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John Keats Quotes
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John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats' work was the most significant literary experience of his life.The poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through an emphasis on natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature. Some of the most acclaimed works of Keats are "Ode to a Nightingale", "Sleep and Poetry", and the famous sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".



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✵ 31. October 1795 – 23. February 1821
John Keats photo
John Keats: 211   quotes 39   likes

John Keats Quotes

“And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 30
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

“Tis the pest
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. II, l. 365
Endymion (1818)

Love , Joy

“Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toil me back from thee to my sole self!”

John Keats Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza 8
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale

“So many, and so many, and such glee.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. IV
Endymion (1818)

“They will explain themselves — as all poems should do without any comment.”

John Keats

Letter to George Keats (1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

“Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is — Love, forgive us! — cinders, ashes, dust.”

John Keats Lamia

"Lamia", Pt. II, l. 1
Poems (1820)

Love , Forgiveness , Water

“He ne'er is crown'd
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. II, l. 211
Endymion (1818)

Fear

“And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?”

John Keats Lamia

"Lamia", Pt. I, l. 61
Poems (1820)

“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!”

John Keats Ode to Psyche

"Ode to Psyche", st. 5
Poems (1820)

Love , Night

“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.”

John Keats

Bk. I, l. 72
Hyperion: A Fragment (1819)

Dreams , Star , Silence , Summer

“To his sight
The husk of natural objects opens quite
To the core; and every secret essence there
Reveals the elements of good and fair;
Making him see, where Learning hath no light.”

John Keats

"The Poet," London Magazine (Oct 1821)

Secret , Nature , Light , Learning

“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.”

John Keats Letter to George and Thomas Keats

Letter to George and Thomas Keats (December 22, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)

Literature

“The silver snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 4
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

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

John Keats book La Belle Dame sans Merci

Stanza I
La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819)

Bird , Singing

“Works of genius are the first things in this world.”

John Keats

Letter to G. and F. Keats (January 13, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

World

“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.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 40
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Fear , Way , Sleep , Housing

“Call the world if you please "The vale of soul-making."”

John Keats

Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (April 21, 1819)
Letters (1817–1820)

World , Soul

“A drainless shower
Of light is poesy; ’tis the supreme of power;
’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.”

John Keats Sleep and Poetry

"Sleep and Poetry", st. 11
Poems (1817)

Light

“Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?”

John Keats

"Lines on the Mermaid Tavern", l. 1–4
Poems (1820)

Soul , Dead , Happiness

“Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.”

John Keats To Autumn

"To Autumn", st. 3
Poems (1820)

Light

“Time, that aged nurse,
Rocked me to patience.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 705
Endymion (1818)

Age , Time , Patience

“There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
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.”

John Keats Lamia

"Lamia", Pt. II, l. 229
Poems (1820)

Angels

“The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.”

John Keats

Bk. II
Hyperion: A Fragment (1819)

Peace

“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.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 20
Endymion (1818)

Love , Imagination , Drink , Reading

“The poetical character… is not itself — it has no self — it is every thing and nothing — It has no character — it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it fair or foul, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated. — It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philospher, delights the camelion poet.”

John Keats Letter to Richard Woodhouse

Letter to Richard Woodhouse (October 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Light

“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!"”

John Keats book La Belle Dame sans Merci

Stanza X
La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819)

Death

“I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.”

John Keats

Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (October 14, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Death , Thinking

“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.”

John Keats

Letter to James Hessey (October 9, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Love , Beauty

“Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind
Along the reedy stream; a half-heard strain,
Full of sweet desolation—balmy pain.”

John Keats

I stood tip-toe upon a little Hill; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Pain

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

John Keats Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza 5
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale

Wine , Summer

“To one who has been long in city pent,
’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven.”

John Keats

" Sonnet. To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent http://www.bartleby.com/126/23.html"
Poems (1817)

“For cruel ’tis,” said she,
“To steal my Basil-pot away from me.”

John Keats

"Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil", st. 62
Poems (1820)

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

John Keats Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza 5
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale

Flowers

“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.”

John Keats Ode on Melancholy

"Ode on Melancholy", st. 3
Poems (1820)

Pleasure , Sadness , Beauty , Soul

“That large utterance of the early gods!”

John Keats

Bk. I
Hyperion: A Fragment (1819)

God

“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.”

John Keats

"This living hand" (1819)

Life , Dreams , Silence , Heart

“And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 42
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Age , Lovers

“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.”

John Keats Ode on Melancholy

"Ode on Melancholy", st. 1
Poems (1820)

Suffering , Wolf , Wine

“In spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 11
Endymion (1818)

Beauty

“There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of immortality.”

John Keats

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (September 22, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Heart

“A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 18
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

“Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers.”

John Keats

Letter to his brother, (January 23, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

“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.”

John Keats

" Sonnet. Addressed to the Same http://www.bartleby.com/126/27.html" (Benjamin Robert Haydon)
Poems (1817)

Age , World , Distant , Heart

“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.”

John Keats book La Belle Dame sans Merci

Stanza IV
La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819)

Beauty , Light

“The sweet converse of an innocent mind.”

John Keats

Sonnet, To Solitude; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 23
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Heart

“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.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 1
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Grass

“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.”

John Keats

Bk. I, l. 1
Hyperion: A Fragment (1819)

Sadness , Star , Silence

“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.”

John Keats

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (May 3, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Life