I am certain of nothing but of 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 - for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty...
The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream, - he awoke and found it truth. I am more zealous in this affair because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning - and yet it must be.
Can it be that even the greatest philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections?
However it may be, O for a life of sensation rather than of thoughts!
It is a 'Vision in the form of Youth,' a shadow of reality to come.
- John Keats
(pulled from a letter to Benjamin Bailey)
I like it when his words have meaning to me again. To temper the enthusiasm, an excerpt from his odes...
"Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung."
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