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Acrostic : Georgiana Augusta Keats
By John Keats
Give me your patience, sister, while I frame
Exact in capitals your golden name;
Or sue the fair Apollo and he will
Rouse from his heavy slumber and instill
Great love in me for thee and Poesy.
Imagine not that greatest mastery
And kingdom over all the Realms of verse,
Nears more to heaven in aught, than when we nurse
And surety give to love and Brotherhood.
Anthropophagi in Othello's mood;
Ulysses storm'd and his enchanted belt
Glow with the Muse, but they are never felt
Unbosom'd so and so eternal made,
Such tender incense in their laurel shade
To all the regent sisters of the Nine
As this poor offering to you, sister mine.
Kind sister! aye, this third name says you are;
Enchanted has it been the Lord knows where;
And may it taste to you like good old wine,
Take you to real happiness and give
Sons, daughters and a home like honied hive.
Extra Info:
'This acrostic seems to have been written at the foot of Helvellyn on the 27th of June 1818, for although it appears in the Winchester journal-letter of September 1819 as given in the New York World of the 25th of June 1877, it purports to be copied from an old letter which reached Liverpool after the George Keatses had sailed for America, and which was therefore returned to the poet. The words "Foot of Helvellyn, June 27th," are printed in The World as if they belonged to the next piece copied into the journal-letter; but the context indicates that the date really belongs to the acrostic. Keats (with his friend Charles Armitage Brown) was on the way to Carlisle, to take coach there for Dumfries and begin the walking tour in Scotland on which the first serious break-down of his health occurred. Leaving London about the middle of June, they had seen the George Keatses off from Liverpool for America, and had then started walking from Lancaster; so that, by the time Keats was writing the Acrostic, he had already been walking several days; and four days later the friends reached Carlisle, ending there the English portion of their walk.'
- Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.
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