Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

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References to this poem

Song of Four Fairies: Fire, Air, Earth, and Water

SALAMANDER

Happy, happy glowing fire!

ZEPHYR

Fragrant air! Delicious light!

DUSKETHA

Let me to my glooms retire!

BREAMA

I to green-weed rivers bright!

SALAMANDER

Happy, happy glowing Fire!
Dazzling bowers of soft retire,
Ever let my nourish’d wing,
Like a bat’s, still wandering,
Faintly fan your fiery spaces,
Spirit sole in deadly places.
In unhaunted roar and blaze,
Open eyes that never daze,
Let me see the myriad shapes
Of men, and beasts, and fish, and apes,
Portray’d in many a fiery den,
And wrought by spumy bitumen.
On the deep intenser roof,
Arched every way aloof,
Let me breathe upon their skies,
And anger their live tapestries;
Free from cold, and every care,
Of chilly rain, and shivering air.

ZEPHYR

Spirit of Fire! away! away!
Or your very roundelay
Will sear my plumage newly budded
From its quilled sheath, all studded
With the self-same dews that fell
On the may-grown asphodel.
Spirit of Fire — away! away!

BREAMA

Spirit of fire — away! away!
Zephyr, blue-eyed fairy, turn,
And see my cool sedge-buried urn,
Where it rests its mossy brim
’Mid water-mint and cresses dim;
And the flowers, in sweet troubles,
Lift their eyes above the bubbles,
Like our Queen, when she would please
To sleep, and Oberon will teaze.
Love me, blue-eyed fairy true,
Soothly I am sick for you.

ZEPHYR

Gentle Breama! by the first
Violet young nature nurst,
I will bathe myself with thee,
So you sometimes follow me
Beyond the nimble-wheeled quest
Of the golden-presenc’d sun
Come with me, o’er tops of trees,
To my fragrant palaces,
Where they ever floating are
Beneath the cherish of a star
Call’d Vesper, who with silver veil
Ever hides his brilliance pale,
Ever gently-drows’d doth keep
Twilight for the fayes to sleep.
Fear not that your watery hair
Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there;
Clouds of stored summer rains
Thou shalt taste, before the stains
Of the mountain soil they take,
And too unlucent for thee make.
I love thee, crystal fairy, true!
Sooth I am as sick for you!

SALAMANDER

Out, ye aguish fairies, out!
Chilly lovers, what a rout
Keep ye with your frozen breath,
Colder than the mortal death.
Adder-eyed Dusketha, speak,
Shall we leave these, and go seek
In the earth’s wide entrails old
Couches warm as their’s are cold?
O for a fiery gloom and thee,
Dusketha, so enchantingly
Freckle-wing’d and lizard-sided!

DUSKETHA

By thee, sprite, will I be guided!
I care not for cold or heat;
Frost and flame, or sparks, or sleet,
To my essence are the same; —
But I honour more the flame.
Sprite of Fire, I follow thee
Wheresoever it may be,
To the torrid spouts and fountains,
Underneath earth-quaked mountains;
Or, at thy supreme desire,
Touch the very pulse of fire
With my bare unlidded eyes.

SALAMANDER

Sweet Dusketha! Paradise!
Off, ye icy spirits, fly!
Frosty creatures of the sky!

DUSKETHA

Breathe upon them, fiery sprite!

ZEPHYR and BREAMA

Away! away to our delight!

SALAMANDER

Go, feed on icicles, while we

DUSKETHA

Lead me to those feverous glooms,
Sprite of fire!

BREAMA
Me to the blooms,
Blue-eyed Zephyr, of those flowers
Far in the west where the May-cloud lowers;
And the beams of still Vesper, when winds are all wist,
Are shed thro’ the rain and the milder mist,
And twilight your floating bowers.

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “Song of Four Fairies: Fire, Air, Earth, and Water.” 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_song_of_four_fairies_fire_air.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “Song of Four Fairies: Fire, Air, Earth, and Water,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_song_of_four_fairies_fire_air.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “Song of Four Fairies: Fire, Air, Earth, and Water.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_song_of_four_fairies_fire_air.html.