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Home  »  The Book of Georgian Verse  »  John Keats (1795–1821)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.

To Homer

John Keats (1795–1821)

STANDING aloof in giant ignorance,

Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,

As one who sits ashore and longs perchance

To visit Dolphin-coral in deep seas.

So thou wast blind;—but then the veil was rent,

For Jove uncurtained Heaven to let thee live,

And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,

And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive.

Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light,

And precipices show untrodden green,

There is a budding morrow in mid-night,

There is a triple sight in blindness keen;

Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel

To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.