Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

And what is Love? — It is a doll dress’d up

  • And what is Love? — it is a doll dress’d up
  • For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
  • A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
  • That silly youth doth think to make itself
  • Divine by loving, and so goes on
  • Yawning and doating a whole summer long,
  • Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,
  • And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
  • Till Cleopatra lives at Number Seven,
  • And Anthony resides in Brunswick Square.
  • Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world,
  • If queens and soldiers have play’d high for hearts,
  • It is no reason why such agonies
  • Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
  • Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
  • The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say
  • That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “And what is Love? — It is a doll dress’d up.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, by G. Kim Blank. Edition 3.26 , University of Victoria, 12 July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_and_what_is_love_it_is.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “And what is Love? — It is a doll dress’d up,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_and_what_is_love_it_is.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “And what is Love? — It is a doll dress’d up.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_and_what_is_love_it_is.html.