Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

• 1

• In silent barren synod met
• Within these roofless walls, where yet,
• The shafted arch and carved fret
• Cling to the rain
• The brethren’s skulls mourn, dewy wet,
• Their creed’s undoing.

• 2

• The mitred ones of Nice and Trent
• Were not so tongue-tied — no, they went
• Hot to their Councils, scarce content
• With orthodoxy;
• But ye, poor tongueless things, were meant
• To speak by proxy.

• 3

• Your chronicles no more exist,
• Since Knox, the revolutionist,
• Destroy’d the work of every fist
• That scrawl’d black letter;
• Well! I’m a craniologist,
• And may do better.

• 4

• This skull-cap wore the cowl from sloth,
• Or discontent, perhaps from both;
• And yet one day, against his oath,
• He tried escaping,
• For men, though idle, may be loth
• To live on gaping.

• 5

• A toper this! he plied his glass
• More strictly than he said the mass,
• And lov’d to see a tempting lass,
• Come to confession
• Letting her absolution pass
• O’er fresh transgression.

• 6

• This crawl’d through life in feebleness,
• Boasting he never knew excess,
• Cursing those crimes he scarce could guess,
• Or feel but faintly,
• With prayers that heaven would cease to bless
• Men so unsaintly.

• 7

• Here’s a true churchman! he’d affect
• Much charity, and ne’er neglect
• To pray for mercy on th’ elect
• But thought no evil
• In sending heathen, Turk, and sect
• All to the devil!

• 8

• Poor skull, thy fingers set ablaze,
• With silver saint in golden rays,
• The holy missal; thou did’st craze
• ’Mid bead and spangle,
• While others pass’d their idle days
• In coil and wrangle.

• 9

• Long time this sconce a helmet wore,
• But sickness smites the conscience sore;
• He broke his sword, and hither bore
• His gear and plunder,
• Took to the cowl, — then rav’d and swore
• At his damn’d blunder!

• 10

• This lily-colour’d skull, with all
• The teeth complete, so white and small,
• Belong’d to one whose early pall
• A lover shaded;
• He died ere superstition’s gall
• His heart invaded.

• 11

• Ha! here is “undivulged crime”!
• Despair forbad his soul to climb
• Beyond this world, this mortal time
• Of fever’d sadness,
• Until their monkish pantomime
• Dazzled his madness!

• 12

• A younger brother this! a man
• Aspiring as a Tartar khan,
• But, curb’d and baffled, he began
• The trade of frightening;
• It smack’d of power! — and here he ran
• To deal heaven’s lightening.

• 13

• This ideot-skull belong’d to one,
• A buried miser’s only son,
• Who, penitent ere he’d begun,
• To taste of pleasure,
• And hoping heaven’s dread wrath to shun
• Gave hell his treasure.

• 14

• Here is the forehead of an ape,
• A robber’s mark, —and near the nape
• That bone, fie on’t, bears just the shape
• Of carnal passion;
• Ah! he was one for theft and rape
• In monkish fashion!

• 15

• This was the porter! — he could sing,
• Or dance, or play, do any thing,
• And what the friars bade him bring,
• They ne’er were balk’d of;
• Matters not worth remembering,
• And seldom talk’d of.

• 16

• Enough! why need I further pore?
• This corner holds at least a score,
• And yonder twice as many more
• Of reverend brothers;
• ’Tis the same story o’er and o’er, —
• They’re like the others!