On a Picture of Leander

Come hither, all sweet maidens soberly,
Down-looking aye, and with a chasten’d light
Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white,
And meekly let your fair hands joined be,
As if so gentle that ye could not see,
Untouch’d, a victim of your beauty bright,
Sinking away to his young spirit’s night,
Sinking bewilder’d ’mid the dreary sea:
’Tis young Leander toiling to his death;
Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips
For Hero’s cheek, and smiles against her smile.
O horrid dream! see how his body dips
Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile:
He’s gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!

Where this text comes from

First published in The Gem: A Literary Annual (1829), edited by Thomas Hood. The claim is the headnote to this poem in The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats, Cambridge Edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1899). The sonnet is undated in the manuscripts and is not in the two volumes of Milnes’s 1848 edition read here. No copy of The Gem has been read here. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

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–#L14.

Cite this poem

John Keats (1795–1821). “On a Picture of Leander.” First published in The Gem: A Literary Annual (1829), edited by Thomas Hood. Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-keats/on-a-picture-of-leander/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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