And what is love? It is a doll dress’d upFor idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;A thing of soft misnomers, so divineThat silly youth doth think to make itselfDivine by loving, and so goes onYawning and doting a whole summer long,Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world,If Queens and Soldiers have play’d deep for hearts,It is no reason why such agoniesShould be more common than the growth of weeds.Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearlThe…
Author: John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English poet prominent in the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, although his poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25.
As late I rambled in the happy fields, What time the sky-lark shakes the tremulous dew From his lush clover covert;—when anew Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields: I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields, A fresh-blown musk-rose; ’twas the first that threw Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew As is the wand that queen Titania wields. And, as I feasted on its fragrancy, I thought the garden-rose it far excell’d: But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me My sense with their deliciousness was spell’d: Soft voices had they,…
For Fanny Brawne The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone, Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang’rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Faded the shape of beauty from my arms, Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise! Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve, When the dusk holiday—or holinight— Of fragrant-curtained love begins to weave The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight; But, as I’ve read love’s missal through today,
To Fanny. I cry your mercy—pity—love!—ay, love! Merciful love that tantalises not One-thoughted, never-wandering, 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!
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring’s honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto Heaven: quiet coves His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness—to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:— He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else…