Keats

'Ode to a Nightingale' and Other Poems

John Keats

• Publisher: Michael O'Mara
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781782437116
• eBook ISBN: 9781782437154
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Arguably the greatest of all the English Romantic poets, John Keats left behind him an astonishingly large body of work almost as remarkable for its maturity as for its beauty. Whether in longer narrative works like 'The Eve of St Agnes', or in such sonnets as 'On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer', or in magnificent odes like those 'To a Nightingale' and 'To Autumn', his verse resonates with lyricism and with sensuous imagery, however melancholy his tone or his subject. His finest poems are among the greatest in the language; almost all of them strike a chord in the heart of even the most jaded reader.This compact selection includes many of Keats's greatest shorter poems, as well as extracts from his longer works.

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy For Ever, from Book 1 of Endymion

(1818)

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

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-darken’d 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.

Therefore, ’tis with full happiness that I

Will trace the story of Endymion.

The very music of the name has gone

Into my being, and each pleasant scene

Is growing fresh before me as the green

Of our own valleys: so I will begin

Now while I cannot hear the city’s din;

Now while the early budders are just new,

And run in mazes of the youngest hue

About old forests; while the willow trails

Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails

Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year

Grows lush in juicy stalks, I’ll smoothly steer

My little boat, for many quiet hours,

With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.

Many and many a verse I hope to write,

Before the daisies, vermeil rimm’d and white,

Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees

Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,

I must be near the middle of my story.

O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,

See it half-finish’d: but let Autumn bold,

With universal tinge of sober gold,

Be all about me when I make an end.

And now at once, adventuresome, I send

My herald thought into a wilderness:

There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress

My uncertain path with green, that I may speed

Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell

(1817)

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,

In flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,

May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep

’Mongst boughs pavilion’d, where the deer’s swift leap

Startles the wild bee from the foxglove 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 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.

Ode to Psyche

(1820)

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung

By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,

And pardon that thy secrets should be sung

Even into thine own soft-conchèd ear:

Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see

The wingèd Psyche with awaken’d eyes?

I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,

And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,

Saw two fair creatures, couchèd side by side

In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof

Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran

A brooklet, scarce espied:

’Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,

They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;

Their arms embracèd, and their pinions too;

Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,

As if disjoinèd by soft-handed slumber,

And ready still past kisses to outnumber

At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:

The wingèd boy I knew;

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?

His Psyche true!

O latest-born and loveliest vision far

Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!

Fairer than Phoebe’s sapphire-region’d star,

Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;

Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,

Nor altar heap’d with flowers;

Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan

Upon the midnight hours;

No voice, no lut...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq.
• How many bards gild the lapses of time!
• On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
• To Chatterton
• A Thing of Beauty is a Joy For Ever, from Book 1 of Endymion
• O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell
• Ode to Psyche
• La Belle Dame Sans Merci
• From The Eve of St Agnes
• Written in the Cottage where Burns was born
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• The day is gone
• Ode to a Nightingale
• If by Dull Rhymes Our English Must be Chain’d
• Ode on Melancholy
• Sonnet to a Cat
• Sonnet: Why did I laugh to-night?
• Two Sonnets on Fame
• To Fanny
• Fancy
• I had a dove
• You Say You Love
• His Last Sonnet
• When I have fears
• Ode to Fanny
• Ode to Autumn
• Stanzas: In drear-nighted December
• To Hope
• To Some Ladies
• On receiving a curious Shell
• Epistle: To my Brother George
• Sonnet: To my Brother George
• Sonnet: To My Brothers
• To a Friend who sent me some Roses
• To one who has been long in city pent
• Addressed to Haydon
• Addressed to the Same
• On the Grasshopper and Cricket
• Written on the day that Mr Leigh Hunt left Prison
• Happy is England! I could be content
• Robin Hood
• Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
• Sonnet: On the Sea
• The Poet
• A draught of Sunshine
• Sonnet to the Nile
• Sonnet: Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition
• Fragment of an Ode to Maia, written on May Day, 1818
• A prophecy: To George Keats in America
• A Song of Opposites
• Sonnet to a lady seen for a few Moments at Vauxhall
• Ode to Apollo
• Sonnet on sitting down to read King Lear once again
• Written on Top of the Ben Nevis
• Ode on Indolence
• The Human Seasons
• Women, wine, and snuff
• Modern Love
• On Death
• Index of first lines