Meter Of The Heart Poem by gershon hepner

With daring Milton through the air
I wander, and my heart in meter beats,
not silent, slow moon, de la Mare,
but shaking like the spear of Keats.
I will not stray in Spenser’s halls,
but while there’s fire in my belly,
avoid Byronic know-it-alls,
and find myself a friend like Shelley,
and write not just what I can see,
but what, imagining, I feel
helps me become a refugee
from prisons barring all appeal,
before I take my leave below
the Spanish steps, where I will roam
until my verses lose their glow,
and God shuts off my metronome.


It was about the year 1815 that Keats showed to his former school friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, the following sonnet,
the first indication the latter had that Keats had written poetry:

' What though, for showing truth to flatter'd state,
Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he,
In his immortal spirit been as free
As the sky-searching lark, and as elate.
Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
Till, so unwilling thou unturn'dst the key?
Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
In Spenser's halls he stray'd, and bowers fair,
Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew
With daring Milton through the fields of air:
To regions of his own his genius true
Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair
When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew? '
Keats wrote to his brother George in September 1819: 'You speak of Lord Byron and me - There is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees - I describe what I imagine - Mine is the hardest task.'

3/23/09