ANQ, June 22nd, 2006
One of Keats's most memorable passages on poetic influence occurs in his sonnet on this topic, "How many bards gild the lapses of time!" Of his favorite poets, Keats says he "could brood / Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:" (3-4)
And often, when I sit me down to rhyme, These will in throngs before my mind intrude: But no confusion, no disturbance rude Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime. (5-8)
As John Kerrigan has shown, one of the poems Keats brooded over most intensely was Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece, and Keats's line about poets intruding in throngs before his mind ...
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