Fill For Me A Brimming Bowl

by John Keats — a poem card from Justes Mots

A lover's lament requesting oblivion through a magical draught from Lethe's waters to erase the memory of an unattainable beloved. The poem dwells on the inescapability of love's pain and the dimming of all other pleasures and pursuits, concluding with the bittersweet acceptance that the beloved will remain eternally vivid in memory.

Fill for me a brimming bowl
And in it let me drown my soul:
But put therein some drug, designed
To Banish Women from my mind:
For I want not the stream inspiring
That fills the mind with'fond desiring,
But I want as deep a draught
As e'er from Lethe's wave was quaff'd;…

Themes: sympathy · grief · reflection · long-distance