Sonnet The Human Seasons

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

      There are four seasons in the mind of man:

    He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

  Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

  Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

  Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

  He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness—to let fair things

  Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

'This sonnet and that to Ailsa Rock were first published, with the signature "I," in Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book; or, Companion for the Lover of Nature and Art, -- the first number, that for 1819.'~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.