John Keats - Soul Quotes

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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.

John Keats
Who alive can say 'Thou art no Poet - mayst 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.

John Keats
In the long vista of the years to roll, Let me not see my country's honor fade; Oh! let me see our land retain its soul! Her pride in Freedom, and not Freedom's shade.

John Keats
Through the dancing poppies stole A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul.

John Keats
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?

John Keats
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
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.

John Keats
Who, of men, can tell
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,
If human souls did never kiss and greet?

John Keats
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.

John Keats
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

John Keats
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.

John Keats
A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.

John Keats
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.

John Keats
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.

John Keats
Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to School an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!

John Keats
I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the thousand and first—'t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.

John Keats
Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?

John Keats
Albeit failure in any cause produces a correspondent misery in the soul, yet it 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 afterward carefully eschew.

John Keats
When it is moving on luxurious wings, The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings.

John Keats