Meg Merrilies

By John Keats 1795–1821 John Keats

Old Meg she was a Gipsy,

And liv'd upon the Moors:

Her bed it was the brown heath turf,

And her house was out of doors.

Her apples were swart blackberries,

Her currants pods o' broom;

Her wine was dew of the wild white rose,

Her book a churchyard tomb.

Her Brothers were the craggy hills,

Her Sisters larchen trees—

Alone with her great family

She liv'd as she did please.

No breakfast had she many a morn,

No dinner many a noon,

And 'stead of supper she would stare

Full hard against the Moon.

But every morn of woodbine fresh

She made her garlanding,

And every night the dark glen Yew

She wove, and she would sing.

And with her fingers old and brown

She plaited Mats o' Rushes,

And gave them to the Cottagers

She met among the Bushes.

Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen

And tall as Amazon:

An old red blanket cloak she wore;

A chip hat had she on.

God rest her aged bones somewhere—

She died full long agone!

Biography

John Keats, who died at the age of twenty-five, had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet. He published only fifty-four poems, in three slim volumes and a few magazines. But at each point in his development he took on the challenges of a wide range of poetic forms from the sonnet, to the Spenserian romance, to the Miltonic epic, defining anew their possibilities with his own distinctive fusion of earnest energy, . . .

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