Keats
The melancholy gift Aurora gainedFrom Jove, that her sad lover should not seeThe face of death, no goddess asked for thee,My Keats! But when the scarlet blood-drop stainedThy pillow, thou didst read the fate ordained,--Brief life, wild love, a flight of poesy!And then,--a shadow fell on Italy:Thy star went down before its brightness waned.
Yet thou hast won the gift Tithonus missed:Never to feel the pain of growing old,Nor lose the blissful sight of beauty's truth,But with the ardent lips Urania kissedTo breathe thy song, and, ere thy heart grew cold,Become the Poet of Immortal Youth.
Words in this poem
- aurora n.
- The rising light of the morning; the dawn of day; the redness of the sky just before the sun rises. [L. aurora, for ausosa, akin to Gr. ushas, and E. east.]
- jove n.
- The chief divinity of the ancient Romans; Jupiter. [L. Jupiter, gen. Jovis, OL. Jovis, nom. & gen. for Djovis; akin to E. Tuesday. See Tuesday, and cf. Jupiter.]
- didst
- , the 2d pers. sing. imp. of Do.
- poesy n.
- The art of composing poems; poetical skill or faculty; as, the heavenly gift of poesy. [F. poésie (cf. It. poesia), L. poesis, from Gr. Posy.]
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- blissful a.
- Full of, characterized by, or causing, joy and felicity; happy in the highest degree.
- urania n.
- One of the nine Muses, daughter of Zeus by Mnemosyne, and patron of astronomy.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Keats is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Henry Van Dyke, Project Gutenberg ebook #16229; 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 Van Dyke, Keats, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/keats.html, id L22957.
Form and metre
Keats is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See 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 ABBAA--A gainedA · seeB · theeB · stainedA · ordainedA · poesy · italy · wanedA
- 2 ABCABC missedA · oldB · truthC · kissedA · coldB · youthC
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 melancholy gift Aurora gained | 10 | ·/˘·˘····· |
| From Jove, that her sad lover should not see | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| The face of death, no goddess asked for thee, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| My Keats! But when the scarlet blood-drop stained | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Thy pillow, thou didst read the fate ordained,-- | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| Brief life, wild love, a flight of poesy! | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| And then,--a shadow fell on Italy: | 10 | ···/···/˘˘ |
| Thy star went down before its brightness waned. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Yet thou hast won the gift Tithonus missed: | 10 | ·········· |
| Never to feel the pain of growing old, | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| Nor lose the blissful sight of beauty's truth, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| But with the ardent lips Urania kissed | 11 | ···/˘·˘/˘˘· |
| To breathe thy song, and, ere thy heart grew cold, | 10 | ·········· |
| Become the Poet of Immortal Youth. | 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.