by Keats · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
A sonnet on the blind Homer to whom the gods granted inward sight, finding ‘light on the shores of darkness’. It celebrates poetic vision, blindness as insight, and Greek myth and the sea.
Connections
Topoi: Poet as Prophet Motifs: Light and Dark, Eyes and Sight, Sea Themes & Concepts: Immortality of Art Fame Forms & Genres: Sonnet Historical References: Greek Mythology
Testo integrale / Full text
Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind; - but then the veil was rent,
For Jove uncurtain’d Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,
And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green,
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There is a budding morrow in midnight,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen;
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.