Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

In Drear Nighted December

  • In drear-nighted December,
  • Too happy, happy tree,
  • Thy branches ne’er remember
  • Their green felicity —
  • The north cannot undo them,
  • With a sleety whistle through them,
  • Nor frozen thawings glue them
  • From budding at the prime.
  • In drear-nighted December,
  • Too happy, happy brook,
  • Thy bubblings ne’er remember
  • Apollo’s summer look;
  • But with a sweet forgetting
  • They stay their crystal fretting,
  • Never, never petting
  • About the frozen time.
  • Ah! would ’twere so with many
  • A gentle girl and boy —
  • But were there ever any
  • Writh’d not of passed joy?
  • To know the change and feel it,
  • When there is none to heal it,
  • Nor numbed sense to steel it,
  • Was never said in rhyme.

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “In Drear Nighted December.” 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_in_drear_nighted_december.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “In Drear Nighted December,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_in_drear_nighted_december.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “In Drear Nighted December.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_in_drear_nighted_december.html.