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.

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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 3.28 , University of Victoria, 24 September 2026. 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 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. 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 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_after_dark_vapours_have_oppressed_our.html.