The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (247 page)
Read The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Online
Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
1795–1821
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.
Endymion
(1818) bk. 1, l. 1
St Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold.
"The Eve of St Agnes" (1820) st. 1
The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.
"The Eve of St Agnes" (1820) st. 4
By degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees.
"The Eve of St Agnes" (1820) st. 26
Trembling in her soft and chilly nest.
"The Eve of St Agnes" (1820) st. 27
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.
"The Eve of St Agnes" (1820) st. 27
And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanchèd linen, smooth, and lavendered,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon.
"The Eve of St Agnes" (1820) st. 30
He played an ancient ditty, long since mute,
In Provence called, "La belle dame sans mercy."
"The Eve of St Agnes" (1820) st. 33
And they are gone: aye, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.
"The Eve of St Agnes" (1820) st. 42
Ever let the fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
"Fancy" (1820) l. 1
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.
"I had a dove and the sweet dove died" (written 1818)
In drear nighted December
Too happy, happy tree
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity.
"In drear nighted December" (written 1817)
So the two brothers and their murdered man
Rode past fair Florence.
"Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil" (1820) st. 27
"For cruel 'tis," said she,
"To steal my Basil-pot away from me."
"Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil" (1820) st. 62
Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight.
"I stood tip-toe upon a little hill" (1817) l. 57
Oh, what can ail thee knight at arms
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake
And no birds sing!
"La belle dame sans merci" (1820) st. 1
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
"La belle dame sans merci" (1820) st. 3
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild.
"La belle dame sans merci" (1820) st. 4
…La belle dame sans merci
Thee hath in thrall.
"La belle dame sans merci" (1820) st. 10
I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gapèd wide
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill's side.
"La belle dame sans merci" (1820) st. 11
She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barred.
"Lamia" (1820) pt. 1, l. 47
Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.
"Lamia" (1820) pt. 2, l. 1.
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
"Lamia" (1820) pt. 2, l. 229
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings.
"Lamia" (1820) pt. 2, l. 234
Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
"Lines on the Mermaid Tavern" (1820)
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time.
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) st. 1
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) st. 1
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter.
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) st. 2
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) st. 2
For ever piping songs for ever new.
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) st. 3
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting, and for ever young.
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) st. 3
O Attic shape! Fair attitude!
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) st. 5
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) st. 5
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine.
"Ode on Melancholy" (1820) st. 1
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies.
"Ode on Melancholy" (1820) st. 2
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu.
"Ode on Melancholy" (1820) st. 3
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains.
"Ode to a Nightingale" (1820) st. 1
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green.
"Ode to a Nightingale" (1820) st. 2
O 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" (1820) st. 2
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night.
"Ode to a Nightingale" (1820) st. 4
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called 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.
"Ode to a Nightingale" (1820) st. 6
Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps 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 oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
"Ode to a Nightingale" (1820) st. 7.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
"Ode to a Nightingale" (1820) st. 8
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?
"Ode to a Nightingale" (1820) st. 8
'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian.
"Ode to Psyche" (1820) st. 1
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen.
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1817)
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
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1817)
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.
"Sonnet to Sleep" (written 1819)
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run.
"To Autumn" (1820) st. 1
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.
"To Autumn" (1820) st. 3
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.
"To Autumn" (1820) st. 3
It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn.
"To J. H. Reynolds, Esq." (written 1818)
To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven.
"To one who has been long in city pent" (1817).
When I behold, upon the night's starred face
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" (written 1818)
Then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" (written 1818)
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.
letter to Benjamin Bailey, 8 October 1817
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination—what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not.
letter to Benjamin Bailey, 22 November 1817.
O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts!
letter to Benjamin Bailey, 22 November 1817
Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge.
letter to George and Thomas Keats, 21 December 1817
If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818
It is impossible to live in a country which is continually under hatches…Rain! Rain! Rain!
letter to J. H. Reynolds from Devon, 10 April 1818
I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
letter to Benjamin Bailey, 25 May 1818
O the flummery of a birth place! Cant! Cant! Cant! It is enough to give a spirit the guts-ache.
letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, 11 July 1818
The Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime.
letter to Richard Woodhouse, 27 October 1818
