Quotes from The Complete Poems

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“Life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree’s summit.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“Bright Star

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,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“To Solitude

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,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“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.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“And when thou art weary I'll find thee a bed,
Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“When by my solitary hearth I sit,
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.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“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.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“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:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—-
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.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the sky with silver glitterings!”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“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.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“I do think the bars
That kept my spirit in are burst - that I
Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!
How beautiful thou art!”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“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.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“Open wide the mind's cage-door,
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“I had a dove and the sweet dove died;
And I have thought it died of grieving:
O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied,
With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of Man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness -to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook: -
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forgo his mortal nature.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“To Sleep"

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,—
Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways

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

..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,
Would all their colours from the sunset take.”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
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?”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

“But what, without the social thought of thee,
Would be the wonders of the sky and sea?”
― John Keats, quote from The Complete Poems

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