John Keats (1795-1821)

Ode on Melancholy

1No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

2Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

3Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd

4By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;

5Make not your rosary of yew-berries,

6Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be

7Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

8A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;

9For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

10And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

11But when the melancholy fit shall fall

12Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

13That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

14And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

15Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,

16Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,

17Or on the wealth of globed peonies;

18Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

19Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,

20And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

21She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;

22And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

23Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

24Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

25Ay, in the very temple of Delight

26Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

27Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

28Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;

29His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,

30And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Notes

1] The original first stanza of the poem, suppressed before publication ended: "you would fail /To find the Melancholy—whether she / Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull."

6] death moth: the Death's-head moth.

Online text copyright ©2003, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: John Keats, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820). Facs. edn.: Scolar Press, 1970. PR 4830 E20AB Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto).
First publication date: 1820
RPO poem editor: J. R. MacGillivray
RP edition: 3RP 2.652.
Recent editing: 4:2001/12/20

Composition date: May 1819-June 1819
Composition date note: May or June 1819
Form: English Ode
Rhyme: ababcdecde

John Keats (1795-1821)

Ode to a Nightingale

1.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 2

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 4

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,—

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees 7

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 9

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been 11

Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green, 13

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! 14

O for a beaker full of the warm South, 15

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 16

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

3.
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; 26

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

4.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 32

But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 33

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; 37

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

5.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 43

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; 46

Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

6.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time 51

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

To thy high requiem become a sod. 60

7.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn; 67

The same that oft-times hath

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

8.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Notes

[2] hemlock: a poisonous plant which produces death by paralysis.

[4] Lethe: a river of the lower world from which the shades drank, and thus obtained forgetfulness of the past.

[7] Dryad: a wood nymph.

[9] beechen: of the beech tree.

[11] draught: what can be swallowed in a single drink.

[13] Flora: the goddess of flowers, here used for flowers themselves. Cf. Keats' letter to Fanny Keats ca. May 1, 1819: "O there is nothing like fine weather ... and, please heaven, a little claret-wine cool out of a cellar a mile deep -- with a few or a good many ratafia cakes -- a rocky basin to bathe in, a strawberry bed to say your prayers to Flora in" (Letters, II, 56).

[14] Provençal song. In the early Middle Ages the poets of southern France, the troubadours of Provence, were particularly famous for their love lyrics.

[15] warm South: a southern wine.

[16] Hippocrene: a fountain on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sacred to the Muses.

[26] Tom Keats died of consumption on Dec. 1, 1818.

[32] Bacchus and his pards: the Roman god of wine, whho traditionally is shown in a conveyance drawn by leopards.

[33] viewless: invisible. This phrase appears in half a dozen poems from 1765 to Mary Robinson's "The Progress of Liberty" in 1806 (II, 426).

[37] Fays: fairies.

[43] embalmed: full of balms, or perfumes. Lines 43-49 appear to echo Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, II.i.249-52 The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans and J. J. M. Tobin, 2nd edn. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997):

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine . . .

[46] pastoral eglantine. Eglantine is properly the sweet-briar, though popularly applied to various varieties of the wild rose. "Pastoral" presumably because often referred to in pastoral poetry.

[51] Darkling: in the dark; cf Milton, Paradise Lost, III, 38-40: "As the wakeful Bird/Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid/Tunes her nocturnal Note."

[60] high requiem: a liturgical song for the repose of the dead.

[67] alien corn: alien because Ruth was not an Israelite but a Moabitess, gleaning in the barley fields of Judah (Ruth 2:1-2).

John Keats (1795-1821)

Ode on a Grecian Urn

1Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

2Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

3Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

4A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

5What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

6 Of deities or mortals, or of both,

7In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

8What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

9What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

10What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

11Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

12Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

13Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

14Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

15Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

16Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

17Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

18Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

19She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

20For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

21Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

22Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

23And, happy melodist, unwearièd,

24For ever piping songs for ever new;

25More happy love! more happy, happy love!

26For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

27For ever panting, and for ever young;

28All breathing human passion far above,

29That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

30A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

31Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

32To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

33Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

34And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

35What little town by river or sea shore,

36Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

37Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

38And, little town, thy streets for evermore

39Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

40Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

41O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

42Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

43With forest branches and the trodden weed;

44Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

45As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

46When old age shall this generation waste,

47Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

48Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

49"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

50Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Notes

1] No Greek vase has been found which corresponds to Keats's description; it is supposed to be based rather on his general recollection of various works of Greek art as found in the British Museum and as depicted in engravings.

7] Tempe: a valley in Thessaly famous for its beauty.
Arcady: Arcadia, a district of the Peloponnesus, a pastoral country; associated with pastoral poetry.

41] brede: a variant of "braid," an interweaving.

44] tease us out of thought: draw us out beyond the limits of thought. This phrase occurs also in Keats's Epistle to Reynolds, written in March 1818: "Things cannot to the will/Be settled, but they tease us out of thought."

49-50] Beauty and truth are associated several times in Keats's letters: "What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth" (Nov. 22, 1817); ". . . in close relationship of Beauty and Truth" (Dec. 21, 1817); "I can never feel certain of a truth but from a clear perception of its Beauty" (Dec. 31, 1818). When the poem was first published in Annals of the Fine Arts, the last two lines were without quotation marks. In Lamia, etc., "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" was set in quotation marks as words of the urn, the rest being comment by the poet. This reading has caused unnecessary grammatical confusion. Keats was ill when Lamia, etc., was being prepared for the press, and we do not know who introduced the limited quotation. Our text follows the example of the Riverside edition (Douglas Bush, ed.) in putting the last two lines in quotation marks.

Original text: Annals of the Fine Arts, 15 (Dec. (?) 1819). Reprinted with minor changes in John Keats, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820). Facs. edn.: Scolar Press, 1970. PR 4830 E20AB Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto).
First publication date: 1820
RPO poem editor: J. R. MacGillivray
RP edition: 3RP 2.651.
Recent editing: 4:2001/12/20

Composition date: May 1819
Form: English Ode
Rhyme: ababcdedce