by Keats · Cluster: Transience · Decay · Carpe Diem
Abstract
A sonnet on the vanishing of a day of love at nightfall, cataloguing fading sensual delights; transience of beauty and erotic pleasure with a devotional ‘love’s missal’ close.
Connections
Topoi: Tempus Fugit, Love as Religion Motifs: Night, Flowers Themes & Concepts: Transience, Romantic Love Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,
Bright eyes, accomplish’d shape, and lang’rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise -
Vanish’d unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday - or holinight
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Of fragrant-curtain’d love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight ;
But, as I’ve read love’s missal through today,
He’ll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.