Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

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References to this poem

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.

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