Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

Fill for me a brimming bowl

  • Fill for me a brimming bowl,
  • And let me in it drown my soul:
  • But put therein some drug design’d
  • To banish Woman from my mind.
  • For I want not the stream inspiring,
  • That fills the mind with lewd desiring;
  • But I want as deep a draught
  • As e’er from Lethe’s waves was quaff’d;
  • From my despairing heart to charm
  • The image of the fairest form
  • That e’er my rev’ling eyes beheld,
  • That e’er my wand’ring fancy spell’d!
  • In vain! away I cannot chace
  • The melting softness of that face —
  • The beaminess of those bright eyes —
  • That breast, earth’s only paradise!
  • My sight will never more be blest,
  • For all I see has lost its zest;
  • Nor with delight can I explore
  • The classic page — the muse’s lore.
  • Had she but known how beat my heart
  • And with one smile reliev’d its smart,
  • I should have felt a sweet relief,
  • I should have felt “ the joy of grief ”!
  • Yet as a Tuscan ’mid the snow
  • Of Lapland thinks on sweet Arno;
  • So for ever shall she be
  • The halo of my memory.

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “Fill for me a brimming bowl.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, by G. Kim Blank. Edition 3.26 , University of Victoria, 12 July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_fill_for_me_a_brimming_bowl.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “Fill for me a brimming bowl,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_fill_for_me_a_brimming_bowl.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “Fill for me a brimming bowl.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_fill_for_me_a_brimming_bowl.html.