Poems of John Keats 2009

“The poetry of earth is never dead.” (Keats ‘On the Grasshopper and Cricket’, 2009, p.13).

 “One morn before me were three figures seen,

With bowed necks, and joined hands, side faced;

And one behind the other steep’d serene,

In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;

They pass’d like figures on a marble urn,

When shifted round to see the other side,

They came again;” (Keats ‘Ode on Indolence’, 2009, p.27).

“Was it a silent deep-disguised plot

To steal away, and leave without a task

My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;” (Keats ‘Ode on Indolence’, 2009, p.27).

“Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind.” (Keats ‘Ode to Psyche’, 2009, p.31).

“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,

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.” (Keats ‘Ode to a Nightingale, 2009, p.33).

“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.” (Keats ‘Endymion’, 2009, p.45).

“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 wooly fold:

Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told

His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without death,

Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.” (Keats ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, 2009, p.49).

“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.” (Keats ‘Hyperion, 2009, p.70).

“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 …” (Keats ‘Hyperion, 2009, p.78).

“Poetry should be great & unobstrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject. – How beautiful are the retired flowers! How would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, ‘admire me I am a violet! Dote upon me I am a primrose.” (Keats, 2009, p.96).

“What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity – he is continually informing – and filling some other Body – The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none.” (Keats, 2009, p.98).

“I feel it I my power to become a popular writer … (…) I think if I had a free and healthy and lasting organization of heart and Lungs – as strong as an ox’s – so as to bear unhurt the shock of extreme thought and sensation without weariness, I could pass my Life very nearly alone though it should last eighty years. But I feel my Body too weak to support me to the height; I am obliged continually to check myself and strive to be nothing.” (Keats, 2009, p.101).