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-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet never did I breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.

Then I felt 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.

John Keats

Written on a Blank Page in Shakespeare's Poems, facing "A Lover's Complaint"

BRIGHT star, would I were as stedfast as though art--

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth'd human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--

No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd on my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

John Keats

Happy is England

HAPPY is England! I could be content

To see no other verdure than its own;

To feel no other breezes than are blown

Through its tall woods with high romances blent:

Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment

For skies Italian, and an inward groan

To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,

And half forget what world or worldling meant.

Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;

Enough their simple loveliness for me,

        Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:

Yet do I often warmly burn to see

        Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,

And float with them about the summer waters.

John Keats

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

MY spirit is too weak--mortality

Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep

And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep

Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die

Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

Yet tis a gentle luxury to weep

That I have not the cloudy winds to sweep

Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.

Such dim-conceived glories of the brain

Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;

So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,

Which mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude

Wasting of old Time--with a billowy main--

A sun--a shadow of a magnitude.

John Keats

To one who has been long in city pent

TO one who has been long in city pent,

'Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven,--to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair

Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair

And gentle tale of love and languishment?

Returning home at evening, with an ear

Catching the notes of Philomel,--an eye

Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,

He mourns that day so soon has glided by:

E'en like the passage of an angel's tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.

John Keats

Where's the Poet?

WHERE'S the Poet? show him! show him,

Muses nine! that I may know him.

'Tis the man who with a man

Is an equal, be he King,

Or poorest of the beggar-clan

Or any other wonderous thing

A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato;

'Tis the man who with a bird,

Wren or Eagle, finds his way to

All its instincts; he hath heard

The Lion's roaring, and can tell

What his horny throat expresseth,

And to him the Tiger's yell

Come articulate and presseth

Or his ear like mother-tongue.

John Keats

To Byron

BYRON! how sweetly sad thy melody!

Attuning still the soul to tenderness,

As if soft Pity, with unusual stress,

Had touch'd her plaintive lute, and thou, being by,

Hadst caught the tones, nor suffer'd them to die.

O'ershadowing sorrow doth not make thee less

Delightful: thou thy griefs dost dress

With a bright halo, shining beamily,

As when a cloud the golden moon doth veil,

Its sides are ting'd with a resplendent glow,

Through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail,

And like fair veins in sable marble flow;

Still warble, dying swan! still tell the tale,

The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe.

John Keats

Sonnet: On the Sonnet

IF by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd,

And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet

Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness,

Let us find, if we must be constrain'd,

Sandals more interwoven and complete

To fit the naked foot of Poesy:

Let us inspect the Lyre, and weigh the stress

Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd

By ear industrious, and attention meet;

Misers of sound and syllable, no less

Than Midas of his coinage, let us be

Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;

So, if we may not let the Muse be free,

She will be bound with garlands of her own.

John Keats

To My Brothers

SMALL, busy flames play through the fresh laid coals,

    And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep

    Like whispers of the household gods that keep

A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.

And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles,

    Your eyes are fix d, as in poetic sleep,

    Upon the lore so voluble and deep,

That aye at fall of night our care condoles.

This is your birth-day Tom, and I rejoice

    That thus it passes smoothly, quietly.

Many such eves of gently whisp'ring noise

     May we together pass, and calmly try

What are this world s true joys, ere the great voice,

     From its fair face, shall bid our spirits fly.

John Keats