Lyric Poem · Nature
Stanzas
by John Keats
IN a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.
In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.
Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.
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“Stanzas” by John Keats — quilloak.com/poems/stanzas
Quick facts
- Poem
- Stanzas
- Poet
- John Keats
- Length
- 24 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Nature, Winter, Summer
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
- 24 lines · 3 octaves
- Line length
- Lines run 6-8 syllables (median 7). No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
- Refrains
- “IN a drear-nighted December,”“In a drear-nighted December,”Repeated lines act as the poem's hinge or drumbeat.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
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
- PoetryDBStanzas 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 c10cb6e6ccccec7f…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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