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#NaPoWriMo 4 Best Poems By John Keats, The God Of Poetry

April is our favorite month because it is the month of poetry and all things poesy! Hence, we are bringing you our favorite poets and their best works every day through these #NaPoWriMo posts.

Today, we have compiled a list of 4 of the best poems by John Keats. This, however, isn’t an exclusive list, but just a list of our favorites.

We hope you will love going through these beauties, just as much as we did curating them for you. :)


Suggested read: #NaPoWriMo Poems That’ll Disturb The Comfortable And Comfort The Disturbed


Best poems by John Keats

1.      To Autumn 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 

And still more, later flowers for the bees, 

Until they think warm days will never cease, 

      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, 

   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: 

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 

   Steady thy laden head across a brook; 

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. 

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? 

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— 

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft 

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; 

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

2.      Ode on a Grecian Urn 

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, 

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: 

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape 

       Of deities or mortals, or of both, 

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 

       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? 

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? 

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; 

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, 

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: 

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; 

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; 

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed 

         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; 

And, happy melodist, unwearied, 

         For ever piping songs for ever new; 

More happy love! more happy, happy love! 

         For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, 

                For ever panting, and for ever young; 

All breathing human passion far above, 

         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, 

                A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? 

         To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 

         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? 

What little town by river or sea shore, 

         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 

                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? 

And, little town, thy streets for evermore 

         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell 

                Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. 

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede 

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 

With forest branches and the trodden weed; 

         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 

         When old age shall this generation waste, 

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, 

         “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all 

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”


Suggested read: #NaPoWriMo W.B. Yeats And His Beauties


  1. Ode to Psyche

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung 

         By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, 

And pardon that thy secrets should be sung 

         Even into thine own soft-conched ear: 

Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see 

         The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes? 

I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly, 

         And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, 

Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side 

         In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof 

         Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran 

                A brooklet, scarce espied: 

Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, 

         Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, 

They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass; 

         Their arms embraced, and their pinions too; 

         Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu, 

As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, 

And ready still past kisses to outnumber 

         At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love: 

                The winged boy I knew; 

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? 

                His Psyche true! 

O latest born and loveliest vision far 

         Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy! 

Fairer than Phoebe’s sapphire-region’d star, 

         Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; 

Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, 

                Nor altar heap’d with flowers; 

Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan 

                Upon the midnight hours; 

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet 

         From chain-swung censer teeming; 

No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat 

         Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming. 

O brightest! though too late for antique vows, 

         Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, 

When holy were the haunted forest boughs, 

         Holy the air, the water, and the fire; 

Yet even in these days so far retir’d 

         From happy pieties, thy lucent fans, 

         Fluttering among the faint Olympians, 

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir’d. 

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan 

                Upon the midnight hours; 

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet 

         From swinged censer teeming; 

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat 

         Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming. 

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane 

         In some untrodden region of my mind, 

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, 

         Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: 

Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees 

         Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; 

And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, 

         The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep; 

And in the midst of this wide quietness 

A rosy sanctuary will I dress 

   With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain, 

         With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, 

With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign, 

         Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same: 

And there shall be for thee all soft delight 

         That shadowy thought can win, 

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, 

         To let the warm Love in! 

4.      Ode to a Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 

         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 

         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 

‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 

         But being too happy in thine happiness,— 

                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees 

                        In some melodious plot 

         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 

                Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been 

         Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, 

Tasting of Flora and the country green, 

         Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! 

O for a beaker full of the warm South, 

         Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 

                With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 

                        And purple-stained mouth; 

         That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 

                And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 

         What thou among the leaves hast never known, 

The weariness, the fever, and the fret 

         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; 

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, 

         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; 

                Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 

                        And leaden-eyed despairs, 

         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 

                Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 

Away! away! for I will fly to thee, 

         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 

But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 

         Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: 

Already with thee! tender is the night, 

         And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, 

                Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays; 

                        But here there is no light, 

         Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 

                Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 

         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 

         Wherewith the seasonable month endows 

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 

         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; 

                Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves; 

                        And mid-May’s eldest child, 

         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 

                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time 

         I have been half in love with easeful Death, 

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, 

         To take into the air my quiet breath; 

                Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 

         To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 

                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 

                        In such an ecstasy! 

         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— 

                   To thy high requiem become a sod. 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! 

         No hungry generations tread thee down; 

The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

         In ancient days by emperor and clown: 

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 

         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 

                She stood in tears amid the alien corn; 

                        The same that oft-times hath 

         Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam 

                Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell 

         To toll me back from thee to my sole self! 

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well 

         As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf. 

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 

         Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 

                Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep 

                        In the next valley-glades: 

         Was it a vision, or a waking dream? 

                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? 


Suggested read: #NaPoWriMo The Best Of Walt Whitman!


This is all we have on today’s post on the Best Poems by John Keats. This is, however, not an exhaustive list, and if we have missed out on some of your favorites, then please feel free to add them in the comment section below.

Until next time!

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#NaPoWriMo 4 Best Poems By John Keats, The God Of Poetry
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Today, we have compiled a list of 4 of the best poems by John Keats. This, however, isn’t an exclusive list, but just a list of our favorites.
Riya Roy

Riya Roy

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.” This Isaac Asimov line, embraces my love for writing in the finest and most desperate way that it is and should be! I was tormented by the earnestness of the written word not very early in my journey. But once smitten, it has helped me devour life twice over; savoring the moment and indulging in its memories. As a flâneuse, I wander to understand the intricacies of human relationships. Realizing that, they are just different manifestations of the same feeling of love, has been my greatest learning. I seek to share its opulence through the words I type.