Quote

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.

John Keats

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John Keats
Age: 25 †
Born: 1795
Born: October 31
Died: 1821
Died: February 23
Judge-Rapporteur
Physician
Poet
Star
Polar
Poetry
Sails
Imagination
Sail
Stars
Poem
Take
Fancy
Long
Test
Invention
Rudder
Tests
Rudders

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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.
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The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
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There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
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...yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From out dark spirits.
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And shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.
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I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion-- I have shuddered at it, I shudder no more. I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion and I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet.
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Like a mermaid in sea-weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest.
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I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.
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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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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.
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That queen of secrecy, the violet.
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That which is creative must create itself.
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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.
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In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time.
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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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A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
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I find I cannot exist without Poetry
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A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.
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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
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I have so much of you in my heart.
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