…

 

John Keats once prayed to touch a maiden’s wrist!

I merely pray that I’ll not first be kissed

(awkward as it must be) before an audience,

Nor by some hurried boy far too intense,

Nor by some practiced jerk who’ll grade my nerved embrace.

I pray to be proposed to with some grace,

to find some garment not-too-short, for first-night rite,

and that my future spouse won’t run his ship too tight.

How slowly, as my youthful years advance,

How surely have I ceased to dream romance.

Still, when the brisk young woman I’ve become

Stops to read what Keats prayed, also young -

The maiden with the rustling gown wakes inside,

Who’d interrupt the poet’s goldfinch-watching by the brook,

Blushing to have kept the unplanned tryst.

Were I to meet his startled look and lyric tongue,

Were he to lead me to the brook’s far side,

I think that leaving, I, like her, would turn and look

A few more times when he had brushed my wrist...

(referring to the following excerpt from an untitled poem 

by John Keats, romantic poet: 

published when he was about twenty-two years of age)

…Linger awhile upon some bending planks

That lean against a streamlet’s rushy banks

And watch intently Nature’s gentle doings:

They will be found softer than ring-dove’s cooings.

How silent comes the water round that bend;

not the minutest whisper does it send

To the o’erhanging sallows: blades of grass

Slowly across the chequered shadows pass.

Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach

To where they hurrying freshnesses aye preach

A natural sermon o’er their pebbly beds;

Where swarms of minnows show their little heads,

Staying their wavy bodies ‘gainst the streams,

To taste the luxury of sunny beams

Temper’d with coolness. How they ever wrestle

With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle

Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand.

If you but scantily hold out the hand,

That very instant not one will remain;

But turn your eye, and they are there again.

The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses,

And cool themselves among the em’rald tresses;

The while they cool themselves, they freshness give,

And moisture, that the bowery green may live:

So keeping up an interchange of favours,

Like good men in the truth of their behaviours.

Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop

From low hung branches; little space they stop;

But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek;

Then off at once as in a wanton freak:

Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings,

Pausing upon their yellow flutterings

Were I in such a place, I sure should pray

That naught less sweet, might call my thoughts away,

Than the soft rustle of a maiden’s gown

Fanning away the dandelion’s down;

Than the light music of her nimble toes

Patting against the sorrel as she goes.

How she would start, and blush, thus to be caught

Playing in all her innocence of thought.

O let me lead her gently o’er the brook,

Watch her half-smiling lips, and downward look;

O let me for one moment touch her wrist;

Let me one moment to her breathing list;

And as she leaves me may she often turn

Her fair eyes looking through her locks auburne…