John Keats

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheardAre sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

I have a habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am now leading a posthumous existence.

Call the world, if you please, "the Vale of Soul Making". Then you will find out the use of the world....There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions -- but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.Intelligences are atoms of perception -- they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God. How then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them -- so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence. How, but in the medium of a world like this?This point I sincerely wish to consider, because I think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion -- or rather it is a system of Spirit Creation...I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive -- and yet I think I perceive it -- that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible. I will call the world a school instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read. I will call the human heart the hornbook used in that school. And I will call the child able to read, the soul made from that school and its hornbook.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....As various as the lives of men are -- so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, souls, identical souls of the sparks of his own essence.This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of salvation which does not affront our reason and humanity...

Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die.

But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy waysI cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

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.

The world is too brutal for me__ am glad there is such a thing as the grave__ am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there.

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.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a timeI have been half in love with easeful Death...

Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?

To Sleep"O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities.Then save me, or the passed day will shineUpon my pillow, breeding many woes,_ Save me from curious Conscience, that still lordsIts strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

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!

Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.

Think of my Pleasure in Solitude, in comparison of my commerce with the world - there I am a child - there they do not know me not even my most intimate acquaintance - I give into their feelings as though I were refraining from irritating a little child - Some think me middling, others silly, other foolish - every one thinks he sees my weak side against my will; when in thruth it is with my will - I am content to be thought all this because I have in my own breast so graet a resource. This is one great reason why they like me so; because they can all show to advantage in a room, and eclipese from a certain tact one who is reckoned to be a good Poet - I hope I am not here playing tricks 'to make the angels weep': I think not: for I have not the least contempt for my species; and though it may sound paradoxical: my greatest elevations of Soul leave me every time more humbled - Enough of this - though in your Love for me you will not think it enough.

I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource.

Yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits.

I must choose between despair and Energy__I choose the latter.