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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
Invention
Rudder
Tests
Rudders
Star
Polar
Poetry
Sails
Imagination
Sail
Stars
Poem
Take
Fancy
Long
Test

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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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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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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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It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores
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I came to feel how far above All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood, All earthly pleasure, all imagined good, Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss.
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Knowledge enormous makes a God of me. 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.
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Darkling I listen and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a muse' d rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!
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I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen.
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Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.
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You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving.
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O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
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Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu
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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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... the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown - the Air is our robe of state - the Earth is our throne, and the Sea a mighty minstrel playing before it.
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As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden,- Speech is silvern, Silence is golden or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.
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I Cannot Exist Without You. I Am Forgetful Of Everything But Seeing You Again.
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Even bees, the little almsmen of spring bowers, know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.
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Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect.
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Souls of poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host's Canary wine?
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A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
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