Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

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References to this poem

Bards of passion and of mirth

Bards of passion and of mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond’rous,
And the parle of voices thund’rous;
With the whisper of heaven’s trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Brows’d by none but Dian’s fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then
On the earth ye live again;
And the souls ye left behind you
Teach us, here, the way to find you,
Where your other souls are joying,
Never slumber’d, never cloying.
Here, your earth-born souls still speak
To mortals, of their little week;
Of their sorrows and delights;
Of their passions and their spites;
Of their glory and their shame;
What doth strengthen and what maim.
Thus ye teach us, every day,
Wisdom, though fled far away.

Bards of passion and of mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Ye have souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new!

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “Bards of passion and of mirth.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, by G. Kim Blank. Edition 3.25 , University of Victoria, 29 May 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_bards_of_passion_and_of_mirth.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “Bards of passion and of mirth,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.25 , last modified 29th May 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_bards_of_passion_and_of_mirth.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “Bards of passion and of mirth.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.25 , last modified 29th May 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_bards_of_passion_and_of_mirth.html.