The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats/Stanzas: 'In a drear-nighted December'

by John Keats

For other versions of this work, see Stanzas (Keats).

STANZAS

There is no date given to this poem by Lord Houghton, who published it in the 1848 edition, and no reference occurs to it in the Letters. It was probably an early careless poem, very likely a set of album verses.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would 't were so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writh'd not at passèd joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbèd sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.