“Oh, I Am Frighten’d with Most Hateful Thoughts!”

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

Oh, I am frighten’d with most hateful thoughts!
Perhaps her voice is not a nightingale’s,
Perhaps her teeth are not the fairest pearl;
Her eye-lashes may be, for aught I know,
Not longer than the May-fly’s small fanhorns;
There may not be one dimple on her hand;
And freckles many; ah! a careless nurse,
In haste to teach the little thing to walk,
May have crumpt up a pair of Dian’s legs,
And warpt the ivory of a Juno’s neck.

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–#L10.

Cite this poem

John Keats (1795–1821). ““Oh, I Am Frighten’d with Most Hateful Thoughts!”.” First published in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-keats/oh-i-am-frightend-with-most-hateful-thoughts/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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