Young Keats

That first free flight was the most imaginative,

air-blasted to a tingling pulp, fluttering like fluffs of egg.

a mold fast-formed in wide white whirlpools of garnered thought

round and about, a wild and tumultuous continuum of wing

an iridescence even too bright for his especial needs.

 

Yet, going up and over, in one melodramatic hyperbolic arc,

until the thin blue atmospheric line of this heaven’s marginal allure

exclaimed, “that’s quite far enough for one so young!”

 

But this was a “learning-time”, a momentous,

though transient glow, as if a birth of stars

had had the accompaniment of a Bach Chorale.

 

Thus a splash of printer’s ink was a comet’s trail

rushing for the sun’s hot source

to stimulate an even greater thrust to its frozen tail.

 

Return