"
Notwithstand your Happiness and your recommendation I hope I shall never marry... Though the most beautiful
Creature were waiting for me at the end of a
Journey or a
Walk; though the carpet were of
Silk, the
Curtains of the morning
Clouds; the chairs and
Sofa stuffed with
Cygnet's down; the food
Manna, the
Wine beyond
Claret, the
Window opening on
Winander mere, I should not feel - or rather my Happiness would not be so fine, as
my Solitude is sublime. Then instead of what
I have
described, there is a Sublimity to
welcome me
home - The
roaring of the wind is my wife and
the Stars through the window pane are my Children. The mighty
abstract Idea I have of
Beauty in all things
stifles the more divided and minute
domestic happiness - an amiable wife and sweet Children I contemplate as a part of that Beauty, but I must have a thousand of those beautiful
particles to fill up my
heart. I feel more and more every day, as my
imagination strengthens, that
I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds."
Letter to his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana,
John Keats, 1818