Pria’s Reviews > The Complete Poems > Status Update

“On some bright essence could I lean, and lull
Myself to immortality.”

Book 3

Book 2

“But this is human life: the war, the deeds, / The disappointment, the anxiety, / Imagination's struggles, far and nigh, / All human.”

“Were I rippling round her now, / Circling about her waist. / Between her luscious lips and eyelids thin. / O that her shining hair was in the sun. / To linger on her lilly shoulders, warm / Between her breasts, and every charm / See how painfully I flow” (938-48).

“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…”

"I feel this thine endearing love
All through my bosom: thou art as a dove
Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings
About me.”

Endymion (Book 1)

I sure should pray
That naught less sweet, might call my thoughts away,
Than the soft rustle of a maiden's gown
Fanning away the dandelion's down;
Than the light music of her nimble toes
Patting against the sorrel as she goes.
O let me lead her gently o'er the brook,
Watch her half-smiling lips, and downward look.
And as she leaves me may she often turn
Her fair eyes looking through her locks auburne. (91-106)

In the spring of 1819, a nightingale had built its nest close to Wentworth Place. “Keats took great pleasure in her song, and one morning took his chair from the breakfast-table to the grass plot under a plum tree, where he remained between two and three hours. He then reached the house with some scraps of paper in his hand, which he soon put together in the form of this Ode."

“The death of his brother wounded him deeply, and it appeared to me from that hour he began to droop. He wrote his exquisite Ode to the Nightingale at this time, and as we were one evening walking in the Kilburn meadows he repeated it to me, before he put it to paper, in a low, tremulous under-tone which affected me extremely."