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Sonnet VI. To G. A. W.

Nymph of the downward smile and sidelong glance! In what diviner moments of the day Art thou most lovely? -- when gone far astray Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance, Or when serenely wandering in a trance Of sober thought? -- Or when starting away, With careless robe to meet the morning ray, Thou sparest the flowers in thy mazy dance? Haply 'tis when thy ruby lips part sweetly, And so remain, because thou listenest: But thou to please wert nurtured so completely That I can never tell what mood is best; I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly Trips it before Apollo than the rest. 'The subject of this sonnet was Miss Georgiana Augusta Wylie, afterwards the wife of Keats's brother George, and now (1881) Mrs. Jeffrey. I should not have connected the sonnet positively with this lady had I not seen the manuscript in Keats's writing, headed "To Miss Wylie. " ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.