John Keats Zitate

seite 5

„Gib mir Bücher, französischen Wein, Obst, schönes Wetter und ein bisschen Musik, die von jemandem kommt, den ich nicht kenne.“

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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!”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The silver snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The music, yearning like a God in pain.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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!"”

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

“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.”

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