Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

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References to this poem

As Hermes once took to his feathers light

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away—
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove griev’d a [that] day,
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

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MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “ As Hermes once took to his feathers light.” 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_as_hermes_once_took_to_his.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “ As Hermes once took to his feathers light,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_as_hermes_once_took_to_his.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “ As Hermes once took to his feathers light.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_as_hermes_once_took_to_his.html.