Logos Virtual Library: Keats: On a Dream

John Keats

John Keats (1795-1821)

On a Dream

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,

When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright

So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;

And, seeing it asleep, so fled away,
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,

Nor unto Tempe, where Jove griev’d that day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,

Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell

Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.