"I cannot see, / Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal"

— Keats, John (1795-1821)


Date
1848
Metaphor
"I cannot see, / Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal"
Metaphor in Context
This mortal body of a thousand days
  Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room,
Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,
  Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!
My pulse is warm with thine own Barley-bree,
  My head is light with pledging a great soul,
My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,
  Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;

Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,
  Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find
The meadow thou hast tramped o'er and o'er,--
  Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind,--
Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name,--
O smile among the shades, for this is fame!
(ll. 1-14, p. 206-7)
Provenance
HDIS
Citation
Keats, John. Complete Poems. Ed. Jack Stillinger. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Date of Entry
09/27/2003

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.