Sonnets of John Keats

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By Listen TheBook Posted on Jan 30, 2024

In Category - Single author

Authors: John Keats In Year : 1898

Book Language: English

Audiobook: Sonnets of John Keats

Dedication of the Volume of 1817 to Leigh Hunt
O Chatterton! how very sad thy fate!
Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody!
Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine
To My Brother George
As from the darkening gloom a silver dove
Written on a Summer Evening
To G. A. W.
To --
To a Friend Who Sent Me some Roses
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell
Oh! how I love, on a fair summer's eve
To a Young Lady who Sent Me a Laurel Crown
Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt Left Prison
To Kosciusko
How many bards gild the lapses of time!
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Keen fitful gusts are whispering here and there
On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour
Happy is England! I could be content
To My Brothers
On the Grasshopper and Cricket
Addressed to Haydon
Addressed to the Same
After dark vapours have oppress'd our plains
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time
To Haydon (With the Foregoing)
When I have fears that I may cease to be
On Leigh Hunt's Poem, the "Story of Rimini"
Written on a Blank Space at the End of Chaucer's Tale of "The Flowre and the Lefe"
On a Picture of Leander
On the Sea
To the Nile
On Visiting the Tomb of Burns
Written in Burns' Cottage
To Ailsa Rock
Ben Nevis
To one who has been long in city pent
The Human Seasons
Written before Re-reading King Lear
From Ronsard, Fragment of a Sonnet
Answer to a Sonnet by J. H. Reynolds
To Homer
To John Hamilton Reynolds
To a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall
To Sleep
On Fame
On Fame
Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell
A Dream, after Reading Dante's Episode of Paolo and Francesca
If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd
The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
To Fanny
His Last Sonnet

The superb poetic skill and exquisite sensitivity of John Keats is brilliantly illustrated in this collection of meticulously selected sonnets. Keats had a passion for poetry as he had for life itself. His own life, although cut short at an early age, was one of creativity, productivity and one ornamented with immense poetic skill. His was a life that left an indelible mark of wonder on the world, an enduring legacy, a mark of greatness. Keats would write of his heroes, "How many bards gild the lapses of time!" - other poets and writers whose plight he often lamented, whose talent he always praised and whose loss, should it occur, he grieved. Keats would describe great artistry and the unsparing nature of time, "The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs,- / A woodland rivulet,- a Poet's death." Indeed, Keats would draw his poetic inspiration not only from gifted poets but also from the magnificence of the natural world around him, "The poetry of earth is ceasing never."

Keats's sonnets resound with a search for meaning and, where none seems probable, create a compelling vision of what may be to come. In Keats's work we witness the poetry of fascination, of hope, of gratitude, of uncertainty and of entreaty, "But when I am consumed in the Fire, / Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire."

These sonnets reflect the heart of a man enraptured, albeit the heart of a man too soon to sound its final beat. But until that fateful day we behold a heart strong and determined with the perennial uncertainty foremost in mind, "O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan, / To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain." - Summary by Bruce Kachuk