Lyric Poem · Death & Loss
Written On A Summer Evening
by John Keats
1The church bells toll a melancholy round,
2Calling the people to some other prayers,
3Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
4More harkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
5Surely the mind of man is closely bound
6In some blind spell: seeing that each one tears
7Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs,
8And converse high of those with glory crowned.
9Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,
10A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
11That they are dying like an outburnt lamp,—
12That 'tis their sighing, wailing, ere they go
13Into oblivion—that fresh flowers will grow,
14And many glories of immortal stamp.
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“Written On A Summer Evening” by John Keats — quilloak.com/poems/written-on-a-summer-evening
Quick facts
- Poem
- Written On A Summer Evening
- Poet
- John Keats
- Length
- 14 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Death & Loss, Nature, 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
- 14 lines · one 14-line stanza
- End rhyme
- ABBAABCDEFEFFE.
- Line length
- Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).
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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
- PoetryDBWritten On A Summer Evening 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 19a23fb8be4da1d0…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.