On a Dream

On a Dream is a sonnet by the English Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821), composed in 1819. Just fourteen lines long, it opens by invoking the Greek myth in which Hermes lulls the hundred-eyed giant Argus to sleep and so rescues Io, a figure for the poet's own soul slipping away while the wakeful "hundred-eyed" world lies dormant. The spirit in the poem does not fly to radiant, cool locales of Greek myth such as Mount Ida or the Vale of Tempe; instead it plunges into the "second circle of sorrowful Hell" depicted in Dante's Divine Comedy, a place of violent winds and driving hail where those consumed by lust and love endure torment. Amid this melancholy storm the poet sees and kisses pale, sweet lips, and floats with a beautiful figure above the wind and rain. Taking the dream as its passageway, the poem sets mythical lightness against hellish weight, giving voice to Keats's complex sense of love, mortality, and imagination. Though very short, it concentrates the essential temper of Keats's poetry: the interweaving of sensory beauty and a consciousness of mourning, the reworking of classical allusion, and a fascination with the half-waking, half-sleeping state of the dream. It is often anthologized alongside the odes Keats wrote in the same year, and stands as a compact yet important work for understanding his poetic style.