Sonnet On The Sea

It keeps eternal whisperings around

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell

Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell

Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.

Often 'tis in such gentle temper found

That scarcely will the very smallest shell

Be mov'd for days from whence it sometime fell,

When last the winds of heaven were unbound.

Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vex'd and tir'd,

Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;

Oh ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude,

Or fed too much with cloying melody,--

Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood

Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quir'd!

'First given among the Literary Remains in Volume II of the Life, Letters &c. (1848), and dated August 1817.' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.