John Keats

Sonnet. Why Did I Laugh Tonight?

Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell No God, no Demon of severe response, Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell Then to my human heart I turn at once: Heart!  Thou and I are here sad and alone; I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain! O Darkness!  Darkness! ever must I moan, To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain. Why did I laugh? I know this Being's lease, My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads; Yet would I on this very midnight cease, And all the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds; Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, But Death intenser -- Death is Life's high meed. 'This sonnet, first given in Life, Letters &c. (1848), was probably composed between the 19th of March and the 15 of April 1819. Keats says in a letter, that he had intended not to send the Sonnet to his brother George and his wife, on account of their anxieties about his temperament; but he refers to other passages in his letter as "the best comment" on the sonnet, and ends the subject with a triumphant "I went to bed and enjoyed uninterrupted sleep: sane I went to bed, and sane I arose. " A man might well go to bed sane after writing the final couplet, which is a thoroughly self-contained and contemplative vein -- strangely so for the end of such a bitter series of "obstinate questionings. "' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.