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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.

John Keats

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John Keats
Age: 25 †
Born: 1795
Born: October 31
Died: 1821
Died: February 23
Judge-Rapporteur
Physician
Poet
Difference
Describes
Differences
Describe
Imagine
Task
Lord
Sees
Speak
Hardest
Great
Tasks
Mines
Mine
Byron

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With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
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I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not – for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty . . .
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A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life, a life like the scriptures, figurative.
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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.
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How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not.
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So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud, Sweet Hope! celestial influence round me shed Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head.
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Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.
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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.
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My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.
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I never can feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of its beauty.
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And there shall be for thee all soft delight That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!
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Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by? ---On death
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There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.
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No one can usurp the heights... But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest.
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I love your hills and I love your dales, And I love your flocks a-bleating but oh, on the heather to lie together, With both our hearts a-beating!
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The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.
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I do think better of womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not.
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No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures Than I began to think of rhymes and measures: The air that floated by me seem'd to say 'Write! thou wilt never have a better day.
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Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
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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.
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