JOHN KEATS

JOHN KEATS

The weltering London ways where children weep

    And girls whom none call maidens laugh, — strange road

    Miring his outward steps, who inly trode

The bright Castalian brink and Latmos’ steep: —

Even such his life’s cross-paths; till deathly deep

    He toiled through sands of Lethe; and long pain,

    Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,

In dead Rome’s sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.

O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips

And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon’s eclipse, —

    Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o’er, —

Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ

But rumour’d in water, while the fame of it

    Along Time’s flood goes echoing evermore.