Written on the Day that Mr Leigh Hunt Left Prison / John Keats

What though, for showing truth to flattered state,

Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he,

In his immortal spirit, been as free

As the sky-searching lark, and as elate.

Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?

Think you he nought but prison-walls did see,

Till, so unwilling, thou unturnedst the key?

Written on a Summer Evening / John Keats

The church bells toll a melancholy round,

Calling the people to some other prayers,

Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,

More harkening to the sermon's horrid sound.

Surely the mind of man is closely bound

In some blind spell: seeing that each one tears

Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs,

And converse high of those with glory crowned.

Written on a Blank Space / John Keats

This pleasant tale is like a little copse:

The honied lines so freshly interlace,

To keep the reader in so sweet a place,

So that he here and there full-hearted stops;

And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops

Come cool and suddenly against his face,

And, by the wandering melody, may trace

Which way the tender-legged linnet hops.

Written Before Re-Reading King Lear/ John Keats

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!

Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!

Leave melodizing on this wintry day,

Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute.

Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute

Betwixt damnation and impassioned clay

Must I burn through; once more humbly assay

The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.

Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell / John Keats

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;

I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!

O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,

To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be / John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;

When I behold upon the night's starred 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;

To the Nile / John Keats

Son of the old Moon-mountains African!

Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!

We call thee fruitful, and that very while

A desert fills our seeing's inward span:

Nurse of swart nations since the world began,

Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile

Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,

ON RECEIVING A CURIOUS SHELL, AND A COPY OF VERSES, FROM THE SAME LADIES / John Keats

Hast thou from the caves of Golconda, a gem

Pure as the ice-drop that froze on the mountain?

Bright as the humming-bird's green diadem,

When it flutters in sun-beams that shine through a fountain?

Hast thou a goblet for dark sparkling wine?

That goblet right heavy, and massy, and gold?

And splendidly mark'd with the story divine

Of Armida the fair, and Rinaldo the bold?

To Some Ladies / John Keats

What though while the wonders of nature exploring,

I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;

Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring,

Bless Cynthia's face, the enthusiast's friend:

Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes,

With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove;

Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes,

Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews.

To Sleep / John Keats

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!

Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,

Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered 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;

To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent / John Keats

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?

To My Brothers / John Keats

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 fixed, as in poetic sleep,

Upon the lore so voluble and deep,

That aye at fall of night our care condoles.

To My Brother George / John Keats

Many the wonders I this day have seen:

The sun, when first he kissed away the tears

That filled the eyes of Morn; -the laurelled peers

Who from the feathery gold of evening lean; - 

The ocean with its vastness, its blue green,

Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,

Its voice mysterious, which whoso hears

Must think on what will be, and what has been.

To Leight Hunt, Esq. / John Keats

Glory and loveliness have passed away;

For if we wander out in early morn,

No wreathed incense do we see upborne

Into the east, to meet the smiling day:

No crowd of nymphs soft voic'd and young, and gay,

In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,

Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn

The shrine of Flora in her early May.

To Kosciusko / John Keats

Good Kosciusko, thy great name alone

Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;

It comes upon us like the glorious pealing

Of the wide spheres--an everlasting tone.

And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown,

The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing,

And changed to harmonies, for ever stealing

Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne.

To John Hamilton Reynolds / John Keats

O that a week could be an age, and we

Felt parting and warm meeting every week,

Then one poor year a thousand years would be,

The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:

So could we live long life in little space,

So time itself would be annihilate,

So a day's journey in oblivious haze

To serve ourjoys would lengthen and dilate.

To Hope / John Keats

When by my solitary hearth I sit,

And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;

When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,

And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;

Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,

And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head.

To Homer / John Keats

Standing aloof in giant ignorance,

Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,

As one who sits ashore and longs perchance

To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.

So thou wast blind! -but then the veil was rent;

For Jove uncurtained Heaven to let thee live,

And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,

And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;

To Haydon / John Keats

Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak

Definitively of these mighty things;

Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings,

That what I want I know not where to seek,

And think that I would not be over-meek,

In rolling out upfollowed thunderings,

Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,

Were I of ample strength for such a freak.

To George Felton Mathew / John Keats

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong,

And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song;

Nor can remembrance, Mathew! bring to view

A fate more pleasing, a delight more true

Than that in which the brother Poets joy'd,

Who with combined powers, their wit employ'd

To raise a trophy to the drama's muses.