John Keats 1795-1821 John Bartlett


1
A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness.
Endymion. Book i.
2
He ne’er is crown’d With immortality, who fears to follow Where airy voices lead.
Endymion. Book ii.
3
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.
Endymion. Book iv.
4
So many, and so many, and such glee.
Endymion. Book iv.
5
Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.
Lamia. Part ii.
6
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.
Lamia. Part ii.
7
Music’s golden tongue Flatter’d to tears this aged man and poor.
The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 3.
8
The silver snarling trumpets ’gan to chide.
The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 4.
9
Asleep in lap of legends old.
The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 15.
10
Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, Flushing his brow.
The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 16.



11
A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing.
The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 18.
12
As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.
The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 27.
13
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon.
The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 30.
14
He play’d an ancient ditty long since mute, In Provence call’d “La belle dame sans mercy.”
The Eve of St. Agnes. Stanza 33.
15
That large utterance of the early gods!
Hyperion. Book i.
16
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir.
Hyperion. Book i.
17
The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.
Hyperion. Book ii.
18
Dance and Provençal song and sunburnt mirth! Oh for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stainèd mouth.
Ode to a Nightingale.
19
The self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that ofttimes hath Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Ode to a Nightingale.
20
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.
Ode on a Grecian Urn.
21
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on,— Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
Ode on a Grecian Urn.
22
Thou, silent form, doth tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
Ode on a Grecian Urn.
23
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Ode on a Grecian Urn.
24
In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne’er remember Their green felicity.
Stanzas.
25
Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?
Addressed to Haydon. Sonnet x.
26
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne, Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
On first looking into Chapman’s Homer.
27
E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear That falls through the clear ether silently.
To One who has been long in City pent.
28
The poetry of earth is never dead.
On the Grasshopper and Cricket.
29
Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind Along the reedy stream; a half-heard strain, Full of sweet desolation—balmy pain.
I stood tip-toe upon a little Hill.
30
There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.
Preface to Endymion.
31
Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too?
Ode to the fair Maid of the Inn.
32
Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shine.
Ode on Melancholy. Stanza 3.
33
It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns.
Sonnet. On the Sea.
34
The sweet converse of an innocent mind.
Sonnet. To Solitude.
35
She no tear—O shed no tear! The flower will bloom another year. Weep no more—O weep no more! Young buds sleep in the root’s white core.
Faery Song 1.
36
The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast.
Sonnet The Day is gone.
37
Mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.
Sonnet. On seeing the Elgin Marbles.
38
Bright star, would I were stedfast 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.
Sonnet.
39
Here lies one whose name was writ in water. 1

Note 1.
See Chapman, Quotation 20.

Among the many things he has requested of me to-night, this is the principal,—that on his gravestone shall be this inscription.—Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton): Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Letter to Severn, vol. ii. p. 91. [back]

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