Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

TO A FRIEND

• No! those days are gone away,
• And their hours are old and gray,
• And their minutes buried all
• Under the down-trodden pall
• Of the leaves of many years:
• Many times have winter’s shears,
• Frozen north, and chilling east,
• Sounded tempests to the feast
• Of the forest’s whispering fleeces,
• Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

• No, the bugle sounds no more,
• And the twanging bow no more;
• Silent is the ivory shrill
• Past the heath and up the hill;
• There is no mid-forest laugh,
• Where lone Echo gives the half
• To some wight, amaz’d to hear
• Jesting, deep in forest drear.

• On the fairest time of June
• You may go, with sun or moon,
• Or the seven stars to light you,
• Or the polar ray to right you;
• But you never may behold
• Little John, or Robin bold;
• Never one, of all the clan,
• Thrumming on an empty can
• Some old hunting ditty, while
• He doth his green way beguile
• To fair hostess Merriment,
• Down beside the pasture Trent;
• For he left the merry tale
• Messenger for spicy ale.

• Gone, the merry morris din;
• Gone, the song of Gamelyn;
• Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
• Idling in the “grene shawe”;
• All are gone away and past!
• And if Robin should be cast
• Sudden from his turfed grave,
• And if Marian should have
• Once again her forest days,
• She would weep, and he would craze:
• He would swear, for all his oaks,
• Fall’n beneath the dockyard strokes,
• Have rotted on the briny seas;
• She would weep that her wild bees
• Sang not to her — strange! that honey
• Can’t be got without hard money!

• So it is: yet let us sing,
• Honour to the old bow-string!
• Honour to the bugle-horn!
• Honour to the woods unshorn!
• Honour to the Lincoln green!
• Honour to the archer keen!
• Honour to tight little John,
• And the horse he rode upon!
• Honour to bold Robin Hood,
• Sleeping in the underwood!
• Honour to maid Marian,
• And to all the Sherwood-clan!
• Though their days have hurried by
• Let us two a burden try.