dots-menu
×

Home  »  English Poetry II  »  528. Happy Insensibility

English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

John Keats

528. Happy Insensibility


IN a drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy Tree,

Thy branches ne’er remember

The north cannot undo them

With a sleety whistle through them,

Nor frozen thawings glue them

From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy Brook,

Thy bubblings ne’er remember

Apollo’s summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting

They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

Ah would ’twere so with many

A gentle girl and boy!

But were there ever any

Writhed not at passéd joy?

To know the change and feel it,

When there is none to heal it

Nor numbéd sense to steal it—

Was never said in rhyme.