Keats
The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!The solemn grove uplifts its shield of goldTo the red rising moon, and loud and deepThe nightingale is singing from the steep;It is midsummer, but the air is cold;Can it be death? Alas, beside the foldA shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,On which I read: "Here lieth one whose nameWas writ in water." And was this the meedOf his sweet singing? Rather let me write:"The smoking flax before it burst to flameWas quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."
Words in this poem
- midsummer n.
- The middle of summer. Shak. Midsummer daisy (Bot.), the oxeye daisy. [AS. midsumor.]
- meed v. t.
- To reward; to repay. Waytt.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Keats is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Project Gutenberg ebook #1365; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Keats, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/keats.html, id L17743.
Form and metre
Keats is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBAABBACDECDE, the pattern of the Italian sonnet. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.9 syllables. 43% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other Italian sonnets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBAABBACDECDE sleepA · toldB · goldB · deepA · steepA · coldB · foldB · sheepA · whiteC · nameD · meedE · writeC · flameD · reedE
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep; | 10 | ·········· |
| The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told! | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold | 10 | ·/˘·/˘···· |
| To the red rising moon, and loud and deep | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| The nightingale is singing from the steep; | 9 | ·/˘·/˘··· |
| It is midsummer, but the air is cold; | 10 | ··//˘····· |
| Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold | 10 | ····˘/˘/·· |
| A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white, | 10 | ···/···/˘· |
| On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name | 9 | ········· |
| Was writ in water." And was this the meed | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write: | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| "The smoking flax before it burst to flame | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed." | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.