Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

References to this poem

Ode to Fanny

  • Physician Nature! let my spirit blood!
  • O ease my heart of verse and let me rest;
  • Throw me upon thy tripod, till the flood
  • Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.
  • A theme! a theme! Great Nature! give a theme;
  • Let me begin my dream.
  • I come — I see thee, as thou standest there,
  • Beckon me out into the wintry air.
  • Ah, dearest love, sweet home of all my fears
  • And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries, —
  • To-night, if I may guess, thy beauty wears
  • A smile of such delight,
  • As brilliant and as bright,
  • As when with ravished, aching, vassal eyes,
  • Lost in soft amaze,
  • I gaze, I gaze!
  • Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast?
  • What stare outfaces now my silver moon!
  • Ah! keep that hand unravished at the least;
  • Let, let, the amorous burn —
  • But, pr’ythee, do not turn
  • The current of your heart from me so soon:
  • O, save, in charity,
  • The quickest pulse for me.
  • Save it for me, sweet love! though music breathe
  • Voluptuous visions into the warm air,
  • Though swimming through the dance’s dangerous wreath,
  • Be like an April day,
  • Smiling and cold and gay,
  • A temperate lily, temperate as fair;
  • Then, heaven! there will be
  • A warmer June for me.
  • Why, this you’ll say — my Fanny!— is not true;
  • Put your soft hand upon your snowy side,
  • Where the heart beats: confess —’tis nothing new —
  • Must not a woman be
  • A feather on the sea,
  • Sway’d to and fro by every wind and tide?
  • Of as uncertain speed
  • As blow-ball from the mead?
  • I know it —and to know it is despair
  • To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny,
  • Whose heart goes fluttering for you every where,
  • Nor when away you roam,
  • Dare keep its wretched home:
  • Love, love alone, has pains severe and many;
  • Then, loveliest, keep me free
  • From torturing jealousy.
  • Ah! if you prize my subdued soul above
  • The poor, the fading, brief pride of an hour:
  • Let none profane my Holy See of Love,
  • Or with a rude hand break
  • The sacramental cake:
  • Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;
  • If not— may my eyes close,
  • Love, on their last repose!

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “Ode to Fanny.” 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_to_fanny.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “Ode to Fanny,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_to_fanny.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “Ode to Fanny.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_to_fanny.html.