POEM OF THE DAY

THE poems by Keats in our short series marking the bicentenary of his death have been pretty serious. But he was a young man with a capacity for light-heartedness and wit as well as gloom. Here, in a letter to his sister, he takes a playful look at himself in a poem associated with his visit to Scotland in the summer of 1818.

from A SONG ABOUT MYSELF

There was a naughty Boy, And a naughty Boy was he, He ran away to Scotland The people for to see – Then he found

That the ground

Was as hard,

That a yard

Was as long,

That a song

Was as merry,

That a cherry

Was as red –

That lead

Was as weighty,

That fourscore

Was as eighty,

That a door

Was as wooden

As in England –

So he stood in his shoes And he wonder’d, He wonder’d,

He stood in his shoes

And he wonder’d.