Caroling Dusk/To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime

For other versions of this work, see To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime.

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From the Dark Tower

Caroling Dusk (1927)
edited by Countee Cullen

To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime by Countee Cullen

Four Epitaphs

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Countee Cullen4758147Caroling Dusk — To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime1927Countee Cullen

TO JOHN KEATS, POET, AT SPRINGTIME

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;There never was a spring like this;It is an echo, that repeatsMy last year’s song and next year’s bliss.I know, in spite of all men sayOf Beauty, you have felt her most.Yea, even in your grave her wayIs laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost,Spring never was so fair and dearAs Beauty makes her seem this year.

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;I am as helpless in the toilOf Spring as any lamb that bleatsTo feel the solid earth recoil Beneath his puny legs. Spring beatsHer tocsin call to those who love her,And lo! the dogwood petals coverHer breast with drifts of snow, and sleekWhite gulls fly screaming to her, and hoverAbout her shoulders, and kiss her cheek,While white and purple lilacs musterA strength that bears them to a clusterOf color and odor; for her sakeAll things that slept are now awake.

And you and I, shall we lie still,John Keats, while Beauty summons us?Somehow I feel your sensitive willIs pulsing up some tremulousSap road of a maple tree, whose leavesGrow music as they grow, since yourWild voice is in them, a harp that grievesFor life that opens death’s dark door.Though dust, your fingers still can pushThe Vision Splendid to a birth,Though now they work as grass in the hushOf the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.

“John Keats is dead,” they say, but IWho hear your full insistent cryIn bud and blossom, leaf and tree,Know John Keats still writes poetry.And while my head is earthward bowedTo read new life sprung from your shroud, Folks seeing me must think it strangeThat merely spring should so derangeMy mind. They do not know that you,John Keats, keep revel with me, too.