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Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell
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.


Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell
by John Keats

Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No God, no Demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once.
Heart! Thou and I are here, sad and alone;
I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,
To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.
Why did I laugh? I know this Being's lease,
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads;
Yet would I on this very midnight cease,
And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds;
Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,
But Death intenser -Death is Life's high meed.


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