John Keats

Sonnet. Written In Answer To A Sonnet By J. H. Reynolds

Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven,--the domain Of Cynthia,--the wide palace of the sun,-- The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,-- The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun. Blue! 'Tis the life of waters: -- Ocean And all its vassal streams, pools numberless, May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can Subside, if not to dark-blue nativeness. Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers,-- Forget-me-not,--the Blue bell,--and, that Queen Of secrecy, the Violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow!  But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate! Written in answer to a Sonnet ending thus : -- " Dark eyes are dearer far Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell--" 'The sonnet of John Hamilton Reynolds to which this is a reply appeared in 1821 in The Garden of Florence &c. From a letter signed "A. J. Horwood" which was published in The Anthenoeum of the 3rd of June 1876, it would seem that this poem, like many others, must have been written out more than once by Keats; for, in a copy of The Garden of Florence mentioned in that letter, Keats's sonnet is transcribed, seemingly, from a different manuscript from that used by Lord Houghton when he gave the sonnet in the Life, Letters and Literary Remains (Vol. II, page 295) in 1848. . . . Lord Houghton dates the sonnet February 1818. ' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.