Nor numbèd sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.
WRITTEN IN DISGUST OF VULGAR SUPERSTITION
In Tom Keats's copybook this sonnet is dated 'Sunday evening, Dec. 24, 1816.' Lord Houghton gives it in the Aldine edition, and heads it 'Written on a Summer Evening.' Possibly the seventh line may be adduced as evidence of the wintry season.
The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crown'd.
Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,—
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That 't is their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion;—that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.
SONNET
Published in the 1817 volume, but there is no evidence as to its exact date. It is the latest in order of the sonnets, immediately preceding Sleep and Poetry.
Happy is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent:
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.
ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET
Written December 30, 1816, on a challenge from Leigh Hunt, who printed both his and Keats's sonnets in his paper, The Examiner. Keats included the sonnet in his 1817 volume. Leigh Hunt's sonnet will be found in the Notes and Illustrations.
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one, in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
