The youngest and shortest-lived of the English Romantic poets, John Keats (1795-1821) began training as a doctor but abandoned his studies to pursue poetry as a singular calling. The phrase negative capability originates with Keats, who was fascinated by the possibility of knowledge attained not through philosophical reasoning, but through the extrarational apprehension of beauty in art or nature. It is this sense of sublime understanding, beyond the bounds of reason, which the thrush of the unrhymed sonnet here articulates for the human listener.  

What the Thrush Said
by John Keats

O Thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm tops ’mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phœbus was away,
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge—I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge—I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.

———————————————

With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by the Sun’s poetry editor, Joseph Bottum of Dakota State University, with the help of a North Carolina poet, Sally Thomas. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.