John Keats

Sonnet To Spenser

Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine, A forester deep in thy midmost trees, Did last eve ask my promise to refine Some English that might strive thine ear to please. But Elfin Poet 'tis impossible For an inhabitant of wintry earth To rise like Phoebus with a golden quill Fire-wing'd and make a morning in his mirth. It is impossible to escape from toil O' the sudden and receive thy spiriting: The flower must drink the nature of the soil Before it can put forth its blossoming: Be with me in the summer days, and I Will for thine honour and his pleasure try. 'Lord Houghton, who first gave this sonnet in Volume 1 of the Life, Letters &c. , 1848, appended in the Aldine edition of 1876 the following note: -- "I am enabled by the kindness of Mr. W. A. Longmore, nephew of Mr. J. W. [sic, but quoere H. ] Reynolds, to give an exact transcript of this sonnet as written and given to his mother, by the poet, at his father's house in Little Britain. The poem is dated, in Mrs. Longmore's hand, Feb. 5th, 1818, but it seems to me impossible that it can have been other than an early production and of the especially Spenserian time. "' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.