On Reading a Sonnet of Keats

This immortality, this meteor spark
popped from a fire which gloriously roared
recovered dreams into the silent dark,
shocking our slow-grown tongue to new accord.
    He shook the citadel of hardened heart,
    whose duty-weary corps looked up and danced
    to meet the bard who summoned them apart,
    drawn to obey the dreamy beat of trance;
As harried men, briefcased in strait attire,
may utterly forget their clock-bound crush
to pause and smile, hearing a children's choir
whose music charms their fretwork to a hush.
      Few years know poets; poets know few years;
      yet he knew, and renewed, our hearts and tears.