I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving:
O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, With a silken thread of my own hand’s weaving.
‘I had a dove and the sweet dove died’ (written 1818)
In drear nighted December Too happy, happy tree
Thy branches ne’er remember Their green felicity.
‘In drear nighted December’ (written 1817)
But were there ever any Writhed not of passéd joy:
To know the change and feel it When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it Was never said in rhyme.
‘In drear nighted December’ (written 1817)
Why were they proud? again we ask aloud, Why in the name of Glory were they proud?
‘Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil’ (1820) st. 16
So the two brothers and their murdered man Rode past fair Florence.
‘Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil’ (1820) st. 27
And she forgot the stars, the moon,and sun, And she forgot the blue above the trees, And she forgot the dells where waters run, And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done, And the new morn she saw not: but in peace Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moistened it with tears unto the core.
‘Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil’ (1820) st. 53
‘For cruel ’tis,’ said she,
‘To steal my Basil-pot away from me.’
‘Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil’ (1820) st. 62
And then there crept
A little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.
‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill’ (1817) l. 10
Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight.
‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill’ (1817) l. 57
Oh, what can ail thee knight at arms Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake And no birds sing!
‘La belle dame sans merci’ (1820) st. 1
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too.
‘La belle dame sans merci’ (1820) st. 3
I met a lady in the meads Full beautiful, a faery’s child
Her hair was long, her foot was light And her eyes were wild.
‘La belle dame sans merci’ (1820) st. 4
She looked at me as she did love And made sweet moan.
‘La belle dame sans merci’ (1820) st. 5
I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long For sidelong would she bend and sing A faery’s song.
‘La belle dame sans merci’ (1820) st. 6
‘La belle dame sans merci Thee hath in thrall.’
‘La belle dame sans merci’ (1820) st. 10
I saw their starved lips in the gloam With horrid warning gapéd wide And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill’s side.
‘La belle dame sans merci’ (1820) st. 11
She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barred.
‘Lamia’ (1820) pt. 1, l. 47
Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.
‘Lamia’ (1820) pt. 1, l. 127
Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust; Love in a palace is perhaps at last
More grievous torment than a hermit’s fast.
‘Lamia’ (1820) pt. 2, l. 1
That purple-linéd palace of sweet sin.
‘Lamia’ (1820) pt. 2, l. 31
In pale contented sort of discontent.
‘Lamia’ (1820) pt. 2, l. 135
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings.
‘Lamia’ (1820) pt. 2, l. 229
Souls of poets dead and gone, \What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host’s Canary wine?
‘Lines on the Mermaid Tavern’ (1820)
Pledging with contented smack The Mermaid in the Zodiac.
‘Lines on the Mermaid Tavern’ (1820)
Rich in the simple worship of a day.
‘Mother of Hermes! and still youthful Maia!’ (written 1818)
Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time.
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 1
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 1
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 2
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 2
For ever piping songs for ever new.
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 3
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 3
Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed? What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 4
O Attic shape! Fair attitude!
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 5
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 5
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820) st. 5
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine.
‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1820) st. 1
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche.
‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1820) st. 1
But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globéd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1820) st. 2
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1820) st. 3
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-wingéd Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 1
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep-delvéd earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stainéd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 2
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 3
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 4
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 5
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves; And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 5
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a muséd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 6
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 7
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 8
Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?
‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (1820) st. 8
‘Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian.
‘Ode to Psyche’ (1820) st. 1
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours.
‘Ode to Psyche’ (1820) st. 2
Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchéd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind.
‘Ode to Psyche’ (1820) st. 4
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!
‘Ode to Psyche’ (1820) st. 4
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen.
‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (1817)
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 stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (1817)
Mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.
‘On Seeing the Elgin Marbles’ (1817)
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
‘On the Grasshopper and Cricket’ (1817)
It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores,—and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns.
‘On the Sea’ (1817)
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, Whose words are images of thoughts refined, Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.
‘O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell’ (1817)
O fret not after knowledge—I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge—I have none,
And yet the Evening listens.
‘O thou whose face hath felt the winter’s wind’ (written 1818)
Dry your eyes—O dry your eyes For I was taught in Paradise
To ease my breast of melodies.
‘Shed no tear—O shed no tear’ (written 1819)
Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way From a tree’s summit; a poor Indian’s sleep
While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep Of Montmorenci.
‘Sleep and Poetry’ (1817) l. 85
O for ten years, that I may overwhelm Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed That my own soul has to itself decreed.
‘Sleep and Poetry’ (1817) l. 96
They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus.
‘Sleep and Poetry’ (1817) l. 186
And they shall be accounted poet kings Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.
‘Sleep and Poetry’ (1817) l. 267
O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign Our gloom-pleased eyes.
‘Sonnet to Sleep’ (written 1819)
Turn the key deftly in the oiléd wards, And seal the hushéd casket of my soul.
‘Sonnet to Sleep’ (written 1819)
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thus be conscience-calmed—see here it is I hold it towards you.
‘This living hand, now warm and capable’ (written 1819)
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 Autumn’ (1820) st. 1
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinéd flowers.
‘To Autumn’ (1820) st. 2
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.
‘To Autumn’ (1820) st. 3
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.
‘To Autumn’ (1820) st. 3
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
‘To Autumn’ (1820) st. 3
Oh Chatterton! how very sad thy fate! Dear child of sorrow! son of misery!
How soon the film of death obscured that eye, Whence genius wildly flashed.
‘To Chatterton’ (written 1815)
Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.
‘To George Felton Mathew’ (1817) l. 1
Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green, There is a budding morrow in midnight, There is a triple sight in blindness keen.
‘To Homer’ (written 1818)
It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn— It forces us in summer skies to mourn: It spoils the singing of the nightingale.
‘To J. H. Reynolds, Esq.’ (written 1818)
Glory and loveliness have passed away.
‘To Leigh Hunt, Esq.’ (1817)
To one who has been long in city pent, ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven.
‘To one who has been long in city pent’ (1817)
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain.
‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ (written 1818)
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.
‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ (written 1818)
Then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ (written 1818)
Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain, Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies.
‘Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain’ (1817)
I remember your saying that you had notions of a good genius presiding over you—I have of late had the same thought. For things which [I] do half at random are afterwards confirmed by my judgement in a dozen features of propriety—Is it too daring to fancy Shakespeare this presider?
Letter to B. R. Haydon, 10 May 1817, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) ‘The Letters of John Keats’ (1958) vol. 1, p. 141
A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.
Letter to Benjamin Bailey, 8 October 1817, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) ‘The Letters of John Keats’ (1958) vol. 1, p. 170
A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.
Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 22 November 1817, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) ‘The Letters of John Keats’ (1958) vol. 1, p. 188
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination—
