To Ailsa Rock

Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid!
Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowls’ screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is ’t since the mighty power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams?
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams,
Or when gray clouds are thy cold coverlid.
Thou answer’st not; for thou art dead asleep;
Thy life is but two dead eternities⁠—
The last in air, the former in the deep;
First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies⁠—
Drown’d wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep,
Another cannot wake thy giant size.

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). “To Ailsa Rock.” First published in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-keats/to-ailsa-rock/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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