object:1.jk - Sonnet - After Dark Vapors Have Oppressd Our Plains
author class:John Keats
book class:Keats - Poems
subject class:Poetry
class:chapter
After dark vapors have oppress'd our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relieved of its pains,
Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May;
The eyelids with the passing coolness play
Like rose leaves with the drip of Summer rains.
The calmest thoughts came round us; as of leaves
Budding -- fruit ripening in stillness -- Autumn suns
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves --
Sweet Sappho's cheek -- a smiling infant's breath --
The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs --
A woodland rivulet -- a Poet's death.
'This sonnet appeared in The Examiner for the 23rd of February 1817, and is dated January 1817 in Lord Houghton's editions. In line 5 The Examiner reads 'relieving of;' his Lordship reads 'relieved from,' and again 'And' for 'The' at the beginning of line 9, and 'sleeping' for 'smiling' at line 12.
The word 'relieving' in the earlier version must, I think, have been a slip, and not an intentional use of 'relieve' as an intransitive verb, though Keats was perhaps capable of such use in his early strife after freshness of speech.'
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