by Keats · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
An early lyric in which the speaker craves wine and Lethean forgetfulness to banish the haunting image of an unattainable beloved; themes of unrequited love, melancholy and memory.
Connections
Topoi: Unattainable Beloved Motifs: Wine and Drink, Memory, Eyes and Sight Themes & Concepts: Unrequited Frustrated Love, Melancholy Forms & Genres: Lyric Historical References: Greek Mythology Settings: Underworld Cave
Testo integrale / Full text
Fill for me a brimming bowl
And let me in it drown my soul:
But put therein some drug, designed
To banish women from my mind:
For I want not the stream inspiring
That fills the mind with - fond desiring,
But I want as deep a draught
As e’er from Lethe’s wave was quaff d;
From my despairing heart to charm
The image of the fairest form 10
That e’er my reveling eyes beheld,
That e’er my wandering fancy spell’d.
In vain! away I cannot chase
The melting softness of that face,
The beaminess of those bright eyes,
That breast-earth’s only Paradise.
My sight will never more be blest;
For all I see has lost its zest:
Nor with delight can I explore
The Classic page, or Muse’s lore. 20
Had she but known how beat my heart,
And with one smile reliev’d its smart
I should have felt sweet relief,
I should have felt ‘the joy of grief.’
Yet as the Tuscan mid the snow
Of Lapland thinks on sweet Arno,
Even so for ever shall she be
The Halo of my Memory.
August 1814