Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

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References to this poem

Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell

Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No god, no demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once —
Heart! thou and I are here sad and alone;
Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O darkness! darkness! ever must I moan,
To question heaven and hell and heart in vain!
Why did I laugh? I know this being’s lease —
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads:
Yet could I on this very midnight cease,
And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds.
Verse, fame, and beauty are intense indeed,
But death intenser — death is life’s high meed.

🗙 Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, by G. Kim Blank. Edition 3.8 , University of Victoria, 18 January 2021. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_why_did_i_laugh_tonight.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.8 , last modified 18th January 2021. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_why_did_i_laugh_tonight.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.8 , last modified 18th January 2021. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_why_did_i_laugh_tonight.html.