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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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A drainless shower Of light is poesy: 'tis the supreme of power 'Tis might half slumbering on its own right arm.
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Music's golden tongue Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.
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I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!
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No, no, I'm sure, My restless spirit never could endure To brood so long upon one luxury, Unless it did, though fearfully, espy A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
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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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The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft and gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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I would jump down Etna for any public good - but I hate a mawkish popularity.
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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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No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
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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.
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I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
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The poetry of the earth is never dead.
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...I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become more acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.
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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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Even bees, the little almsmen of spring bowers, know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.
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Why employ intelligent and highly paid ambassadors and then go and do their work for them? You don't buy a canary and sing yourself.
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Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter therefore, ye soft pipes, play on Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
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The air is all softness.
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O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song!
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A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
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