To the Nile
by John Keats

English Romantic lyric poet. His first published volume (1817) included On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer and Sleep and Poetry; Endymion followed (1818); many of his best-known poems including The Eve of St Agnes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode of a Grecian Urn and To Autumn were written between 1818-1819 and published in a volume in 1820. His letters have also come to be considered as part of his works. Keats is one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. Other Romantic poets include Burns, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Blake.

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To the Nile
by John Keats

Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.

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To the Nile by John Keats