SELECTED POEMS AND LETTERS
John Keats

Copyright

William Collins

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Life & Times section © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Silvia Crompton asserts her moral right as author of the Life & Times section

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from Collins English Dictionary

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History of Collins

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books, and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the ﬁrst dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the ﬁrst Collins novel, Ready Reckoner; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed, and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly “Victorian” in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the ﬁrst time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientiﬁc books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of “books for the millions” was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel, and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible, and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Life & Times
About the Author

John Keats is one of the greatest English poets ever to have lived, a leading light of the Romantic movement, famed as much for his sentimental odes and melancholic meditations as for his contemplative correspondence. When Keats died in 1821 at the tragically young age of 25, Lord Byron lamented “his genius … undoubtedly of great promise”, concluding: “He is a loss to our literature.” His legacy is all the more remarkable when one considers that Keats had only been a published writer for four years before his death, that a great many contemporary critics were exceptionally unkind about him, and that he only sold 200 copies of his combined work during his lifetime.

The Cockney Poet

The high regard in which Keats is nowadays held developed during the nineteenth century, in the decades following his death. In his own time, it was really only his publishers and friends who truly appreciated the beauty of his imagination and writing; literary reviewers – those able to inform public opinion – tended to deride him for his lowly upbringing and schooling.

They had a point. Keats was born in Moorgate, at that time the eastern extremity of London, quite possibly at the tavern where his father worked as a stableman. He received an ordinary, inexpensive education and was raised by his grandmother from the age of eight, following the death of his father. Money was tight, and aged fourteen he left school to begin an apprenticeship with his grandmother’s neighbour, a surgeon, seeming for many years to be destined for a career in medicine.

But Keats had also taken to reading poetry, particularly the works of London poets Byron and Leigh Hunt, and increasingly he neglected his studies in order to write. Through his childhood friend, the author Charles Cowden Clarke, Keats was introduced not only to great literature but also to the great writers of his day. In 1816, the same year he qualified as an apothecary and surgeon, Keats composed “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, expressing his wonder at the new world of poetry that had opened up to him: “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken.” By the end of that year, Keats was a published poet – Leigh Hunt had included “O Solitude” in his weekly magazine – and he abandoned medicine for good.

The critics never quite forgave him for his upbringing, however. His first collection of poems in 1817 was almost universally panned or ignored. The influential Blackwood’s Review was particularly harsh, referring to Leigh Hunt and Keats, among others, as the “Cockney School” of poets. Reviewing Keats’ “Endymion” in 1818, the journal commented that the “imperturbable drivelling idiocy” was the symptom of “an able mind reduced to a state of insanity”, advising that “it is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet.”

Beauty is Truth

Neither bad reviews nor poverty could dissuade Keats from writing. In the winter of 1818–19 he moved to Wentworth Place in Hampstead – now the Keats Museum – and wrote a series of odes that are regarded as some of his best work. They include “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode to a Nightingale” and the great “To Autumn”, often praised as his most perfect poem. Keats was experimenting with the ode, a form popular with earlier English poets including Spenser and Dryden, as well as older Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the odes he composed in 1819 are regarded as landmarks of the form.

The last lines of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” are among Keats’ most famous: “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” It is an idea very much in keeping with Keats’ philosophy on both life and the purpose of poetry, with his sharp eye for detail and his yearning to express wonder in words. He had said as much in a November 1817 letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey, writing of “the truth of the imagination” and concluding that “whatever the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.”

Keats’ letters are an invaluable asset in understanding the inspiration behind his writing. He took his time over his correspondence, and repeatedly ideas played with in letters appear in subsequent poems. In a letter to the poet John Hamilton Reynolds in September 1819, for example, Keats wrote of the beauty of autumn – “somehow the stubble plain looks warm” – lines which, in more polished form, found their way into “On Autumn”. In May 1818 Keats had, in another letter to Reynolds, toyed with the idea of life as a “Mansion of Many Apartments”, a notion that returned the following year in “The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream”. More than any other subject, Keats wrote about poetry itself, and though his letters, like his poems, did not achieve fame until after his death, they finally found their audience in the great poets of the twentieth century. T. S. Eliot considered them “the most notable and important ever written by any English poet”, their statements on poetry ringing true even “for greater and more mature poetry than anything Keats ever wrote”.

Love and Death

The two subjects that intrigued Keats most clashed repeatedly in the last years of his life. Towards the end of 1818, around the time he moved to Wentworth Place, Keats lost his beloved younger brother Tom to tuberculosis but also met the love of his life, Fanny Brawne. She helped him in his grief during the months in which he composed his odes, and Keats had her in mind when he wrote “Bright star, would I were as steadfast as thou”. In October 1819 he wrote to her: “I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you.” That same month, Fanny accepted his proposal of marriage, although her mother refused to give her consent until the failed poet had proved his financial worth.

But Keats himself had by now begun to show symptoms of tuberculosis, the disease that had killed his mother and two brothers. His condition worsened during 1820 until finally, in September, he departed for the warmer climate of Rome on doctors’ orders. Knowing that he would never return, he never wrote to Fanny again.

Following a storm-wracked voyage, Keats reached Rome in mid-November, two months after he had left London. The weather had turned wintry and he took to his bed. He wrote his last letter on 30 November, telling his friend Charles Armitage Brown: “I am leading a posthumous existence.”

Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821. Convinced that he had left no lasting impression on the world of literature – a year earlier he had written to Fanny: “I have left nothing to make my friends proud of my memory” – he asked his doctor to arrange a plain, nameless and dateless gravestone simply saying: “Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water”. His doctor ignored this wish, and the simple tombstone that lies to this day in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome bears the following, more elaborate inscription: “This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / YOUNG ENGLISH POET / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired / these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water.”

It was not until 1848, thirty years after their composition, that some of Keats’ own poignant thoughts on leaving the world behind were published: “When I have fears that I may cease to be / Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, / … And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! / That I shall never look upon thee more, / Never have relish in the faery power / Of unreflecting love! – then on the shore / Of the wide world I stand alone, and think / Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.”

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

History of Collins

Life & Times

Poems

Addressed to Haydon

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill

Imitation of Spenser

Three Sonnets to Woman

Isabella; or, The Pot Of Basil. A Story from Boccaccio

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Lamia

Part I

Part II

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Ode on Melancholy

Ode to a Nightingale

Fancy

Ode to Psyche

On first looking into Chapman’s Homer

To Autumn

Sleep and Poetry

Specimen of an Induction to a Poem

The Eve of St. Agnes

To Charles Cowden Clarke

To Kosciusko

Hyperion: A Fragment

Book I

Book II

Book III

Endymion: A Poetic Romance

Book I

Book II

Book III

Book IV

Letters

CLASSIC LITERATURE: WORDS AND PHRASES adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

About the Publisher

Poems

Addressed to Haydon

Highmindedness, a jealousy for good,

A loving-kindness for the great man’s fame,

Dwells here and there with people of no name,

In noisome alley, and in pathless wood:

And where we think the truth least understood,

Oft may be found a “singleness of aim,”

That ought to frighten into hooded shame

A money mong’ring, pitiable brood.

How glorious this affection for the cause

Of stedfast genius, toiling gallantly!

What when a stout unbending champion awes

Envy, and Malice to their native sty?

Unnumber’d souls breathe out a still applause,

Proud to behold him in his country’s eye.

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,

The air was cooling, and so very still.

That the sweet buds which with a modest pride

Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,

Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems,

Had not yet lost those starry diadems

Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.

The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,

And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept

On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept

A little noiseless noise among the leaves,

Born of the very sigh that silence heaves:

For not the faintest motion could be seen

Of all the shades that slanted o’er the green.

There was wide wand’ring for the greediest eye,

To peer about upon variety;

Far round the horizon’s crystal air to skim,

And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim;

To picture out the quaint, and curious bending

Of a fresh woodland alley, never ending;

Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves,

Guess were the jaunty streams refresh themselves.

I gazed awhile, and felt as light, and free

As though the fanning wings of Mercury

Had played upon my heels: I was light-hearted,

And many pleasures to my vision started;

So I straightway began to pluck a posey

Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy.

A bush of May flowers with the bees about them;

Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them;

And let a lush laburnum oversweep them,

And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them

Moist, cool and green; and shade the violets,

That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

A filbert hedge with wild briar overtwined,

And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind

Upon their summer thrones; there too should be

The frequent chequer of a youngling tree,

That with a score of light green brethen shoots

From the quaint mossiness of aged roots:

Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters

Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters

The spreading blue bells: it may haply mourn

That such fair clusters should be rudely torn

From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly

By infant hands, left on the path to die.

Open afresh your round of starry folds,

Ye ardent marigolds!

Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,

For great Apollo bids

That in these days your praises should be sung

On many harps, which he has lately strung;

And when again your dewiness he kisses,

Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses:

So haply when I rove in some far vale,

His mighty voice may come upon the gale.

Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight:

With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,

And taper fulgent catching at all things,

To bind them all about with tiny rings.

Linger awhile upon some bending planks

That lean against a streamlet’s rushy banks,

And watch intently Nature’s gentle doings:

They will be found softer than ring-dove’s cooings.

How silent comes the water round that bend;

Not the minutest whisper does it send

To the o’erhanging sallows: blades of grass

Slowly across the chequer’d shadows pass.

Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach

To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach

A natural sermon o’er their pebbly beds;

Where swarms of minnows show their little heads,

Staying their wavy bodies ’gainst the streams,

To taste the luxury of sunny beams

Temper’d with coolness. How they ever wrestle

With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle

Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand.

If you but scantily hold out the hand,

That very instant not one will remain;

But turn your eye, and they are there again.

The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses,

And cool themselves among the em’rald tresses;

The while they cool themselves, they freshness give,

And moisture, that the bowery green may live:

So keeping up an interchange of favours,

Like good men in the truth of their behaviours

Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop

From low hung branches; little space they stop;

But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek;

Then off at once, as in a wanton freak:

Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings,

Pausing upon their yellow flutterings.

Were I in such a place, I sure should pray

That nought less sweet, might call my thoughts away,

Than the soft rustle of a maiden’s gown

Fanning away the dandelion’s down;

Than the light music of her nimble toes

Patting against the sorrel as she goes.

How she would start, and blush, thus to be caught

Playing in all her innocence of thought.

O let me lead her gently o’er the brook,

Watch her half-smiling lips, and downward look;

O let me for one moment touch her wrist;

Let me one moment to her breathing list;

And as she leaves me may she often turn

Her fair eyes looking through her locks aubùrne.

What next? A tuft of evening primroses,

O’er which the mind may hover till it dozes;

O’er which it well might take a pleasant sleep,

But that ’tis ever startled by the leap

Of buds into ripe flowers; or by the flitting

Of diverse moths, that aye their rest are quitting;

Or by the moon lifting her silver rim

Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim

Coming into the blue with all her light.

O Maker of sweet poets, dear delight

Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers;

Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers,

Mingler with leaves, and dew and tumbling streams,

Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,

Lover of loneliness, and wandering,

Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!

Thee must I praise above all other glories

That smile us on to tell delightful stories.

For what has made the sage or poet write

But the fair paradise of Nature’s light?

In the calm grandeur of a sober line,

We see the waving of the mountain pine;

And when a tale is beautifully staid,

We feel the safety of a hawthorn glade:

When it is moving on luxurious wings,

The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings:

Fair dewy roses brush against our faces,

And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases;

O’er head we see the jasmine and sweet briar,

And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire;

While at our feet, the voice of crystal bubbles

Charms us at once away from all our troubles:

So that we feel uplifted from the world,

Walking upon the white clouds wreath’d and curl’d.

So felt he, who first told, how Psyche went

On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment;

What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips

First touch’d; what amorous, and fondling nips

They gave each other’s cheeks; with all their sighs,

And how they kist each other’s tremulous eyes:

The silver lamp, – the ravishment, – the wonder –

The darkness, – loneliness, – the fearful thunder;

Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown,

To bow for gratitude before Jove’s throne.

So did he feel, who pull’d the boughs aside,

That we might look into a forest wide,

To catch a glimpse of Fawns, and Dryades

Coming with softest rustle through the trees;

And garlands woven of flowers wild, and sweet,

Upheld on ivory wrists, or sporting feet:

Telling us how fair, trembling Syrinx fled

Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread.

Poor nymph, – poor Pan, – how he did weep to find,

Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind

Along the reedy stream; a half heard strain,

Full of sweet desolation – balmy pain.

What first inspired a bard of old to sing

Narcissus pining o’er the untainted spring?

In some delicious ramble, he had found

A little space, with boughs all woven round;

And in the midst of all, a clearer pool

Than e’er reflected in its pleasant cool,

The blue sky here, and there, serenely peeping

Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping.

And on the bank a lonely flower he spied,

A meek and forlorn flower, with naught of pride,

Drooping its beauty o’er the watery clearness,

To woo its own sad image into nearness:

Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move;

But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love.

So while the Poet stood in this sweet spot,

Some fainter gleamings o’er his fancy shot;

Nor was it long ere he had told the tale

Of young Narcissus, and sad Echo’s bale.

Where had he been, from whose warm head out-flew

That sweetest of all songs, that ever new,

That aye refreshing, pure deliciousness,

Coming ever to bless

The wanderer by moonlight? to him bringing

Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing

From out the middle air, from flowery nests,

And from the pillowy silkiness that rests

Full in the speculation of the stars.

Ah! surely he had burst our mortal bars;

Into some wond’rous region he had gone,

To search for thee, divine Endymion!

He was a Poet, sure a lover too,

Who stood on Latmus’ top, what time there blew

Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below;

And brought in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow

A hymn from Dian’s temple; while upswelling,

The incense went to her own starry dwelling.

But though her face was clear as infant’s eyes,

Though she stood smiling o’er the sacrifice,

The Poet wept at her so piteous fate,

Wept that such beauty should be desolate:

So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won,

And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion.

Queen of the wide air; thou most lovely queen

Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen!

As thou exceedest all things in thy shine,

So every tale, does this sweet tale of thine.

O for three words of honey, that I might

Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night!

Where distant ships do seem to show their keels,

Phoebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels,

And turned to smile upon thy bashful eyes,

Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize.

The evening weather was so bright, and clear,

That men of health were of unusual cheer;

Stepping like Homer at the trumpet’s call,

Or young Apollo on the pedestal:

And lovely women were as fair and warm,

As Venus looking sideways in alarm.

The breezes were ethereal, and pure,

And crept through half closed lattices to cure

The languid sick; it cool’d their fever’d sleep,

And soothed them into slumbers full and deep.

Soon they awoke clear eyed: nor burnt with thirsting,

Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting:

And springing up, they met the wond’ring sight

Of their dear friends, nigh foolish with delight;

Who feel their arms, and breasts, and kiss and stare,

And on their placid foreheads part the hair.

Young men, and maidens at each other gaz’d

With hands held back, and motionless, amaz’d

To see the brightness in each others’ eyes;

And so they stood, fill’d with a sweet surprise,

Until their tongues were loos’d in poesy.

Therefore no lover did of anguish die:

But the soft numbers, in that moment spoken,

Made silken ties, that never may be broken.

Cynthia! I cannot tell the greater blisses,

That follow’d thine, and thy dear shepherd’s kisses:

Was there a Poet born? – but now no more,

My wand’ring spirit must no further soar. –

Imitation of Spenser

Now Morning from her orient chamber came,

And her first footsteps touch’d a verdant hill;

Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,

Silv’ring the untainted gushes of its rill;

Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill,

And after parting beds of simple flowers,

By many streams a little lake did fill,

Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,

And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.

There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright

Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below;

Whose silken fins, and golden scales’ light

Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow:

There saw the swan his neck of arched snow,

And oar’d himself along with majesty;

Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show

Beneath the waves like Afric’s ebony,

And on his back a fay reclined voluptuously.

Ah! could I tell the wonders of an isle

That in that fairest lake had placed been,

I could e’en Dido of her grief beguile;

Or rob from aged Lear his bitter teen:

For sure so fair a place was never seen,

Of all that ever charm’d romantic eye:

It seem’d an emerald in the silver sheen

Of the bright waters; or as when on high,

Through clouds of fleecy white, laughs the coerulean sky.

And all around it dipp’d luxuriously

Slopings of verdure through the glossy tide,

Which, as it were in gentle amity,

Rippled delighted up the flowery side;

As if to glean the ruddy tears, it tried,

Which fell profusely from the rose-tree stem!

Haply it was the workings of its pride,

In strife to throw upon the shore a gem

Outvieing all the buds in Flora’s diadem.

Three Sonnets to Woman

I.

Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain,

Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies;

Without that modest softening that enhances

The downcast eye, repentant of the pain

That its mild light creates to heal again:

E’en then, elate, my spirit leaps, and prances,

E’en then my soul with exultation dances

For that to love, so long, I’ve dormant lain:

But when I see thee meek, and kind, and tender,

Heavens! how desperately do I adore

Thy winning graces; – to be thy defender

I hotly burn – to be a Calidore –

A very Red Cross Knight – a stout Leander –

Might I be loved by thee like these of yore.

II.

Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair;

Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast,

Are things on which the dazzled senses rest

Till the fond, fixed eyes, forget they stare.

From such fine pictures, heavens! I cannot dare

To turn my admiration, though unpossess’d

They be of what is worthy, – though not drest

In lovely modesty, and virtues rare.

Yet these I leave as thoughtless as a lark;

These lures I straight forget, – e’en ere I dine,

Or thrice my palate moisten: but when I mark

Such charms with mild intelligences shine,

My ear is open like a greedy shark,

To catch the tunings of a voice divine.

III.

Ah! who can e’er forget so fair a being?

Who can forget her half retiring sweets?

God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats

For man’s protection. Surely the All-seeing,

Who joys to see us with his gifts agreeing,

Will never give him pinions, who intreats

Such innocence to ruin, – who vilely cheats

A dove-like bosom. In truth there is no freeing

One’s thoughts from such a beauty; when I hear

A lay that once I saw her hand awake,

Her form seems floating palpable, and near;

Had I e’er seen her from an arbour take

A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear,

And o’er my eyes the trembling moisture shake.

Isabella; or, The Pot Of Basil
A Story from Boccaccio

I.

Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!

Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love’s eye!

They could not in the self-same mansion dwell

Without some stir of heart, some malady;

They could not sit at meals but feel how well

It soothed each to be the other by;

They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep

But to each other dream, and nightly weep.

II.

With every morn their love grew tenderer,

With every eve deeper and tenderer still;

He might not in house, field, or garden stir,

But her full shape would all his seeing fill;

And his continual voice was pleasanter

To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;

Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,

She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.

III.

He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch,

Before the door had given her to his eyes;

And from her chamber-window he would catch

Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;

And constant as her vespers would he watch,

Because her face was turn’d to the same skies;

And with sick longing all the night outwear,

To hear her morning-step upon the stair.

IV.

A whole long month of May in this sad plight

Made their cheeks paler by the break of June:

“To-morrow will I bow to my delight,

To-morrow will I ask my lady’s boon.” –

“O may I never see another night,

Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love’s tune.” –

So spake they to their pillows; but, alas,

Honeyless days and days did he let pass;

V.

Until sweet Isabella’s untouch’d cheek

Fell sick within the rose’s just domain,

Fell thin as a young mother’s, who doth seek

By every lull to cool her infant’s pain:

“How ill she is,” said he, “I may not speak,

And yet I will, and tell my love all plain:

If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears,

And at the least ’twill startle off her cares.”

VI.

So said he one fair morning, and all day

His heart beat awfully against his side;

And to his heart he inwardly did pray

For power to speak; but still the ruddy tide

Stifled his voice, and puls’d resolve away –

Fever’d his high conceit of such a bride,

Yet brought him to the meekness of a child:

Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!

VII.

So once more he had wak’d and anguished

A dreary night of love and misery,

If Isabel’s quick eye had not been wed

To every symbol on his forehead high;

She saw it waxing very pale and dead,

And straight all flush’d; so, lisped tenderly,

“Lorenzo!” – here she ceas’d her timid quest,

But in her tone and look he read the rest.

VIII.

“O Isabella, I can half perceive

That I may speak my grief into thine ear;

If thou didst ever any thing believe,

Believe how I love thee, believe how near

My soul is to its doom: I would not grieve

Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear

Thine eyes by gazing; but I cannot live

Another night, and not my passion shrive.

IX.

“Love! thou art leading me from wintry cold,

Lady! thou leadest me to summer clime,

And I must taste the blossoms that unfold

In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time.”

So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,

And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme:

Great bliss was with them, and great happiness

Grew, like a lusty flower in June’s caress.

X.

Parting they seem’d to tread upon the air,

Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart

Only to meet again more close, and share

The inward fragrance of each other’s heart.

She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair

Sang, of delicious love and honey’d dart;

He with light steps went up a western hill,

And bade the sun farewell, and joy’d his fill.

XI.

All close they met again, before the dusk

Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

All close they met, all eyes, before the dusk

Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk,

Unknown of any, free from whispering tale.

Ah! better had it been for ever so,

Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe.

XII.

Were they unhappy then? – It cannot be –

Too many tears for lovers have been shed,

Too many sighs give we to them in fee,

Too much of pity after they are dead,

Too many doleful stories do we see,

Whose matter in bright gold were best be read;

Except in such a page where Theseus’ spouse

Over the pathless waves towards him bows.

XIII.

But, for the general award of love,

The little sweet doth kill much bitterness;

Though Dido silent is in under-grove,

And Isabella’s was a great distress,

Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove

Was not embalm’d, this truth is not the less –

Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers,

Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.

XIV.

With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,

Enriched from ancestral merchandize,

And for them many a weary hand did swelt

In torched mines and noisy factories,

And many once proud-quiver’d loins did melt

In blood from stinging whip; – with hollow eyes

Many all day in dazzling river stood,

To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

XV.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,

And went all naked to the hungry shark;

For them his ears gush’d blood; for them in death

The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark

Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe

A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:

Half-ignorant, they turn’d an easy wheel,

That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

XVI.

Why were they proud? Because their marble founts

Gush’d with more pride than do a wretch’s tears? –

Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts

Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs? –

Why were they proud? Because red-lin’d accounts

Were richer than the songs of Grecian years? –

Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,

Why in the name of Glory were they proud?

XVII.

Yet were these Florentines as self-retired

In hungry pride and gainful cowardice,

As two close Hebrews in that land inspired,

Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies;

The hawks of ship-mast forests – the untired

And pannier’d mules for ducats and old lies –

Quick cat’s-paws on the generous stray-away, –

Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay.

XVIII.

How was it these same ledger-men could spy

Fair Isabella in her downy nest?

How could they find out in Lorenzo’s eye

A straying from his toil? Hot Egypt’s pest

Into their vision covetous and sly!

How could these money-bags see east and west? –

Yet so they did – and every dealer fair

Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare.

XIX.

O eloquent and famed Boccaccio!

Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon;

And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow,

And of thy roses amorous of the moon,

And of thy lilies, that do paler grow

Now they can no more hear thy ghittern’s tune,

For venturing syllables that ill beseem

The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme.

XX.

Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale

Shall move on soberly, as it is meet;

There is no other crime, no mad assail

To make old prose in modern rhyme more sweet:

But it is done – succeed the verse or fail –

To honour thee, and thy gone spirit greet;

To stead thee as a verse in English tongue,

An echo of thee in the north-wind sung.

XXI.

These brethren having found by many signs

What love Lorenzo for their sister had,

And how she lov’d him too, each unconfines

His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad

That he, the servant of their trade designs,

Should in their sister’s love be blithe and glad,

When ’twas their plan to coax her by degrees

To some high noble and his olive-trees.

XXII.

And many a jealous conference had they,

And many times they bit their lips alone,

Before they fix’d upon a surest way

To make the youngster for his crime atone;

And at the last, these men of cruel clay

Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone;

For they resolved in some forest dim

To kill Lorenzo, and there bury him.

XXIII.

So on a pleasant morning, as he leant

Into the sun-rise, o’er the balustrade

Of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent

Their footing through the dews; and to him said,

“You seem there in the quiet of content,

Lorenzo, and we are most loth to invade

Calm speculation; but if you are wise,

Bestride your steed while cold is in the skies.

XXIV.

“To-day we purpose, ay, this hour we mount

To spur three leagues towards the Apennine;

Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count

His dewy rosary on the eglantine.”

Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont,

Bow’d a fair greeting to these serpents’ whine;

And went in haste, to get in readiness,

With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman’s dress.

XXV.

And as he to the court-yard pass’d along,

Each third step did he pause, and listen’d oft

If he could hear his lady’s matin-song,

Or the light whisper of her footstep soft;

And as he thus over his passion hung,

He heard a laugh full musical aloft;

When, looking up, he saw her features bright

Smile through an in-door lattice, all delight.

XXVI.

“Love, Isabel!” said he, “I was in pain

Lest I should miss to bid thee a good morrow

Ah! what if I should lose thee, when so fain

I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow

Of a poor three hours’ absence? but we’ll gain

Out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow.

Goodbye! I’ll soon be back.” – “Goodbye!” said she: –

And as he went she chanted merrily.

XXVII.

So the two brothers and their murder’d man

Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno’s stream

Gurgles through straiten’d banks, and still doth fan

Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream

Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan

The brothers’ faces in the ford did seem,

Lorenzo’s flush with love. – They pass’d the water

Into a forest quiet for the slaughter.

XXVIII.

There was Lorenzo slain and buried in,

There in that forest did his great love cease;

Ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win,

It aches in loneliness – is ill at peace

As the break-covert blood-hounds of such sin:

They dipp’d their swords in the water, and did tease

Their horses homeward, with convulsed spur,

Each richer by his being a murderer.

XXIX.

They told their sister how, with sudden speed,

Lorenzo had ta’en ship for foreign lands,

Because of some great urgency and need

In their affairs, requiring trusty hands.

Poor Girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed,

And ’scape at once from Hope’s accursed bands;

To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow,

And the next day will be a day of sorrow.

XXX.

She weeps alone for pleasures not to be;

Sorely she wept until the night came on,

And then, instead of love, O misery!

She brooded o’er the luxury alone:

His image in the dusk she seem’d to see,

And to the silence made a gentle moan,

Spreading her perfect arms upon the air,

And on her couch low murmuring “Where? O where?”

XXXI.

But Selfishness, Love’s cousin, held not long

Its fiery vigil in her single breast;

She fretted for the golden hour, and hung

Upon the time with feverish unrest –

Not long – for soon into her heart a throng

Of higher occupants, a richer zest,

Came tragic; passion not to be subdued,

And sorrow for her love in travels rude.

XXXII.

In the mid days of autumn, on their eves

The breath of Winter comes from far away,

And the sick west continually bereaves

Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay

Of death among the bushes and the leaves,

To make all bare before he dares to stray

From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel

By gradual decay from beauty fell,

XXXIII.

Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes

She ask’d her brothers, with an eye all pale,

Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes

Could keep him off so long? They spake a tale

Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes

Came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom’s vale;

And every night in dreams they groan’d aloud,

To see their sister in her snowy shroud.

XXXIV.

And she had died in drowsy ignorance,

But for a thing more deadly dark than all;

It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,

Which saves a sick man from the feather’d pall

For some few gasping moments; like a lance,

Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall

With cruel pierce, and bringing him again

Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

XXXV.

It was a vision. – In the drowsy gloom,

The dull of midnight, at her couch’s foot

Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb

Had marr’d his glossy hair which once could shoot

Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom

Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute

From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears

Had made a miry channel for his tears.

XXXVI.

Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake;

For there was striving, in its piteous tongue,

To speak as when on earth it was awake,

And Isabella on its music hung:

Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake,

As in a palsied Druid’s harp unstrung;

And through it moan’d a ghostly under-song,

Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among.

XXXVII.

Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright

With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof

From the poor girl by magic of their light,

The while it did unthread the horrid woof

Of the late darken’d time, – the murderous spite

Of pride and avarice, – the dark pine roof

In the forest, – and the sodden turfed dell,

Where, without any word, from stabs he fell.

XXXVIII.

Saying moreover, “Isabel, my sweet!

Red whortle-berries droop above my head,

And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;

Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed

Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat

Comes from beyond the river to my bed:

Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,

And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

XXXIX.

“I am a shadow now, alas! alas!

Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling

Alone: I chant alone the holy mass,

While little sounds of life are round me knelling,

And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,

And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,

Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me,

And thou art distant in Humanity.

XL.

“I know what was, I feel full well what is,

And I should rage, if spirits could go mad;

Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss,

That paleness warms my grave, as though I had

A Seraph chosen from the bright abyss

To be my spouse: thy paleness makes me glad;

Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel

A greater love through all my essence steal.”

XLI.

The Spirit mourn’d “Adieu!” – dissolv’d, and left

The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;

As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,

Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,

We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,

And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:

It made sad Isabella’s eyelids ache,

And in the dawn she started up awake;

XLII.

“Ha! ha!” said she, “I knew not this hard life,

I thought the worst was simple misery;

I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife

Portion’d us – happy days, or else to die;

But there is crime – a brother’s bloody knife!

Sweet Spirit, thou hast school’d my infancy:

I’ll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes,

And greet thee morn and even in the skies.”

XLIII.

When the full morning came, she had devised

How she might secret to the forest hie;

How she might find the clay, so dearly prized,

And sing to it one latest lullaby;

How her short absence might be unsurmised,

While she the inmost of the dream would try.

Resolv’d, she took with her an aged nurse,

And went into that dismal forest-hearse.

XLIV.

See, as they creep along the river side,

How she doth whisper to that aged Dame,

And, after looking round the champaign wide,

Shows her a knife. – “What feverous hectic flame

Burns in thee, child? – What good can thee betide,

That thou should’st smile again?” – The evening came,

And they had found Lorenzo’s earthy bed;

The flint was there, the berries at his head.

XLV.

Who hath not loiter’d in a green church-yard,

And let his spirit, like a demon-mole,

Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard,

To see scull, coffin’d bones, and funeral stole;

Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr’d,

And filling it once more with human soul?

Ah! this is holiday to what was felt

When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt.

XLVI.

She gaz’d into the fresh-thrown mould, as though

One glance did fully all its secrets tell;

Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know

Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;

Upon the murderous spot she seem’d to grow,

Like to a native lily of the dell:

Then with her knife, all sudden, she began

To dig more fervently than misers can.

XLVII.

Soon she turn’d up a soiled glove, whereon

Her silk had play’d in purple phantasies,

She kiss’d it with a lip more chill than stone,

And put it in her bosom, where it dries

And freezes utterly unto the bone

Those dainties made to still an infant’s cries:

Then ’gan she work again; nor stay’d her care,

But to throw back at times her veiling hair.

XLVIII.

That old nurse stood beside her wondering,

Until her heart felt pity to the core

At sight of such a dismal labouring,

And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,

And put her lean hands to the horrid thing:

Three hours they labour’d at this travail sore;

At last they felt the kernel of the grave,

And Isabella did not stamp and rave.

XLIX.

Ah! wherefore all this wormy circumstance?

Why linger at the yawning tomb so long?

O for the gentleness of old Romance,

The simple plaining of a minstrel’s song!

Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance,

For here, in truth, it doth not well belong

To speak: – O turn thee to the very tale,

And taste the music of that vision pale.

L.

With duller steel than the Perséan sword

They cut away no formless monster’s head,

But one, whose gentleness did well accord

With death, as life. The ancient harps have said,

Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord:

If Love impersonate was ever dead,

Pale Isabella kiss’d it, and low moan’d.

’Twas love; cold, – dead indeed, but not dethroned.

LI.

In anxious secrecy they took it home,

And then the prize was all for Isabel:

She calm’d its wild hair with a golden comb,

And all around each eye’s sepulchral cell

Pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam

With tears, as chilly as a dripping well,

She drench’d away: – and still she comb’d, and kept

Sighing all day – and still she kiss’d, and wept.

LII.

Then in a silken scarf, – sweet with the dews

Of precious flowers pluck’d in Araby,

And divine liquids come with odorous ooze

Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully, –

She wrapp’d it up; and for its tomb did choose

A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by,

And cover’d it with mould, and o’er it set

Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.

LIII.

And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,

And she forgot the blue above the trees,

And she forgot the dells where waters run,

And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;

She had no knowledge when the day was done,

And the new morn she saw not: but in peace

Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,

And moisten’d it with tears unto the core.

LIV.

And so she ever fed it with thin tears,

Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew,

So that it smelt more balmy than its peers

Of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew

Nurture besides, and life, from human fears,

From the fast mouldering head there shut from view:

So that the jewel, safely casketed,

Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread.

LV.

O Melancholy, linger here awhile!

O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!

O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,

Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us – O sigh!

Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile;

Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily,

And make a pale light in your cypress glooms,

Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs.

LVI.

Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe,

From the deep throat of sad Melpomene!

Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go,

And touch the strings into a mystery;

Sound mournfully upon the winds and low;

For simple Isabel is soon to be

Among the dead: She withers, like a palm

Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm.

LVII.

O leave the palm to wither by itself;

Let not quick Winter chill its dying hour! –

It may not be – those Baälites of pelf,

Her brethren, noted the continual shower

From her dead eyes; and many a curious elf,

Among her kindred, wonder’d that such dower

Of youth and beauty should be thrown aside

By one mark’d out to be a Noble’s bride.

LVIII.

And, furthermore, her brethren wonder’d much

Why she sat drooping by the Basil green,

And why it flourish’d, as by magic touch;

Greatly they wonder’d what the thing might mean:

They could not surely give belief, that such

A very nothing would have power to wean

Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay,

And even remembrance of her love’s delay.

LIX.

Therefore they watch’d a time when they might sift

This hidden whim; and long they watch’d in vain;

For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift,

And seldom felt she any hunger-pain;

And when she left, she hurried back, as swift

As bird on wing to breast its eggs again;

And, patient, as a hen-bird, sat her there

Beside her Basil, weeping through her hair.

LX.

Yet they contriv’d to steal the Basil-pot,

And to examine it in secret place:

The thing was vile with green and livid spot,

And yet they knew it was Lorenzo’s face:

The guerdon of their murder they had got,

And so left Florence in a moment’s space,

Never to turn again. – Away they went,

With blood upon their heads, to banishment.

LXI.

O Melancholy, turn thine eyes away!

O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!

O Echo, Echo, on some other day,

From isles Lethean, sigh to us – O sigh!

Spirits of grief, sing not your “Well-a-way!”

For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die;

Will die a death too lone and incomplete,

Now they have ta’en away her Basil sweet.

LXII.

Piteous she look’d on dead and senseless things,

Asking for her lost Basil amorously;

And with melodious chuckle in the strings

Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry

After the Pilgrim in his wanderings,

To ask him where her Basil was; and why

’Twas hid from her: “For cruel ’tis,” said she,

“To steal my Basil-pot away from me.”

LXIII.

And so she pined, and so she died forlorn,

Imploring for her Basil to the last.

No heart was there in Florence but did mourn

In pity of her love, so overcast.

And a sad ditty of this story born

From mouth to mouth through all the country pass’d:

Still is the burthen sung – “O cruelty,

To steal my Basil-pot away from me!”

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the Lake

And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms

So haggard, and so woe begone?

The Squirrel’s granary is full

And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever dew,

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a Lady in the Meads

Full beautiful, a faery’s child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light

And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone,

She look’d at me as she did love

And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long,

For sidelong would she bend and sing

A Faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said

I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept and sigh’d full sore,

And there I shut her wild, wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,

And there I dream’d, Ah! Woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dreamt

On the cold hill side.

I saw pale Kings, and Princes too,

Pale warriors, death pale were they all;

They cried, La belle dame sans merci,

Thee hath in thrall.

I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gaped wide,

And I awoke, and found me here

On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering;

Though the sedge is withered from the Lake

And no birds sing …

Lamia
PART I.

Upon a time, before the faery broods

Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,

Before King Oberon’s bright diadem,

Sceptre, and mantle, clasp’d with dewy gem,

Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns

From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip’d lawns,

The ever-smitten Hermes empty left

His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft:

From high Olympus had he stolen light,

On this side of Jove’s clouds, to escape the sight

Of his great summoner, and made retreat

Into a forest on the shores of Crete.

For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt

A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt;

At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured

Pearls, while on land they wither’d and adored.

Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont,

And in those meads where sometime she might haunt,

Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse,

Though Fancy’s casket were unlock’d to choose.

Ah, what a world of love was at her feet!

So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat

Burnt from his winged heels to either ear,

That from a whiteness, as the lily clear,

Blush’d into roses ’mid his golden hair,

Fallen in jealous curls about his shoulders bare.

From vale to vale, from wood to wood, he flew,

Breathing upon the flowers his passion new,

And wound with many a river to its head,

To find where this sweet nymph prepar’d her secret bed:

In vain; the sweet nymph might nowhere be found,

And so he rested, on the lonely ground,

Pensive, and full of painful jealousies

Of the Wood-Gods, and even the very trees.

There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice,

Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys

All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake:

“When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake!

When move in a sweet body fit for life,

And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife

Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!”

The God, dove-footed, glided silently

Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed,

The taller grasses and full-flowering weed,

Until he found a palpitating snake,

Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake.

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,

Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;

Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,

Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d;

And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,

Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed

Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries –

So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries,

She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf,

Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.

Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire

Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar:

Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!

She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete:

And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there

But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?

As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.

Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake

Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake,

And thus; while Hermes on his pinions lay,

Like a stoop’d falcon ere he takes his prey.

“Fair Hermes, crown’d with feathers, fluttering light,

I had a splendid dream of thee last night:

I saw thee sitting, on a throne of gold,

Among the Gods, upon Olympus old,

The only sad one; for thou didst not hear

The soft, lute-finger’d Muses chaunting clear,

Nor even Apollo when he sang alone,

Deaf to his throbbing throat’s long, long melodious moan.

I dreamt I saw thee, robed in purple flakes,

Break amorous through the clouds, as morning breaks,

And, swiftly as a bright Phœbean dart,

Strike for the Cretan isle; and here thou art!

Too gentle Hermes, hast thou found the maid?”

Whereat the star of Lethe not delay’d

His rosy eloquence, and thus inquired:

“Thou smooth-lipp’d serpent, surely high inspired!

Thou beauteous wreath, with melancholy eyes,

Possess whatever bliss thou canst devise,

Telling me only where my nymph is fled, –

Where she doth breathe!” “Bright planet, thou hast said,”

Return’d the snake, “but seal with oaths, fair God!”

“I swear,” said Hermes, “by my serpent rod,

And by thine eyes, and by thy starry crown!”

Light flew his earnest words, among the blossoms blown.

Then thus again the brilliance feminine:

“Too frail of heart! for this lost nymph of thine,

Free as the air, invisibly, she strays

About these thornless wilds; her pleasant days

She tastes unseen; unseen her nimble feet

Leave traces in the grass and flowers sweet;

From weary tendrils, and bow’d branches green,

She plucks the fruit unseen, she bathes unseen:

And by my power is her beauty veil’d

To keep it unaffronted, unassail’d

By the love-glances of unlovely eyes,

Of Satyrs, Fauns, and blear’d Silenus’ sighs.

Pale grew her immortality, for woe

Of all these lovers, and she grieved so

I took compassion on her, bade her steep

Her hair in weird syrops, that would keep

Her loveliness invisible, yet free

To wander as she loves, in liberty.

Thou shalt behold her, Hermes, thou alone,

If thou wilt, as thou swearest, grant my boon!”

Then, once again, the charmed God began

An oath, and through the serpent’s ears it ran

Warm, tremulous, devout, psalterian.

Ravish’d, she lifted her Circean head,

Blush’d a live damask, and swift-lisping said,

“I was a woman, let me have once more

A woman’s shape, and charming as before.

I love a youth of Corinth – O the bliss!

Give me my woman’s form, and place me where he is.

Stoop, Hermes, let me breathe upon thy brow,

And thou shalt see thy sweet nymph even now.”

The God on half-shut feathers sank serene,

She breath’d upon his eyes, and swift was seen

Of both the guarded nymph near-smiling on the green.

It was no dream; or say a dream it was,

Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass

Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.

One warm, flush’d moment, hovering, it might seem

Dash’d by the wood-nymph’s beauty, so he burn’d;

Then, lighting on the printless verdure, turn’d

To the swoon’d serpent, and with languid arm,

Delicate, put to proof the lythe Caducean charm.

So done, upon the nymph his eyes he bent

Full of adoring tears and blandishment,

And towards her stept: she, like a moon in wane,

Faded before him, cower’d, nor could restrain

Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower

That faints into itself at evening hour:

But the God fostering her chilled hand,

She felt the warmth, her eyelids open’d bland,

And, like new flowers at morning song of bees,

Bloom’d, and gave up her honey to the lees.

Into the green-recessed woods they flew;

Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do.

Left to herself, the serpent now began

To change; her elfin blood in madness ran,

Her mouth foam’d, and the grass, therewith besprent,

Wither’d at dew so sweet and virulent;

Her eyes in torture fix’d, and anguish drear,

Hot, glaz’d, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear,

Flash’d phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear.

The colours all inflam’d throughout her train,

She writh’d about, convuls’d with scarlet pain:

A deep volcanian yellow took the place

Of all her milder-mooned body’s grace;

And, as the lava ravishes the mead,

Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede;

Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks and bars,

Eclips’d her crescents, and lick’d up her stars:

So that, in moments few, she was undrest

Of all her sapphires, greens, and amethyst,

And rubious-argent: of all these bereft,

Nothing but pain and ugliness were left.

Still shone her crown; that vanish’d, also she

Melted and disappear’d as suddenly;

And in the air, her new voice luting soft,

Cried, “Lycius! gentle Lycius!” – Borne aloft

With the bright mists about the mountains hoar

These words dissolv’d: Crete’s forests heard no more.

Whither fled Lamia, now a lady bright,

A full-born beauty new and exquisite?

She fled into that valley they pass o’er

Who go to Corinth from Cenchreas’ shore;

And rested at the foot of those wild hills,

The rugged founts of the Peræan rills,

And of that other ridge whose barren back

Stretches, with all its mist and cloudy rack,

South-westward to Cleone. There she stood

About a young bird’s flutter from a wood,

Fair, on a sloping green of mossy tread,

By a clear pool, wherein she passioned

To see herself escap’d from so sore ills,

While her robes flaunted with the daffodils.

Ah, happy Lycius! – for she was a maid

More beautiful than ever twisted braid,

Or sigh’d, or blush’d, or on spring-flowered lea

Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy:

A virgin purest lipp’d, yet in the lore

Of love deep learned to the red heart’s core:

Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain

To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain;

Define their pettish limits, and estrange

Their points of contact, and swift counterchange;

Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart

Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art;

As though in Cupid’s college she had spent

Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent,

And kept his rosy terms in idle languishment.

Why this fair creature chose so fairily

By the wayside to linger, we shall see;

But first ’tis fit to tell how she could muse

And dream, when in the serpent prison-house,

Of all she list, strange or magnificent:

How, ever, where she will’d, her spirit went;

Whether to faint Elysium, or where

Down through tress-lifting waves the Nereids fair

Wind into Thetis’ bower by many a pearly stair;

Or where God Bacchus drains his cups divine,

Stretch’d out, at ease, beneath a glutinous pine;

Or where in Pluto’s gardens palatine

Mulciber’s columns gleam in far piazzian line.

And sometimes into cities she would send

Her dream, with feast and rioting to blend;

And once, while among mortals dreaming thus,

She saw the young Corinthian Lycius

Charioting foremost in the envious race,

Like a young Jove with calm uneager face,

And fell into a swooning love of him.

Now on the moth-time of that evening dim

He would return that way, as well she knew,

To Corinth from the shore; for freshly blew

The eastern soft wind, and his galley now

Grated the quaystones with her brazen prow

In port Cenchreas, from Egina isle

Fresh anchor’d; whither he had been awhile

To sacrifice to Jove, whose temple there

Waits with high marble doors for blood and incense rare.

Jove heard his vows, and better’d his desire;

For by some freakful chance he made retire

From his companions, and set forth to walk,

Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk:

Over the solitary hills he fared,

Thoughtless at first, but ere eve’s star appeared

His phantasy was lost, where reason fades,

In the calm’d twilight of Platonic shades.

Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near –

Close to her passing, in indifference drear,

His silent sandals swept the mossy green;

So neighbour’d to him, and yet so unseen

She stood: he pass’d, shut up in mysteries,

His mind wrapp’d like his mantle, while her eyes

Follow’d his steps, and her neck regal white

Turn’d – syllabling thus, “Ah, Lycius bright,

And will you leave me on the hills alone?

Lycius, look back! and be some pity shown.”

He did; not with cold wonder fearingly,

But Orpheus-like at an Eurydice;

For so delicious were the words she sung,

It seem’d he had lov’d them a whole summer long:

And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up,

Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup,

And still the cup was full, – while he, afraid

Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid

Due adoration, thus began to adore;

Her soft look growing coy, she saw his chain so sure:

“Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah, Goddess, see

Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee!

For pity do not this sad heart belie –

Even as thou vanishest so I shall die.

Stay! though a Naiad of the rivers, stay!

To thy far wishes will thy streams obey:

Stay! though the greenest woods be thy domain,

Alone they can drink up the morning rain:

Though a descended Pleiad, will not one

Of thine harmonious sisters keep in tune

Thy spheres, and as thy silver proxy shine?

So sweetly to these ravish’d ears of mine

Came thy sweet greeting, that if thou shouldst fade

Thy memory will waste me to a shade: –

For pity do not melt!” – “If I should stay,”

Said Lamia, “here, upon this floor of clay,

And pain my steps upon these flowers too rough,

What canst thou say or do of charm enough

To dull the nice remembrance of my home?

Thou canst not ask me with thee here to roam

Over these hills and vales, where no joy is, –

Empty of immortality and bliss!

Thou art a scholar, Lycius, and must know

That finer spirits cannot breathe below

In human climes, and live: Alas! poor youth,

What taste of purer air hast thou to soothe

My essence? What serener palaces,

Where I may all my many senses please,

And by mysterious sleights a hundred thirsts appease?

It cannot be – Adieu!” So said, she rose

Tiptoe with white arms spread. He, sick to lose

The amorous promise of her lone complain,

Swoon’d, murmuring of love, and pale with pain.

The cruel lady, without any show

Of sorrow for her tender favourite’s woe,

But rather, if her eyes could brighter be,

With brighter eyes and slow amenity,

Put her new lips to his, and gave afresh

The life she had so tangled in her mesh:

And as he from one trance was wakening

Into another, she began to sing,

Happy in beauty, life, and love, and every thing,

A song of love, too sweet for earthly lyres,

While, like held breath, the stars drew in their panting fires.

And then she whisper’d in such trembling tone,

As those who, safe together met alone

For the first time through many anguish’d days,

Use other speech than looks; bidding him raise

His drooping head, and clear his soul of doubt,

For that she was a woman, and without

Any more subtle fluid in her veins

Than throbbing blood, and that the self-same pains

Inhabited her frail-strung heart as his.

And next she wonder’d how his eyes could miss

Her face so long in Corinth, where, she said,

She dwelt but half retir’d, and there had led

Days happy as the gold coin could invent

Without the aid of love; yet in content

Till she saw him, as once she pass’d him by,

Where ’gainst a column he leant thoughtfully

At Venus’ temple porch, ’mid baskets heap’d

Of amorous herbs and flowers, newly reap’d

Late on that eve, as ’twas the night before

The Adonian feast; whereof she saw no more,

But wept alone those days, for why should she adore?

Lycius from death awoke into amaze,

To see her still, and singing so sweet lays;

Then from amaze into delight he fell

To hear her whisper woman’s lore so well;

And every word she spake entic’d him on

To unperplex’d delight and pleasure known.

Let the mad poets say whate’er they please

Of the sweets of Fairies, Peris, Goddesses,

There is not such a treat among them all,

Haunters of cavern, lake, and waterfall,

As a real woman, lineal indeed

From Pyrrha’s pebbles or old Adam’s seed.

Thus gentle Lamia judg’d, and judg’d aright,

That Lycius could not love in half a fright,

So threw the goddess off, and won his heart

More pleasantly by playing woman’s part,

With no more awe than what her beauty gave,

That, while it smote, still guaranteed to save.

Lycius to all made eloquent reply,

Marrying to every word a twinborn sigh;

And last, pointing to Corinth, ask’d her sweet,

If ’twas too far that night for her soft feet.

The way was short, for Lamia’s eagerness

Made, by a spell, the triple league decrease

To a few paces; not at all surmised

By blinded Lycius, so in her comprized.

They pass’d the city gates, he knew not how,

So noiseless, and he never thought to know.

As men talk in a dream, so Corinth all,

Throughout her palaces imperial,

And all her populous streets and temples lewd,

Mutter’d, like tempest in the distance brew’d,

To the wide-spreaded night above her towers.

Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours,

Shuffled their sandals o’er the pavement white,

Companion’d or alone; while many a light

Flared, here and there, from wealthy festivals,

And threw their moving shadows on the walls,

Or found them cluster’d in the corniced shade

Of some arch’d temple door, or dusky colonnade.

Muffling his face, of greeting friends in fear,

Her fingers he press’d hard, as one came near

With curl’d gray beard, sharp eyes, and smooth bald crown,

Slow-stepp’d, and robed in philosophic gown:

Lycius shrank closer, as they met and past,

Into his mantle, adding wings to haste,

While hurried Lamia trembled: “Ah,” said he,

“Why do you shudder, love, so ruefully?

Why does your tender palm dissolve in dew?” –

“I’m wearied,” said fair Lamia: “tell me who

Is that old man? I cannot bring to mind

His features: – Lycius! wherefore did you blind

Yourself from his quick eyes?” Lycius replied,

“’Tis Apollonius sage, my trusty guide

And good instructor; but to-night he seems

The ghost of folly haunting my sweet dreams.”

While yet he spake they had arrived before

A pillar’d porch, with lofty portal door,

Where hung a silver lamp, whose phosphor glow

Reflected in the slabbed steps below,

Mild as a star in water; for so new,

And so unsullied was the marble hue,

So through the crystal polish, liquid fine,

Ran the dark veins, that none but feet divine

Could e’er have touch’d there. Sounds Æolian

Breath’d from the hinges, as the ample span

Of the wide doors disclos’d a place unknown

Some time to any, but those two alone,

And a few Persian mutes, who that same year

Were seen about the markets: none knew where

They could inhabit; the most curious

Were foil’d, who watch’d to trace them to their house:

And but the flitter-winged verse must tell,

For truth’s sake, what woe afterwards befel,

’Twould humour many a heart to leave them thus,

Shut from the busy world of more incredulous.

PART II.

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,

Is – Love, forgive us! – cinders, ashes, dust;

Love in a palace is perhaps at last

More grievous torment than a hermit’s fast: –

That is a doubtful tale from faery land,

Hard for the non-elect to understand.

Had Lycius liv’d to hand his story down,

He might have given the moral a fresh frown,

Or clench’d it quite: but too short was their bliss

To breed distrust and hate, that make the soft voice hiss.

Besides, there, nightly, with terrific glare

Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair,

Hover’d and buzz’d his wings, with fearful roar,

Above the lintel of their chamber door,

And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor.

For all this came a ruin: side by side

They were enthroned, in the even tide,

Upon a couch, near to a curtaining

Whose airy texture, from a golden string,

Floated into the room, and let appear

Unveil’d the summer heaven, blue and clear,

Betwixt two marble shafts: – there they reposed,

Where use had made it sweet, with eyelids closed,

Saving a tythe which love still open kept,

That they might see each other while they almost slept;

When from the slope side of a suburb hill,

Deafening the swallow’s twitter, came a thrill

Of trumpets – Lycius started – the sounds fled,

But left a thought, a buzzing in his head.

For the first time, since first he harbour’d in

That purple-lined palace of sweet sin,

His spirit pass’d beyond its golden bourn

Into the noisy world almost forsworn.

The lady, ever watchful, penetrant,

Saw this with pain, so arguing a want

Of something more, more than her empery

Of joys; and she began to moan and sigh

Because he mused beyond her, knowing well

That but a moment’s thought is passion’s passing bell.

“Why do you sigh, fair creature?” whisper’d he:

“Why do you think?” return’d she tenderly:

“You have deserted me; – where am I now?

Not in your heart while care weighs on your brow:

No, no, you have dismiss’d me; and I go

From your breast houseless: ay, it must be so.”

He answer’d, bending to her open eyes,

Where he was mirror’d small in paradise,

“My silver planet, both of eve and morn!

Why will you plead yourself so sad forlorn,

While I am striving how to fill my heart

With deeper crimson, and a double smart?

How to entangle, trammel up and snare

Your soul in mine, and labyrinth you there

Like the hid scent in an unbudded rose?

Ay, a sweet kiss – you see your mighty woes.

My thoughts! shall I unveil them? Listen then!

What mortal hath a prize, that other men

May be confounded and abash’d withal,

But lets it sometimes pace abroad majestical,

And triumph, as in thee I should rejoice

Amid the hoarse alarm of Corinth’s voice.

Let my foes choke, and my friends shout afar,

While through the thronged streets your bridal car

Wheels round its dazzling spokes.” – The lady’s cheek

Trembled; she nothing said, but, pale and meek,

Arose and knelt before him, wept a rain

Of sorrows at his words; at last with pain

Beseeching him, the while his hand she wrung,

To change his purpose. He thereat was stung,

Perverse, with stronger fancy to reclaim

Her wild and timid nature to his aim:

Besides, for all his love, in self despite,

Against his better self, he took delight

Luxurious in her sorrows, soft and new.

His passion, cruel grown, took on a hue

Fierce and sanguineous as ’twas possible

In one whose brow had no dark veins to swell.

Fine was the mitigated fury, like

Apollo’s presence when in act to strike

The serpent – Ha, the serpent! certes, she

Was none. She burnt, she lov’d the tyranny,

And, all subdued, consented to the hour

When to the bridal he should lead his paramour.

Whispering in midnight silence, said the youth,

“Sure some sweet name thou hast, though, by my truth,

I have not ask’d it, ever thinking thee

Not mortal, but of heavenly progeny,

As still I do. Hast any mortal name,

Fit appellation for this dazzling frame?

Or friends or kinsfolk on the citied earth,

To share our marriage feast and nuptial mirth?”

“I have no friends,” said Lamia, “no, not one;

My presence in wide Corinth hardly known:

My parents’ bones are in their dusty urns

Sepulchred, where no kindled incense burns,

Seeing all their luckless race are dead, save me,

And I neglect the holy rite for thee.

Even as you list invite your many guests;

But if, as now it seems, your vision rests

With any pleasure on me, do not bid

Old Apollonius – from him keep me hid.”

Lycius, perplex’d at words so blind and blank,

Made close inquiry; from whose touch she shrank,

Feigning a sleep; and he to the dull shade

Of deep sleep in a moment was betray’d.

It was the custom then to bring away

The bride from home at blushing shut of day,

Veil’d, in a chariot, heralded along

By strewn flowers, torches, and a marriage song,

With other pageants: but this fair unknown

Had not a friend. So being left alone,

(Lycius was gone to summon all his kin)

And knowing surely she could never win

His foolish heart from its mad pompousness,

She set herself, high-thoughted, how to dress

The misery in fit magnificence.

She did so, but ’tis doubtful how and whence

Came, and who were her subtle servitors.

About the halls, and to and from the doors,

There was a noise of wings, till in short space

The glowing banquet-room shone with wide-arched grace.

A haunting music, sole perhaps and lone

Supportress of the faery-roof, made moan

Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might fade.

Fresh carved cedar, mimicking a glade

Of palm and plantain, met from either side,

High in the midst, in honour of the bride:

Two palms and then two plantains, and so on,

From either side their stems branch’d one to one

All down the aisled place; and beneath all

There ran a stream of lamps straight on from wall to wall.

So canopied, lay an untasted feast

Teeming with odours. Lamia, regal drest,

Silently paced about, and as she went,

In pale contented sort of discontent,

Mission’d her viewless servants to enrich

The fretted splendour of each nook and niche.

Between the tree-stems, marbled plain at first,

Came jasper pannels; then, anon, there burst

Forth creeping imagery of slighter trees,

And with the larger wove in small intricacies.

Approving all, she faded at self-will,

And shut the chamber up, close, hush’d and still,

Complete and ready for the revels rude,

When dreadful guests would come to spoil her solitude.

The day appear’d, and all the gossip rout.

O senseless Lycius! Madman! wherefore flout

The silent-blessing fate, warm cloister’d hours,

And show to common eyes these secret bowers?

The herd approach’d; each guest, with busy brain,

Arriving at the portal, gaz’d amain,

And enter’d marveling: for they knew the street,

Remember’d it from childhood all complete

Without a gap, yet ne’er before had seen

That royal porch, that high-built fair demesne;

So in they hurried all, maz’d, curious and keen:

Save one, who look’d thereon with eye severe,

And with calm-planted steps walk’d in austere;

’Twas Apollonius: something too he laugh’d,

As though some knotty problem, that had daft

His patient thought, had now begun to thaw,

And solve and melt: – ’twas just as he foresaw.

He met within the murmurous vestibule

His young disciple. “’Tis no common rule,

Lycius,” said he, “for uninvited guest

To force himself upon you, and infest

With an unbidden presence the bright throng

Of younger friends; yet must I do this wrong,

And you forgive me.” Lycius blush’d, and led

The old man through the inner doors broad-spread;

With reconciling words and courteous mien

Turning into sweet milk the sophist’s spleen.

Of wealthy lustre was the banquet-room,

Fill’d with pervading brilliance and perfume:

Before each lucid pannel fuming stood

A censer fed with myrrh and spiced wood,

Each by a sacred tripod held aloft,

Whose slender feet wide-swerv’d upon the soft

Wool-woofed carpets: fifty wreaths of smoke

From fifty censers their light voyage took

To the high roof, still mimick’d as they rose

Along the mirror’d walls by twin-clouds odorous.

Twelve sphered tables, by silk seats insphered,

High as the level of a man’s breast rear’d

On libbard’s paws, upheld the heavy gold

Of cups and goblets, and the store thrice told

Of Ceres’ horn, and, in huge vessels, wine

Come from the gloomy tun with merry shine.

Thus loaded with a feast the tables stood,

Each shrining in the midst the image of a God.

When in an antichamber every guest

Had felt the cold full sponge to pleasure press’d,

By minist’ring slaves, upon his hands and feet,

And fragrant oils with ceremony meet

Pour’d on his hair, they all mov’d to the feast

In white robes, and themselves in order placed

Around the silken couches, wondering

Whence all this mighty cost and blaze of wealth could spring.

Soft went the music the soft air along,

While fluent Greek a vowel’d undersong

Kept up among the guests, discoursing low

At first, for scarcely was the wine at flow;

But when the happy vintage touch’d their brains,

Louder they talk, and louder come the strains

Of powerful instruments: – the gorgeous dyes,

The space, the splendour of the draperies,

The roof of awful richness, nectarous cheer,

Beautiful slaves, and Lamia’s self, appear,

Now, when the wine has done its rosy deed,

And every soul from human trammels freed,

No more so strange; for merry wine, sweet wine,

Will make Elysian shades not too fair, too divine.

Soon was God Bacchus at meridian height;

Flush’d were their cheeks, and bright eyes double bright:

Garlands of every green, and every scent

From vales deflower’d, or forest-trees branch-rent,

In baskets of bright osier’d gold were brought

High as the handles heap’d, to suit the thought

Of every guest; that each, as he did please,

Might fancy-fit his brows, silk-pillow’d at his ease.

What wreath for Lamia? What for Lycius?

What for the sage, old Apollonius?

Upon her aching forehead be there hung

The leaves of willow and of adder’s tongue;

And for the youth, quick, let us strip for him

The thyrsus, that his watching eyes may swim

Into forgetfulness; and, for the sage,

Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage

War on his temples. Do not all charms fly

At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:

We know her woof, her texture; she is given

In the dull catalogue of common things.

Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,

Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,

Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine –

Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made

The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.

By her glad Lycius sitting, in chief place,

Scarce saw in all the room another face,

Till, checking his love trance, a cup he took

Full brimm’d, and opposite sent forth a look

’Cross the broad table, to beseech a glance

From his old teacher’s wrinkled countenance,

And pledge him. The bald-head philosopher

Had fix’d his eye, without a twinkle or stir

Full on the alarmed beauty of the bride,

Brow-beating her fair form, and troubling her sweet pride.

Lycius then press’d her hand, with devout touch,

As pale it lay upon the rosy couch:

’Twas icy, and the cold ran through his veins;

Then sudden it grew hot, and all the pains

Of an unnatural heat shot to his heart.

“Lamia, what means this? Wherefore dost thou start?

Know’st thou that man?” Poor Lamia answer’d not.

He gaz’d into her eyes, and not a jot

Own’d they the lovelorn piteous appeal:

More, more he gaz’d: his human senses reel:

Some hungry spell that loveliness absorbs;

There was no recognition in those orbs.

“Lamia!” he cried – and no soft-toned reply.

The many heard, and the loud revelry

Grew hush; the stately music no more breathes;

The myrtle sicken’d in a thousand wreaths.

By faint degrees, voice, lute, and pleasure ceased;

A deadly silence step by step increased,

Until it seem’d a horrid presence there,

And not a man but felt the terror in his hair.

“Lamia!” he shriek’d; and nothing but the shriek

With its sad echo did the silence break.

“Begone, foul dream!” he cried, gazing again

In the bride’s face, where now no azure vein

Wander’d on fair-spaced temples; no soft bloom

Misted the cheek; no passion to illume

The deep-recessed vision: – all was blight;

Lamia, no longer fair, there sat a deadly white.

“Shut, shut those juggling eyes, thou ruthless man!

Turn them aside, wretch! or the righteous ban

Of all the Gods, whose dreadful images

Here represent their shadowy presences,

May pierce them on the sudden with the thorn

Of painful blindness; leaving thee forlorn,

In trembling dotage to the feeblest fright

Of conscience, for their long offended might,

For all thine impious proud-heart sophistries,

Unlawful magic, and enticing lies.

Corinthians! look upon that gray-beard wretch!

Mark how, possess’d, his lashless eyelids stretch

Around his demon eyes! Corinthians, see!

My sweet bride withers at their potency.”

“Fool!” said the sophist, in an under-tone

Gruff with contempt; which a death-nighing moan

From Lycius answer’d, as heart-struck and lost,

He sank supine beside the aching ghost.

“Fool! Fool!” repeated he, while his eyes still

Relented not, nor mov’d; “from every ill

Of life have I preserv’d thee to this day,

And shall I see thee made a serpent’s prey?”

Then Lamia breath’d death breath; the sophist’s eye,

Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly,

Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging: she, as well

As her weak hand could any meaning tell,

Motion’d him to be silent; vainly so,

He look’d and look’d again a level – No!

“A Serpent!” echoed he; no sooner said,

Than with a frightful scream she vanished:

And Lycius’ arms were empty of delight,

As were his limbs of life, from that same night.

On the high couch he lay! – his friends came round –

Supported him – no pulse, or breath they found,

And, in its marriage robe, the heavy body wound.

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,

Let it not be among the jumbled heap

Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep, –

Nature’s observatory – whence the dell,

Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,

May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep

’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap

Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.

But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,

Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,

Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,

Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be

Almost the highest bliss of humankind,

When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

I.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

II.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

III.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

IV.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

V.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Ode on Melancholy

1.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d

By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;

Make not your rosary of yew-berries,

Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be

Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;

For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

2.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall

Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,

Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,

Or on the wealth of globed peonies;

Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,

And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

3.

She dwells with Beauty – Beauty that must die;

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

Ay, in the very temple of Delight

Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;

His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,

And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Ode to a Nightingale

I.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness, –

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

II.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

III.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

IV.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

V.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;

And mid-May’s eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

VI.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain –

To thy high requiem become a sod.

VII.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

VIII.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music: – Do I wake or sleep?

Fancy

Ever let the Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;

Then let winged Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her:

Open wide the mind’s cage-door,

She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;

Summer’s joys are spoilt by use,

And the enjoying of the Spring

Fades as does its blossoming;

Autumn’s red-lipp’d fruitage too,

Blushing through the mist and dew,

Cloys with tasting: What do then?

Sit thee by the ingle, when

The sear faggot blazes bright,

Spirit of a winter’s night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,

And the caked snow is shuffled

From the ploughboy’s heavy shoon;

When the Night doth meet the Noon

In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.

Sit thee there, and send abroad,

With a mind self-overaw’d,

Fancy, high-commission’d: – send her!

She has vassals to attend her:

She will bring, in spite of frost,

Beauties that the earth hath lost;

She will bring thee, all together,

All delights of summer weather;

All the buds and bells of May,

From dewy sward or thorny spray

All the heaped Autumn’s wealth,

With a still, mysterious stealth:

She will mix these pleasures up

Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it: – thou shalt hear

Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reaped corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn:

And, in the same moment – hark!

’Tis the early April lark,

Or the rooks, with busy caw,

Foraging for sticks and straw.

Thou shalt, at one glance, behold

The daisy and the marigold;

White-plum’d lilies, and the first

Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;

Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;

And every leaf, and every flower

Pearled with the self-same shower.

Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep

Meagre from its celled sleep;

And the snake all winter-thin

Cast on sunny bank its skin;

Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see

Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,

When the hen-bird’s wing doth rest

Quiet on her mossy nest;

Then the hurry and alarm

When the bee-hive casts its swarm;

Acorns ripe down-pattering,

While the autumn breezes sing.

Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;

Every thing is spoilt by use:

Where’s the cheek that doth not fade,

Too much gaz’d at? Where’s the maid

Whose lip mature is ever new?

Where’s the eye, however blue,

Doth not weary? Where’s the face

One would meet in every place?

Where’s the voice, however soft,

One would hear so very oft?

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.

Let, then, winged Fancy find

Thee a mistress to thy mind:

Dulcet-eyed as Ceres’ daughter,

Ere the God of Torment taught her

How to frown and how to chide;

With a waist and with a side

White as Hebe’s, when her zone

Slipt its golden clasp, and down

Fell her kirtle to her feet,

While she held the goblet sweet,

And Jove grew languid. – Break the mesh

Of the Fancy’s silken leash;

Quickly break her prison-string

And such joys as these she’ll bring. –

Let the winged Fancy roam

Pleasure never is at home.

Ode to Psyche

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung

By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,

And pardon that thy secrets should be sung

Even into thine own soft-conched ear:

Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see

The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?

I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,

And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,

Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side

In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof

Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran

A brooklet, scarce espied:

’Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,

They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;

Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;

Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,

As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,

And ready still past kisses to outnumber

At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:

The winged boy I knew;

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?

His Psyche true!

O latest born and loveliest vision far

Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!

Fairer than Phœbe’s sapphire-region’d star,

Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;

Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,

Nor altar heap’d with flowers;

Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan

Upon the midnight hours;

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet

From chain-swung censer teeming;

No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat

Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,

Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,

When holy were the haunted forest boughs,

Holy the air, the water, and the fire;

Yet even in these days so far retir’d

From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,

Fluttering among the faint Olympians,

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan

Upon the midnight hours;

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet

From swinged censer teeming;

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat

Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;

And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,

The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep;

And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,

Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:

And there shall be for thee all soft delight

That shadowy thought can win,

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,

To let the warm Love in!

On first looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

To Autumn

I.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

II.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

III.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Sleep and Poetry

“As I lay in my bed slepe full unmete

Was unto me, but why that I ne might

Rest I ne wist, for there n’as erthly wight

[As I suppose] had more of hertis ese

Than I, for I n’ad sicknesse nor disese.”

Chaucer

What is more gentle than a wind in summer?

What is more soothing than the pretty hummer

That stays one moment in an open flower,

And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?

What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing

In a green island, far from all men’s knowing?

More healthful than the leafiness of dales?

More secret than a nest of nightingales?

More serene than Cordelia’s countenance?

More full of visions than a high romance?

What, but thee Sleep? Soft closer of our eyes!

Low murmurer of tender lullabies!

Light hoverer around our happy pillows!

Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!

Silent entangler of a beauty’s tresses!

Most happy listener! when the morning blesses

Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes

That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise.

But what is higher beyond thought than thee?

Fresher than berries of a mountain tree?

More strange, more beautiful, more smooth, more regal,

Than wings of swans, than doves, than dim-seen eagle?

What is it? And to what shall I compare it?

It has a glory, and nought else can share it:

The thought thereof is awful, sweet, and holy,

Chacing away all worldliness and folly;

Coming sometimes like fearful claps of thunder,

Or the low rumblings earth’s regions under;

And sometimes like a gentle whispering

Of all the secrets of some wond’rous thing

That breathes about us in the vacant air;

So that we look around with prying stare,

Perhaps to see shapes of light, aerial lymning,

And catch soft floatings from a faint-heard hymning;

To see the laurel wreath, on high suspended,

That is to crown our name when life is ended.

Sometimes it gives a glory to the voice,

And from the heart up-springs, rejoice! rejoice!

Sounds which will reach the Framer of all things,

And die away in ardent mutterings.

No one who once the glorious sun has seen,

And all the clouds, and felt his bosom clean

For his great Maker’s presence, but must know

What ’tis I mean, and feel his being glow:

Therefore no insult will I give his spirit,

By telling what he sees from native merit.

O Poesy! for thee I hold my pen

That am not yet a glorious denizen

Of thy wide heaven – Should I rather kneel

Upon some mountain-top until I feel

A glowing splendour round about me hung,

And echo back the voice of thine own tongue?

O Poesy! for thee I grasp my pen

That am not yet a glorious denizen

Of thy wide heaven; yet, to my ardent prayer,

Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air,

Smoothed for intoxication by the breath

Of flowering bays, that I may die a death

Of luxury, and my young spirit follow

The morning sun-beams to the great Apollo

Like a fresh sacrifice; or, if I can bear

The o’erwhelming sweets, ’twill bring to me the fair

Visions of all places: a bowery nook

Will be elysium – an eternal book

Whence I may copy many a lovely saying

About the leaves, and flowers – about the playing

Of nymphs in woods, and fountains; and the shade

Keeping a silence round a sleeping maid;

And many a verse from so strange influence

That we must ever wonder how, and whence

It came. Also imaginings will hover

Round my fire-side, and haply there discover

Vistas of solemn beauty, where I’d wander

In happy silence, like the clear meander

Through its lone vales; and where I found a spot

Of awfuller shade, or an enchanted grot,

Or a green hill o’erspread with chequered dress

Of flowers, and fearful from its loveliness,

Write on my tablets all that was permitted,

All that was for our human senses fitted.

Then the events of this wide world I’d seize

Like a strong giant, and my spirit teaze

Till at its shoulders it should proudly see

Wings to find out an immortality.

Stop and consider! life is but a day;

A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way

From a tree’s summit; a poor Indian’s sleep

While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep

Of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan?

Life is the rose’s hope while yet unblown;

The reading of an ever-changing tale;

The light uplifting of a maiden’s veil;

A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;

A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,

Riding the springy branches of an elm.

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm

Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed

That my own soul has to itself decreed.

Then will I pass the countries that I see

In long perspective, and continually

Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I’ll pass

Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,

Feed upon apples red, and strawberries,

And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees;

Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,

To woo sweet kisses from averted faces, –

Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white

Into a pretty shrinking with a bite

As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,

A lovely tale of human life we’ll read.

And one will teach a tame dove how it best

May fan the cool air gently o’er my rest;

Another, bending o’er her nimble tread,

Will set a green robe floating round her head,

And still will dance with ever varied case,

Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:

Another will entice me on, and on

Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon;

Till in the bosom of a leafy world

We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl’d

In the recesses of a pearly shell.

And can I ever bid these joys farewell?

Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,

Where I may find the agonies, the strife

Of human hearts: for lo! I see afar,

O’er sailing the blue cragginess, a car

And steeds with streamy manes – the charioteer

Looks out upon the winds with glorious fear:

And now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly

Along a huge cloud’s ridge; and now with sprightly

Wheel downward come they into fresher skies,

Tipt round with silver from the sun’s bright eyes.

Still downward with capacious whirl they glide,

And now I see them on a green-hill’s side

In breezy rest among the nodding stalks.

The charioteer with wond’rous gesture talks

To the trees and mountains; and there soon appear

Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear,

Passing along before a dusky space

Made by some mighty oaks: as they would chase

Some ever-fleeting music on they sweep.

Lo! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep:

Some with upholden hand and mouth severe;

Some with their faces muffled to the ear

Between their arms; some, clear in youthful bloom,

Go glad and smilingly, athwart the gloom;

Some looking back, and some with upward gaze;

Yes, thousands in a thousand different ways

Flit onward – now a lovely wreath of girls

Dancing their sleek hair into tangled curls;

And now broad wings. Most awfully intent

The driver, of those steeds is forward bent,

And seems to listen: O that I might know

All that he writes with such a hurrying glow.

The visions all are fled – the car is fled

Into the light of heaven, and in their stead

A sense of real things comes doubly strong,

And, like a muddy stream, would bear along

My soul to nothingness: but I will strive

Against all doublings, and will keep alive

The thought of that same chariot, and the strange

Journey it went.

Is there so small a range

In the present strength of manhood, that the high

Imagination cannot freely fly

As she was wont of old? prepare her steeds,

Paw up against the light, and do strange deeds

Upon the clouds? Has she not shewn us all?

From the clear space of ether, to the small

Breath of new buds unfolding? From the meaning

Of Jove’s large eye-brow, to the tender greening

Of April meadows? Here her altar shone,

E’en in this isle; and who could paragon

The fervid choir that lifted up a noise

Of harmony, to where it aye will poise

Its mighty self of convoluting sound,

Huge as a planet, and like that roll round,

Eternally around a dizzy void?

Ay, in those days the Muses were nigh cloy’d

With honors; nor had any other care

Than to sing out and sooth their wavy hair.

Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism

Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,

Made great Apollo blush for this his land.

Men were thought wise who could not understand

His glories: with a puling infant’s force

They sway’d about upon a rocking horse,

And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal soul’d!

The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll’d

Its gathering waves – ye felt it not. The blue

Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew

Of summer nights collected still to make

The morning precious: beauty was awake!

Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead

To things ye knew not of, – were closely wed

To musty laws lined out with wretched rule

And compass vile: so that ye taught a school

Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit,

Till, like the certain wands of Jacob’s wit,

Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:

A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask

Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race!

That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face,

And did not know it, – no, they went about,

Holding a poor, decrepid standard out

Mark’d with most flimsy mottos, and in large

The name of one Boileau!

O ye whose charge

It is to hover round our pleasant hills!

Whose congregated majesty so fills

My boundly reverence, that I cannot trace

Your hallowed names, in this unholy place,

So near those common folk; did not their shames

Affright you? Did our old lamenting Thames

Delight you? Did ye never cluster round

Delicious Avon, with a mournful sound,

And weep? Or did ye wholly bid adieu

To regions where no more the laurel grew?

Or did ye stay to give a welcoming

To some lone spirits who could proudly sing

Their youth away, and die? ’Twas even so:

But let me think away those times of woe:

Now ’tis a fairer season; ye have breathed

Rich benedictions o’er us; ye have wreathed

Fresh garlands: for sweet music has been heard

In many places; – some has been upstirr’d

From out its crystal dwelling in a lake,

By a swan’s ebon bill; from a thick brake,

Nested and quiet in a valley mild,

Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild

About the earth: happy are ye and glad.

These things are doubtless: yet in truth we’ve had

Strange thunders from the potency of song;

Mingled indeed with what is sweet and strong,

From majesty: but in clear truth the themes

Are ugly clubs, the Poets Polyphemes

Disturbing the grand sea. A drainless shower

Of light is poesy; ’tis the supreme of power;

’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.

The very archings of her eye-lids charm

A thousand willing agents to obey,

And still she governs with the mildest sway:

But strength alone though of the Muses born

Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,

Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres

Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs,

And thorns of life; forgetting the great end

Of poesy, that it should be a friend

To sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.

Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than

E’er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds

Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds

A silent space with ever sprouting green.

All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen,

Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering,

Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing.

Then let us clear away the choaking thorns

From round its gentle stem; let the young fawns,

Yeaned in after times, when we are flown,

Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown

With simple flowers: let there nothing be

More boisterous than a lover’s bended knee;

Nought more ungentle than the placid look

Of one who leans upon a closed book;

Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes

Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes!

As she was wont, th’ imagination

Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,

And they shall be accounted poet kings

Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.

O may these joys be ripe before I die.

Will not some say that I presumptuously

Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace

’Twere better far to hide my foolish face?

That whining boyhood should with reverence bow

Ere the dread thunderbolt could reach? How!

If I do hide myself, it sure shall be

In the very fane, the light of Poesy:

If I do fall, at least I will be laid

Beneath the silence of a poplar shade;

And over me the grass shall be smooth shaven;

And there shall be a kind memorial graven.

But oft’ Despondence! miserable bane!

They should not know thee, who athirst to gain

A noble end, are thirsty every hour.

What though I am not wealthy in the dower

Of spanning wisdom; though I do not know

The shiftings of the mighty winds, that blow

Hither and thither all the changing thoughts

Of man: though no great minist’ring reason sorts

Out the dark mysteries of human souls

To clear conceiving: yet there ever rolls

A vast idea before me, and I glean

Therefrom my liberty; thence too I’ve seen

The end and aim of Poesy. ’Tis clear

As any thing most true; as that the year

Is made of the four seasons – manifest

As a large cross, some old cathedral’s crest,

Lifted to the white clouds. Therefore should I

Be but the essence of deformity,

A coward, did my very eye-lids wink

At speaking out what I have dared to think.

Ah! rather let me like a madman run

Over some precipice; let the hot sun

Melt my Dedalian wings, and drive me down

Convuls’d and headlong! Stay! an inward frown

Of conscience bids me be more calm awhile.

An ocean dim, sprinkled with many an isle,

Spreads awfully before me. How much toil!

How many days! what desperate turmoil!

Ere I can have explored its widenesses.

Ah, what a task! upon my bended knees,

I could unsay those – no, impossible!

Impossible!

For sweet relief I’ll dwell

On humbler thoughts, and let this strange assay

Begun in gentleness die so away.

E’en now all tumult from my bosom fades:

I turn full hearted to the friendly aids

That smooth the path of honour; brotherhood,

And friendliness the nurse of mutual good.

The hearty grasp that sends a pleasant sonnet

Into the brain ere one can think upon it;

The silence when some rhymes are coming out;

And when they’re come, the very pleasant rout:

The message certain to be done to-morrow.

’Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow

Some precious book from out its snug retreat,

To cluster round it when we next shall meet.

Scarce can I scribble on; for lovely airs

Are fluttering round the room like doves in pairs;

Many delights of that glad day recalling,

When first my senses caught their tender falling.

And with these airs come forms of elegance

Stooping their shoulders o’er a horse’s prance,

Careless, and grand – fingers soft and round

Parting luxuriant curls; – and the swift bound

Of Bacchus from his chariot, when his eye

Made Ariadne’s cheek look blushingly.

Thus I remember all the pleasant flow

Of words at opening a portfolio.

Things such as these are ever harbingers

To trains of peaceful images: the stirs

Of a swan’s neck unseen among the rushes:

A linnet starting all about the bushes:

A butterfly, with golden wings broad parted,

Nestling a rose, convuls’d as though it smarted

With over pleasure – many, many more,

Might I indulge at large in all my store

Of luxuries: yet I must not forget

Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet:

For what there may be worthy in these rhymes

I partly owe to him: and thus, the chimes

Of friendly voices had just given place

To as sweet a silence, when I ’gan retrace

The pleasant day, upon a couch at ease.

It was a poet’s house who keeps the keys

Of pleasure’s temple. Round about were hung

The glorious features of the bards who sung

In other ages – cold and sacred busts

Smiled at each other. Happy he who trusts

To clear Futurity his darling fame!

Then there were fauns and satyrs taking aim

At swelling apples with a frisky leap

And reaching fingers, ’mid a luscious heap

Of vine leaves. Then there rose to view a fane

Of liny marble, and thereto a train

Of nymphs approaching fairly o’er the sward:

One, loveliest, holding her white band toward

The dazzling sun-rise: two sisters sweet

Bending their graceful figures till they meet

Over the trippings of a little child:

And some are hearing, eagerly, the wild

Thrilling liquidity of dewy piping.

See, in another picture, nymphs are wiping

Cherishingly Diana’s timorous limbs; –

A fold of lawny mantle dabbling swims

At the bath’s edge, and keeps a gentle motion

With the subsiding crystal: as when ocean

Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothiness o’er

Its rocky marge, and balances once more

The patient weeds; that now unshent by foam

Feel all about their undulating home.

Sappho’s meek head was there half smiling down

At nothing; just as though the earnest frown

Of over thinking had that moment gone

From off her brow, and left her all alone.

Great Alfred’s too, with anxious, pitying eyes,

As if he always listened to the sighs

Of the goaded world; and Kosciusko’s worn

By horrid suffrance – mightily forlorn.

Petrarch, outstepping from the shady green,

Starts at the sight of Laura; nor can wean

His eyes from her sweet face. Most happy they!

For over them was seen a free display

Of out-spread wings, and from between them shone

The face of Poesy: from off her throne

She overlook’d things that I scarce could tell.

The very sense of where I was might well

Keep Sleep aloof: but more than that there came

Thought after thought to nourish up the flame

Within my breast; so that the morning light

Surprised me even from a sleepless night;

And up I rose refresh’d, and glad, and gay,

Resolving to begin that very day

These lines; and howsoever they be done,

I leave them as a father does his son.

Specimen of an Induction to a Poem

Lo! I must tell a tale of chivalry;

For large white plumes are dancing in mine eye.

Not like the formal crest of latter days:

But bending in a thousand graceful ways;

So graceful, that it seems no mortal hand,

Or e’en the touch of Archimago’s wand,

Could charm them into such an attitude.

We must think rather, that in playful mood,

Some mountain breeze had turned its chief delight,

To show this wonder of its gentle might.

Lo! I must tell a tale of chivalry;

For while I muse, the lance points slantingly

Athwart the morning air: some lady sweet,

Who cannot feel for cold her tender feet,

From the worn top of some old battlement

Hails it with tears, her stout defender sent:

And from her own pure self no joy dissembling,

Wraps round her ample robe with happy trembling.

Sometimes, when the good Knight his rest would take,

It is reflected, clearly, in a lake,

With the young ashen boughs, ’gainst which it rests,

And th’ half seen mossiness of linnets’ nests.

Ah! shall I ever tell its cruelty,

When the fire flashes from a warrior’s eye,

And his tremendous hand is grasping it,

And his dark brow for very wrath is knit?

Or when his spirit, with more calm intent,

Leaps to the honors of a tournament,

And makes the gazers round about the ring

Stare at the grandeur of the balancing?

No, no! this is far off: – then how shall I

Revive the dying tones of minstrelsy,

Which linger yet about lone gothic arches,

In dark green ivy, and among wild larches?

How sing the splendour of the revelries,

When buts of wine are drunk off to the lees?

And that bright lance, against the fretted wall,

Beneath the shade of stately banneral,

Is slung with shining cuirass, sword, and shield?

Where ye may see a spur in bloody field.

Light-footed damsels move with gentle paces

Round the wide hall, and show their happy faces;

Or stand in courtly talk by fives and sevens:

Like those fair stars that twinkle in the heavens.

Yet must I tell a tale of chivalry:

Or wherefore comes that knight so proudly by?

Wherefore more proudly does the gentle knight,

Rein in the swelling of his ample might?

Spenser! thy brows are arched, open, kind,

And come like a clear sun-rise to my mind;

And always does my heart with pleasure dance,

When I think on thy noble countenance:

Where never yet was ought more earthly seen

Than the pure freshness of thy laurels green.

Therefore, great bard, I not so fearfully

Call on thy gentle spirit to hover nigh

My daring steps: or if thy tender care,

Thus startled unaware,

Be jealous that the foot of other wight

Should madly follow that bright path of light

Trac’d by thy lov’d Libertas; he will speak,

And tell thee that my prayer is very meek;

That I will follow with due reverence,

And start with awe at mine own strange pretence.

Him thou wilt hear; so I will rest in hope

To see wide plains, fair trees and lawny slope:

The morn, the eve, the light, the shade, the flowers:

Clear streams, smooth lakes, and overlooking towers.

The Eve of St. Agnes

I.

St. Agnes’ Eve – Ah, bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told

His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,

Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

II.

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;

Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,

And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,

Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:

The sculptur’d dead, on each side, seem to freeze,

Emprison’d in black, purgatorial rails:

Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat’ries,

He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails

To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails.

III.

Northward he turneth through a little door,

And scarce three steps, ere Music’s golden tongue

Flatter’d to tears this aged man and poor;

But no – already had his deathbell rung;

The joys of all his life were said and sung:

His was harsh penance on St. Agnes’ Eve:

Another way he went, and soon among

Rough ashes sat he for his soul’s reprieve,

And all night kept awake, for sinners’ sake to grieve.

IV.

That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft;

And so it chanc’d, for many a door was wide,

From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft,

The silver, snarling trumpets ’gan to chide:

The level chambers, ready with their pride,

Were glowing to receive a thousand guests:

The carved angels, ever eager-eyed,

Star’d, where upon their heads the cornice rests,

With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their

breasts.

V.

At length burst in the argent revelry,

With plume, tiara, and all rich array,

Numerous as shadows haunting fairily

The brain, new stuff’d, in youth, with triumphs gay

Of old romance. These let us wish away,

And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there,

Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,

On love, and wing’d St. Agnes’ saintly care,

As she had heard old dames full many times declare.

VI.

They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,

Young virgins might have visions of delight,

And soft adorings from their loves receive

Upon the honey’d middle of the night,

If ceremonies due they did aright;

As, supperless to bed they must retire,

And couch supine their beauties, lily white;

Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require

Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

VII.

Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline:

The music, yearning like a God in pain,

She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine,

Fix’d on the floor, saw many a sweeping train

Pass by – she heeded not at all: in vain

Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier,

And back retir’d; not cool’d by high disdain,

But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere:

She sigh’d for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year.

VIII.

She danc’d along with vague, regardless eyes,

Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short:

The hallow’d hour was near at hand: she sighs

Amid the timbrels, and the throng’d resort

Of whisperers in anger, or in sport;

’Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn,

Hoodwink’d with faery fancy; all amort,

Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn,

And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn.

IX.

So, purposing each moment to retire,

She linger’d still. Meantime, across the moors,

Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire

For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,

Buttress’d from moonlight, stands he, and implores

All saints to give him sight of Madeline,

But for one moment in the tedious hours,

That he might gaze and worship all unseen;

Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss – in sooth such

things have been.

X.

He ventures in: let no buzz’d whisper tell:

All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords

Will storm his heart, Love’s fev’rous citadel:

For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes,

Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords,

Whose very dogs would execrations howl

Against his lineage: not one breast affords

Him any mercy, in that mansion foul,

Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul.

XI.

Ah, happy chance! the aged creature came,

Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand,

To where he stood, hid from the torch’s flame,

Behind a broad hall-pillar, far beyond

The sound of merriment and chorus bland:

He startled her; but soon she knew his face,

And grasp’d his fingers in her palsied hand,

Saying, “Mercy, Porphyro! hie thee from this place;

They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race!”

XII.

“Get hence! get hence! there’s dwarfish Hildebrand;

He had a fever late, and in the fit

He cursed thee and thine, both house and land:

Then there’s that old Lord Maurice, not a whit

More tame for his gray hairs – Alas me! flit!

Flit like a ghost away.” – “Ah, Gossip dear,

We’re safe enough; here in this arm-chair sit,

And tell me how” – “Good Saints! not here, not here;

Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier.”

XIII.

He follow’d through a lowly arched way,

Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume,

And as she mutter’d “Well-a – well-a-day!”

He found him in a little moonlight room,

Pale, lattic’d, chill, and silent as a tomb.

“Now tell me where is Madeline,” said he,

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