Translation from a Sonnet of Ronsard

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

Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies,
For more adornment, a full thousand years;
She took their cream of Beauty’s fairest dyes,
And shaped and tinted her above all Peers:
Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings,
And underneath their shadow fill’d her eyes
With such a richness that the cloudy Kings
Of high Olympus utter’d slavish sighs.
When from the Heavens I saw her first descend,
My heart took fire, and only burning pains,
They were my pleasures⁠—they my Life’s sad end;
Love pour’d her beauty into my warm veins.

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–#L12.

Cite this poem

John Keats (1795–1821). “Translation from a Sonnet of Ronsard.” First published in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-keats/translation-from-a-sonnet-of-ronsard/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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