But strength alone though of the Muses born
Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,
Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchers
Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs
And thorns of life; forgetting the great end
Of poesy, that it should be a friend
To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.

These lines come from Keats’s long poem *Sleep and Poetry* (1816), written early in his career as he was defining his poetic vocation and distancing himself from what he saw as merely showy or morbid “strength” in verse. In the poem, Keats reflects on the aims of poetry, the temptations of dark or sensational subject matter, and the ethical responsibility of the poet. The passage contrasts a powerful imagination that dwells on gloom and ruin with a higher poetic calling: to console, elevate, and be “a friend” to human thought and care—an idea aligned with Keats’s broader concern for poetry’s humane, restorative function.

Keats warns that poetic power (“strength…of the Muses born”) is not automatically virtuous. If it fixates on destruction and morbidity—“fallen angel,” “sepulchers,” “worms”—it becomes a kind of corrupted sublimity, feeding on life’s “burrs and thorns” rather than transforming experience. The “great end of poesy” is presented as companionship and consolation: poetry should soothe anxiety and raise the mind above mere suffering. The passage thus argues for an art that is not only intense but also morally and emotionally generous, anticipating Keats’s later emphasis on sympathy and the capacity of beauty to deepen, rather than exploit, human feeling.