Silly Pipe

I like Keats's comments on his poem Endymion, after it had been thrashed by the critics. It's possibly Keats's best known poem (first line "A thing of beauty is a joy forever"). He wrote to his publisher in October 1818:

In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice. -- I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.