Explore "On Fame" by John Keats on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"You cannot eat your cake and have it too."
Proverb / How fever'd is that man, who cannot look / Upon his mortal days with temperate blood, / Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book, / And robs his fair name of its maidenhood:
It is as if the rose should pluck herself, / Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom; / As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf, / Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom.
But the rose leaves herself upon the brier, / For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed, / And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire, / The undisturbed lake has crystal space:
Why then should man, teasing the world for grace, / Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed?