Keats
On sitting down to read King Lear once again
O golden tongued Romance, with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren, Queen of far-away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute
Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit:
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme! 10
When through the old oak Forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But, when I am consumed in the fire
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
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Written on 22 January 1818. Keats was revising his "Romance" of Endymion, and planning the sterner epic of Hyperion. Much of his feeling about the contrast between his own two works is expressed in his sonnet.
When he came to begin Hyperion later in the year, its opening was heavily based on King Lear, which he again re-read.
l. 11. - "the old oak Forest" - The arduous pains of Shakespeare while wrting King Lear, which Keats anticipates he himself will experience while writing Hyperion.
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