Written on the Blank Space at the End of Chaucer’s Tale of The Floure and the Lefe

John Keats (1795–1821) · Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats · 1817

This pleasant tale is like a little copse:
The honied lines so freshly interlace,
To keep the reader in so sweet a place,
So that he here and there full-hearted stops;
And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops
Come cool and suddenly against his face,
And, by the wandering melody, may trace
Which way the tender-legged linnet hops.
Oh! what a power has white simplicity!
What mighty power has this gentle story!
I, that do ever feel athirst for glory,
Could at this moment be content to lie
Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings
Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.

Where this text comes from

First published in The Examiner (16 March 1817). Written in February 1817. Reprinted in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848). The claim is the headnote to this poem in The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats, Cambridge Edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1899). No copy of that number of The Examiner 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). “Written on the Blank Space at the End of Chaucer’s Tale of The Floure and the Lefe.” First published in The Examiner (16 March 1817). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-keats/written-on-the-blank-space-at-the-end-of-chaucers-tale-of-the-floure-a/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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