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.
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination.
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
Nothing ever becomes real till experienced – even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it
The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.
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.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter
For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know
There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify – so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in the rubbish.
If I am destined to be happy with you here—how short is the longest Life—I wish to believe in immortality—I wish to live with you for ever.
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becksOur ready minds to fellowship divine,A fellowship with essence; till we shine,Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. BeholdThe clear religion of heaven!
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.
Yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a timeI have been half in love with easeful Death…
Darkling I listen; and, for many a timeI 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.
The world is too brutal for me—I am glad there is such a thing as the grave—I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheardAre sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.
Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not
To SorrowI 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.
If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.
I do think the barsThat kept my spirit in are burst – that IAm sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!How beautiful thou art!
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.
Open wide the mind’s cage-door,She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
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.
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art–Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite.
No one can usurp the heights…But those to whom the miseries of the worldAre misery, and will not let them rest.
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thoughtAs doth eternity…
The same that oft-times hath charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.
Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.
O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, Would all their colours from the sunset take.
I have good reason to be content,for thank God I can read andperhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.
The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mindabout nothing — to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.
I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
Besides, 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.
I have clung To nothing, lov’d a nothing, nothing seen Or felt but a great dream!
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?—“On death
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,What can I do to kill it and be free?
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breedsAlong the pebbled shore of memory!Many old rotten-timber’d boats there beUpon thy vaporous bosom, magnifiedTo goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,And golden keel’d, is left unlaunch’d and dry.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile madeThe tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade
I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter.
I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource.
Now a soft kiss – Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.
I have a habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am now leading a posthumous existence.
Beauty is truth – truth beauty – that is all Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
The excellence of every art is its intensity capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.
A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it.
I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion I have shudder’d at it. I shudder no more. I could be martyr’d for my religion Love is my religion And I could die for that. I could die for you.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases it will never Pass into nothingness.
Ever let the Fancy roam Pleasure never is at home.
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 ferment the character undecided the way of life uncertain.
I wish to believe in immortality – I wish to live with you forever.
Oh for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts.
A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it.
Love in a hut with water and a crust Is – Love forgive us! – cinders ashes dust.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings Conquer all mysteries by rule and line Empty the haunted air the gnomed mine -Unweave a rainbow.
A drainless shower of light is poesy ’tis the supreme of power ’tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.
Soft closer of our eyes! Low murmur of tender lullabies!
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 have met with women who I really think would like to be married to a poem and to be given away by a novel.
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 very fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.
There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.
I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.
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.
Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.
I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.
There is nothing stable in the world uproar’s your only music.
You are always new, the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.
I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion – I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more – I could be martyred for my religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that.
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases it will never pass into nothingness.
With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
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.
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.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
Poetry should… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
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.