John Keats

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John Keats, English poet

John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) was one of the principle poets of the English Romantic movement.

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My spirit is too weak- mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.
- On Seeing the Elgin Marbles (1817)

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity.
- Stanzas, st. 1 (1817)

But were there ever any
Writh'd not of passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.
- Stanzas, st. 3

It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
- On the Sea (1817)

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
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;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
- When I Have Fears (1817)

Shed no tear! O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! O weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
- Faery Songs, I (1818)

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm'd- see here it is-
I hold it towards you.
- This Living Hand (1819)

Bright star! would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores.
- Bright Star (1819)

None can usurp this height...
But those to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery, and will not let them rest.
- The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream, Canto I, l. 147 (1819)

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
- Epitaph for himself (1821)

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Letters (1817-1820)

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination—what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not.
- Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)

The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream—he awoke and found it truth.
- Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)

O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
- Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)

I scarcely remember counting upon happiness—I look not for it if it be not in the present hour—nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights—or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.
- Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)

At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
- Letter to George and Thomas Keats (December 22, 1817)

They will explain themselves - as all poems should do without any comment.
- Letter to George Keats (1818)

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze with itself, but with its subject.
- Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (February 3, 1818)

In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their center. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity--it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance— Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him—shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the luxury of twilight—but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it—and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
- Letter to John Taylor (February 27, 1818)

Scenery is fine—but human nature is finer.
- Letter to Benjamin Bailey (March 13, 1818)

Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: we read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.
- Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (May 3, 1818)

I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.
- Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (May 3, 1818)

There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of immortality.
- Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (September 22, 1818)

I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.
- Letter to James Hessey (October 9, 1818)

The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man; it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself—In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better 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 sdvice.
- Letter to James Hessey (October 9, 1818)

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
- Letter to James Hessey (October 9, 1818)

I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.
- Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (October 14, 1818)

The poetical character...is not itself—it has no self—it is everything and nothing...It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen.
- Letter to Richard Woodhouse (October 27, 1818)

A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity—he is continually informing—and filling some other body.
- Letter to Richard Woodhouse (October 27, 1818)

A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory—and very few eyes can see the mystery of life—a life like the Scriptures, figurative...Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not figurative. Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it.
- Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (February 14-May 3, 1819)

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced—Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it.
- Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (February 14-May 3, 1819)

I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of—I am, however young, writing at random—straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness—without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?
- Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (March 19, 1819)

Call the world if you please "The vale of soul-making."
- Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (April 21, 1819)

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.
- To Fanny Brawne (July 25, 1819)

"If I should die," said I to myself, "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."
- To Fanny Brawne (c. February 1820)

You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest.
- Letter to Fanny Brawne (March 1820)

You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.
- Letter to Shelley (August 1820)

I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you!
- Letter to Charles Armitage Brown (November 30, 1820)

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Poems (1817)

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,
The air was cooling, and so very still,
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems,
Had not yet lost those starry diadems
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.
- I Stood Tiptoe, l. 1

And then there crept
A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.
- I Stood Tiptoe, l. 10

Open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!
- I Stood Tiptoe, l. 47

Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach
To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach
A natural sermon o’er their pebbly beds;
Where swarms of minnows show their little heads,
Staying their wavy bodies ’gainst the streams,
To taste the luxury of sunny beams
Temper’d with coolness.
- I Stood Tiptoe, l. 72

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.
- I Stood Tiptoe, l. 87

Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain,
Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies.
- Woman! When I Behold Thee Flippant, Vain, st. 1

To one who has been long in city pent,
’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven.
- Sonnet. To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent

E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.
- Sonnet. To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
- On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
- On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings in a distant mart?
Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.
- Sonnet. Addressed to the Same (Benjamin Robert Haydon)

The poetry of earth is never dead.
- Sonnet. On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree’s summit.
- Sleep and Poetry, st. 5

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed.
- Sleep and Poetry, st. 6

A drainless shower
Of light is poesy; ’tis the supreme of power;
’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.
- Sleep and Poetry, st. 11

But strength alone though of the Muses born
Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,
Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres
Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs,
And thorns of life; forgetting the great end
Of poesy, that it should be a friend
To sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.
- Sleep and Poetry, st. 11

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Endymion (1818)

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.
- Preface

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thicksighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.
- Preface

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
- Bk. I, l. 1

In spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.
- Bk. I, l. 11

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.
- Bk. I, l. 20

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,
They alway must be with us, or we die.
- Bk. I, l. 25

O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,
That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind
Till it is hush’d and smooth!
- Bk. I, l. 453

Time, that aged nurse,
Rocked me to patience.
- Bk. I, l. 705

Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold
The clear religion of heaven!
- Bk. I, l. 777

The crown of these
Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
Upon the forehead of humanity.
- Bk. I, l. 800

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.
- Bk. I, l. 854

Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain
Clings cruelly to us.
- Bk. I, l. 906

He ne'er is crown'd
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead.
- Bk. II, l. 211

'Tis the pest
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest.
- Bk. II, l. 365

To Sorrow
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.
- Bk. IV, l. 173

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La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819)

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
- Stanza I

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful- a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
- Stanza IV

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
- Stanza V

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried- "La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
- Stanza X

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Poems (1820)

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.
- Lamia, Pt. II, l. 1

Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.
- Lamia, Pt. II, l. 234

“For cruel ’tis,” said she,
“To steal my Basil-pot away from me.”
- Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil, st. 62

St. Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold.
- The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 1

The music, yearning like a God in pain.
- The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 7

Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart
Made purple riot.
- The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 16

As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.
- The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 23

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest.
- The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 25

Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees.
- The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 26

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d.
- The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 30

She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears—
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.—
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-droop’d lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.
- The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 40

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.
- The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 42

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours
- Ode to Psyche, st. 3

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!
- Ode to Psyche, st. 5

Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
- Fancy, l. 1

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
- Ode, The Fair Maid of the Inn

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?
- Lines on the Mermaid Tavern

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
- To Autumn, st. 1

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers.
- To Autumn, st. 2

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.
- To Autumn, st. 3

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolfs-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade.
- Ode on Melancholy, st. 1

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.
- Ode on Melancholy, st. 2

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips.
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
- Ode on Melancholy, st. 3

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Ode to a Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.
- Stanza 1

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
- Stanza 1

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth.
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth.
- Stanza 2

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs.
- Stanza 3

Already with thee! tender is the night.
- Stanza 4

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.
- Stanza 5

And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
- Stanza 5

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd 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!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
- Stanza 6

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
- Stanza 7

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toil me back from thee to my sole self!
- Stanza 8

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
- Stanza 8

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Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thou express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape?
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
- Stanza 1

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.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
- Stanza 2

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
- Stanza 4

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," —that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
- Stanza 5
- The final lines of this poem have been rendered in various ways in different editions, some placing the entire last two lines within quotation marks, others only the statement "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," and others without any quotation marks. The poet's final intentions upon the matter before his death are unclear.

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Hyperion: A Fragment

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,
Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud.
- Bk. I, l. 1

As when, upon a tranced summer-night,
Those green-rob’d senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave.
- Bk. I, l. 72