Lyric Poem · Peace
Bards of Passion and of Mirth, written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-Comedy 'The Fair Maid of the Inn'
by John Keats
1BARDS of Passion and of Mirth,
2Ye have left your souls on earth!
3Have ye souls in heaven too,
4Doubled-lived in regions new?
5Yes, and those of heaven commune
6With the spheres of sun and moon;
7With the noise of fountains wondrous,
8And the parle of voices thund'rous;
9With the whisper of heaven's trees
10And one another, in soft ease
11Seated on Elysian lawns
12Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;
13Underneath large blue-bells tented,
14Where the daisies are rose-scented,
15And the rose herself has got
16Perfume which on earth is not;
17Where the nightingale doth sing
18Not a senseless, tranced thing,
19But divine melodious truth;
20Philosophic numbers smooth;
21Tales and golden histories
22Of heaven and its mysteries.
23 Thus ye live on high, and then
24On the earth ye live again;
25And the souls ye left behind you
26Teach us, here, the way to find you,
27Where your other souls are joying,
28Never slumber'd, never cloying.
29Here, your earth-born souls still speak
30To mortals, of their little week;
31Of their sorrows and delights;
32Of their passions and their spites;
33Of their glory and their shame;
34What doth strengthen and what maim.
35Thus ye teach us, every day,
36Wisdom, though fled far away.
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“Bards of Passion and of Mirth, written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-Comedy 'The Fair Maid of the Inn'” by John Keats — quilloak.com/poems/bards-of-passion-and-of-mirth-written-on-the-blank-page-before-beaumont-and-fletchers-tragi-comedy-the-fair-maid-of-the-inn
Quick facts
- Poem
- Bards of Passion and of Mirth, written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-Comedy 'The Fair Maid of the Inn'
- Poet
- John Keats
- Length
- 40 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Peace, Nature, Sad
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 40 lines · 3 stanzas of 4–22 lines
- Line length
- Mostly 7-syllable lines.
- Refrains
- “BARDS of Passion and of Mirth,”“Ye have left your souls on earth!”“Bards of Passion and of Mirth,”Repeated lines act as the poem's hinge or drumbeat.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- John Keats1795–1821
- Source record
- PoetryDBBards of Passion and of Mirth, written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-Comedy 'The Fair Maid of the Inn' by john-keats, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 e80fb3d81e5cbb04…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.