168 quotes
My spirit is too weak — mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles (1817)
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth.
Poems (1820)
I have nothing to speak of but my self-and what can I say but what I feel
Letters (1817)
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
And on the balmy zephyrs tranquil rest
The silver clouds.
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolfs-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade.
Poems (1820)
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon.
Poems (1820)
It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
On the Sea (1817)
Many have original minds who do not think it — they are led away by custom — Now it appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own citadel.
Letters (1817)
Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree's summit.
Poems (1817)
I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my mouth.
Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain;
O folly! for to bear all naked truths,
And to envisage circumstance, all calm,
That is the top of sovereignty Mark well.
Hyperion: A Fragment (1819)
He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch,
Before the door had given her to his eyes.
My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
Endymion (1818)
Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.
Hyperion: A Fragment (1819)
'Tis the witching hour of night,
Orbed is the moon and bright,
And the stars they glisten, glisten,
Seeming with bright eyes to listen—
For what listen they?
No, no, I'm sure,
My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
Endymion (1818)
Some think I have lost that poetical ardour and fire 'tis said I once had- the fact is, perhaps I have; but, instead of that, I hope I shall substitute a more thoughtful and quiet power.
Letters (1817)
Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain,
Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies.
Poems (1817)
None can usurp this height...
But those to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery, and will not let them rest.
The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (1819)