by Keats · Cluster: Wonder and Gratitude · Sublime · Storm
Abstract
A sonnet addressing Spenser, pleading the impossibility of matching his poetic fire and asking for time to ripen; the poetic vocation and inspiration.
Connections
Topoi: Inexpressibility, Book of Nature Motifs: Flowers, Sun Themes & Concepts: Imagination, Artist and Society Forms & Genres: Sonnet Historical References: Renaissance
Testo integrale / Full text
Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine,
A forester deep in thy midmost trees,
Did last eve ask my promise to refine
Some English that might strive thine ear to please.
But Elfin Poet ’tis impossible
For an inhabitant of wintry earth
To rise like Phoebus with a golden quell
Fire-wing’d and make a morning in his mirth.
It is impossible to escape from toil
O’ the sudden and receive thy spiriting: 10
The flower must drink the nature of the soil
Before it can put forth its blossoming:
Be with me in the summer days and I
Will for thine honour and his pleasure try.