John Keats

To —— 'Had I a man's fair form, then might my sighs

TO ——
There is no clue to the identity of the person addressed and no date is affixed. It was published in the 1817 volume, and there follows the one addressed to his brother George.
Had I a man's fair form, then might my sighs

ivory shell

Keats uses the period's standard anatomical metaphor—the ear's spiral shape resembles a seashell. He's being formal, even clinical, about the body he can't touch.

Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell
Thine ear, and find thy gentle heart; so well
Would passion arm me for the enterprise:
But ah! I am no knight whose foeman dies;
No cuirass glistens on my bosom's swell;

No cuirass glistens

A cuirass is chest armor. Keats lists three masculine roles he can't claim: knight, warrior, shepherd-lover. This is a catalog of his social inadequacy.

I am no happy shepherd of the dell
Whose lips have trembled with a maiden's eyes.
Yet must I dote upon thee,—call thee sweet,

Hybla's honied roses

Hybla was a Sicilian town famous in antiquity for honey (not roses). Keats conflates two separate symbols of sweetness into an impossible hybrid.

Sweeter by far than Hybla's honied roses
When steep'd in dew rich to intoxication.
Ah! I will taste that dew, for me 't is meet,
And when the moon her pallid face discloses,
I 'll gather some by spells, and incantation.

spells, and incantation

The poem pivots from self-pity to fantasy: if he can't win her as a man, he'll use magic. The shift from social failure to supernatural ambition is abrupt and slightly desperate.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Body Problem

This is a poem about physical inadequacy. The opening conditional—"Had I a man's fair form"—establishes that Keats believes he lacks the body necessary for courtship. At 5'1" and self-conscious about his height, Keats returned obsessively to this theme in early poems.

The octave (first eight lines) catalogs masculine archetypes he can't inhabit: the knight who defeats rivals, the warrior in gleaming armor, the pastoral shepherd who wins maidens. Each image emphasizes physical presence and action. The repetition of "No" and "I am no" hammers home his exclusion from these roles.

What's striking is how literary his inadequacy is. He doesn't compare himself to real men but to figures from romance and pastoral poetry. His problem isn't just his body—it's that he knows too much poetry and can't live up to it.

The Turn to Magic

The sestet (final six lines) abandons realism for enchantment. "Yet must I dote upon thee" signals the volta: he'll desire her anyway, but on different terms. The language shifts from martial (knight, cuirass) to sensual and supernatural (dew, moon, spells).

"Hybla's honied roses" is a telling mistake. Hybla produced honey, not roses—Keats manufactures an impossible flower that's both sweet-smelling and sweet-tasting. This is wish-fulfillment at the level of botany. The dew "steep'd...rich to intoxication" extends the fantasy: nature itself becomes narcotic.

The final couplet's promise to gather dew "by spells, and incantation" sounds less like confidence than compensation. If the real world won't give him a lover's body, he'll rewrite the rules entirely. The poem ends not with success but with the fantasy of success—which may be all the young Keats thought himself capable of.