by Keats · Cluster: Melancholy · Suffering · Pain and Suffering
Abstract
A dark sonnet questioning Heaven, Hell and Heart over a mysterious midnight laugh, concluding that ‘Death is Life’s high meed’. It treats mortality, melancholy, doubt, and the longing for death.
Connections
Motifs: Death, Night Themes & Concepts: Mortality, Melancholy, Doubt Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No God, no Demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once.
Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone;
I say, why did I laugh! O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,
To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.
Why did I laugh? I know this Being’s lease,
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads;
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Yet would I on this very midnight cease,
And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds;
Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,
But Death intenser - Death is Life’s high meed.