John Keats

John Keats

1795-10-31
1821-02-23 Roma, Itália
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Some Poems

Endymion: Book IV

Endymion: Book IV

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse!
O first-born on the mountains! by the hues
Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
While yet our England was a wolfish den;
Before our forests heard the talk of men;
Before the first of Druids was a child;--
Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild
Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude.
There came an eastern voice of solemn mood:--
Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine,
Apollo's garland:--yet didst thou divine
Such home-bred glory, that they cry'd in vain,
"Come hither, Sister of the Island!" Plain
Spake fair Ausonia; and once more she spake
A higher summons:--still didst thou betake
Thee to thy native hopes. O thou hast won
A full accomplishment! The thing is done,
Which undone, these our latter days had risen
On barren souls. Great Muse, thou know'st what prison
Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets
Our spirit's wings: despondency besets
Our pillows; and the fresh to-morrow morn
Seems to give forth its light in very scorn
Of our dull, uninspired, snail-paced lives.
Long have I said, how happy he who shrives
To thee! But then I thought on poets gone,
And could not pray:--nor can I now--so on
I move to the end in lowliness of heart.---


"Ah, woe is me! that I should fondly part

From my dear native land! Ah, foolish maid!

Glad was the hour, when, with thee, myriads bade

Adieu to Ganges and their pleasant fields!

To one so friendless the clear freshet yields

A bitter coolness, the ripe grape is sour:

Yet I would have, great gods! but one short hour

Of native air--let me but die at home."

Endymion to heaven's airy dome

Was offering up a hecatomb of vows,

When these words reach'd him. Whereupon he bows

His head through thorny-green entanglement

Of underwood, and to the sound is bent,

Anxious as hind towards her hidden fawn.

"Is no one near to help me? No fair dawn

Of life from charitable voice? No sweet saying

To set my dull and sadden'd spirit playing?

No hand to toy with mine? No lips so sweet

That I may worship them? No eyelids meet

To twinkle on my bosom? No one dies


Before me, till from these enslaving eyes
Redemption sparkles!--I am sad and lost."

Thou, Carian lord, hadst better have been tost

Into a whirlpool. Vanish into air,

Warm mountaineer! for canst thou only bear

A woman's sigh alone and in distress?

See not her charms! Is Phoebe passionless?

Phoebe is fairer far--O gaze no more:--

Yet if thou wilt behold all beauty's store,

Behold her panting in the forest grass!

Do not those curls of glossy jet surpass

For tenderness the arms so idly lain

Amongst them? Feelest not a kindred pain,

To see such lovely eyes in swimming search

After some warm delight, that seems to perch

Dovelike in the dim cell lying beyond

Their upper lids?--Hist! "O for Hermes' wand

To touch this flower into human shape!

That woodland Hyacinthus could escape

From his green prison, and here kneeling down

Call me his queen, his second life's fair crown!

Ah me, how I could love!--My soul doth melt

For the unhappy youth--Love! I have felt

So faint a kindness, such a meek surrender

To what my own full thoughts had made too tender,

That but for tears my life had fled away!--

Ye deaf and senseless minutes of the day,

And thou, old forest, hold ye this for true,

There is no lightning, no authentic dew

But in the eye of love: there's not a sound,

Melodious howsoever, can confound

The heavens and earth in one to such a death

As doth the voice of love: there's not a breath

Will mingle kindly with the meadow air,

Till it has panted round, and stolen a share

Of passion from the heart!"-


Upon a bough

He leant, wretched. He surely cannot now

Thirst for another love: O impious,

That he can even dream upon it thus!--

Thought he, "Why am I not as are the dead,

Since to a woe like this I have been led

Through the dark earth, and through the wondrous sea?

Goddess! I love thee not the less: from thee

By Juno's smile I turn not--no, no, no--

While the great waters are at ebb and flow.--

I have a triple soul! O fond pretence--

For both, for both my love is so immense,

I feel my heart is cut in twain for them."


And so he groan'd, as one by beauty slain.

The lady's heart beat quick, and he could see

Her gentle bosom heave tumultuously.

He sprang from his green covert: there she lay,

Sweet as a muskrose upon new-made hay;

With all her limbs on tremble, and her eyes

Shut softly up alive. To speak he tries.

"Fair damsel, pity me! forgive that I

Thus violate thy bower's sanctity!

O pardon me, for I am full of grief--

Grief born of thee, young angel! fairest thief!

Who stolen hast away the wings wherewith

I was to top the heavens. Dear maid, sith

Thou art my executioner, and I feel

Loving and hatred, misery and weal,

Will in a few short hours be nothing to me,

And all my story that much passion slew me;

Do smile upon the evening of my days:

And, for my tortur'd brain begins to craze,

Be thou my nurse; and let me understand

How dying I shall kiss that lily hand.--

Dost weep for me? Then should I be content.

Scowl on, ye fates! until the firmament

Outblackens Erebus, and the full-cavern'd earth

Crumbles into itself. By the cloud girth

Of Jove, those tears have given me a thirst

To meet oblivion."--As her heart would burst

The maiden sobb'd awhile, and then replied:

"Why must such desolation betide

As that thou speakest of? Are not these green nooks

Empty of all misfortune? Do the brooks

Utter a gorgon voice? Does yonder thrush,

Schooling its half-fledg'd little ones to brush

About the dewy forest, whisper tales?--

Speak not of grief, young stranger, or cold snails

Will slime the rose to night. Though if thou wilt,

Methinks 'twould be a guilt--a very guilt--

Not to companion thee, and sigh away

The light--the dusk--the dark--till break of day!"

"Dear lady," said Endymion, "'tis past:

I love thee! and my days can never last.

That I may pass in patience still speak:

Let me have music dying, and I seek

No more delight--I bid adieu to all.

Didst thou not after other climates call,

And murmur about Indian streams?"--Then she,

Sitting beneath the midmost forest tree,

For pity sang this roundelay-----


"O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow



The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?-To
give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes?

Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?

"O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow


The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?-To
give the glow-worm light?
Or, on a moonless night,

To tinge, on syren shores, the salt sea-spry?

"O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow


The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue?-To
give at evening pale
Unto the nightingale,

That thou mayst listen the cold dews among?

"O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow


Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?-A
lover would not tread
A cowslip on the head,

Though he should dance from eve till peep of day-Nor
any drooping flower
Held sacred for thy bower,

Wherever he may sport himself and play.

"To Sorrow
I bade good-morrow,


And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;

She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,

But ah! she is so constant and so kind.

"Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping: in the whole world wide
There was no one to ask me why I wept,-


And so I kept
Brimming the water-lily cups with tears
Cold as my fears.

"Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping: what enamour'd bride,
Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds,


But hides and shrouds
Beneath dark palm trees by a river side?


"And as I sat, over the light blue hills
There came a noise of revellers: the rills
Into the wide stream came of purple hue-


'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din-


'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
Like to a moving vintage down they came,
Crown'd with green leaves, and faces all on flame;
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley,

To scare thee, Melancholy!
O then, O then, thou wast a simple name!
And I forgot thee, as the berried holly
By shepherds is forgotten, when, in June,
Tall chesnuts keep away the sun and moon:-


I rush'd into the folly!

"Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood,
Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood,

With sidelong laughing;
And little rills of crimson wine imbrued
His plump white arms, and shoulders, enough white

For Venus' pearly bite;
And near him rode Silenus on his ass,
Pelted with flowers as he on did pass

Tipsily quaffing.

"Whence came ye, merry Damsels! whence came ye!
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your bowers desolate,


Your lutes, and gentler fate?-‘
We follow Bacchus! Bacchus on the wing?

A conquering!
Bacchus, young Bacchus! good or ill betide,
We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide:--
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be

To our wild minstrelsy!'

"Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs! whence came ye!
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left


Your nuts in oak-tree cleft?-‘
For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree;
For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,

And cold mushrooms;
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth;
Great God of breathless cups and chirping mirth!--
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
To our mad minstrelsy!'

"Over wide streams and mountains great we went,
And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent,


Onward the tiger and the leopard pants,

With Asian elephants:
Onward these myriads--with song and dance,
With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance,
Web-footed alligators, crocodiles,
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files,
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil
Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil:
With toying oars and silken sails they glide,

Nor care for wind and tide.

"Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes,
From rear to van they scour about the plains;
A three days' journey in a moment done:
And always, at the rising of the sun,
About the wilds they hunt with spear and horn,


On spleenful unicorn.

"I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown
Before the vine-wreath crown!
I saw parch'd Abyssinia rouse and sing
To the silver cymbals' ring!
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce

Old Tartary the fierce!
The kings of Inde their jewel-sceptres vail,
And from their treasures scatter pearled hail;
Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans,

And all his priesthood moans;
Before young Bacchus' eye-wink turning pale.--
Into these regions came I following him,
Sick hearted, weary--so I took a whim
To stray away into these forests drear

Alone, without a peer:
And I have told thee all thou mayest hear.

"Young stranger!
I've been a ranger


In search of pleasure throughout every clime:
Alas! 'tis not for me!
Bewitch'd I sure must be,

To lose in grieving all my maiden prime.

"Come then, Sorrow!
Sweetest Sorrow!


Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast:
I thought to leave thee
And deceive thee,

But now of all the world I love thee best.

"There is not one,
No, no, not one
But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid;


Thou art her mother,
And her brother,


Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade."

O what a sigh she gave in finishing,

And look, quite dead to every worldly thing!

Endymion could not speak, but gazed on her;

And listened to the wind that now did stir

About the crisped oaks full drearily,

Yet with as sweet a softness as might be

Remember'd from its velvet summer song.

At last he said: "Poor lady, how thus long

Have I been able to endure that voice?

Fair Melody! kind Syren! I've no choice;

I must be thy sad servant evermore:

I cannot choose but kneel here and adore.

Alas, I must not think--by Phoebe, no!

Let me not think, soft Angel! shall it be so?

Say, beautifullest, shall I never think?

O thou could'st foster me beyond the brink

Of recollection! make my watchful care

Close up its bloodshot eyes, nor see despair!

Do gently murder half my soul, and I

Shall feel the other half so utterly!-


I'm giddy at that cheek so fair and smooth;

O let it blush so ever! let it soothe

My madness! let it mantle rosy-warm

With the tinge of love, panting in safe alarm.--

This cannot be thy hand, and yet it is;

And this is sure thine other softling--this

Thine own fair bosom, and I am so near!

Wilt fall asleep? O let me sip that tear!

And whisper one sweet word that I may know

This is this world--sweet dewy blossom!"--Woe!

Woe! Woe to that Endymion! Where is he?--

Even these words went echoing dismally

Through the wide forest--a most fearful tone,

Like one repenting in his latest moan;

And while it died away a shade pass'd by,

As of a thunder cloud. When arrows fly

Through the thick branches, poor ring-doves sleek forth

Their timid necks and tremble; so these both

Leant to each other trembling, and sat so

Waiting for some destruction--when lo,

Foot-feather'd Mercury appear'd sublime

Beyond the tall tree tops; and in less time

Than shoots the slanted hail-storm, down he dropt

Towards the ground; but rested not, nor stopt

One moment from his home: only the sward

He with his wand light touch'd, and heavenward

Swifter than sight was gone--even before

The teeming earth a sudden witness bore


Of his swift magic. Diving swans appear
Above the crystal circlings white and clear;
And catch the cheated eye in wild surprise,
How they can dive in sight and unseen rise--
So from the turf outsprang two steeds jet-black,
Each with large dark blue wings upon his back.
The youth of Caria plac'd the lovely dame
On one, and felt himself in spleen to tame
The other's fierceness. Through the air they flew,
High as the eagles. Like two drops of dew
Exhal'd to Phoebus' lips, away they are gone,
Far from the earth away--unseen, alone,
Among cool clouds and winds, but that the free,
The buoyant life of song can floating be
Above their heads, and follow them untir'd.--
Muse of my native land, am I inspir'd?
This is the giddy air, and I must spread
Wide pinions to keep here; nor do I dread
Or height, or depth, or width, or any chance
Precipitous: I have beneath my glance
Those towering horses and their mournful freight.
Could I thus sail, and see, and thus await
Fearless for power of thought, without thine aid?--
There is a sleepy dusk, an odorous shade
From some approaching wonder, and behold
Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold
Snuff at its faint extreme, and seem to tire,
Dying to embers from their native fire!

There curl'd a purple mist around them; soon,
It seem'd as when around the pale new moon
Sad Zephyr droops the clouds like weeping willow:
'Twas Sleep slow journeying with head on pillow.
For the first time, since he came nigh dead born
From the old womb of night, his cave forlorn
Had he left more forlorn; for the first time,
He felt aloof the day and morning's prime--
Because into his depth Cimmerian
There came a dream, shewing how a young man,
Ere a lean bat could plump its wintery skin,
Would at high Jove's empyreal footstool win
An immortality, and how espouse
Jove's daughter, and be reckon'd of his house.
Now was he slumbering towards heaven's gate,
That he might at the threshold one hour wait
To hear the marriage melodies, and then
Sink downward to his dusky cave again.
His litter of smooth semilucent mist,
Diversely ting'd with rose and amethyst,
Puzzled those eyes that for the centre sought;
And scarcely for one moment could be caught
His sluggish form reposing motionless.


Those two on winged steeds, with all the stress
Of vision search'd for him, as one would look
Athwart the sallows of a river nook
To catch a glance at silver throated eels,--
Or from old Skiddaw's top, when fog conceals
His rugged forehead in a mantle pale,
With an eye-guess towards some pleasant vale
Descry a favourite hamlet faint and far.

These raven horses, though they foster'd are
Of earth's splenetic fire, dully drop
Their full-veined ears, nostrils blood wide, and stop;
Upon the spiritless mist have they outspread
Their ample feathers, are in slumber dead,--
And on those pinions, level in mid air,
Endymion sleepeth and the lady fair.
Slowly they sail, slowly as icy isle
Upon a calm sea drifting: and meanwhile
The mournful wanderer dreams. Behold! he walks
On heaven's pavement; brotherly he talks
To divine powers: from his hand full fain
Juno's proud birds are pecking pearly grain:
He tries the nerve of Phoebus' golden bow,
And asketh where the golden apples grow:
Upon his arm he braces Pallas' shield,
And strives in vain to unsettle and wield
A Jovian thunderbolt: arch Hebe brings
A full-brimm'd goblet, dances lightly, sings
And tantalizes long; at last he drinks,
And lost in pleasure at her feet he sinks,
Touching with dazzled lips her starlight hand.
He blows a bugle,--an ethereal band
Are visible above: the Seasons four,-Green-
kyrtled Spring, flush Summer, golden store
In Autumn's sickle, Winter frosty hoar,
Join dance with shadowy Hours; while still the blast,
In swells unmitigated, still doth last
To sway their floating morris. "Whose is this?
Whose bugle?" he inquires: they smile--"O Dis!
Why is this mortal here? Dost thou not know
Its mistress' lips? Not thou?--'Tis Dian's: lo!
She rises crescented!" He looks, 'tis she,
His very goddess: good-bye earth, and sea,
And air, and pains, and care, and suffering;
Good-bye to all but love! Then doth he spring
Towards her, and awakes--and, strange, o'erhead,
Of those same fragrant exhalations bred,
Beheld awake his very dream: the gods
Stood smiling; merry Hebe laughs and nods;
And Phoebe bends towards him crescented.
O state perplexing! On the pinion bed,
Too well awake, he feels the panting side


Of his delicious lady. He who died
For soaring too audacious in the sun,
Where that same treacherous wax began to run,
Felt not more tongue-tied than Endymion.
His heart leapt up as to its rightful throne,
To that fair shadow'd passion puls'd its way--
Ah, what perplexity! Ah, well a day!
So fond, so beauteous was his bed-fellow,
He could not help but kiss her: then he grew
Awhile forgetful of all beauty save
Young Phoebe's, golden hair'd; and so 'gan crave
Forgiveness: yet he turn'd once more to look
At the sweet sleeper,--all his soul was shook,--
She press'd his hand in slumber; so once more
He could not help but kiss her and adore.
At this the shadow wept, melting away.
The Latmian started up: "Bright goddess, stay!
Search my most hidden breast! By truth's own tongue,
I have no dædale heart: why is it wrung
To desperation? Is there nought for me,
Upon the bourne of bliss, but misery?"


These words awoke the stranger of dark tresses:
Her dawning love-look rapt Endymion blesses
With 'haviour soft. Sleep yawned from underneath.
"Thou swan of Ganges, let us no more breathe
This murky phantasm! thou contented seem'st
Pillow'd in lovely idleness, nor dream'st
What horrors may discomfort thee and me.
Ah, shouldst thou die from my heart-treachery!--
Yet did she merely weep--her gentle soul
Hath no revenge in it: as it is whole
In tenderness, would I were whole in love!
Can I prize thee, fair maid, all price above,
Even when I feel as true as innocence?
I do, I do.--What is this soul then? Whence
Came it? It does not seem my own, and I
Have no self-passion or identity.
Some fearful end must be: where, where is it?
By Nemesis, I see my spirit flit
Alone about the dark--Forgive me, sweet:
Shall we away?" He rous'd the steeds: they beat
Their wings chivalrous into the clear air,
Leaving old Sleep within his vapoury lair.

The good-night blush of eve was waning slow,
And Vesper, risen star, began to throe
In the dusk heavens silvery, when they
Thus sprang direct towards the Galaxy.
Nor did speed hinder converse soft and strange--
Eternal oaths and vows they interchange,
In such wise, in such temper, so aloof


Up in the winds, beneath a starry roof,
So witless of their doom, that verily
'Tis well nigh past man's search their hearts to see;
Whether they wept, or laugh'd, or griev'd, or toy'd--
Most like with joy gone mad, with sorrow cloy'd.


Full facing their swift flight, from ebon streak,

The moon put forth a little diamond peak,

No bigger than an unobserved star,

Or tiny point of fairy scymetar;

Bright signal that she only stoop'd to tie

Her silver sandals, ere deliciously

She bow'd into the heavens her timid head.

Slowly she rose, as though she would have fled,

While to his lady meek the Carian turn'd,

To mark if her dark eyes had yet discern'd

This beauty in its birth--Despair! despair!

He saw her body fading gaunt and spare

In the cold moonshine. Straight he seiz'd her wrist;

It melted from his grasp: her hand he kiss'd,

And, horror! kiss'd his own--he was alone.

Her steed a little higher soar'd, and then

Dropt hawkwise to the earth. There lies a den,

Beyond the seeming confines of the space

Made for the soul to wander in and trace

Its own existence, of remotest glooms.

Dark regions are around it, where the tombs

Of buried griefs the spirit sees, but scarce

One hour doth linger weeping, for the pierce

Of new-born woe it feels more inly smart:

And in these regions many a venom'd dart

At random flies; they are the proper home

Of every ill: the man is yet to come

Who hath not journeyed in this native hell.

But few have ever felt how calm and well

Sleep may be had in that deep den of all.

There anguish does not sting; nor pleasure pall:

Woe-hurricanes beat ever at the gate,

Yet all is still within and desolate.

Beset with painful gusts, within ye hear

No sound so loud as when on curtain'd bier

The death-watch tick is stifled. Enter none

Who strive therefore: on the sudden it is won.

Just when the sufferer begins to burn,

Then it is free to him; and from an urn,

Still fed by melting ice, he takes a draught--

Young Semele such richness never quaft

In her maternal longing. Happy gloom!

Dark Paradise! where pale becomes the bloom

Of health by due; where silence dreariest

Is most articulate; where hopes infest;

Where those eyes are the brightest far that keep


Their lids shut longest in a dreamless sleep.
O happy spirit-home! O wondrous soul!
Pregnant with such a den to save the whole
In thine own depth. Hail, gentle Carian!
For, never since thy griefs and woes began,
Hast thou felt so content: a grievous feud
Hath let thee to this Cave of Quietude.
Aye, his lull'd soul was there, although upborne
With dangerous speed: and so he did not mourn
Because he knew not whither he was going.
So happy was he, not the aerial blowing
Of trumpets at clear parley from the east
Could rouse from that fine relish, that high feast.
They stung the feather'd horse: with fierce alarm
He flapp'd towards the sound. Alas, no charm
Could lift Endymion's head, or he had view'd
A skyey mask, a pinion'd multitude,--
And silvery was its passing: voices sweet
Warbling the while as if to lull and greet
The wanderer in his path. Thus warbled they,
While past the vision went in bright array.

"Who, who from Dian's feast would be away?
For all the golden bowers of the day
Are empty left? Who, who away would be
From Cynthia's wedding and festivity?
Not Hesperus: lo! upon his silver wings
He leans away for highest heaven and sings,
Snapping his lucid fingers merrily!--
Ah, Zephyrus! art here, and Flora too!
Ye tender bibbers of the rain and dew,
Young playmates of the rose and daffodil,
Be careful, ere ye enter in, to fill

Your baskets high
With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines,
Savory, latter-mint, and columbines,
Cool parsley, basil sweet, and sunny thyme;
Yea, every flower and leaf of every clime,
All gather'd in the dewy morning: hie

Away! fly, fly!--
Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven,
Aquarius! to whom king Jove has given
Two liquid pulse streams 'stead of feather'd wings,
Two fan-like fountains,--thine illuminings

For Dian play:
Dissolve the frozen purity of air;
Let thy white shoulders silvery and bare
Shew cold through watery pinions; make more bright
The Star-Queen's crescent on her marriage night:

Haste, haste away!--
Castor has tamed the planet Lion, see!
And of the Bear has Pollux mastery:


A third is in the race! who is the third,

Speeding away swift as the eagle bird?
The ramping Centaur!

The Lion's mane's on end: the Bear how fierce!

The Centaur's arrow ready seems to pierce

Some enemy: far forth his bow is bent

Into the blue of heaven. He'll be shent,
Pale unrelentor,

When he shall hear the wedding lutes a playing.--

Andromeda! sweet woman! why delaying

So timidly among the stars: come hither!

Join this bright throng, and nimbly follow whither
They all are going.

Danae's Son, before Jove newly bow'd,

Has wept for thee, calling to Jove aloud.

Thee, gentle lady, did he disenthral:

Ye shall for ever live and love, for all
Thy tears are flowing.--

By Daphne's fright, behold Apollo!--"

More

Endymion heard not: down his steed him bore,

Prone to the green head of a misty hill.

His first touch of the earth went nigh to kill.

"Alas!" said he, "were I but always borne

Through dangerous winds, had but my footsteps worn

A path in hell, for ever would I bless

Horrors which nourish an uneasiness

For my own sullen conquering: to him

Who lives beyond earth's boundary, grief is dim,

Sorrow is but a shadow: now I see

The grass; I feel the solid ground--Ah, me!

It is thy voice--divinest! Where?--who? who

Left thee so quiet on this bed of dew?

Behold upon this happy earth we are;

Let us ay love each other; let us fare

On forest-fruits, and never, never go

Among the abodes of mortals here below,

Or be by phantoms duped. O destiny!

Into a labyrinth now my soul would fly,

But with thy beauty will I deaden it.

Where didst thou melt too? By thee will I sit

For ever: let our fate stop here--a kid

I on this spot will offer: Pan will bid

Us live in peace, in love and peace among

His forest wildernesses. I have clung

To nothing, lov'd a nothing, nothing seen

Or felt but a great dream! O I have been

Presumptuous against love, against the sky,

Against all elements, against the tie

Of mortals each to each, against the blooms


Of flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombs
Of heroes gone! Against his proper glory
Has my own soul conspired: so my story
Will I to children utter, and repent.
There never liv'd a mortal man, who bent
His appetite beyond his natural sphere,
But starv'd and died. My sweetest Indian, here,
Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast
My life from too thin breathing: gone and past
Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewel!
And air of visions, and the monstrous swell
Of visionary seas! No, never more
Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore
Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast.
Adieu, my daintiest Dream! although so vast
My love is still for thee. The hour may come
When we shall meet in pure elysium.
On earth I may not love thee; and therefore
Doves will I offer up, and sweetest store
All through the teeming year: so thou wilt shine
On me, and on this damsel fair of mine,
And bless our simple lives. My Indian bliss!
My river-lily bud! one human kiss!
One sigh of real breath--one gentle squeeze,
Warm as a dove's nest among summer trees,
And warm with dew at ooze from living blood!
Whither didst melt? Ah, what of that!--all good
We'll talk about--no more of dreaming.--Now,
Where shall our dwelling be? Under the brow
Of some steep mossy hill, where ivy dun
Would hide us up, although spring leaves were none;
And where dark yew trees, as we rustle through,
Will drop their scarlet berry cups of dew?
O thou wouldst joy to live in such a place;
Dusk for our loves, yet light enough to grace
Those gentle limbs on mossy bed reclin'd:
For by one step the blue sky shouldst thou find,
And by another, in deep dell below,
See, through the trees, a little river go
All in its mid-day gold and glimmering.
Honey from out the gnarled hive I'll bring,
And apples, wan with sweetness, gather thee,--
Cresses that grow where no man may them see,
And sorrel untorn by the dew-claw'd stag:
Pipes will I fashion of the syrinx flag,
That thou mayst always know whither I roam,
When it shall please thee in our quiet home
To listen and think of love. Still let me speak;
Still let me dive into the joy I seek,--
For yet the past doth prison me. The rill,
Thou haply mayst delight in, will I fill
With fairy fishes from the mountain tarn,



And thou shalt feed them from the squirrel's barn.
Its bottom will I strew with amber shells,
And pebbles blue from deep enchanted wells.
Its sides I'll plant with dew-sweet eglantine,
And honeysuckles full of clear bee-wine.
I will entice this crystal rill to trace
Love's silver name upon the meadow's face.
I'll kneel to Vesta, for a flame of fire;
And to god Phoebus, for a golden lyre;
To Empress Dian, for a hunting spear;
To Vesper, for a taper silver-clear,
That I may see thy beauty through the night;
To Flora, and a nightingale shall light
Tame on thy finger; to the River-gods,
And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods
Of gold, and lines of Naiads' long bright tress.
Heaven shield thee for thine utter loveliness!
Thy mossy footstool shall the altar be
'Fore which I'll bend, bending, dear love, to thee:
Those lips shall be my Delphos, and shall speak
Laws to my footsteps, colour to my cheek,
Trembling or stedfastness to this same voice,
And of three sweetest pleasurings the choice:
And that affectionate light, those diamond things,
Those eyes, those passions, those supreme pearl springs,
Shall be my grief, or twinkle me to pleasure.
Say, is not bliss within our perfect seisure?
O that I could not doubt?"


The mountaineer

Thus strove by fancies vain and crude to clear

His briar'd path to some tranquillity.

It gave bright gladness to his lady's eye,

And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow;

Answering thus, just as the golden morrow

Beam'd upward from the vallies of the east:

"O that the flutter of this heart had ceas'd,

Or the sweet name of love had pass'd away.

Young feather'd tyrant! by a swift decay

Wilt thou devote this body to the earth:

And I do think that at my very birth

I lisp'd thy blooming titles inwardly;

For at the first, first dawn and thought of thee,

With uplift hands I blest the stars of heaven.

Art thou not cruel? Ever have I striven

To think thee kind, but ah, it will not do!

When yet a child, I heard that kisses drew

Favour from thee, and so I kisses gave

To the void air, bidding them find out love:

But when I came to feel how far above

All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood,

All earthly pleasure, all imagin'd good,


Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss,--
Even then, that moment, at the thought of this,
Fainting I fell into a bed of flowers,
And languish'd there three days. Ye milder powers,
Am I not cruelly wrong'd? Believe, believe
Me, dear Endymion, were I to weave
With my own fancies garlands of sweet life,
Thou shouldst be one of all. Ah, bitter strife!
I may not be thy love: I am forbidden--
Indeed I am--thwarted, affrighted, chidden,
By things I trembled at, and gorgon wrath.
Twice hast thou ask'd whither I went: henceforth
Ask me no more! I may not utter it,
Nor may I be thy love. We might commit
Ourselves at once to vengeance; we might die;
We might embrace and die: voluptuous thought!
Enlarge not to my hunger, or I'm caught
In trammels of perverse deliciousness.
No, no, that shall not be: thee will I bless,
And bid a long adieu."


The Carian
No word return'd: both lovelorn, silent, wan,
Into the vallies green together went.
Far wandering, they were perforce content
To sit beneath a fair lone beechen tree;
Nor at each other gaz'd, but heavily
Por'd on its hazle cirque of shedded leaves.

Endymion! unhappy! it nigh grieves
Me to behold thee thus in last extreme:
Ensky'd ere this, but truly that I deem
Truth the best music in a first-born song.
Thy lute-voic'd brother will I sing ere long,
And thou shalt aid--hast thou not aided me?
Yes, moonlight Emperor! felicity
Has been thy meed for many thousand years;
Yet often have I, on the brink of tears,
Mourn'd as if yet thou wert a forester,--
Forgetting the old tale.

He did not stir
His eyes from the dead leaves, or one small pulse
Of joy he might have felt. The spirit culls
Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays
Through the old garden-ground of boyish days.
A little onward ran the very stream
By which he took his first soft poppy dream;
And on the very bark 'gainst which he leant
A crescent he had carv'd, and round it spent
His skill in little stars. The teeming tree
Had swollen and green'd the pious charactery,


But not ta'en out. Why, there was not a slope
Up which he had not fear'd the antelope;
And not a tree, beneath whose rooty shade
He had not with his tamed leopards play'd.
Nor could an arrow light, or javelin,
Fly in the air where his had never been--
And yet he knew it not.


O treachery!
Why does his lady smile, pleasing her eye
With all his sorrowing? He sees her not.
But who so stares on him? His sister sure!
Peona of the woods!--Can she endure-Impossible--
how dearly they embrace!
His lady smiles; delight is in her face;
It is no treachery.

"Dear brother mine!
Endymion, weep not so! Why shouldst thou pine
When all great Latmos so exalt wilt be?
Thank the great gods, and look not bitterly;
And speak not one pale word, and sigh no more.
Sure I will not believe thou hast such store
Of grief, to last thee to my kiss again.
Thou surely canst not bear a mind in pain,
Come hand in hand with one so beautiful.
Be happy both of you! for I will pull
The flowers of autumn for your coronals.
Pan's holy priest for young Endymion calls;
And when he is restor'd, thou, fairest dame,
Shalt be our queen. Now, is it not a shame
To see ye thus,--not very, very sad?
Perhaps ye are too happy to be glad:
O feel as if it were a common day;
Free-voic'd as one who never was away.
No tongue shall ask, whence come ye? but ye shall
Be gods of your own rest imperial.
Not even I, for one whole month, will pry
Into the hours that have pass'd us by,
Since in my arbour I did sing to thee.
O Hermes! on this very night will be
A hymning up to Cynthia, queen of light;
For the soothsayers old saw yesternight
Good visions in the air,--whence will befal,
As say these sages, health perpetual
To shepherds and their flocks; and furthermore,
In Dian's face they read the gentle lore:
Therefore for her these vesper-carols are.
Our friends will all be there from nigh and far.
Many upon thy death have ditties made;
And many, even now, their foreheads shade
With cypress, on a day of sacrifice.


New singing for our maids shalt thou devise,
And pluck the sorrow from our huntsmen's brows.
Tell me, my lady-queen, how to espouse
This wayward brother to his rightful joys!
His eyes are on thee bent, as thou didst poise
His fate most goddess-like. Help me, I pray,
To lure--Endymion, dear brother, say
What ails thee?" He could bear no more, and so
Bent his soul fiercely like a spiritual bow,
And twang'd it inwardly, and calmly said:
"I would have thee my only friend, sweet maid!
My only visitor! not ignorant though,
That those deceptions which for pleasure go
'Mong men, are pleasures real as real may be:
But there are higher ones I may not see,
If impiously an earthly realm I take.
Since I saw thee, I have been wide awake
Night after night, and day by day, until
Of the empyrean I have drunk my fill.
Let it content thee, Sister, seeing me
More happy than betides mortality.
A hermit young, I'll live in mossy cave,
Where thou alone shalt come to me, and lave
Thy spirit in the wonders I shall tell.
Through me the shepherd realm shall prosper well;
For to thy tongue will I all health confide.
And, for my sake, let this young maid abide
With thee as a dear sister. Thou alone,
Peona, mayst return to me. I own
This may sound strangely: but when, dearest girl,
Thou seest it for my happiness, no pearl
Will trespass down those cheeks. Companion fair!
Wilt be content to dwell with her, to share
This sister's love with me?" Like one resign'd
And bent by circumstance, and thereby blind
In self-commitment, thus that meek unknown:
"Aye, but a buzzing by my ears has flown,
Of jubilee to Dian:--truth I heard!
Well then, I see there is no little bird,
Tender soever, but is Jove's own care.
Long have I sought for rest, and, unaware,
Behold I find it! so exalted too!
So after my own heart! I knew, I knew
There was a place untenanted in it:
In that same void white Chastity shall sit,
And monitor me nightly to lone slumber.
With sanest lips I vow me to the number
Of Dian's sisterhood; and, kind lady,
With thy good help, this very night shall see
My future days to her fane consecrate."


As feels a dreamer what doth most create


His own particular fright, so these three felt:
Or like one who, in after ages, knelt
To Lucifer or Baal, when he'd pine
After a little sleep: or when in mine
Far under-ground, a sleeper meets his friends
Who know him not. Each diligently bends
Towards common thoughts and things for very fear;
Striving their ghastly malady to cheer,
By thinking it a thing of yes and no,
That housewives talk of. But the spirit-blow
Was struck, and all were dreamers. At the last
Endymion said: "Are not our fates all cast?
Why stand we here? Adieu, ye tender pair!
Adieu!" Whereat those maidens, with wild stare,
Walk'd dizzily away. Pained and hot
His eyes went after them, until they got
Near to a cypress grove, whose deadly maw,
In one swift moment, would what then he saw
Engulph for ever. "Stay!" he cried, "ah, stay!
Turn, damsels! hist! one word I have to say.
Sweet Indian, I would see thee once again.
It is a thing I dote on: so I'd fain,
Peona, ye should hand in hand repair
Into those holy groves, that silent are
Behind great Dian's temple. I'll be yon,
At vesper's earliest twinkle--they are gone--
But once, once, once again--" At this he press'd
His hands against his face, and then did rest
His head upon a mossy hillock green,
And so remain'd as he a corpse had been
All the long day; save when he scantly lifted
His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted
With the slow move of time,--sluggish and weary
Until the poplar tops, in journey dreary,
Had reach'd the river's brim. Then up he rose,
And, slowly as that very river flows,
Walk'd towards the temple grove with this lament:
"Why such a golden eve? The breeze is sent
Careful and soft, that not a leaf may fall
Before the serene father of them all
Bows down his summer head below the west.
Now am I of breath, speech, and speed possest,
But at the setting I must bid adieu
To her for the last time. Night will strew
On the damp grass myriads of lingering leaves,
And with them shall I die; nor much it grieves
To die, when summer dies on the cold sward.
Why, I have been a butterfly, a lord
Of flowers, garlands, love-knots, silly posies,
Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbour roses;
My kingdom's at its death, and just it is
That I should die with it: so in all this


We miscal grief, bale, sorrow, heartbreak, woe,
What is there to plain of? By Titan's foe
I am but rightly serv'd." So saying, he
Tripp'd lightly on, in sort of deathful glee;
Laughing at the clear stream and setting sun,
As though they jests had been: nor had he done
His laugh at nature's holy countenance,
Until that grove appear'd, as if perchance,
And then his tongue with sober seemlihed
Gave utterance as he entered: "Ha!" I said,
"King of the butterflies; but by this gloom,
And by old Rhadamanthus' tongue of doom,
This dusk religion, pomp of solitude,
And the Promethean clay by thief endued,
By old Saturnus' forelock, by his head
Shook with eternal palsy, I did wed
Myself to things of light from infancy;
And thus to be cast out, thus lorn to die,
Is sure enough to make a mortal man
Grow impious." So he inwardly began
On things for which no wording can be found;
Deeper and deeper sinking, until drown'd
Beyond the reach of music: for the choir
Of Cynthia he heard not, though rough briar
Nor muffling thicket interpos'd to dull
The vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full,
Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles.
He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles,
Wan as primroses gather'd at midnight
By chilly finger'd spring. "Unhappy wight!
Endymion!" said Peona, "we are here!
What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier?"
Then he embrac'd her, and his lady's hand
Press'd, saying:" Sister, I would have command,
If it were heaven's will, on our sad fate."
At which that dark-eyed stranger stood elate
And said, in a new voice, but sweet as love,
To Endymion's amaze: "By Cupid's dove,
And so thou shalt! and by the lily truth
Of my own breast thou shalt, beloved youth!"
And as she spake, into her face there came
Light, as reflected from a silver flame:
Her long black hair swell'd ampler, in display
Full golden; in her eyes a brighter day
Dawn'd blue and full of love. Aye, he beheld
Phoebe, his passion! joyous she upheld
Her lucid bow, continuing thus; "Drear, drear
Has our delaying been; but foolish fear
Withheld me first; and then decrees of fate;
And then 'twas fit that from this mortal state
Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlook'd for change
Be spiritualiz'd. Peona, we shall range



These forests, and to thee they safe shall be
As was thy cradle; hither shalt thou flee
To meet us many a time." Next Cynthia bright
Peona kiss'd, and bless'd with fair good night:
Her brother kiss'd her too, and knelt adown
Before his goddess, in a blissful swoon.
She gave her fair hands to him, and behold,
Before three swiftest kisses he had told,
They vanish'd far away!--Peona went
Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work only having been in publication for four years before his death. Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his life, his reputation grew after his death, so that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life. The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English literature. Biography Early Life John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 to Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats. Keats and his family seemed to have marked his birthday on 29 October, however baptism records give the birth date as the 31st. He was the eldest of four surviving children; George (1797–1841), Thomas (1799–1818) and Frances Mary "Fanny" (1803–1889). Another son was lost in infancy. John was born in central London although there is no clear evidence of the exact location. His father first worked as a hostler at the stables attached to the Swan and Hoop inn, an establishment he later managed and where the growing family lived for some years. Keats believed that he was born at the inn, a birthplace of humble origins, but there is no evidence to support this. The Keats at the Globe pub now occupies the site, a few yards from modern day Moorgate station. He was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and sent to a local dame school as a child. His parents were unable to afford Eton or Harrow, so in the summer of 1803 he was sent to board at John Clarke's school in Enfield, close to his grandparents' house. The small school had a liberal, progressive outlook and a progressive curriculum more modern than the larger, more prestigious schools. In the family atmosphere at Clarke's, Keats developed an interest in classics and history which would stay with him throughout his short life. The www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive headmaster's son, Charles Cowden Clarke, would become an important influence, mentor and friend, introducing Keats to Renaissance literature including Tasso, Spenser and Chapman's translations. Keats is described as a volatile character "always in extremes", given to indolence and fighting. However at 13 he began focusing his energy towards reading and study, winning his first academic prize in midsummer 1809. In April 1804, when Keats was eight, his father died after fracturing his skull falling from his horse when returning from visiting John and his brother George at the school. Thomas died intestate. Frances remarried two months later, but left her new husband soon afterwards, and the four children went to live with their grandmother, Alice Jennings, in the village of Edmonton. In March 1810, when Keats was 14, his mother died of tuberculosis leaving the children in the custody of their grandmother. She appointed two guardians, Richard Abbey and John Sandell, to take care of them. That autumn, Keats left Clarke's school to apprentice with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary, neighbour and doctor of the Jennings family, and lodged in the attic above the surgery at 7 Church Street until 1813. Cowden Clarke, who remained a close friend of Keats, described this as "the most placid time in Keats's life". Early Career From 1814 Keats had two bequests held in trust for him until his 21st birthday: £800 willed by his grandfather John Jennings (about £34,000 in today's money) and a portion of his mother's legacy, £8000 (about £340,000 today), to be equally divided between her living children. It seems he was not told of either, since he never applied for any of the money. Historically, blame has often been laid on Abbey as legal guardian, but he may well have also been unaware. William Walton, solicitor for Keats's mother and grandmother, definitely did know and had a duty of care to relay the information to Keats. It seems he did not. The money would have made a critical difference to the poet's expectations. Money was always a great concern and difficulty for him, as he struggled to stay out of debt and make his way in the world independently. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien. “” The sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" October 1816 Having finished his apprenticeship with Hammond, Keats registered as a medical student at Guy's Hospital (now part of King's College London) and began there in October 1815. Within a month of starting, he was accepted as a dresser at the hospital, assisting surgeons during operations, the equivalent of a junior house surgeon today. It was a significant promotion marking a distinct aptitude for medicine, the position bringing increased responsibility and workload. His long and expensive medical training with Hammond and at Guy's Hospital led his family to assume this would be his lifelong career, assuring financial security, and it seems that at this point Keats had a genuine desire to become a doctor. Keats lodged near the hospital at 28 St Thomas's Street in Southwark, with other medical students. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Keats's training took up increasing amounts of his writing time and he felt increasingly ambivalent about his medical career. He felt presented with a stark choice. Keats's first surviving poem, An Imitation of Spenser, had been written in 1814, when Keats was 19. Now, strongly drawn by ambition, inspired by fellow poets such as Leigh Hunt and Byron, and beleaguered by family financial crises, he suffered periods of depression. His brother George wrote that John "feared that he should never be a poet, & if he was not he would destroy himself". In 1816, Keats received his apothecary's licence which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician and surgeon, but before the end of the year he announced to his guardian that he had resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon. Though he continued his work and training at Guy's, Keats was devoting increasing time to the study of literature, experimenting with verse forms, particularly at this time sonnets. In May 1816, Leigh Hunt agreed to publish the sonnet O Solitude in his magazine The Examiner, a leading liberal magazine of the day. It is the first appearance of Keats's poems in print and Charles Cowden Clarke refers to it as his friend's red letter day, first proof that Keats's ambitions were valid. In the summer of that year he went with Clarke to the seaside town of Margate to write. There he began Calidore and initiated the era of his great letter writing. On his return to London he took lodgings at 8 Dean Street, Southwark and braced himself for further study in order to become a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. In October, Clarke introduced Keats to the influential Hunt, a close friend of Byron and Shelley. Five months later Poems, the first volume of Keats verse, was published, which included "I stood tiptoe" and "Sleep and Poetry", both poems strongly influenced by Hunt. It was a critical failure, arousing little interest, although Reynolds reviewed it favourably in The Champion. Clarke commented that the book "might have emerged in Timbuctoo". Keats's publishers, Charles and James Ollier, felt ashamed of the book. Keats immediately changed publishers to Taylor and Hessey on Fleet Street. Unlike Olliers, Keats's new publishers were enthusiastic about his work. Within a month of the publication of Poems they were planning a new Keats volume and had paid him an advance. Hessey became a steady friend to Keats and made the company's rooms available for young writers to meet. Their publishing lists would come to include Coleridge, Hazlitt, Clare, Hogg, Carlyle and Lamb. At Taylor and Hessey Keats met their Eton-educated lawyer Richard Woodhouse. Woodhouse, who advised the publishers on literary as well as legal matters, was deeply impressed by Poems. Though he noted that Keats could be "wayward, trembling, easily daunted", Woodhouse was convinced of Keats's genius, a poet to support as he became one of England's greatest writers. Soon after they met, the two became close friends and Woodhouse started to collect Keatsiana, documenting as much as he could about Keats's poetry, an archive that survives as one of the main sources of information on Keats's work.Motion casts him as Boswell to Keats' Johnson, ceaselessly promoting the writer's work, fighting his corner, spurring his poetry on to greater heights. At the end, Woodhouse would be one of the few people to accompany Keats to Gravesend to embark on his final trip to Rome. In spite of the bad reviews of Poems, Hunt published the essay Three Young Poets (Shelley, Keats and Reynolds) and the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, foreseeing great things to come. He introduced Keats to many prominent men in his circle, including editor of The Times Thomas Barnes, writer Charles Lamb, conductor Vincent Novello and poet John Hamilton Reynolds, who would become a close friend. He was also meeting William Hazlitt regularly, a powerful literary figure of the day. It was a decisive turning point for Keats, establishing him in the public eye as a figure in, what Hunt termed 'a new school of poetry'. At this time Keats wrote to his friend Bailey: "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. What imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth". This would eventually transmute into the concluding lines of Ode on a Grecian Urn: "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' – that is all / you know on earth, and all ye need to know". In early December, under the www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive heady influence of his artistic friends, Keats told Abbey that he had decided to give up medicine in favour of poetry, to Abbey's fury. Keats had spent a great deal on his medical training and had made several large loans that he could ill afford. Having left his training at the hospital, suffering from a succession of colds, and unhappy with living in damp rooms in London, Keats moved with his brothers into rooms at 1 Well Walk in the village of Hampstead in April 1817. Both John and George nursed their brother Tom, who was suffering from tuberculosis. The house was close to Hunt and others from his circle in Hampstead, as well as to Coleridge, respected elder of the first wave of Romantic poets, Around this time he was introduced to Charles Wentworth Dilke, James Rice and Benjamin Bailey. In June 1818, Keats began a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland and the Lake District with his friend Charles Armitage Brown. Keats' brother George and his wife Georgina accompanied them as far as Lancaster and then continued to Liverpool, from where the couple would emigrate to America. They lived in Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky until 1841 when George's investments failed. Like Keats' other brother, they died penniless and racked by tuberculosis. There would be no effective treatment for the disease until 1921. In July, while on the Isle of Mull, Keats caught a bad cold and "was too thin and fevered to proceed on the journey". After his return south in August, Keats continued to nurse Tom, exposing himself to infection. Some biographers suggest that this is when tuberculosis, his "family disease", first took hold. Tom Keats died on 1 December 1818. Wentworth Place John Keats moved to the newly built Wentworth Place, owned by his friend Charles Armitage Brown. It was also on the edge of Hampstead Heath, ten minutes walk south of his old home in Well Walk. The winter of 1818–19, though a difficult period for the poet, marked the beginning of his annus mirabilis in which he wrote his most mature work. He had been inspired by a series of recent lectures by Hazlitt on English poets and poetic identity and had also met Wordsworth. Keats may have seemed to his friends to be living on comfortable means, but in reality he was borrowing regularly from Abbey and his friends. He composed five of his six great odes at Wentworth Place in April and May and, although it is debated in which order they were written, "Ode to Psyche" opened the published series. According to Brown, "Ode to a Nightingale" was composed under a plum tree in the garden. Brown wrote, "In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast-table to the grass-plot under a plum-tree, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house, I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feelings on the song of our nightingale." Dilke, co-owner of the house, strenuously denied the story, printed in Milnes' 1848 biography of Keats, dismissing it as pure delusion. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. “” First stanza of "Ode to a Nightingale", www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive May 1819 "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode on Melancholy" were inspired by sonnet forms and probably written after "Ode to a Nightingale". Keats's new and progressive publishers Taylor and Hessey issued Endymion, which Keats dedicated to Thomas Chatterton, a work that he termed "a trial of my Powers of Imagination". It was damned by the critics, giving rise to Byron's quip that Keats was ultimately "snuffed out by an article", suggesting that he never truly got over it. A particularly harsh review by John Wilson Croker appeared in the April 1818 edition of The Quarterly Review. " John Gibson Lockhart writing in Blackwood's Magazine, described Endymion as "imperturbable drivelling idiocy". With biting sarcasm, Lockhart advised, "It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes ". It was Lockhart at Blackwoods who coined the defamatory term "the Cockney School" for Hunt and his circle, which included both Hazlitt and Keats. The dismissal was as much political as literary, aimed at upstart young writers deemed uncouth for their lack of education, non-formal rhyming and "low diction". They had not attended Eton, Harrow or Oxbridge and they were not from the upper classes. In 1819, Keats wrote The Eve of St. Agnes, "La Belle Dame sans Merci", Hyperion, Lamia and Otho (critically damned and not dramatised until 1950). The poems "Fancy" and "Bards of passion and of mirth" were inspired by the garden of Wentworth Place. In September, very short of money and in despair considering taking up journalism or a post as a ship's surgeon, he approached his publishers with a new book of poems.They were unimpressed with the collection, finding the presented versions of "Lamia" confusing, and describing "St Agnes" as having a "sense of pettish disgust" and "a 'Don Juan' style of mingling up sentiment and sneering" concluding it was "a poem unfit for ladies". The final volume Keats lived to see, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, was eventually published in July 1820. It received greater acclaim than had Endymion or Poems, finding favourable notices in both The Examiner and Edinburgh Review. It would come to be recognised as one of the most important poetic works ever published. Wentworth Place now houses the Keats House museum. Isabella Jones and Fanny Brawne Keats befriended Isabella Jones in May 1817, while on holiday in the village of Bo Peep, near Hastings. She is described as beautiful, talented and widely read, not of the top flight of society yet financially secure, an enigmatic figure who would become a part of Keats's circle.Throughout their friendship Keats never hesitates to own his sexual attraction to her, although they seem to enjoy circling each other rather than offering commitment. He writes that he "frequented her rooms" in the winter of 1818–19, and in his letters to George says that he "warmed with her" and "kissed her". It is unclear how close they were, but Bate and Gittings suggest the trysts may represent a sexual initiation for Keats. Jones' greatest significance may be as an inspiration and steward of Keats's writing. The themes of The Eve of St. Agnes and The Eve of St Mark may well have been suggested by her, the lyric Hush, Hush! ["o sweet Isabel"] was about her, and that the first version of "Bright Star" may have originally been for her. In 1821, Jones was one of the first in England to be notified of Keats's death. Letters and drafts of poems suggest that Keats first met Frances (Fanny) Brawne between September and November 1818. It is likely that the 18-year-old Brawne visited the Dilke family at Wentworth Place before she lived there. She was born in the hamlet of West End (now in the district of West Hampstead), on 9 August 1800. Like Keats's grandfather, her grandfather kept a London inn, and both lost several family members to tuberculosis. She shared her first name with both Keats's sister and mother, and had a talent for dress-making and languages as well as a natural theatrical bent. During November 1818 she developed an intimacy with Keats, but it was shadowed by the illness of Tom Keats, whom John was nursing through this period. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive On 3 April 1819, Brawne and her widowed mother moved into the other half of Dilke's Wentworth Place, and Keats and Brawne were able to see each other every day. Keats began to lend Brawne books, such as Dante's Inferno, and they would read together. He gave her the love sonnet "Bright Star" (perhaps revised for her) as a declaration. It was a work in progress which he continued at until the last months of his life, and the poem came to be associated with their relationship. "All his desires were concentrated on Fanny". From this point there is no further documented mention of Isabella Jones. Sometime before the end of June, he arrived at some sort of understanding with Brawne, far from a formal engagement as he still had too little to offer, with no prospects and financial stricture. Keats endured great conflict knowing his expectations as a struggling poet in increasingly hard straits would preclude marriage to Brawne. Their love remained unconsummated; jealousy for his 'star' began to gnaw at him. Darkness, disease and depression surrounded him, reflected in poems such as The Eve of St. Agnes and "La Belle Dame sans Merci" where love and death both stalk. "I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks;" he wrote to her, "...your loveliness, and the hour of my death". In one of his many hundreds of notes and letters, Keats wrote to Brawne on 13 October 1819: "My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you ... I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder'd at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr'd for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you." Tuberculosis took hold and he was advised by his doctors to move to a warmer climate. In September 1820 Keats left for Rome knowing he would probably never see Brawne again. After leaving he felt unable to write to her or read her letters, although he did correspond with her mother. He died there five months later. None of Brawne's letters to Keats survive; he requested that her letters be destroyed after his death. It took a month for the news of his death to reach London, after which Brawne stayed in mourning for six years. In 1833, more than 12 years after his death, she married and went on to have three children; she outlived Keats by more than 40 years. The 2009 film Bright Star, written and directed by Jane Campion, focuses on Keats' relationship with Fanny Brawne. Last months: Rome During 1820 Keats displayed increasingly serious symptoms of tuberculosis, suffering two lung haemorrhages in the first few days of February. He lost large amounts of blood and was bled further by the attending physician. Hunt nursed him in London for much of the following summer. At the suggestion of his doctors, he agreed to move to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. On 13 September, they left for Gravesend and four days later boarded the sailing brig "Maria Crowther", where he made the final revisions of "Bright Star". The journey was a minor catastrophe: storms broke out followed by a dead calm that slowed the ship’s progress. When they finally docked in Naples, the ship was held in quarantine for ten days due to a suspected outbreak of cholera in Britain. Keats reached Rome on November 14, by which time any hope of the warmer climate he sought had disappeared. Keats wrote his last letter on November 30, 1820 to Charles Armitage Brown; "Tis the most difficult thing in the world to me to write a letter. My stomach continues so bad, that I feel it worse on opening any book – yet I am much better than I was in Quarantine. Then I am afraid to encounter the proing and conning of any thing interesting to me in England. I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence". www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive He moved into a villa on the Spanish Steps, today the Keats-Shelley Memorial House museum. Despite care from Severn and Dr. James Clark, his health rapidly deteriorated, and the medical attention he received may have hastened his death. In November 1820, Clark declared that the source of his illness was "mental exertion" and the source was largely situated in his stomach. Clark eventually diagnosed consumption (tuberculosis) and placed Keats on a starvation diet of an anchovy and a piece of bread a day, hoping to reduce the blood flow to his stomach. He bled the poet; a standard treatment of the day, but probably contributing significantly to Keats's weakness. Keats's friend Brown writes: "They could have used opium in small doses, and Keats had asked Severn to buy a bottle of opium when they were setting off on their voyage. What Severn didn't realise was that Keats saw it as a possible resource if he wanted to commit suicide. He tried to get the bottle from Severn on the voyage but Severn wouldn't let him have it. Then in Rome he tried again ... Severn was in such a quandary he didn't know what to do, so in the end he went to the doctor who took it away. As a result Keats went through dreadful agonies with nothing to ease the pain at all." On 10 December, Severn returned from an early walk and woke Keats. Immediately, the poet began to cough and then vomit blood, about two cupfuls. Clark was summoned and promptly bled him. The loss of blood dizzied and confused Keats. When Clark left, Keats got out of his bed, stumbled around the rooms, and said to Severn, "This day shall be my last." Severn feared a suicide attempt and hid any sharp object he could find as well as the laudanum prescribed by Clarke. Keats was delirious for the rest of the day, until a violent haemorrhage and bleeding weakened him into calm. Over the next nine days he suffered five severe haemorrhages and continued bleedings by Clark. The doctor visited constantly and put him on a strict diet, mostly fish. Keats begged for food, believing he was being starved. Clark held no hope of recovery and admitted as much to Keats. The poet's thoughts turned again to suicide and he begged Severn for the laudanum, at first appealing to Severn's self-interest, but he was refused. Keats became angry; he raged at Severn for keeping him alive against his will. When Severn, not trusting himself, gave the bottle to Clark, Keats turned on the doctor asking "How long is this posthumous life of mine to last?" Death The first months of 1821 marked a slow and steady decline into the final stage of tuberculosis. Keats was coughing up blood and covered in sweat. Severn nursed him devotedly and observed in a letter how Keats would sometimes cry upon waking to find himself still alive. Severn writes, "Keats raves till I am in a complete tremble for him...about four, the approaches of death came on. [Keats said] 'Severn—I—lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy; don't be frightened—be firm, and thank God it has come.' I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seem'd boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sank into death, so quiet, that I still thought he slept." John Keats died on 23 February 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request was to be placed under an unnamed tombstone which contained only the words (in pentameter), "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Severn and Brown erected the stone, which under a relief of a lyre with broken strings, contains the epitaph: "This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired / these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821" There is a discrepancy of one day between the official date of death and that on the gravestone. Severn and Brown added their lines to the stone in protest at the critical reception of Keats's work. Hunt blamed his death on the Quarterly Review's scathing attack of "Endymion". As Byron quipped in his narrative poem Don Juan; www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle Should let itself be snuffed out by an article. (canto 2, stanza 60) Seven weeks after the funeral Shelley memorialised Keats in his poem Adonaïs. Clark saw to the planting of daisies on the grave, saying that Keats would have wished it. For public health reasons, the Italian health authorities burned the furniture in Keats's room, scraped the walls, made new windows, doors and flooring. The ashes of Shelley, one of Keats’s most fervent champions, are buried in the cemetery and Joseph Severn is buried next to Keats. Describing the site today, Marsh wrote, "In the old part of the graveyard, barely a field when Keats was buried here, there are now umbrella pines, myrtle shrubs, roses, and carpets of wild violets". Reception When Keats died at 25, he had been writing poetry seriously for only about six years, from 1814 until the summer of 1820; and publishing for only four. In his lifetime, sales of Keats's three volumes of poetry probably amounted to only 200 copies. His first poem, the sonnet O Solitude appeared in the Examiner in May 1816, while his collection Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other poems was published in July 1820 before his last visit to Rome. The compression of his poetic apprenticeship and maturity into so short a time is just one remarkable aspect of Keats's work. Although prolific during his short career, and now one of the most studied and admired British poets, his reputation rests on a small body of work, centred on the Odes, and only in the creative outpouring of the last years of his short life was he able to express the inner intensity for which he has been lauded since his death. Keats was convinced that he had made no mark in his lifetime. Aware that he was dying, he wrote to Fanny Brawne in February 1820, "I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd." Keats's ability and talent was acknowledged by several influential contemporary allies such as Shelley and Hunt. His admirers praised him for thinking "on his pulses", for having developed a style which was more heavily loaded with sensualities, more gorgeous in its effects, more voluptuously alive than any poet who had come before him: 'loading every rift with ore'. Shelley often corresponded with Keats in Rome, and loudly declared that Keats's death had been brought on by bad reviews in the Quarterly Review. Seven weeks after the funeral he wrote Adonaïs, a despairing elegy, stating that Keats' early death was a personal and public tragedy: The loveliest and the last, The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew Died on the promise of the fruit. Although Keats wrote that "if poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all", poetry did not come easy to him, his work the fruit of a deliberate and prolonged classical self-education. He may have possessed an innate poetic sensibility but his early works were clearly those of a young man learning his craft. His first attempts at verse were often vague, languorously narcotic and lacking a clear eye. His poetic sense was based on the conventional tastes of his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, who first introduced him to the classics, and also came from the predilections of Hunt's Examiner, which Keats read as a boy. Hunt scorned the Augustan or 'French' school, dominated by Pope, and attacked the earlier Romantic poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, now in their forties, as unsophisticated, obscure and crude writers. Indeed, during Keats's few years as a published poet, the reputation of the older Romantic school was at its lowest ebb. Keats came to echo these sentiments in his work, identifying himself with a 'new school' for a time, somewhat alienating him from Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron and providing the basis from the scathing attacks from Blackwoods and The Quarterly. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. “” First stanza of "To Autumn", September 1819 By the time of his death, Keats had therefore been associated with the taints of both old and new schools: the obscurity of the first wave Romantics and the uneducated affectation of Hunt's "Cockney School". Keats's posthumous reputation mixed the reviewers' caricature of the simplistic bumbler with the image of the hyper-sensitive genius killed by high feeling, which Shelley later portrayed. The Victorian sense of poetry as the work of indulgence and luxuriant fancy offered a schema into which Keats was posthumously fitted. Marked as the standard bearer of sensory writing, his reputation grew steadily and remarkably. His work had the full support of the influential Cambridge Apostles, whose members included the young Tennyson, later a popular Poet Laureate who came to regard Keats as the greatest poet of the 19th century. In 1848, twenty-seven years after Keats's death, Richard Monckton Milnes wrote the first full biography, which helped place Keats within the canon of English literature. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Millais and Rossetti, were inspired by Keats, and painted scenes from his poems including "The Eve of St. Agnes", "Isabella" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci", lush, arresting and popular images which remain closely associated with Keats's work. In 1882, Swinburn e wrote in the Encyclopædia Britannica that "the Ode to a Nightingale, [is] one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages". In the twentieth century, Keats remained the muse of poets such as Wilfred Owen, who kept his death date as a day of mourning, Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Critic Helen Vendler stated the odes "are a group of works in which the English language find ultimate embodiment". Bate declared of To Autumn: "Each generation has found it one of the most nearly perfect poems in English" and M. R. Ridley claimed the ode "is the most serenely flawless poem in our language." The largest collection of the letters, manuscripts, and other papers of Keats is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Other collections of material are archived at the British Library, Keats House, Hampstead, the Keats-Shelley Memorial House in Rome and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Since 1998 the British Keats-Shelley Memorial Association have annually awarded a prize for romantic poetry. Biographical Controversy None of Keats' biographies were written by people who had known him. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Shortly after his death, his publishers announced they would speedily publish The memoirs and remains of John Keats but his friends refused to cooperate and argued with each other to the extent that the project was abandoned. Leigh Hunt's Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries (1828) gives the first biographical account, strongly emphasising Keats's supposedly humble origins, a misconception which still continues. Given that he was becoming a significant figure within artistic circles, a succession of other publications followed, including anthologies of his many notes, chapters and letters. However, early accounts often gave contradictory or heavily biased versions of events and were subject to dispute. His friends Brown, Severn, Dilke, Shelley and his guardian Richard Abbey, his publisher Taylor, Fanny Brawne and many others issued posthumous commentary on Keats's life. These early writings coloured all subsequent biography and have become embedded in a body of Keats legend. Shelley promoted Keats as someone whose achievement could not be separated from agony, who was 'spiritualised' by his decline and too fine-tuned to endure the harshness of life; the consumptive, suffering image popularly held today. The first full biography was published in 1848 by Richard Monckton Milnes. Landmark Keats biographers since include Sidney Colvin, Robert Gittings, Walter Jackson Bate and Andrew Motion. The idealised image of the heroic romantic poet who battled poverty and died young was inflated by the late arrival of an authoritative biography and the lack of an accurate likeness. Most of the surviving portraits of Keats were painted after his death, and those who knew him held that they did not succeed in capturing his unique quality and intensity. Letters Keats' letters were first published in 1848 and 1878. During the 19th century, critics deemed them unworthy of attention, distractions from his poetic works. During the 20th century they became almost as admired and studied as his poetry, and are highly regarded within the canon of English literary correspondence. T. S. Eliot described them as "certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet." Keats spent a great deal of time considering poetry itself, its constructs and impacts, displaying a deep interest unusual amongst his milieu who were more easily distracted by metaphysics or politics, fashions or science. Eliot wrote of Keats's conclusions; "There is hardly one statement of Keats' about poetry which ... will not be found to be true, and what is more, true for greater and more mature poetry than anything Keats ever wrote." Few of Keats's letters from the period before he joined his literary circle are extant. From spring 1817, however, there is a rich record of his prolific and impressive skills as letter writer.Keats and his friends, poets, critics, novelists, and editors wrote to each other daily, and Keats' ideas are bound up in the ordinary, his day-to-day missives sharing news, parody and social commentary. They glitter with humour and critical intelligence.Born of an "unself-conscious stream of consciousness," they are impulsive, full of awareness of his own nature and his weak spots. When his brother George went to America, Keats wrote to him in great detail, the body of letters becoming "the real diary" and self-revelation of Keats's life, as well as containing an exposition of his philosophy, and the first drafts of poems containing some of Keats's finest writing and thought. Gittings describes them as akin to a "spiritual journal" not written for a specific other, so much as for synthesis. Keats also reflected on the background and composition of his poetry, and specific letters often coincide with or anticipate the poems they describe. In February to May 1819 he produced many of his finest letters". Writing to his brother George, Keats explored the idea of the world as "the vale of Soul-making", anticipating the great odes that he would write some months later. In the letters, Keats coined ideas such as the Mansion of Many Apartments and the Chameleon Poet, concepts that came to gain common currency and capture the public imagination, despite only making single appearances as phrases in his correspondence. The poetical mind, Keats argued: www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive has no self – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade;... What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion [chameleon] Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity – he is continually in for – and filling some other Body – The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none; no identity – he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures. He used the term Negative capability to discuss the state in which we are "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason ...[Being] content with half knowledge" where one trusts in the heart's perceptions. He wrote later: "I am certain of nothing but 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" again and again turning to the question of what it means to be a poet. "My Imagination is a Monastery and I am its Monk", Keats notes to Shelley. In September 1819, Keats wrote to Reynolds "How beautiful the season is now – How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it ... I never lik'd the stubbled fields as much as now – Aye, better than the chilly green of spring. Somehow the stubble plain looks warm – in the same way as some pictures look warm – this struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it". The final stanza of his last great ode: "To Autumn" runs: Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,- While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Later, To Autumn became one of the most highly regarded poems in the English language. There are areas of his life and daily routine that Keats does not describe. He mentions little about his childhood or his financial straits and is seemingly embarrassed to discuss them. There is a total absence of any reference to his parents. In his last year, as his health deteriorated, his concerns often gave way to despair and morbid obsessions. The publications of letters to Fanny Brawne in 1870 focused on this period and emphasised this tragic aspect, giving rise to widespread criticism at the time. Works: Addressed to Haydon (1816) text Addressed to the Same (1816) text After dark vapours have oppressed our plains (1817) As from the darkening gloom a silver dove (1814) Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl! text A Song About Myself Bards of Passion and of Mirth text Before he went to live with owls and bats (1817?) Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art (1819) Calidore: A Fragment (1816) The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq. A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode Of Paolo And Francesca text A Draught of Sunshine Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1817) Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds Epistle to My Brother George First Love The Eve of Saint Mark The Eve of St. Agnes (1819) text www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (1819) Fancy (poem) Fill for me a brimming bowl (1814) text Fragment of an Ode to Maia Give me women, wine, and snuff (1815 or 1816) God of the golden bow (1816 or 1817) The Gothic looks solemn (1817) Had I a man's fair form, then might my sighs (1815 or 1816) Hadst thou liv’d in days of old (1816) Happy is England! I could be content (1816) Hither, hither, love (1817 or 1818) How many bards gild the lapses of time (1816) The Human Seasons Hymn To Apollo Hyperion (1818) I am as brisk (1816) I had a dove I stood tip-toe upon a little hill (1816) If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chain'd Imitation of Spenser (1814) text In Drear-Nighted December Isabella or The Pot of Basil (1818) text Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there (1816) La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) text Lamia (1819) Lines Written on 29 May, the Anniversary of Charles’s Restoration, on Hearing the Bells Ringing (1814 or 1815) Lines on Seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair Lines on The Mermaid Tavern Meg Merrilies Modern Love (Keats) O Blush Not So! O come, dearest Emma! the rose is full blown (1815) O grant that like to Peter I (1817?) O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell (1815 or 1816) Ode (Keats) Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) text Ode on Indolence (1819) Ode on Melancholy (1819) text Ode to a Nightingale (1819) text Ode to Apollo (1815) Ode to Fanny Ode to Psyche (1819) Oh Chatterton! how very sad thy fate (1815) Oh! how I love, on a fair summer's eve (1816) Old Meg (1818) On a Leander Which Miss Reynolds, My Kind Friend, Gave Me (1817) On Death text On Fame text On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (1816) text On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour (1816) On Peace (1814) text On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the Same Ladies (1815) On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt (1816 or 1817) On Seeing the Elgin Marbles (1817) On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again On the Grasshopper and Cricket (1816) On the Sea (1817) text On The Story of Rimini (1817) On The Sonnet The Poet (a fragment) A Prophecy - To George Keats in America Robin Hood. To A Friend Sharing Eve's Apple Sleep and Poetry (1816) A Song of Opposites www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Specimen of an Induction to a Poem (1816) Staffa Stay, ruby breasted warbler, stay (1814) Stanzas Think not of it, sweet one, so (1817) This Living Hand This pleasant tale is like a little copse (1817) To — To a Cat To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses (1816) To a Lady seen for a few Moments at Vauxhall To A Young Lady Who Sent Me A Laurel Crown (1816 or 1817) To Ailsa Rock To Autumn (1819) text To Lord Byron (1814) text To Charles Cowden Clarke (1816) To Fanny To G.A.W. (Georgiana Augusta Wylie) (1816) To George Felton Mathew (1815) To Georgiana Augusta Wylie To Haydon To Haydon with a Sonnet Written on Seeing the Elgin Marbles (1817) To Homer To Hope (1815) To John Hamilton Reynolds To Kosciusko (1816) To Leigh Hunt, Esq. (1817) To My Brother George (epistle) (1816) To My Brother George (sonnet) (1816) To My Brothers (1816) To one who has been long in city pent (1816) To Sleep To Solitude To Some Ladies (1815) To the Ladies Who Saw Me Crown’d (1816 or 1817) To the Nile Two Sonnets on Fame Unfelt, unheard, unseen (1817) When I have fears that I may cease to be (1818) text Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid? Where's the Poet? Why did I laugh tonight? Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain (1815 or 1816) Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition (1816) Written on a Blank Space Written on a Summer Evening Written on the Day that Mr Leigh Hunt Left Prison (1815) Written Upon the Top of Ben Nevis You say you love; but with a voice (1817 or 1818) www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive
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