by Keats · Cluster: Christianity · Faith and Doubt · Doubt
Abstract
A sonnet attacking gloomy church-going superstition, predicting its death and the rebirth of fresh glories; anticlerical critique, faith and doubt, mutability.
Connections
Motifs: Bells, Grave, Flowers Themes & Concepts: Faith and Doubt, Satire of Society, Transience Forms & Genres: Sonnet Historical References: Christianity
Testo integrale / Full text
The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More hearkening to the sermon’s horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crown’d.
Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp, -
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
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That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That ’tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion; - that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.