RPO -- John Keats : On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

John Keats (1795-1821)

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

1O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!

2 Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!

3 Leave melodizing on this wintry day,

4Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:

5Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,

6 Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay

7 Must I burn through; once more humbly assay

8The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.

9Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,

10 Begetters of our deep eternal theme,

11When through the old oak forest I am gone,

12 Let me not wander in a barren dream,

13But when I am consumed in the fire,

14Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

Notes

1] golden-tongued Romance. The meaning and identification is uncertain. Keats may be contrasting poetic romance and poetic tragedy in general in the sonnet; he may be thinking particularly of The Faerie Queene and King Lear; or in putting aside romance, he may have in mind, to some degree, his own Endymion: A Poetic Romance which he was revising for the press at this time.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Richard Monckton Milnes, Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats (New York: Putnam, 1848). PR 4836 A4 1848 ROBA
First publication date: 1838
RPO poem editor: J. R. MacGillivray
RP edition: 3RP 2.622.
Recent editing: 4:2001/12/28

Composition date: January 1818
Composition date note: January 22, 1818
Form: Italian Sonnet (variant)
Rhyme: abbaabbacdcdee
Form note: Keats's quatrain-and-couplet rhyme scheme in the sestet is a common variation that recalls the English sonnet.

Other poems by John Keats