Folly’s Song

John Keats (1795–1821) · Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats · Extracts from an Opera · 1848

When wedding fiddles are a-playing,
Huzza for folly O!
And when maidens go a-Maying,
Huzza, etc.
When a milk-pail is upset,
Huzza, etc.
And the clothes left in the wet,
Huzza, etc.
When the barrel’s set abroach,
Huzza, etc.
When Kate Eyebrow keeps a coach,
Huzza, etc.
When the pig is over-roasted,
Huzza, etc.
And the cheese is over-toasted.
Huzza, etc.
When Sir Snap is with his lawyer.
Huzza, etc.
And Miss Chip has kiss’d the sawyer;
Huzza, etc.

Where this text comes from

First published in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-19.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/john-keats_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L20.

Cite this poem

John Keats (1795–1821). “Folly’s Song.” First published in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-keats/follys-song/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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