On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

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

O golden-tongued Romance, with serene lute!
Fair plumèd Syren, Queen of far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay,
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter sweet of this Shakespearean fruit:
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme!
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumèd in the Fire,
Give me new Phœnix-wings to fly at my desire.

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 2026-08-12.

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 Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.” First published in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-keats/on-sitting-down-to-read-king-lear-once-again/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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