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Keats House Museum

The Keats House Museum at Wentworth Place, 10 Keats Grove, London, NW3 2RR is the house where Keats lived for some time.

Keats wrote some of his most famous poems there including Lamia,Ode to a Nightingale, La Belle Dame & To Autumn.

Born in London on October 31, 1795, John Keats was the son of Frances Jennings and Thomas Keats. John Keats was given a liberal education at Enfield School where he was tought by Charles Cowden Clarke, himself an author and Shakespearian scholar. Keats studied at Guy's Hospital, later graduating as an apothecary-surgeon. Lured by the Muses Keats began writing poetry fulltime and published his first volume of poetry in 1817.

Tuberculosis was rife in the early 1800s. It had already killed Keats's mother & brother. Keats himself caught tuberculosis & died of the disease in Rome in 1821. Visit Keats grave there in the Protestant cemetery.

So, a sad end for a poetic genius. Keats died at 26 years yet managed to write some 92 poems.

Keats never married due to his health problems but at least he experienced love & romance with Fanny Brawne whom he met in Hampstead. Noteworthy exhits include a love letter to Fanny, their engagement ring and a lock of her hair.

Transport to the Keats House Museum

Wentworth Place, 10 Keats Grove, London, NW3 2R

Underground Belsize Park, Hampstead (Northern Line)
Rail Hampstead Heath (Silverlink Metro)
Bus Numbers 24, 46, 168, 268, C11

Some of John Keat's 92 Poems in chronological order

Imitation of Spencer
Now Morning from her orient chamber came,
And her first footsteps touch’d a verdant hill;
Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,
Silv’ring the untained gushes of its rill;
Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill,
And after parting beds of simple flowers,
By many streams a little lake did fill,
Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,
And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.

There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright
Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below;
Whose silken fins and golden scalès light
Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow:
There saw the swan his neck of arched snow,
And oar’d himself along with majesty;
Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show
Beneath the waves like Afric’s ebony,
And on his back a fay reclined voluptuously.

Ah! could I tell the wonders of an isle
That in that fairest lake had placed been,
I could e’en Dido of her grief beguile;
Or rob from aged Lear his bitter teen:
For sure so fair a place was never seen,
Of all that ever charm’d romantic eye:
It seem’d an emerald in the silver sheen
Of the bright waters; or as when on high,
Through clouds of fleecy white, laughs the coerulean sky.

John Keats 1814

On Peace
Oh Peace! And dost thou with thy presence bless
The dwellings of this war-surrounded isle;
Soothing with placid brow our late distress,
Making the triple kingdom brightly smile?
Joyful I hail thy presence; and I hail
The sweet companions that await on thee;
Complete my joy – let not my first wish fail,
Let the sweet mountain nymph thy favorite be,
With England’s happiness proclaim Europa’s liberty.
Oh Europe, let not sceptred tyrants see
That thou must shelter in thy former state;
Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free;
Give thy kings law – leave not uncurbed the great;
So with the horrors past thou’lt win thy happier fate.

John Keats 1814

Hearing the Bells Ringing
Infatuate Britons, will you still proclaim
His memory, your direst, foulest shame?
Nor patriots revere?
Ah! When I hear each traitorous lying bell,
’Tis gallant Sydney’s, Russell’s, Vane’s sad knell,
That pains my wounded ear.

John Keats 1814

O Solitude!
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep, -
Nature’s observatory - whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
‘ Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
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.

John Keats 1815

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 1816

On First Looking
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 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.

John Keats 1816

John Keats 1816

Endymion
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘ Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

John Keats, begun April 1817 at Carisbrooke

Mrs. Reynolds’s Cat
Cat! who hast past thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy’d? - how many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green and prick
Those velvet ears - but prythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me - and upraise
Thy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays
Of fish and mice and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists -
For all the wheezy asthma - and for all
Thy tail’s tip is nicked off - and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists
In youth thou enter’dst on glass-bottled wall.

John Keats, 16 January 1818

When I have fears
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats, January 1818

Blue! - ‘Tis the life of Heaven
Blue! - ‘Tis the life of Heaven - the domain
Of Cynthia: - the wide palace of the Sun;
The tent of Hesperus and all his train;
The bosomer of clouds gold, grey, and dun.
Blue! - ‘Tis the life of waters - Ocean,
And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness.
Blue! - gentle cousin to the forest green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers -
Forget-me-not - the blue-bell - and, that Queen
Of secrecy, the violet: - What strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow? - But how great,
When in an eye thou art, alive with fate!

John Keats, 8 February 1818

O thou whose face
O thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind;
Whose eye has seen the Snow clouds hung in Mist
And the black-elm tops ‘mong the freezing Stars
To thee the Spring will be a harvest-time –
O thou whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night, when Phoebus was away:
To thee the Spring shall be a tripple morn –
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 – He who saddens
At thought of Idleness cannot be idle,
And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.

John Keats 1818

This mortal body
This mortal body of a thousand days
Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room,
Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,
Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!
My pulse is warm with thine old barley-bree,
My head is light with pledging a great soul,
My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,
Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;
Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,
Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find
The meadow thou hast tramped o’er and o’er, -
Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind, -
Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name, -
O smile among the shades, for this is fame!

John Keats 1818

Fancy
Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let winged Fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind’s cage-door,
She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O sweet Fancy! Let her loose;
Summer’s joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn’s red-lipp’d fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: what do then?
Sit thee by the ingle , when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter’s night;
When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy’s heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy
To banish Even from her sky.
Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overaw’d,
Fancy, high-commission’d:- send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heaped autumn’s wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shalt quaff it:- thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear;
Rustle of the reaped corn;
Sweet birds antheming the morn:
And, in the same moment – hark!
‘Tis the early April lark,
Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy, and the marigold;
White-plum’d lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
Shaded hyacinth, alway
Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf, and every flower
Pearled with the self-same shower.
Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its celled sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,
When the hen-bird’s wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
Acorns ripe down-pattering,
While the autumn breezes sing.

Oh, sweet Fancy! Let her loose;
Every thing is spoilt by use:
Where’s the check that doth not fade,
Too much gaz’d at? Where’s the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where’s the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where’s the face
One would meet in every place?
Where’s the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then , winged Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres’ daughter,
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe’s, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
While she held the goblet sweet,
And Jove grew languid. – Break the mesh
Of the Fancy’s silken leash;
Quickly break her prison-string
And such joys as these she’ll bring. –
Let the winged Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.

John Keats 1818

Bards of passion
Bards of passion and of mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond’rous,
And the parle of voices thund’rous;
With the whisper of heaven’s trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Brows’d by none but Dian’s fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then
On the earth ye live again;
And the souls ye left behind you
Teach us, here, the way to find you,
Where your other souls are joying,
Never slumber’d, never cloying.
Here, your earth-born souls still speak
To mortals, of their little week;
Of their sorrows and delights;
Of their passions and their spites;
Of their glory and their shame;
What doth strengthen and what maim.
Thus ye teach us, every day,
Wisdom, though fled far away.

Bards of passion and of mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Ye have souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new!

John Keats 1818

Spirit here that reignest
Spirit here that reignest!
Spirit here that painest!
Spirit here that burneth!
Spirit here that mourneth!
Spirit! I bow
My forehead low,
Enshaded with thy pinions!
Spirit! I look
All passion struck,
Into thy pale dominions!

Spirit here that laughest!
Spirit here that quaffest!
Spirit here that danceth!
Spirit here that pranceth!
Spirit! with thee
I join in the glee,
While nudging the elbow of Momus!
Spirit! I flush
With a Bacchanal blush,
Just fresh from the banquet of Comus!

John Keats 1818

I had a dove
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:
Sweet little red feet! why would you die?
Why would you leave me, sweet bird, why?
You liv’d alone on the forest tree,
Why, pretty thing, could you not live with me?
I kiss’d you oft, and gave you white pease;
Why not live sweetly as in the green trees?

John Keats 1819

Hush, hush, tread softly
Hush, hush, tread softly, hush, hush, my dear,
All the house is asleep, but we know very well
That the jealous, the jealous old baldpate may hear,
Though you’ve padded his night-cap, O sweet Isabel.
Though your feet are more light than a fairy’s feet,
Who dances on bubble where brooklets meet –
Hush, hush, tread softly, hush, hush, my dear,
For less than a nothing the jealous can hear.

No leaf doth tremble, no ripple is there
On the river – all’s still, and the night’s sleepy eye
Closes up, and forgets all its Lethean care,
Charmed to death by the drone of the humming may fly.
And the moon, whether prudish or complaisant,
Hath fled to her bower, well knowing I want
No light in the darkness, no torch in the gloom,
But my Isabel’s eyes and her lips pulped with bloom.

Lift the latch, ah gently! ah tenderly, sweet,
We are dead if that latchet gives one little chink.
Well done – now those lips and a flowery seat:
The old man may sleep, and the planets may wink;
The shut rose shall dream of our loves and awake
Full blown, and such warmth for the morning take;
The stockdove shall hatch her soft brace and shall coo,
While I kiss to the melody, aching all through.

John Keats 1818

Ah! woe is me!
Ah! woe is me! poor Silver-wing!
That I must chaunt thy lady’s dirge,
And death to this fair haunt of spring,
Of melody, and streams of flowery verge, –
Poor Silver-wing! Ah! woe is me!
That I must see
These blossoms snow upon thy lady’s pall!
Go, pretty page, and in her ear
Whisper that the hour is near!
Softly tell her not to fear
Such calm favonian burial!
Go, pretty page, and smoothly tell, –
The blossoms hang by a melting spell,
And fall they must, ere a star wink thrice
Upon her closed eyes,
That now in vain are weeping their last tears,
At sweet life leaving, and these arbours green, –
Rich dowry from the sirit of the spheres, –
Alas! poor queen!

John Keats 1818

The Eve of St. Agnes
And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.

These delicates he heap’d with glowing hand
On golden dishes and in baskets bright
Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand
In the retired quiet of the night,
Filling the chilly room with perfume light.-
“And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake!
Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite:
Open thy eyes, for meek St. Agnes’ sake,
Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache.”

John Keats 1819

Why did I laugh tonight?
Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No god, no demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once -
Heart! thou and I are here sad and alone;
Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O darkness! darkness! ever must I moan,
To question heaven and hell and heart in vain!
Why did I laugh? I know this being’s lease -
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads:
Yet could I on this very midnight cease,
And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds.
Verse, fame, and beauty are intense indeed,
But death intenser - death is life’s high meed.

John Keats 1819

As Hermes
As Hermes once took to his feathers light
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept
So on a delphic reed my idle spright
So play’d, so charm’d so conquer’d, so bereft
The dragon world of all its hundred eyes
And seeing it asleep so fled away: –
Not to pure Ida with its snowcold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove grieved that day,
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind and the flaw
Of Rain and hailstones lovers need not tell
Their sorrows – Pale were the sweet lips I saw
Pale were the lips I kiss’d and fair the form
I floated with about that melancholy storm –

John Keats 1819

Character of Charles Brown
He is to weet a melancholy carle:
Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair,
As hath the seeded thistle when in parle
It holds the Zephyr, ere it sendeth fair
Its light balloons into the summer air;
Thereto his beard had not begun to bloom,
No brush had touched his chin or razor sheer;
No care had touched his cheek with mortal doom,
But new he was and bright as scarf from Persian loom.

Ne cared he for wine, or half-and-half,
Ne cared he for fish or flesh or fowl,
And sauces held he worthless as the chaff;
He ‘sdained the swine-herd at the wassail-bowl,
Ne with lewd ribbalds sat he cheek by jowl,
Ne with sly Lemans in the the scorner’s chair,
But after water-brooks this Pilgrim’s soul
Panted, and all his food was woodland air
Though he would oft-times feast on gillyflowers rare.

The slang of cities in no wise he knew,
Tipping the wink to him was heathen Greek.
He sipped no olden Tom or ruin blue,
Or Nantz or cheery-brandy drank full meek
By many a damsel hoarse and rouge of cheek.
Nor did he know each agèd watchman’s beat,
Nor in obscurèd purlieus would he seek
For curlèd Jewesses, with ankles neat,
Who as they walk abroad make tinkling with their feet.

John Keats 1819

Bright star
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendor 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’s 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 upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
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 1819

La Belle Dame
O what can ail thee, knight in arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight at arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheek’s a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a fairy’s child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said-
I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d – Ah! Woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death pale were they all;
They cried- “La belle dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

John Keats 1819

Sonnet to Sleep
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the Amen ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes:
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like the mole:
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

John Keats 1819

Ode to a Nightingale
John Keats 1819

Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats 1819

Ode on Melancholy
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

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 globed 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.

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
Veil’d 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.

John Keats 1819

Ode on Indolence

“They toil not, neither do they spin.”

One morn before me were three figures seen,
With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp’d serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes graced:
They pass’d, like figures on a marble urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.

How is it, shadows, that I knew ye not?
How came ye muffled in so hush a masque?
Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower.
O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
Unhaunted quite of all but – nothingness?

A third time pass’d they by, and, passing, turn’d
Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d
And ached for wings, because I knew the three:
The first was a fair maid, and Love her name;
The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
And ever watchful with fatigued eye;
The last, whom I love more, the more of blame
Is heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek, -
I knew to be my demon Poesy.

They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
O folly! What is Love? And where is it?
And for that poor Ambition - it springs
From a man’s little heart’s short fever- fit;
For Poesy! - no, - she has not a joy,-
At least for me, - so sweet as drowsy noons,
And evenings steep’d in honied indolence;
O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,
That I may never know how change the moons,
Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!

A third time came they by; - alas! Wherefore?
My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er
With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:
The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
Though in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;
The open casement press’d a new-leaved vine,
Let in the budding warmth and throstle’s lay;
O shadows! ‘twas a time to bid farewell!
Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.

So, ye three ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
For I would not be dieted with praise,
A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more
In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;
Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,
And for the day faint visions there is store;
Vanish, ye phantoms, from my idle spright,
Into the clouds, and never more return!

John Keats 1819

To Autumn
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-eves 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.

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-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowd’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

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,
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats 1819

I cry your mercy
I cry your mercy - pity - love! - aye, love,
Merciful love that tantalises not,
One-thoughted, never wand’ring, guileless love,
Unmask’d, and being seen - without a blot!
O, let me have thee whole, - all, - all - be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, -
Yourself - your soul - in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die,
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life’s purposes, the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind.

John Keats 1819

To Fanny
Physician Nature! let my spirit blood!
O ease my heart of verse and let me rest;
Throw me upon thy tripod, till the flood
Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.
A theme! a theme! Great Nature! give a theme;
Let me begin my dream.
I come - I see thee, as thou standest there,
Beckon me out into the wintry air.

Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears
And hopes and joys and panting miseries, -
To-night, if I may guess, thy beauty wears
A smile of such delight,
As brilliant and as bright,
As when with ravished, aching, vassal eyes,
Lost in a soft amaze,
I gaze, I gaze!

Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast?
Wht stare outfaces now my silver moon!
Ah! keep that hand unravished at the least;
Let, let the amorous burn -
But, prithee, do not turn
The current of your heart from me so soon:
O save, in charity,
The quickest pulse for me.

Save it for me, sweet love! though music breathe
Voluptuous visions into the warm air,
Though swimming through the dance’s dangerous wreath,
Be like an April day,
Smiling and cold and gay,
A temperate lily, temperate as fair;
Then, heaven! there will be
A warmer June for me.

Why this, you’ll say - my Fanny! - is not true;
Put your soft hand upon your snowy side,
Where the heart beats: confess - ‘tis nothing new -
Must not a woman be
A feather on the sea,
Swayed to and fro by every wind and tide?
Of as uncertain speed
As blow-ball from the mead?

I know it - and to know it is despair
To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny,
Whose heart goes fluttering for you every where,
Nor when away you roam,
Dare keep its wretched home:
Love, love alone, has pains severe and many;
Then, loveliest! keep me free
From torturing jealousy.

Ah! if you prize my subdued soul above
The poor, the fading, brief pride of an hour:
Let none profane my Holy See of Love,
Or with a rude hand break
The sacramental cake:
Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;
If not - may my eyes close,
Love, on their last repose!

John Keats 1820