{
 "id": "john-keats/epistle-to-charles-cowden-clarke",
 "title": "Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Keats",
 "poet_slug": "john-keats",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1817,
  "venue": "Poems (1817)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poems008365mbp"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/john-keats_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/completepoetical01keat",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005261190"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 132,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Oft have you seen a swan superbly frowning,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And with proud breast his own white shadow crowning;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He slants his neck beneath the waters bright",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So silently, it seems a beam of light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come from the galaxy: anon he sports,⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With outspread wings the Naiad Zephyr courts,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or ruffles all the surface of the lake",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In striving from its crystal face to take",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some diamond water-drops, and them to treasure",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In milky nest, and sip them off at leisure.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But not a moment can he there insure them,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor to such downy rest can he allure them;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For down they rush as though they would be free,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And drop like hours into eternity.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Just like that bird am I in loss of time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whene’er I venture on the stream of rhyme;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With shatter’d boat, oar snapt, and canvas rent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I slowly sail, scarce knowing my intent;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still scooping up the water with my fingers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In which a trembling diamond never lingers.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "By this, friend Charles, you may full plainly see",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Why I have never penn’d a line to thee:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because my thoughts were never free, and clear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And little fit to please a classic ear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because my wine was of too poor a savour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For one whose palate gladdens in the flavour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of sparkling Helicon:⁠—small good it were",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To take him to a desert rude, and bare,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who had on Baiæ’s shore reclin’d at ease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While Tasso’s page was floating in a breeze",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That gave soft music from Armida’s bowers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mingled with fragrance from her rarest flowers:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Small good to one who had by Mulla’s stream",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fondled the maidens with the breasts of cream;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who had beheld Belphœbe in a brook,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lovely Una in a leafy nook,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Archimago leaning o’er his book:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who had of all that’s sweet tasted, and seen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From silv’ry ripple, up to beauty’s queen;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the sequester’d haunts of gay Titania,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the blue dwelling of divine Urania:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One, who of late had ta’en sweet forest walks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With him who elegantly chats and talks⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The wrong’d Libertas,⁠—who has told you stories",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of laurel chaplets, and Apollo’s glories;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of troops chivalrous prancing through a city,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And tearful ladies made for love, and pity:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With many else which I have never known.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus have I thought; and days on days have flown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Slowly, or rapidly⁠—unwilling stilly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For you to try my dull, unlearned quill.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor should I now, but that I’ve known you long;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That you first taught me all the sweets of song:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grand, the sweet, the terse, the free, the fine:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What swell’d with pathos, and what right divine:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spenserian vowels that elope with ease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And float along like birds o’er summer seas:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Miltonian storms, and more, Miltonian tenderness:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Michael in arms, and more, meek Eve’s fair slenderness.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up to its climax, and then dying proudly?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who found for me the grandeur of the ode,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Growing, like Atlas, stronger from its load?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who let me taste that more than cordial dram,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sharp, the rapier-pointed epigram?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Show’d me that epic was of all the king,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Round, vast, and spanning all, like Saturn’s ring?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You too upheld the veil from Clio’s beauty,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And pointed out the patriot’s stern duty;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The might of Alfred, and the shaft of Tell;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hand of Brutus, that so grandly fell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon a tyrant’s head. Ah! had I never seen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or known your kindness, what might I have been?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What my enjoyments in my youthful years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bereft of all that now my life endears?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And can I e’er these benefits forget?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And can I e’er repay the friendly debt?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No, doubly no;⁠—yet should these rhymings please,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall roll on the grass with twofold ease;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I have long time been my fancy feeding",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With hopes that you would one day think the reading",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of my rough verses not an hour misspent;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should it e’er be so, what a rich content!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some weeks have pass’d since last I saw the spires",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In lucent Thames reflected:⁠—warm desires",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see the sun o’er-peep the eastern dimness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And morning shadows streaking into slimness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Across the lawny fields, and pebbly water;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To mark the time as they grow broad, and shorter;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To feel the air that plays about the hills,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sips its freshness from the little rills;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To see high, golden corn wave in the light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When Cynthia smiles upon a summer’s night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And peers among the cloudlet’s jet and white,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As though she were reclining in a bed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of bean blossoms, in heaven freshly shed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No sooner had I stepp’d into these pleasures,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than I began to think of rhymes and measures;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The air that floated by me seem’d to say",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Write! thou wilt never have a better day.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so I did. When many lines I’d written,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though with their grace I was not oversmitten,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, as my hand was warm, I thought I’d better",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Trust to my feelings, and write you a letter.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such an attempt required an inspiration",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a peculiar sort,⁠—a consummation;⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which, had I felt, these scribblings might have been",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Verses from which the soul would never wean;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But many days have past since last my heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was warm’d luxuriously by divine Mozart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By Arne delighted, or by Handel madden’d;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or by the song of Erin pierc’d and sadden’d:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What time you were before the music sitting,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the rich notes to each sensation fitting.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since I have walk’d with you through shady lanes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That freshly terminate in open plains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And revell’d in a chat that ceasèd not",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When at night-fall among your books we got:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No, nor when supper came, nor after that,⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor when reluctantly I took my hat;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No, nor till cordially you shook my hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mid-way between our homes:⁠—your accents bland",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still sounded in my ears, when I no more",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could hear your footsteps touch the grav’ly floor.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes I lost them, and then found again;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You changed the foot-path for the grassy plain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In those still moments I have wish’d you joys",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That well you know to honour:⁠—“Life’s very toys",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With him,” said I, “will take a pleasant charm;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It cannot be that ought will work him harm.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These thoughts now come o’er me with all their might:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Again I shake your hand⁠—friend Charles, good night.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}