John Keats

Translated From A Sonnet Of Ronsard

Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies For more adornment a full thousand years; She took their cream of Beauty's fairest dyes, And shap'd and tinted her above all Peers: Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings, And underneath their shadow fill'd her eyes With such a richness that the cloudy Kings Of high Olympus utter'd slavish sighs. When from the Heavens I saw her first descend My heart took fire, and only burning pains They were my pleasures -- they my Life's sad end; Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins. . . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 'I presume this translation was made about September 1818. It was first given by Lord Houghton in the Life, Letters &c. (1848) in a letter to Reynolds, undated, but belonging to that time. The sonnet follows the words "Here is a free translation of a Sonnet of Ronsard, which I think will please you. I have the loan of his works -- they have great beauties. " Lord Houghton supplied the couplet thus:-- "So that her image in my soul upgrew, The only thing adorable and true. " In the copy of Shakespeare's Poetical Works to Keats by Reynolds, and containing the manuscript of Keats's last sonnet, there is also a manuscript of these three quatrains, wanting, like the version adopted by Lord Houghton, the last two lines. ' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.