The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats/Written on the Blank Space at the end of Chaucer's Tale of 'The Floure and the Lefe'
WRITTEN ON THE BLANK SPACE AT THE END OF CHAUCER'S TALE OF 'THE FLOURE AND THE LEFE'
Written in February, 1817, and published in The Examiner, March 16, 1817. There is a pleasant story that Charles Cowden Clarke had fallen asleep over the book, and woke to find this epilogue.
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.
Oh! what a power has white simplicity!
What mighty power has this gentle story!
I, that do ever feel athirst for glory,
Could at this moment be content to lie
Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings
Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.