John Keats

Stanzas to Miss Wylie

III. FAMILIAR VERSES
Stanzas to Miss Wylie
These verses belong to 1816. It is not impossible that like the valentine on p. 11, they were written for the use of George Keats.
O come, Georgiana! the rose is full blown,

Flora's riches

Flora is the Roman goddess of flowers and spring. Keats uses classical references even in lightweight courtship poems—it's his default mode.

The riches of Flora are lavishly strown,
The air is all softness, and crystal the streams;
The West is resplendently clothed in beams.
O come! let us haste to the freshening shades,
The quaintly carv'd seats, and the opening glades;
Where the faeries are chanting their evening hymns,
And ⟨in⟩ the last sun-beam the sylph lightly swims.

sylph lightly swims

Sylphs are air spirits from Pope's *Rape of the Lock*. Keats is borrowing from fashionable 18th-century fancy poetry—this is deliberately old-fashioned.

And when thou art weary, I 'll find thee a bed
Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head:
And there Georgiana I 'll sit at thy feet,
While my story of love I enraptur'd repeat.
So fondly I 'll breathe, and so softly I 'll sigh,

amorous zephyr

A zephyr is the west wind, personified in Greek myth as a gentle breeze. He's pretending his breath is just wind before revealing the physical touch.

Thou wilt think that some amorous zephyr is nigh;
Yet no—as I breathe I will press thy fair knee,

press thy fair knee

The poem's only genuinely forward moment—he moves from sighing to touching. This is the seduction's actual move, wrapped in pastoral fluff.

And then thou wilt know that the sigh comes from me.
Ah! why, dearest girl, should we lose all these blisses?
That mortal 's a fool who such happiness misses:
So smile acquiescence, and give me thy hand,
With love-looking eyes, and with voice sweetly bland.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Written for George's Courtship

The headnote says these verses "were written for the use of George Keats"—meaning John likely wrote them for his brother George to give to Georgiana Wylie, whom George was courting. They married in 1818. This explains the poem's odd tone: it's a ghostwritten love poem, which makes the conventional language make sense. John isn't trying to sound like himself; he's trying to sound like what a young woman in 1816 might expect from a suitor.

The poem follows standard pastoral courtship conventions: come outside, nature is beautiful, I'll tell you I love you, let's be together. It's basically a script. The "faeries" and "sylphs" and "zephyrs" are borrowed from fashionable poetry of the previous generation—Pope, Collins, the poets of fancy and sensibility. For Keats, who would soon write "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "Lamia," this is apprentice work, but it's competent apprentice work.

The one interesting moment is the shift in stanza four: "Yet no—as I breathe I will press thy fair knee." The poem pretends to be about sighs and nature, then suddenly admits physical desire. He's been building to this—the "bed / Of mosses," sitting "at thy feet," the "fondly" breathing. The final stanza tries to close the deal: why refuse "all these blisses"? It's a seduction poem dressed up as a nature walk.

What Keats Cut from His Collections

Keats never published this poem in his lifetime. It appeared in posthumous collections, which tells you something about his standards. By 1817-1818, he was writing "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" and "When I have fears that I may cease to be"—poems with genuine stakes. This valentine-style piece, with its "love-looking eyes" and "voice sweetly bland," belongs to an earlier phase.

The language is generic in ways mature Keats never was. "Crystal the streams," "freshening shades," "resplendently clothed in beams"—these are stock phrases from 18th-century poetry. Compare this to the Keats who would write "Ode to a Nightingale" three years later: "Darkling I listen; and, for many a time / I have been half in love with easeful Death." That's specific, strange, personal. "The riches of Flora are lavishly strown" is borrowed finery.

Still, you can see Keats learning his craft. The meter is smooth. The rhymes are easy but never forced. The stanza structure builds: nature description, invitation, promise of intimacy, physical touch, closing argument. If this were written by almost anyone else in 1816, it would be perfectly respectable. It just happens to be written by someone who would soon become one of the great poets in English.