trees.Collection: Blow
... Who alive can say 'Thou art no Poet - mayst 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.Collection: Mother
Feeling well that breathed words Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps Of grasshoppers against the sun.Collection: Feelings
The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream-he awoke and found it truth.Collection: Dream
Let us not go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there for a knowledge of what is not to be arrived at, but let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo, and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit - sap will be given us for meat and dew for drink.Collection: Flower
Call the world if you please "the vale of soul-making." Then you will find out the use of the world.Collection: Soul
A quote about drinking is a joy foreverCollection: Drinking
What occasions the greater part of the world's quarrels? Simply this: Two minds meet and do not understand each other in time enough to prevent any shock of surprise at the conduct of either party.Collection: Party
Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine - how good how fine. It went down all pulpy, slushy, oozy, all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large, beatified Strawberry.Collection: Food
How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world improve a sense of its natural beauties upon us. Like poor Falstaff, although I do not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have know from my infancy - their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with superhuman fancy.Collection: Death
I have good reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.Collection: Reading
They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus.Collection: Horse