Read "Ode to Fanny" by John Keats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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 not 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 ravish'd, 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 everywhere, / 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.