by Keats · Cluster: Imagination · Fragment · Heroic Couplet
Abstract
A fragment defining the true poet as one equal to king or beggar and able to understand the speech of birds and beasts; the poet, imagination and negative capability.
Connections
Topoi: Poet as Prophet Motifs: Birds, Animals, Lion Themes & Concepts: Imagination, Negative Capability, Common Man Forms & Genres: Fragment
Testo integrale / Full text
Where’s the Poet? show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him!
’Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan,
Or any other wondrous thing
A man may be ‘twixt ape and Plato;
’Tis the man who with a bird,
Wren or Eagle, finds his way to
All its instincts; he hath heard
The Lion’s roaring, and can tell
What his horny throat expresseth,
And to him the Tiger’s yell
Comes articulate and presseth
On his ear like mother tongue.