by Keats · Cluster: Seasons · Winter · Autumn
Abstract
An unrhymed sonnet-letter spoken as the thrush’s counsel, urging trust in instinctive song over anxious pursuit of knowledge, set against winter passing into spring. Central to it are negative capability, the seasons, and the value of receptive idleness.
Connections
Motifs: Birds, Seasons, Winter, Spring Themes & Concepts: Negative Capability, Wonder and Gratitude Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
Lines From a Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds
O Thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind.
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm tops ‘mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phoebus was away.
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge - I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
10
O fret not after knowledge - I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.