Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

References to this poem

To the Nile

  • Son of the old moon-mountains African!
  • Chief of the pyramid and crocodile!
  • We call thee fruitful, and, that very while,
  • A desert fills our seeing’s inward span;
  • Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
  • Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
  • Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
  • Rest for a space ’twixt Cairo and Decan?
  • O may dark fancies err! they surely do;
  • ’Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
  • Of all beyond itself: thou dost bedew
  • Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
  • The pleasant sun-rise; green isles hast thou too,
  • And to the sea as happily dost haste.

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “To the Nile.” 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_the_nile.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “To the Nile,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_to_the_nile.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “To the Nile.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.26 , last modified 12th July 2023. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_to_the_nile.html.