Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

References to this poem

King Stephen: A Fragment of a Tragedy ACT I SCENE III

  • Steph. Another sword! and what if I could seize
  • Steph. One from Bellona’s gleaming armoury,
  • Steph. Or choose the fairest of her sheaved spears!
  • Steph. Here comes the testy brood. O, for a sword!
  • Steph. I’m faint — a biting sword! A noble sword!
  • Steph. A hedge-stake — or a ponderous stone to hurl
  • Steph. With brawny vengeance, like the labourer Cain
  • Steph. Come on! Farewell my kingdom, and all hail
  • Steph. Thou superb, plum’d, and helmeted renown,
  • Steph. All hail — I would not truck this brilliant day
  • Steph. To rule in Pylos with a Nestor’s beard —
  • Steph. Come on!
  • De k. Is’t madness or a hunger after death
  • De k. That makes thee thus unarm’d throw taunts at us?
  • De k. Yield, Stephen, or my sword’s point dip in
  • De k. The gloomy current of a traitor’s heart.
  • Steph. Do it, De Kaims, I will not budge an inch.
  • De k. Yes, of thy madness thou shalt take the meed.
  • Steph. Darest thou? De k. How dare, against a man disarm’d?
  • Steph. What weapons has the lion but himself?
  • Steph. Come not near me, De Kaims, for by the price
  • Steph. Of all the glory I have won this day,
  • Steph. Being a king, I will not yield alive
  • Steph. To any but the second man of the realm,
  • Steph. Robert of Glocester. De k. Thou shalt vail to me.
  • Steph. Shall I, when I have sworn against it, sir?
  • Steph. That, on a court-day bow’d to haughty Maud,
  • Steph. The awed presence-chamber may be bold
  • Steph. To whisper, there’s the man who took alive
  • Steph. Stephen — me — prisoner. Certes, De Kaims,
  • Steph. The ambition is a noble one. De k. ’Tis true,
  • De k. And, Stephen, I must compass it. Steph. No, no,
  • Steph. Do not tempt me to throttle you on the gorge,
  • Steph. Or with my gauntlet crush your hollow breast,
  • Steph. Just when your knighthood is grown ripe and full
  • Steph. For lordship. Soldr. Is an honest yeoman’s spear
  • Soldr. Of no use at a need? Take that.
  • Steph. Ah, dastard!
  • De k. What, you are vulnerable! my prisoner!
  • Steph. No, not yet. I disclaim it, and demand
  • Steph. Death as a sovereign right unto a king
  • Steph. Who ’sdains to yield to any but his peer,
  • Steph. If not in title, yet in noble deeds,
  • Steph. The Earl of Glocester. Stab to the hilts, De Kaims,
  • Steph. For I will never by mean hands be led
  • Steph. From this so famous field. D’ye hear! be quick!

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MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “King Stephen: A Fragment of a Tragedy ACT I SCENE III.” 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_king_stephen_act_i_scene_iii.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “King Stephen: A Fragment of a Tragedy ACT I SCENE III,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_king_stephen_act_i_scene_iii.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “King Stephen: A Fragment of a Tragedy ACT I SCENE III.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_king_stephen_act_i_scene_iii.html.