Sonnet: A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode Of Paulo And Francesca

by John Keats

    As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
    When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept,
    So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
    So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft
    The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
    And seeing it asleep, so fled away
    Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
    Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day;
    But to that second circle of sad Hell,
    Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
    Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
    Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
    Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form
    I floated with, about that melancholy storm.