I cry your mercy—pity—love!—ay, love Lyrics

To Fanny

I cry your mercypity—love!—ay, love!
     Merciful love that tantalises not
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
     Unmask'd, and being seen
—without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine!
     That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine,
     That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,—
Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,
     Withhold no atom's atom or I die,
Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall,
     Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes,—the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

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About

Genius Annotation

Date: Miriam Allot convincingly places the poem in October-November 1819. Compare to Keats’s letter to Fanny Brawne on 19 Oct 1819. The poem was published in 1848.

Form and Structure: Shakespearean Sonnet.


Sources:

  • The Poems of John Keats, ed. by Miriam Allot (London: Longman, 1970).

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