Poem of the week - John Keats – ‘In Drear-Knighted December’

December is upon us, and with it dark nights, icy winds, and the rumble of Christmas drawing closer, spring feels very far away. Few have captured the mid-winter blues better than John Keats who penned “In Drear-Nighted December” in 1817.

Here he laments memories of warmer days, and envies the natural world’s inability to remember the summer. The gloom, however, is somewhat lightened by his concluding wink to the reader – that his complaint “Was never said in rhyme”.

In drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy tree,

Thy branches ne’er remember

Their green felicity:

The north cannot undo them

With a sleety whistle through them;

Nor frozen thawings glue them

From budding at the prime.

In drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy brook,

Thy bubblings ne’er remember

Apollo’s summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting,

They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

Ah! would ‘twere so with many

A gentle girl and boy!

But were there ever any

Writhed not at passed joy?

The feel of not to feel it,

When there is none to heal it

Nor numbed sense to steel it,

Was never said in rhyme.

• You can borrow collections of Keats’s poetry from the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT. Tel: [phone], e-mail [email protected] or see www.spl.org.uk for details.