John Keats

Great spirits now on earth are sojourning

Wordsworth on Helvellyn

This is William Wordsworth—Helvellyn is a Lake District peak he famously climbed. The 'Archangel's wing' suggests divine inspiration from nature itself.

I
Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,

Wordsworth on Helvellyn

This is William Wordsworth—Helvellyn is a Lake District peak he famously climbed. The 'Archangel's wing' suggests divine inspiration from nature itself.

Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,

Leigh Hunt's politics

The 'chain for Freedom's sake' points to Leigh Hunt, who was imprisoned for libeling the Prince Regent. His 'social smile' refers to his salon gatherings.

The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake:
And lo!—whose steadfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
And other spirits there are standing apart

Future poets unnamed

Keats includes himself and Shelley among these unnamed 'spirits'—too young to be celebrated yet, but positioned for the next generation.

Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings in the human mart?
Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Three Named Spirits

CONTEXT Written in 1816 when Keats was 21, this sonnet identifies three older poets Keats admired—all encoded in descriptive phrases rather than named directly.

Wordsworth is 'He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake'—the nature imagery is unmistakable. Helvellyn is a 3,116-foot peak in the Lake District that Wordsworth climbed repeatedly. The detail about catching 'freshness from Archangel's wing' captures Wordsworth's belief that nature mediates divine truth. Notice 'wide awake'—a dig at poets who sleepwalk through conventional subjects.

Leigh Hunt appears as 'He of the rose, the violet, the spring'—the delicate, cultivated garden imagery suits Hunt's lighter verse. The 'chain for Freedom's sake' refers to his 1813 imprisonment for calling the Prince Regent fat. Hunt's cell became a literary salon where Keats first met him. The 'social smile' is both literal (Hunt was famously gregarious) and political (his liberal circle).

Benjamin Robert Haydon is the figure who 'would never take / A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.' Haydon was a historical painter obsessed with rivaling the Old Masters, perpetually broke because he refused commercial work. 'Steadfastness' captures his stubborn integrity—and foreshadows his eventual suicide when his grand style fell out of fashion.

The Sonnet That Isn't

This poem looks like a sonnet but has 15 lines instead of 14. The extra line—'And other spirits there are standing apart'—literally breaks the form to introduce the younger generation. It's a structural rebellion that mirrors the content.

The turn happens at that illegal 15th line. The octet praises established poets; the sestet shifts to unnamed future spirits 'standing apart / Upon the forehead of the age to come.' Keats includes himself in this group—he's 21, unpublished in book form, positioning himself as the next wave. The phrase 'another heart, / And other pulses' suggests a complete transformation of poetry's circulation system.

Notice the final imperative: 'Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.' It's addressed to nations, not readers—an audacious scale for a teenager's poem. The 'hum / Of mighty workings' treats poetry as industrial revolution, the 'human mart' (marketplace) as the site of cultural production. Keats is claiming that poets will reshape civilization itself.