Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

☰

References to this poem

After dark vapours have oppressed our plains

After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle south, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relieving from its pains,
Takes as a long lost right the feel of May,
The eyelids with the passing coolness play,
Like rose-leaves with the drip of summer rains.
And calmest thoughts come round us — as, of leaves
Budding — fruit ripening in stillness — autumn suns
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves —
Sweet Sappho’s cheek — a sleeping infant’s breath —
The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs —
A woodland rivulet — a poet’s death.

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “After dark vapours have oppressed our plains.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, by G. Kim Blank. Edition 3.17 , University of Victoria, 28 April 2022. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_after_dark_vapours_have_oppressed_our.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “After dark vapours have oppressed our plains,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.17 , last modified 28th April 2022. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_after_dark_vapours_have_oppressed_our.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “After dark vapours have oppressed our plains.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.17 , last modified 28th April 2022. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_after_dark_vapours_have_oppressed_our.html.