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Though The Most Beautiful Creature Were Waiting For Me At The End Of A Journey Or A Walk; Though The Carpet Were Of Silk, The Curtains Of The Morning Clouds; The Chairs And Sofa Stuffed With Cygnet's Down; The Food Manna, The Wine Beyond Claret, The Window Opening On Winander Mere, I Should Not Feel -or Rather My Happiness Would Not Be So Fine, As My Solitude Is Sublime.

-John Keats

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Though The Most Beautiful

John Keats

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Though The Most Beautiful Creature Were Waiting For Me At The End Of A Journey Or A Walk; Though The Carpet Were Of Silk, The Curtains Of The Morning Clouds; The Chairs And Sofa Stuffed With Cygnet's Down; The Food Manna, The Wine Beyond Claret, The Window Opening On Winander Mere, I Should Not Feel -or Rather My Happiness Would Not Be So Fine, As My Solitude Is Sublime.

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The Air Is All Softness.

What Is More Gentle Than A Wind Is Summer?

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.

A Man's Life Of Any Worth Is A Continual Allegory.

Should Disappointment, Parent Of Despair, Strive For Her Son To Seize My Careless Heart; When, Like A Cloud, He Sits Upon The Air, Preparing On His Spell-bound Prey To Dart: Chase Him Away, Sweet Hope, With Visage Bright, And Fright Him As The Morning Frightens Night!

Pleasure Is Oft A Visitant; But Pain Clings Cruelly To Us.

Pain And Pleasure

Sweet Are The Pleasures That To Verse Belong, And Doubly Sweet A Brotherhood In Song.

O For The Gentleness Of Old Romance, The Simple Planning Of A Minstrel's Song!

Much Have I Traveled 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. Oft Of One Wide Expanse Had I Been Told That Deep-brow'd Homer Ruled As His Demesne, Yet Did I Never Breathe Its Pure Serene Till I Heard Chapman Speak Out Loud And Bold: 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 Stared At The Pacific, And All His Men Look'd At Each Other With A Wild Surmise, Silent, Upon A Peak In Darien.

Where The Nightingale Doth Sing Not A Senseless, Tranced Thing, But Divine Melodious Truth.

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.

Wine Is Only Sweet To Happy Men.

But The Rose Leaves Herself Upon The Brier, For Winds To Kiss And Grateful Bees To Feed.

The Roaring Of The Wind Is My Wife And The Stars Through The Window Pane Are My Children. The Mighty Abstract Idea I Have Of Beauty In All Things Stifles The More Divided And Minute Domestic Happiness.

Ay, On The Shores Of Darkness There Is A Light, And Precipices Show Untrodden Green; There Is A Budding Morrow In Midnight; There Is Triple Sight In Blindness Keen.

I Love Your Hills And I Love Your Dales, And I Love Your Flocks A-bleating; But Oh, On The Heather To Lie Together, With Both Our Hearts A-beating!

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.

In A Drear-nighted December, Too Happy, Happy Tree, Thy Branches Ne'er Remember Their Green Felicity.

Season Of Mists And Mellow Fruitfulness, Close Bosom-friend Of The Maturing Sun; Conspiring With Him How To Load And Bless With Fruit The Vines That Round The Thatch-eves Run; To Bend With Apples The Moss’d Cottage-trees, And Fill All Fruit With Ripeness To The Core; To Swell The Gourd, And Plump The Hazel Shells With A Sweet Kernel; To Set Budding More, And Still More, Later Flowers For The Bees, Until They Think Warm Days Will Never Cease, For Summer Has O’er-brimm’d Their Clammy Cells.

Many A Time I Have Been Half In Love With Easeful Death.

Knowledge Enormous Makes A God Of Me.

My Creed Is Love And You Are Its Only Tenet.

A Hope Beyond The Shadow Of A Dream.

On A Lone Winter Evening, When The Frost Has Wrought A Silence.

Even Bees, The Little Almsmen Of Spring Bowers, Know There Is Richest Juice In Poison-flowers.

I Always Made An Awkward Bow.

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.

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.

Land And Sea, Weakness And Decline Are Great Separators, But Death Is The Great Divorcer For Ever.

All Clean And Comfortable I Sit Down To Write.

The Genius Of Shakespeare Was An Innate University.

To One Who Has Been Long In City Pent, ’tis Very Sweet To Look Into The Fair And Open Face Of Heaven, — To Breathe A Prayer Full In The Smile Of The Blue Firmament.

Soft Closer Of Our Eyes! Low Murmur Of Tender Lullabies!

Their Woes Gone By, And Both To Heaven Upflown, To Bow For Gratitude Before Jove's Throne.

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.

Some Say The World Is A Vale Of Tears, I Say It Is A Place Of Soul-making.

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.

You Have Absorb'd Me. I Have A Sensation At The Present Moment As Though I Was Dissolving.

Do You Not See How Necessary A World Of Pains And Troubles Is To School An Intelligence And Make It A Soul?

And When Thou Art Weary I'll Find Thee A Bed, Of Mosses And Flowers To Pillow Thy Head.

The Redbreast Whistles From A Garden-croft; And Gathering Swallows Twitter In The Skies.

If Something Is Not Beautiful, It Is Probably Not True.

The Public - A Thing I Cannot Help Looking Upon As An Enemy, And Which I Cannot Address Without Feelings Of Hostility.

It Is A Flaw In Happiness To See Beyond Our Bourn, - It Forces Us In Summer Skies To Mourn, It Spoils The Singing Of The Nightingale.

Parting They Seemed To Tread Upon The Air, Twin Roses By The Zephyr Blown Apart Only To Meet Again More Close.

Is There Another Life? Shall I Awake And Find All This A Dream? There Must Be We Cannot Be Created For This Sort Of Suffering.

I Will Clamber Through The Clouds And Exist.

Neither Poetry, Nor Ambition, Nor Love Have Any Alertness Of Countenance As They Pass By Me.

Severn - I - Lift Me Up - I Am Dying - I Shall Die Easy; Don't Be Frightened - Be Firm, And Thank God It Has Come.

So Rainbow-sided, Touch'd With Miseries, She Seem'd, At Once, Some Penanced Lady Elf, Some Demon's Mistress, Or The Demon's Self.

We Read Fine Things But Never Feel Them To The Full Until We Have Gone The Same Steps As The Author.

Conversation Is Not A Search After Knowledge, But An Endeavor At Effect.

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!

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.

Through Buried Paths, Where Sleepy Twilight Dreams The Summer Time Away.

The Poetry Of The Earth Is Never Dead.

His Religion At Best Is An Anxious Wish,-like That Of Rabelais, A Great Perhaps.

Scenery Is Fine - But Human Nature Is Finer.

Life Is But A Day; A Fragile Dewdrop On Its Perilous Way From A Tree's Summit.

The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone!

I Cannot Exist Without You - I Am Forgetful Of Every Thing But Seeing You Again - My Life Seems To Stop There - I See No Further. You Have Absorb'd Me. I Have A Sensation At The Present Moment As Though I Was Dissolving.

The Silver, Snarling Trumpets 'gan To Chide.

I Don't Need The Stars In The Night I Found My Treasure All I Need Is You By My Side So Shine Forever

Beauty Is Truth, Truth Beauty

They Swayed About Upon A Rocking Horse, And Thought It Pegasus.

You Are Always New. The Last Of Your Kisses Was Even The Sweetest; The Last Smile The Brightest; The Last Movement The Gracefullest.

O For A Life Of Sensations Rather Than Of Thoughts!

To The Very Last, He [napoleon] Had A Kind Of Idea; That, Namely, Of La Carrière Ouverte Aux Talents, - The Tools To Him That Can Handle Them.

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.

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.

What Is There In Thee, Moon! That Thou Should'st Move My Heart So Potently?

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.

--then On The Shore Of The Wide World I Stand Alone, And Think Till Love And Fame To Nothingness Do Sink.

O Magic Sleep! O Comfortable Bird, That Broodest O'er The Troubled Sea Of The Mind Till It Is Hush'd And Smooth!

Let Us Not Go Hurrying About And Collecting Honey, Bee-like Buzzing Here And There For A Knowledge Of What Is Not To Be Arrived At, But Let Us Open Our Leaves Like A Flower, And Be Passive And Receptive, Budding Patiently Under The Eye Of Apollo, And Taking Hints From Every Noble Insect That Favours Us With A Visit - Sap Will Be Given Us For Meat And Dew For Drink.

Don't Be Discouraged By A Failure. It Can Be A Positive Experience. Failure Is, In A Sense, The Highway To Success, Inasmuch As Every Discovery Of What Is False Leads Us To Seek Earnestly After What Is True, And Every Fresh Experience Points Out Some Form Of Error Which We Shall Afterwards Carefully Avoid.

Call The World If You Please "the Vale Of Soul-making." Then You Will Find Out The Use Of The World.

She Hurried At His Words, Beset With Fears, For There Were Sleeping Dragons All Around.

I See A Lily On Thy Brow, With Anguish Moist And Fever Dew; And On Thy Cheek A Fading Rose Fast Withereth Too.

It Can Be Said Of Him, When He Departed He Took A Man's Life With Him. No Sounder Piece Of British Manhood Was Put Together In That Eighteenth Century Of Time.

Like A Mermaid In Sea-weed, She Dreams Awake, Trembling In Her Soft And Chilly Nest.

Music's Golden Tongue Flatter'd To Tears This Aged Man And Poor.

There's A Blush For Won't, And A Blush For Shan't, And A Blush For Having Done It: There's A Blush For Thought And A Blush For Naught, And A Blush For Just Begun It.

A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy For Ever: 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.

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.

I Shall Soon Be Laid In The Quiet Grave--thank God For The Quiet Grave--o! I Can Feel The Cold Earth Upon Me--the Daisies Growing Over Me--o For This Quiet--it Will Be My First.

A Man Should Have The Fine Point Of His Soul Taken Off To Become Fit For This World.

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.

There Is A Budding Morrow In Midnight.

For Poesy Alone Can Tell Her Dreams, With The Fine Spell Of Words Alone Can Save Imagination From The Sable Charm And Dumb Enchantment. Who Alive Can Say, ‘thou Art No Poet May’st Not Tell Thy Dreams?’ Since Every Man Whose Soul Is Not A Clod Hath Visions, And Would Speak, If He Had Loved And Been Well Nurtured In His Mother Tongue. Whether The Dream Now Purpos’d To Rehearse Be Poet’s Or Fanatic’s Will Be Known When This Warm Scribe My Hand Is In The Grave.

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.

Literary Men Are . . . A Perpetual Priesthood.

He Who Saddens At Thought Of Idleness Cannot Be Idle, / And He's Awake Who Thinks Himself Asleep.

We Must Repeat The Often Repeated Saying, That It Is Unworthy A Religious Man To View An Irreligious One Either With Alarm Or Aversion, Or With Any Other Feeling Than Regret And Hope And Brotherly Commiseration.

We Have Oftener Than Once Endeavoured To Attach Some Meaning To That Aphorism, Vulgarly Imputed To Shaftesbury, Which However We Can Find Nowhere In His Works, That "ridicule Is The Test Of Truth."

A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever: Its Loveliness Increases; It Will Never Pass Into Nothingness.

To Silence Gossip, Don't Repeat It.

I Will Imagine You Venus Tonight And Pray, Pray, Pray To Your Star Like A Heathen.

I Never Was In Love - Yet The Voice And The Shape Of A Woman Has Haunted Me These Two Days.

And Shade The Violets, That They May Bind The Moss In Leafy Nets.

Joy, Whose Hand Is Ever At His Lips, Bidding Adieu

Nothing Is Finer For The Purposes Of Great Productions Than A Very Gradual Ripening Of The Intellectual Powers.

The Roaring Of The Wind Is My Wife And The Stars Through The Window Pane Are My Children.

Though A Quarrel In The Streets Is A Thing To Be Hated, The Energies Displayed In It Are Fine; The Commonest Man Shows A Grace In His Quarrel.

A Little Noiseless Noise Among The Leaves, Born Of The Very Sigh That Silence Heaves.

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.

O Latest Born And Loveliest Vision Far Of All Olympus' Faded Hierarchy.

Much Have I Travell'd In The Realms Of Gold.

Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art-- Not In Lone Splendour Hung Aloft The Night And Watching, With Eternal Lids Apart, Like Nature's Patient, Sleepless Eremite.

Health Is The Greatest Of Blessings - With Health And Hope We Should Be Content To Live.

You Are Always New To Me.

Closer Of Lovely Eyes To Lovely Dreams, Lover Of Loneliness, And Wandering, Of Upcast Eye, And Tender Pondering! Thee Must I Praise Above All Other Glories That Smile Us On To Tell Delightful Stories.

Its Better To Lose Your Ego To The One You Love Than To Lose The One You Love To Your Ego

Thou Art A Dreaming Thing, A Fever Of Thyself.

Through The Dancing Poppies Stole A Breeze, Most Softly Lulling To My Soul.

How Astonishingly Does The Chance Of Leaving The World Improve A Sense Of Its Natural Beauties Upon Us. Like Poor Falstaff, Although I Do Not 'babble,' I Think Of Green Fields; I Muse With The Greatest Affection On Every Flower I Have Know From My Infancy - Their Shapes And Colours Are As New To Me As If I Had Just Created Them With Superhuman Fancy.

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.

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.

My Chest Of Books Divide Amongst My Friends.

Fade Far Away, Dissolve, And Quite Forget.

No One Can Usurp The Heights... But Those To Whom The Miseries Of The World Are Misery, And Will Not Let Them Rest.

My Mind Has Been The Most Discontented And Restless One That Ever Was Put Into A Body Too Small For It.

I Have Loved The Principle Of Beauty In All Things.

But Let Me See Thee Stoop From Heaven On Wings That Fill The Sky With Silver Glitterings!

There Is An Old Saying "well Begun Is Half Done"-'tis A Bad One. I Would Use Instead-not Begun At All 'til Half Done.

Works Of Genius Are The First Things In The World.

Give Me Books, French Wine, Fruit, Fine Weather And A Little Music Played Out Of Doors By Somebody I Do Not Know.

There Is Nothing Stable In The World; Uproar's Your Only Music.

The Opinion I Have Of The Generality Of Women--who Appear To Me As Children To Whom I Would Rather Give A Sugar Plum Than My Time, Forms A Barrier Against Matrimony Which I Rejoice In.

It Keeps Eternal Whisperings Around Desolate Shores

Philosophy Will Clip An Angel's Wings, Conquer All Mysteries By Rule And Line, Empty The Haunted Air, And Gnomed Mine - Unweave A Rainbow.

An Extensive Knowledge Is Needful To Thinking People-it Takes Away The Heat And Fever; And Helps, By Widening Speculation, To Ease The Burden Of The Mystery.

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 Thick-sighted: Thence Proceeds Mawkishness.

So Let Me Be Thy Choir, And Make A Moan Upon The Midnight Hours.

How Beautiful, If Sorrow Had Not Made Sorrow More Beautiful Than Beauty's Self.

My Passions Are All Asleep From My Having Slumbered Till Nearly Eleven And Weakened The Animal Fiber All Over Me To A Delightful Sensation About Three Degrees On This Sight Of Faintness - If I Had Teeth Of Pearl And The Breath Of Lilies I Should Call It Languor - But As I Am I Must Call It Laziness. In This State Of Effeminacy The Fibers Of The Brain Are Relaxed In Common With The Rest Of The Body, And To Such A Happy Degree That Pleasure Has No Show Of Enticement And Pain No Unbearable Frown. Neither Poetry, Nor Ambition, Nor Love Have Any Alertness Of Countenance As They Pass By Me.

Bards Of Passion And Of Mirth, Ye Have Left Your Souls On Earth! Have Ye Souls In Heaven Too, Double-lived In Regions New?

A Poem Needs Understanding Through The Senses. The Point Of Diving In A Lake Is Not Immediately To Swim To The Shore; It’s To Be In The Lake, To Luxuriate In The Sensation Of Water. You Do Not Work The Lake Out. It Is An Experience Beyond Thought. Poetry Soothes And Emboldens The Soul To Accept Mystery.

A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever.

What Occasions The Greater Part Of The World's Quarrels? Simply This: Two Minds Meet And Do Not Understand Each Other In Time Enough To Prevent Any Shock Of Surprise At The Conduct Of Either Party.

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.

Now A Soft Kiss - Aye, By That Kiss, I Vow An Endless Bliss.

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 Would 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.

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!

He, Who Is Gone, Was One Of The Very Kindest Friends I Possessed, And Yet He Was Not Kinder Perhaps To Me, Than To Others. His Intense Mind And Powerful Feelings Would, I Truly Believe, Have Done The World Some Service, Had His Life Been Spared But He Was Of Too Sensitive A Nature And Thus He Was Destroyed!

My Love Is Selfish. I Cannot Breathe Without You.

Dancing Music, Music Sad, Both Together, Sane And Mad.

...yes, In Spite Of All, Some Shape Of Beauty Moves Away The Pall From Out Dark Spirits.

The Poppies Hung Dew-dabbled On Their Stalks.

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.

Philosophy Will Clip An Angel's Wings.

Dance And Provencal Song And Sunburnt Mirth! On 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.

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?

I Do Think Better Of Womankind Than To Suppose They Care Whether Mister John Keats Five Feet High Likes Them Or Not.

I Never Can Feel Certain Of Any Truth, But From A Clear Perception Of Its Beauty.

I Have So Much Of You In My Heart.

I Am Certain I Have Not A Right Feeling Towards Women -- At This Moment I Am Striving To Be Just To Them, But I Cannot. Is It Because They Fall So Far Beneath My Boyish Imagination? When I Was A Schoolboy I Thought A Fair Woman A Pure Goddess; My Mind Was A Soft Nest In Which Some One Of Them Slept, Though She Knew It Not.

And How They Kist Each Other's Tremulous Eyes.

X. 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!” Xi. I Saw Their Starved Lips In The Gloam, With Horrid Warning Gaped Wide, And I Awoke And Found Me Here, On The Cold Hill’s Side. Xii. And This Is Why I Sojourn Here, Alone And Palely Loitering, Though The Sedge Is Wither’d From The Lake, And No Birds Sing.

Adieu! Adieu! Thy Plaintive Anthem Fades Past The Near Meadows, Over The Still Stream, Up The Hill-side; And Now 'tis Buried Deep In The Next Valley-glades: Was It A Vision, Or A Waking Dream? Fled Is That Music:--do I Wake Or Sleep?

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.

So, When Dark Thoughts My Boding Spirit Shroud, Sweet Hope! Celestial Influence Round Me Shed Waving Thy Silver Pinions O'er My Head.

Many Have Original Minds Who Do Not Think It - They Are Led Away By Custom!

To Hope "when By My Solitary Hearth I Sit, And Hateful Thoughts Enwrap My Soul In Gloom; When No Fair Dreams Before My 'mind's Eye' Flit, And The Bare Heath Of Life Presents No Bloom; Sweet Hope, Ethereal Balm Upon Me Shed, And Wave Thy Silver Pinions O'er My Head.

O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell, Let It Not Be Among The Jumbled Heap Of Murky Buildings: Climb With Me The Steep,-- Nature's Observatory--whence The Dell, In Flowery Slopes, Its River's Crystal Swell, May Seem A Span; Let Me Thy Vigils Keep 'mongst Boughs Pavilion'd, Where The Deer's Swift Leap Startles The Wild Bee From The Foxglove Bell.

I Think I Shall Be Among The English Poets After My Death.

Let Us Open Our Leaves Like A Flower, And Be Passive And Receptive.

Faded The Flower And All Its Budded Charms,faded The Sight Of Beauty From My Eyes,faded The Shape Of Beauty From My Arms,faded The Voice, Warmth, Whiteness, Paradise!vanishd Unseasonably

The Excellence Of Every Art Is Its Intensity.

The Grandeur Of The Dooms We Have Imagined For The Mighty Dead.

Failure Is, In A Sense, The Highway To Success.

Success And Failure

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.

Where Soil Is, Men Grow, Whether To Weeds Or Flowers.

Was It A Vision Or A Waking Dream? Fled Is That Music--do I Wake Or Sleep?

Ghosts Of Melodious Prophesyings Rave Round Every Spot Where Trod Apollo's Foot; Bronze Clarions Awake, And Faintly Bruit, Where Long Ago A Giant Battle Was; And, From The Turf, A Lullaby Doth Pass In Every Place Where Infant Orpheus Slept. Feel We These Things? - That Moment Have We Stept Into A Sort Of Oneness, And Our State Is Like A Floating Spirit's. But There Are Richer Entanglements, Enthralments Far More Self-destroying, Leading, By Degrees, To The Chief Intensity: The Crown Of These Is Made Of Love And Friendship, And Sits High Upon The Forehead Of Humanity.

Pensive They Sit, And Roll Their Languid Eyes.

Love Is My Religion - I Could Die For It.

I Will Give You A Definition Of A Proud Man: He Is A Man Who Has Neither Vanity Nor Wisdom One Filled With Hatreds Cannot Be Vain, Neither Can He Be Wise.

Season Of Mists And Mellow Fruitfulness, Close Bosom-friend Of The Maturing Sun.

O Fret Not After Knowledge - I Have None, And Yet My Song Comes Native With The Warmth. O Fret Not After Knowledge - I Have None, And Yet The Evening Listens.

There Is An Electric Fire In Human Nature Tending To Purify - So That Among These Human Creatures There Is Continually Some Birth Of New Heroism. The Pity Is That We Must Wonder At It, As We Should At Finding A Pearl In Rubbish.

I Shall Soon Be Laid In The Quiet Grave - Thank God For The Quiet Grave

How I Like Claret!...it Fills One's Mouth With A Gushing Freshness, Then Goes Down To Cool And Feverless; Then, You Do Not Feel It Quarrelling With One's Liver. No; 'tis Rather A Peace-maker, And Lies As Quiet As It Did In The Grape. Then It Is As Fragrant As The Queen Bee, And The More Ethereal Part Mounts Into The Brain, Not Assaulting The Cerebral Apartments, Like A Bully Looking For His Trull, And Hurrying From Door To Door, Bouncing Against The Wainscott, But Rather Walks Like Aladdin About His Enchanted Palace, So Gently That You Do Not Feel His Step.

Feeling Well That Breathed Words Would All Be Lost, Unheard, And Vain As Swords Against The Enchased Crocodile, Or Leaps Of Grasshoppers Against The Sun.

Love In A Hut, With Water And A Crust, Is - Love, Forgive Us! - Cinders, Ashes, Dust.

I Wish You Could Invent Some Means To Make Me At All Happy Without You. Every Hour I Am More And More Concentrated In You; Everything Else Tastes Like Chaff In My Mouth.

Through The Sad Heart Of Ruth, When Sick For Home She Stood In Tears Amid The Alien Corn; The Same That Ofttimes Hath Charm'd Magic Casements, Opening On The Foam Of Perilous Seas, In Faery Lands Forlorn.

I Have Nothing To Speak Of But My Self-and What Can I Say But What I Feel.

Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Water.

Give Me Books, Fruit, French Wine And Fine Weather And A Little Music Out Of Doors, Played By Someone I Do Not Know. I Admire Lolling On A Lawn By A Water-lilied Pond To Eat White Currants And See Goldfish: And Go To The Fair In The Evening If I'm Good. There Is Not Hope For That -one Is Sure To Get Into Some Mess Before Evening.

To Bear All Naked Truths, And To Envisage Circumstance, All Calm, That Is The Top Of Sovereignty

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.

The Imagination May Be Compared To Adam's Dream-he Awoke And Found It Truth.

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-haired Saturn, Quiet As A Stone, Still As The Silence Round About His Lair.

My Heart Aches, And A Drowsy Numbness Pains/ My Sense, As Though Of Hemlock I Had Drunk.

... 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.

It Appears To Me That Almost Any Man May Like The Spider Spin From His Own Inwards His Own Airy Citadel.

Thou Foster-child Of Silence And Slow Time.

Foster Children

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.

Blessed Is The Healthy Nature; It Is The Coherent, Sweetly Co-operative, Not Incoherent, Self-distracting, Self-destructive One!

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