by Keats · Cluster: Appearance vs Reality · Beauty · Eyes and Sight
Abstract
A sonnet answering Reynolds in praise of blue over dark eyes, celebrating the blue of sky, sea and flowers; beauty, nature, colour and gallant debate.
Connections
Motifs: Nature, Flowers, Sea, Eyes and Sight, Sun Themes & Concepts: Beauty, Imagination Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell!
J. H. Reynolds
Blue! ’Tis the life of heaven, - the domain
Of Cynthia, - the wide palace of the sun, -
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train, -
The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun.
Blue! Tis the life of waters: - Ocean
And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness.
Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers, -
10
Forget-me-not, - the bluebell, - and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art, alive with fate!