{
 "id": "john-keats/epistle-to-george-felton-mathew",
 "title": "Epistle to George Felton Mathew",
 "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": 93,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor can remembrance, Mathew! bring to view",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A fate more pleasing, a delight more true",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than that in which the brother Poets joy’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who, with combinèd powers, their wit employ’d",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To raise a trophy to the drama’s muses.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The thought of this great partnership diffuses",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over the genius-loving heart, a feeling",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all that’s high, and great, and good, and healing.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Too partial friend! fain would I follow thee",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Past each horizon of fine poesy;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fain would I echo back each pleasant note",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As o’er Sicilian seas, clear anthems float",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Mong the light skimming gondolas far parted,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Just when the sun his farewell beam has darted:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But ’tis impossible; far different cares",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beckon me sternly from soft “Lydian airs,”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hold my faculties so long in thrall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I am oft in doubt whether at all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall again see Phœbus in the morning:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or flush’d Aurora in the roseate dawning!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or a rapt seraph in a moonlight beam;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or again witness what with thee I’ve seen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dew by fairy feet swept from the green,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After a night of some quaint jubilee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which every elf and fay had come to see:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When bright processions took their airy march",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beneath the curvèd moon’s triumphal arch.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But might I now each passing moment give",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To the coy Muse, with me she would not live",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In this dark city, nor would condescend",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Mid contradictions her delights to lend.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Should e’er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah! surely it must be whene’er I find",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some flowery spot, sequester’d, wild, romantic,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That often must have seen a poet frantic;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the dark-leav’d laburnum’s drooping clusters",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And intertwined the cassia’s arms unite,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With its own drooping buds, but very white.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where on one side are covert branches hung,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Mong which the nightingales have always sung",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In leafy quiet: where to pry, aloof",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Atween the pillars of the sylvan roof,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would be to find where violet beds were nestling,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And where the bee with cowslip bells was wrestling.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There must be too a ruin dark and gloomy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To say “Joy not too much in all that’s bloomy.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet this is vain⁠—O Mathew, lend thy aid",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To find a place where I may greet the maid⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where we may soft humanity put on,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sit, and rhyme and think on Chatterton;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Four laurell’d spirits, heavenward to entreat him.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With reverence would we speak of all the sages",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thou shouldst moralize on Milton’s blindness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To those who strove with the bright golden wing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of genius, to flap away each sting",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thrown by the pitiless world. We next could tell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of those who in the cause of freedom fell;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of our own Alfred, of Helvetian Tell;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of him whose name to ev’ry heart’s a solace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "High-minded and unbending William Wallace.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While to the rugged north our musing turns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We well might drop a tear for him, and Burns.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Felton! without incitements such as these.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "How vain for me the niggard Muse to tease:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For thee, she will thy every dwelling grace,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And make “a sunshine in a shady place:”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For thou wast once a flow’ret blooming wild,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Close to the source, bright, pure, and undefil’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whence gush the streams of song: in happy hour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Came chaste Diana from her shady bower,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Just as the sun was from the east uprising;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, as for him some gift she was devising,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beheld thee, pluck’d thee, cast thee in the stream",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To meet her glorious brother’s greeting beam.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I marvel much that thou hast never told",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How, from a flower, into a fish of gold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Apollo chang’d thee: how thou next didst seem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A black-ey’d swan upon the widening stream;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when thou first didst in that mirror trace",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The placid features of a human face:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thou hast never told thy travels strange,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all the wonders of the mazy range",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O’er pebbly crystal, and o’er golden sands;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Kissing thy daily food from Naiads’ pearly hands.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}