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

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O, sorrow! Why dost borrow Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?
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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.
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My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on my Tomb.
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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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To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty
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Four seasons fill the measure of the year there are four seasons in the minds of men.
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I Cannot Exist Without You. I Am Forgetful Of Everything But Seeing You Again.
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I have so much of you in my heart.
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Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.
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Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
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I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.
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A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
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Some say the world is a vale of tears, I say it is a place of soul-making.
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Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings.
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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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The creature has a purpose, and his eyes are bright with it.
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The genius of Shakespeare was an innate university.
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Like a mermaid in sea-weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest.
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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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Knowledge enormous makes a god of me.
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