Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

References to this poem

On the sea

  • It keeps eternal whisperings around
  • Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
  • Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
  • Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
  • Often ’tis in such gentle temper found,
  • That scarcely will the very smallest shell
  • Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,
  • When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
  • Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tir’d,
  • Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
  • Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
  • Or fed too much with cloying melody—
  • Sit ye near some old Cavern’s Mouth and brood,
  • Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “On the sea.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, by G. Kim Blank. Edition 3.29 , University of Victoria, 26 October 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_on_the_sea.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “On the sea,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.29 , last modified 26th October 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_on_the_sea.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “On the sea.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.29 , last modified 26th October 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_on_the_sea.html.