"Indeed you are too fair: / The swan, soft leaning on her fledgy breast, / When to the stream she launches, looks not back / With such a tender grace; nor are her wings / So white as your soul is, if that but be / Twin-picture to your face."
— Keats, John (1795-1821) [in collab. with Brown]
Work Title
Date
1848
Metaphor
"Indeed you are too fair: / The swan, soft leaning on her fledgy breast, / When to the stream she launches, looks not back / With such a tender grace; nor are her wings / So white as your soul is, if that but be / Twin-picture to your face."
Metaphor in Context
GERSA
Indeed you are too fair:
The swan, soft leaning on her fledgy breast,
When to the stream she launches, looks not back
With such a tender grace; nor are her wings
So white as your soul is, if that but be
Twin-picture to your face. Erminia!
To-day, for the first day, I am a king,
Yet would I give my unworn crown away
To know you spotless.
Indeed you are too fair:
The swan, soft leaning on her fledgy breast,
When to the stream she launches, looks not back
With such a tender grace; nor are her wings
So white as your soul is, if that but be
Twin-picture to your face. Erminia!
To-day, for the first day, I am a king,
Yet would I give my unworn crown away
To know you spotless.
Categories
Provenance
HDIS
Citation
Keats, John. Complete Poems. Ed. Jack Stillinger. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Date of Entry
09/26/2003
Date of Review
12/02/2009
