Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering?
How could I sleight you? How threaten to leave you? not in the spirit of a Threat to you – no – but in the spirit of Wretchedness in myself.
Endymion received mostly negative criticism after its release and Keats himself admitted its diffuse and unappealing style. It was damned by many critics, giving rise to Byron’s quip that Keats was ultimately “snuffed out by an article”, suggesting that he never truly got over the criticism the poem received.
John Gibson Lockhart, writing in Blackwood’s Magazine, described Endymion as “imperturbable drivelling idiocy”. With biting sarcasm, Lockhart advised, “It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes.
I wish you could infuse a little confidence of human nature into my heart. I cannot muster any – the world is too brutal for me – I am glad there is such a thing as the grave – I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
Health and spirits can only belong unalloyed to the selfish man – the.
Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind.
Each of us needs something of an island in his life – if not an actual island, at least some place, or space in time, in which to be himself, free to cultivate his difference from others.
Let the winged Fancy roam Pleasure never is at home.
Shakespeare permeated his whole being, and his influence is to be detected not in a resemblance of style, for Shakespeare can have no imitators, but in a broadening view of life, and increased humanity.
Be careful to let no fretting injure your health as I have suffered it – health is the greatest of blessings – with health and hope we should be content to live, and so you will find as you grow older.
Lo! I must tell a tale of chivalry;.
Forgive me if I wander a little this evening, for I have been all day employ’d in a very abstract Poem and I am in deep love with you – two things which must excuse me.
I will stay very little while, for as I am in a train of writing now I fear to disturb it – let it have its course bad or good...
The more I have known the more have I lov’d.
I cannot say forget me – but I would mention that there are impossibilities in the world.
You see how I go on – like so many strokes of a hammer. I cannot help it – I am impell’d, driven to it.
I was alone for a couple of days while Brown went gadding over the country with his ancient knapsack. Now I like his society as well as any Man’s, yet regretted his return – it broke in upon me like a Thunderbolt. I had got in a dream among my Books – really luxuriating in a solitude and silence you alone should have disturb’d.
Even while you read this, whole square miles of identical boxes are spreading like gangrene; developments conceived in error, nurtured by greed, corroding everything they touch.
A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity – he is continually in for – and filling some other Body – The Sun, the Moon, the Sea, and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none; no identity – he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God’s creatures.