Good afternoon, all.

Today is April 27, and we are now in our final four of sonnets for National Poetry Month.

Today’s selection is a return to Keats, one of my favorite romantic poets. Like all the good romantics, it finds the beauty in nature and, in this poem, solitude.

“O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell,” by John Keats

O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.