John Keats

Selected Poems

This is a free ebook from

www.englishliteratureebooks.com

This book may be shared or copied for any non-commercial purpose.

It may not be sold.

Table of Contents

Introduction

From: Poems, 1817

I stood tiptoe upon a little hill (extracts)

To My Brother George

Calidore; a fragment (extract)

Written on the Day the Mr Leigh Hunt left Prison

Sonnet (O Solitude!)

Sonnet (Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there)

Sonnet (To one who has been long in city pent)

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Sonnet: Addressed to the Same (Great Spirits Now on Earth)

To Charles Cowden Clarke (extract)

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

Sleep and Poetry (extracts)

Poems of 1816 – 1819, from various sources

Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

On the Sea

Sonnet (After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains)

On Leigh Hunt’s poem, The Story of Rimini

Sonnet (When I have fears that I may cease to be)

Song (Hush, hush, tread softly)

What the Thrush Said

Dear Reynolds, As Last Night I Lay in Bed

A Song About Myself

On Visiting the Tomb of Burns

Mrs. Cameron and Ben Nevis (extract)

I Had a Dove and the Sweet Dove Died

La Belle Dame sans Merci

Sonnet (If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d)

To Sleep

The Eve of St. Mark (extract)

Endymion (extracts)

Book I

Book II

Book III

Book IV

From Poems, 1820

Lamia

Book I

Book II

Isabella; or the Pot of Basil

The Eve of St. Agnes

Ode to a Nightingale

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Ode to Psyche

Ode on Indolence

Fancy

To Autumn

Ode on Melancholy

Hyperion: a Fragment

Book I

Book II

Book III

The Fall of Hyperion

Canto I

Canto II

Last Sonnet (Bright Star)

To return to the contents list from any point of the book, click on the ↑ symbol above each title.

*

Introduction

John Keats was born in 1795 in London, the son of a livery stables manager. He was the eldest of four surviving children; his father died when he was eight, and his mother when he was fourteen. He received a good education, before becoming apprenticed to a surgeon in 1810. After four years’ apprenticeship, he enrolled as a student at Guy’s Hospital. However, he had already started writing, and in 1816 abandoned medicine to concentrate on poetry.

His first volume of poems was published in 1817, but sold poorly. His long poem Endymion, published the following year, received some antagonistic reviews, with one reviewer (John Lockhart) calling it a work of “drivelling idiocy.” However, Keats was supported by other writers including Leigh Hunt. He also met Shelley and Wordsworth.

In 1818 Keats went on a walking tour of Northern England and Scotland with his friend Charles Brown: during this trip he suffered the first symptoms of tuberculosis. His brother Tom already had the disease in more advanced form, and Keats cared for him before his death in December 1818.

Around this time Keats met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne, and worked on Hyperion and his great odes, which were published in his Poems of 1820. However, by this time his illness curtailed his writing. He was invited to Italy by Shelley, and travelled there with his friend Joseph Severn. After much suffering he died in Rome in February 1821. He was twenty-five.

Since his death, Keats’s reputation has grown; he is now regarded not just as one of the greatest Romantic poets but one of the greatest English poets of any period. Influenced by Wordsworth, he himself was a major influence on Tennyson and other Victorian poets, as well as the PreRaphaelite artists. He drew on classical myth, legend and medieval stories for his work, and coined the term ‘negative capability’ - the willingness not to understand everything, but to accept mystery. The power of imagination and beauty were paramount to him.

Keats’s poetry is intense, passionate and sensuous; yet he was a sociable, active and high-spirited young man. Besides his poems, he left a multitude of letters, which are affectionate, lively, often humorous, and highly readable.

This selection includes all of the great odes, many sonnets and other short works, and several of Keats’s longer poems (including Hyperion) in full. Where only extracts are included, as in Endymion, the parts omitted are represented by three asterisks:

*   *   *

Brief explanatory notes are attached to some poems.

Emma Laybourn MA PGCE

*

From Poems of 1817

↑

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill (extract)

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 where 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 brethren 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…

*   *   *

…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…

*   *   *

Note

The poem goes on to describe figures from Greek myth, including Endymion, who later became the central figure in Keats’s long poem of that name.

↑

To my Brother George

Full many a dreary hour have I past,

My brain bewilder’d, and my mind o’ercast

With heaviness; in seasons when I’ve thought

No spherey strains by me could e’er be caught

From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze

On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays;

Or, on the wavy grass outstretch’d supinely,

Pry ’mong the stars, to strive to think divinely:

That I should never hear Apollo’s song,

Though feathery clouds were floating all along

The purple west, and, two bright streaks between,

The golden lyre itself were dimly seen:

That the still murmur of the honey bee

Would never teach a rural song to me:

That the bright glance from beauty’s eyelids slanting

Would never make a lay of mine enchanting,

Or warm my breast with ardour to unfold

Some tale of love and arms in time of old.

But there are times, when those that love the bay,

Fly from all sorrowing far, far away;

A sudden glow comes on them, nought they see

In water, earth, or air, but poesy.

It has been said, dear George, and true I hold it,

(For knightly Spenser to Libertas told it,)

That when a Poet is in such a trance,

In air he sees white coursers paw, and prance,

Bestridden of gay knights, in gay apparel,

Who at each other tilt in playful quarrel,

And what we, ignorantly, sheet-lightning call,

Is the swift opening of their wide portal,

When the bright warder blows his trumpet clear,

Whose tones reach nought on earth but Poet’s ear.

When these enchanted portals open wide,

And through the light the horsemen swiftly glide,

The Poet’s eye can reach those golden halls,

And view the glory of their festivals:

Their ladies fair, that in the distance seem

Fit for the silv’ring of a seraph’s dream;

Their rich brimm’d goblets, that incessant run

Like the bright spots that move about the sun;

And, when upheld, the wine from each bright jar

Pours with the lustre of a falling star.

Yet further off, are dimly seen their bowers,

Of which, no mortal eye can reach the flowers;

And ’tis right just, for well Apollo knows

’Twould make the Poet quarrel with the rose.

All that’s reveal’d from that far seat of blisses,

Is, the clear fountains’ interchanging kisses.

As gracefully descending, light and thin,

Like silver streaks across a dolphin’s fin,

When he upswimmeth from the coral caves.

And sports with half his tail above the waves.

These wonders strange he sees, and many more,

Whose head is pregnant with poetic lore.

Should he upon an evening ramble fare

With forehead to the soothing breezes bare,

Would he naught see but the dark, silent blue

With all its diamonds trembling through and through?

Or the coy moon, when in the waviness

Of whitest clouds she does her beauty dress,

And staidly paces higher up, and higher,

Like a sweet nun in holy-day attire?

Ah, yes! much more would start into his sight–

The revelries, and mysteries of night:

And should I ever see them, I will tell you

Such tales as needs must with amazement spell you.

These are the living pleasures of the bard:

But richer far posterity’s award.

What does he murmur with his latest breath,

While his proud eye looks through the film of death?

“What though I leave this dull and earthly mould,

Yet shall my spirit lofty converse hold

With after times. – The patriot shall feel

My stern alarum, and unsheath his steel;

Or, in the senate thunder out my numbers

To startle princes from their easy slumbers.

The sage will mingle with each moral theme

My happy thoughts sententious; he will teem

With lofty periods when my verses fire him,

And then I’ll stoop from heaven to inspire him.

Lays have I left of such a dear delight

That maids will sing them on their bridal night.

Gay villagers, upon a morn of May

When they have tired their gentle limbs with play,

And form’d a snowy circle on the grass,

And plac’d in midst of all that lovely lass

Who chosen is their queen, – with her fine head

Crowned with flowers purple, white, and red:

For there the lily, and the musk-rose, sighing,

Are emblems true of hapless lovers dying:

Between her breasts, that never yet felt trouble,

A bunch of violets full blown, and double,

Serenely sleep: – she from a casket takes

A little book, – and then a joy awakes

About each youthful heart, – with stifled cries,

And rubbing of white hands, and sparkling eyes:

For she’s to read a tale of hopes, and fears;

One that I foster’d in my youthful years:

The pearls, that on each glist’ning circlet sleep,

Gush ever and anon with silent creep,

Lured by the innocent dimples. To sweet rest

Shall the dear babe, upon its mother’s breast,

Be lull’d with songs of mine. Fair world, adieu!

Thy dales and hills are fading from my view:

Swiftly I mount, upon wide spreading pinions,

Far from the narrow bounds of thy dominions.

Full joy I feel, while thus I cleave the air,

That my soft verse will charm thy daughters fair,

And warm thy sons!” Ah, my dear friend and brother,

Could I, at once, my mad ambition smother,

For tasting joys like these, sure I should be

Happier, and dearer to society.

At times, ’tis true, I’ve felt relief from pain

When some bright thought has darted through my brain:

Through all that day I’ve felt a greater pleasure

Than if I’d brought to light a hidden treasure.

As to my sonnets, though none else should heed them,

I feel delighted, still, that you should read them.

Of late, too, I have had much calm enjoyment,

Stretch’d on the grass at my best lov’d employment

Of scribbling lines for you. These things I thought

While, in my face, the freshest breeze I caught.

E’en now I’m pillow’d on a bed of flowers

That crowns a lofty clift, which proudly towers

Above the ocean-waves. The stalks and blades

Chequer my tablet with their quivering shades.

On one side is a field of drooping oats,

Through which the poppies show their scarlet coats;

So pert and useless, that they bring to mind

The scarlet coats that pester human-kind.

And on the other side, outspread, is seen

Ocean’s blue mantle streak’d with purple and green.

Now ’tis I see a canvass’d ship, and now

Mark the bright silver curling round her prow.

I see the lark down-dropping to his nest,

And the broad winged sea-gull never at rest;

For when no more he spreads his feathers free,

His breast is dancing on the restless sea.

Now I direct my eyes into the west,

Which at this moment is in sunbeams drest:

Why westward turn? ’Twas but to say adieu!

’Twas but to kiss my hand, dear George, to you!

↑

Calidore: a Fragment (extract)

Young Calidore is paddling o’er the lake;

His healthful spirit eager and awake

To feel the beauty of a silent eve,

Which seem’d full loath this happy world to leave;

The light dwelt o’er the scene so lingeringly.

He bares his forehead to the cool blue sky,

And smiles at the far clearness all around,

Until his heart is well nigh over wound,

And turns for calmness to the pleasant green

Of easy slopes, and shadowy trees that lean

So elegantly o’er the waters’ brim

And show their blossoms trim.

Scarce can his clear and nimble eye-sight follow

The freaks and dartings of the black-wing’d swallow,

Delighting much to see it half at rest,

Dip so refreshingly its wings, and breast

’Gainst the smooth surface, and to mark anon,

The widening circles into nothing gone.

And now the sharp keel of his little boat

Comes up with ripple, and with easy float,

And glides into a bed of water lillies:

Broad leav’d are they, and their white canopies

Are upward turn’d to catch the heavens’ dew.

Near to a little island’s point they grew;

Whence Calidore might have the goodliest view

Of this sweet spot of earth. The bowery shore

Went off in gentle windings to the hoar

And light blue mountains: but no breathing man

With a warm heart, and eye prepared to scan

Nature’s clear beauty, could pass lightly by

Objects that look’d out so invitingly

On either side. These, gentle Calidore

Greeted, as he had known them long before.

The sidelong view of swelling leafiness,

Which the glad setting sun, in gold doth dress;

Whence ever, and anon the jay outsprings,

And scales upon the beauty of its wings.

The lonely turret, shatter’d, and outworn,

Stands venerably proud; too proud to mourn

Its long lost grandeur: fir trees grow around,

Aye dropping their hard fruit upon the ground.

The little chapel with the cross above

Upholding wreaths of ivy; the white dove,

That on the windows spreads his feathers light,

And seems from purple clouds to wing its flight.

Green tufted islands casting their soft shades

Across the lake; sequester’d leafy glades,

That through the dimness of their twilight show

Large dock leaves, spiral foxgloves, or the glow

Of the wild cat’s eyes, or the silvery stems

Of delicate birch trees, or long grass which hems

A little brook. The youth had long been viewing

These pleasant things, and heaven was bedewing

The mountain flowers, when his glad senses caught

A trumpet’s silver voice….

*   *   *

Note

Sir Calidore appears as the Knight of Courtesy in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, where he defeats the Blatant Beast.

↑

Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison

What though, for showing truth to flatter’d state

Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he,

In his immortal spirit, been as free

As the sky-searching lark, and as elate.

Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?

Think you he nought but prison walls did see,

Till, so unwilling, thou unturn’dst the key?

Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!

In Spenser’s halls he strayed, and bowers fair,

Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew

With daring Milton through the fields of air:

To regions of his own his genius true

Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair

When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?

Note

Leigh Hunt was an essayist and poet who was jailed for libelling the Prince Regent. He supported Keats and published some of his work.

↑

Sonnet

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 human-kind,

When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

↑

Sonnet

Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there

Among the bushes half leafless, and dry;

The stars look very cold about the sky,

And I have many miles on foot to fare.

Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,

Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,

Or of those silver lamps that burn on high,

Or of the distance from home’s pleasant lair:

For I am brimfull of the friendliness

That in a little cottage I have found;

Of fair-haired Milton’s eloquent distress,

And all his love for gentle Lycid drowned;

Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,

And faithful Petrarch gloriously crowned.

↑

Sonnet

To one who has been long in city pent,

’Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven,– to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with hearts content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair

Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair

And gentle tale of love and languishment?

Returning home at evening, with an ear

Catching the notes of Philomel, – an eye

Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,

He mourns that day so soon has glided by:

E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.

↑

On first looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I travell’d 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.

Notes

George Chapman, poet and playwright, completed an English verse translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey in 1614. Chapman used a more natural and readable language than later translators such as Pope.

Hernan Cortez was a Spanish conquistador who invaded Mexico in 1519; he is treated here as the first European to see the Pacific from the Americas (Darien being in Panama), although in fact Balboa was the first to achieve this, in 1513.

↑

Sonnet: Addressed to the Same

Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;

He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,

Who on Helvellyn’s summit, wide awake,

Catches his freshness from Archangel’s wing:

He of the rose, the violet, the spring,

The social smile, the chain for Freedom’s sake:

And lo! – whose stedfastness would never take

A meaner sound than Raphael’s whispering.

And other spirits there are standing apart

Upon the forehead of the age to come;

These, these will give the world another heart,

And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum

Of mighty workings? –

Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.

Notes

The ‘same’ in the title refers to Benjamin Haydon, a painter and friend of Keats; he introduced Keats to the Elgin Marbles.

The ‘great spirits’ of the poem are Wordsworth, here imagined on Helvellyn, a mountain in the Lake District; Leigh Hunt, the writer and journalist, who is he of ‘the social smile’; and Haydon, for his championship of the Elgin Marbles (See also the note after On Seeing the Elgin Marbles).

↑

To Charles Cowden Clarke (extract)

Oft have you seen a swan superbly frowning,

And with proud breast his own white shadow crowning;

He slants his neck beneath the waters bright

So silently, it seems a beam of light

Come from the galaxy: anon he sports,–

With outspread wings the Naiad Zephyr courts,

Or ruffles all the surface of the lake

In striving from its crystal face to take

Some diamond water drops, and them to treasure

In milky nest, and sip them off at leisure.

But not a moment can he there insure them,

Nor to such downy rest can he allure them;

For down they rush as though they would be free,

And drop like hours into eternity.

Just like that bird am I in loss of time,

Whene’er I venture on the stream of rhyme;

With shatter’d boat, oar snapt, and canvass rent,

I slowly sail, scarce knowing my intent;

Still scooping up the water with my fingers,

In which a trembling diamond never lingers.

By this, friend Charles, you may full plainly see

Why I have never penn’d a line to thee:

Because my thoughts were never free, and clear,

And little fit to please a classic ear;

Because my wine was of too poor a savour

For one whose palate gladdens in the flavour

Of sparkling Helicon: – small good it were

To take him to a desert rude, and bare.....

*   *   *

Note

Clarke’s father was a teacher at Keats’s school: Charles, eight years older than Keats, was a friend who encouraged his poetic ambitions.

↑

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

That is the Grasshopper’s – he takes the lead

In summer luxury, – he has never done

With his delights; for when tired out with fun

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

↑

Sleep and Poetry (extracts)

...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...

*   *   *

...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!...

*   *   *

Works of 1816 – 1818, from various sources

↑

Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition (1816)

The church bells toll a melancholy round,

Calling the people to some other prayers,

Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,

More harkening to the sermon’s horrid sound.

Surely the mind of man is closely bound

In some black spell; seeing that each one tears

Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,

And converse high of those with glory crowned.

Still, still they too, and I should feel a damp,–

A chill as from a tomb, did I not know

That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;

That ’tis their sighing, wailing ere they go

Into oblivion; – that fresh flowers will grow,

And many glories of immortal stamp.

Note

Lydian airs: the ancient kingdom of Lydia, in modern western Turkey, was famous for its sweet music. Milton refers to ‘soft Lydian airs’ in his l’Allegro.

↑

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles (1817)

My spirit is too weak – mortality

Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

And each imagined pinnacle and steep

Of godlike hardship tells me I must die

Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.

Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep

That I have not the cloudy winds to keep

Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.

Such dim-conceivèd glories of the brain

Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;

So do these wonders a most dizzy pain

That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude

Wasting of old time – with a billowy main –

A sun – a shadow of a magnitude.

Note

The Elgin marbles, classical Greek statues which originally stood in the Parthenon at Athens, were brought to Britain by Lord Elgin and first displayed in the British Museum in 1816. Keats viewed them there with his friend Benjamin Haydon.

↑

On the Sea (1817)

It keeps eternal whisperings around

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell

Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell

Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.

Often ’tis in such gentle temper found,

That scarcely will the very smallest shell

Be moved for days from where it sometime fell,

When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.

Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,

Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;

Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,

Or fed too much with cloying melody–

Sit ye near some old Cavern’s Mouth and brood,

Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!

Note:

Hecate is a Greek goddess associated with witchcraft.

Keats included this poem in a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds. He wrote: ‘From want of regular rest I have been rather narvus – and the passage in Lear – “Do you not hear the sea?” – has haunted me intensely.’ (April 17th, 1817)

↑

Sonnet (1817)

After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains

For a long dreary season, comes a day

Born of the gentle South, and clears away

From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.

The anxious month, relieved of its pains,

Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May;

The eyelids with the passing coolness play

Like rose leaves with the drip of Summer rains.

The calmest thoughts came round us; as of leaves

Budding – fruit ripening in stillness, – Autumn suns

Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves –

Sweet Sappho’s cheek – a smiling infant’s breath –

The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs –

A woodland rivulet – a Poet’s death.

Note

Sweet Sappho’s cheek: Sappho was a female love poet on the Greek island of Lesbos in the 6th century BC.

This poem was first published in 1817 in the Examiner, which was edited by Leigh Hunt.

↑

On Leigh Hunt’s poem, The Story of Rimini (1817)

Who loves to peer up at the morning sun,

With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek,

Let him, with this sweet tale, full often seek

For meadows where the little rivers run;

Who loves to linger with that brightest one

Of Heaven – Hesperus – let him lowly speak

These numbers to the night, and starlight meek,

Or moon, if that her hunting be begun.

He who knows these delights, and too is prone

To moralize upon a smile or tear.

Will find at once a region of his own,

A bower for his spirit, and will steer

To alleys, where the fir-tree drops its cone,

Where robins hop, and fallen leaves are sear.

Note

Hesperus was the Greek God of the evening star (the planet Venus).

The Story of Rimini was a narrative poem based on a tale from Dante; its freshness and decorative description influenced Keats’s work.

↑

Sonnet (1818)

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charact’ry,

Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

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.

Note

Keats included this poem in a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (Jan 31st, 1818)

↑

Song (1818)

1

Hush, hush, tread softly, hush, hush, my dear,

All the house is asleep, but we know very well

That the jealous, the jealous old baldpate may hear,

Though you’ve padded his night-cap, O sweet Isabel.

Though your feet are more light than a fairy’s feet,

Who dances on bubble where brooklets meet –

Hush, hush, tread softly, hush, hush, my dear,

For less than a nothing the jealous can hear.

2

No leaf doth tremble, no ripple is there

On the river – all’s still, and the night’s sleepy eye

Closes up, and forgets all its Lethean care,

Charmed to death by the drone of the humming may fly.

And the moon, whether prudish or complaisant,

Hath fled to her bower, well knowing I want

No light in the darkness, no torch in the gloom,

But my Isabel’s eyes and her lips pulped with bloom.

3

Lift the latch, ah gently! ah tenderly, sweet,

We are dead if that latchet gives one little chink.

Well done – now those lips and a flowery seat:

The old man may sleep, and the planets may wink;

The shut rose shall dream of our loves and awake

Full blown, and such warmth for the morning take;

The stockdove shall hatch her soft brace and shall coo,

While I kiss to the melody, aching all through.

↑

What the Thrush said (1818)

O thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind,

Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist

And the black elm tops ’mong the freezing stars,

To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.

O thou, whose only book has been the light

Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on

Night after night when Phoebus was away,

To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.

O fret not after knowledge- I have none,

And yet my song comes native with the warmth.

O fret not after knowledge – I have none,

And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens

At thought of idleness cannot be idle,

And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.

Note

Phoebus is another name for Apollo, Greek god of light and the sun.

Keats included this poem in a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds. He wrote: ‘I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of idleness. I have not read any books – the morning said I was right – I had no idea but of the morning, and the thrush said I was right, seeming to say–’ The poem followed. (Feb 19th 1818)

↑

Dear Reynolds, As Last Night I Lay in Bed (1818)

Dear Reynolds! as last night I lay in bed,

There came before my eyes that wonted thread

Of shapes, and shadows, and remembrances,

That every other minute vex and please:

Things all disjointed come from north and south, –

Two witch’s eyes above a cherub’s mouth,

Voltaire with casque and shield and habergeon,

And Alexander with his nightcap on;

Old Socrates atying his cravat,

And Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth’s cat;

And Junius Brutus, pretty well so so,

Making the best of’s way towards Soho.

Few are there who escape these visitings –

Perhaps one or two whose lives have patient wings,

And thro’ whose curtains peeps no hellish nose,

No wild-boar tushes, and no mermaid’s toes;

But flowers bursting out with lusty pride,

And young Æolian harps personified;

Some, Titian colours touch’d into real life, –

The sacrifice goes on; the pontiff knife

Gleams in the sun, the milk-white heifer lows,

The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows:

A white sail shows above the green-head cliff,

Moves round the point, and throws her anchor stiff;

The mariners join hymn with those on land.

You know the Enchanted Castle – it doth stand

Upon a rock, on the border of a lake,

Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake

From some old magic like Urganda’s Sword.

O Phoebus! that I had thy sacred word

To show this Castle, in fair dreaming wise,

Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies!

You know it well enough, where it doth seem

A mossy place, a Merlin’s Hall, a dream;

You know the clear lake, and the little isles,

The mountains blue, and cold near neighbour rills,

All which elsewhere are but half animate;

There do they look alive to love and hate,

To smiles and frowns; they seem a lifted mound

Above some giant, pulsing underground.

Part of the building was a chosen see

Built by a banish’d santon of Chaldee;

The other part, two thousand years from him,

Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim;

Then there’s a little wing, far from the Sun,

Built by a Lapland Witch turn’d maudlin Nun:

And many other juts of aged stone

Founded with many a mason-devil’s groan.

The doors all look as if they oped themselves,

The windows as if latch’d by fays and elves,

And from them comes a silver flash of light

As from the westward of a summer’s night;

Or like a beauteous woman’s large blue eyes

Gone mad thro’ olden songs and poesies.

See what is coming from the distance dim!

A golden galley all in silken trim!

Three rows of oars are lightening moment whiles

Into the verderous bosoms of those isles;

Towards the shade under the castle wall

It comes in silence – now ’tis hidden all.

The clarion sounds, and from a postern-gate

An echo of sweet music doth create

A fear in the poor herdsman who doth bring

His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring;

He tells of the sweet music and the spot

To all his friends, and they believe him not.

O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,

Would all their colours from the sunset take:

From something of material sublime,

Rather than shadow our own soul’s day-time

In the dark void of night. For in the world

We jostle – but my flag is not unfurl’d

On the Admiral-staff – and so philosophize

I dare not yet! Oh, never will the prize,

High reason, and the love of good and ill,

Be my award. Things cannot to the will

Be settled, but they tease us out of thought;

Or is it that imagination brought

Beyond its proper bound, yet still confin’d,

Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind,

Cannot refer to any standard law

Of either earth or heaven? – It is a flaw

In happiness to see beyond our bourn –

It forces us in summer skies to mourn;

It spoils the singing of the nightingale.

Dear Reynolds! I have a mysterious tale

And cannot speak it. The first page I read

Upon a lampit rock of green sea-weed

Among the breakers. – ’Twas a quiet eve,

The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave

An untumultuous fringe of silver foam

Along the flat brown sand; I was at home

And should have been most happy – but I saw

Too far into the sea, where every maw

The greater on the less feeds evermore. –

But I saw too distinct into the core

Of an eternal fierce destruction,

And so from happiness I far was gone.

Still am I sick of it, and tho’, to-day,

I’ve gathered young spring-leaves, and flowers gay

Or periwinkle and wild strawberry,

Still do I that most fierce destruction see,

The shark at savage prey – the hawk at pounce,

The gentle Robin, like a pard or ounce,

Ravening a worm. – Away, ye horrid moods,

Moods of one’s mind! You know I hate them well.

You know I’d sooner be a clapping bell

To some Kamschatkan Missionary Church,

Than with these horrid moods be left i’the lurch.

Notes:

Keats sent this as a letter to his sick friend John Hamilton Reynolds, adding: ‘In hopes of cheering you through a Minute or two, I was determined will he nill he to send you some lines, so you will excuse the unconnected subject and careless verse. You know, I am sure, Claude’s Enchanted Castle, and I wish you may be pleased with my remembrance of it.’ (March 25th, 1818)

The Enchanted Castle is a painting of 1664 by Claude Lorrain, depicting an atmospheric scene from the myth of Cupid and Psyche. It may be seen online at the National Gallery website:

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/claude-the-enchanted-castle

Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth’s cat: William Hazlitt, writer and art critic, was a friend of Keats. Maria Edgeworth was a novelist and children’s writer.

Junius Brutus: either Lucius Junius Brutus, founder of the ancient Roman Republic, or Marcus Junius Brutus, one of Julius Caesar’s assassins.

Urganda’s sword: Urganda was a priestess in a 16th century Spanish romance, Amadis de Gaula, which was translated into English by the poet Robert Southey.

Santon of Chaldee: seems to mean (roughly) a priest of ancient Babylon.

Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim: a fictional saint.

↑

A Song About Myself (1818)

I.

There was a naughty boy,

A naughty boy was he,

He would not stop at home,

He could not quiet be–

He took

In his knapsack

A book

Full of vowels

And a shirt

With some towels,

A slight cap

For night cap,

A hair brush,

Comb ditto,

New stockings

For old ones

Would split O!

This knapsack

Tight at’s back

He rivetted close

And followed his nose

To the north,

To the north,

And followed his nose

To the north.

II.

There was a naughty boy

And a naughty boy was he,

For nothing would he do

But scribble poetry–

He took

An ink stand

In his hand

And a pen

Big as ten

In the other,

And away

In a pother

He ran

To the mountains

And fountains

And ghostes

And postes

And witches

And ditches

And wrote

In his coat

When the weather

Was cool,

Fear of gout,

And without

When the weather

Was warm–

Och the charm

When we choose

To follow one’s nose

To the north,

To the north,

To follow one’s nose

To the north!

III.

There was a naughty boy

And a naughty boy was he,

He kept little fishes

In washing tubs three

In spite

Of the might

Of the maid

Nor afraid

Of his Granny-good–

He often would

Hurly burly

Get up early

And go

By hook or crook

To the brook

And bring home

Miller’s thumb,

Tittlebat

Not over fat,

Minnows small

As the stall

Of a glove,

Not above

The size

Of a nice

Little baby’s

Little fingers–

O he made

’Twas his trade

Of fish a pretty kettle

A kettle–

A kettle

Of fish a pretty kettle

A kettle!

IV.

There was a naughty boy,

And a naughty boy was he,

He ran away to Scotland

The people for to see–

There he found

That the ground

Was as hard,

That a yard

Was as long,

That a song

Was as merry,

That a cherry

Was as red,

That lead

Was as weighty,

That fourscore

Was as eighty,

That a door

Was as wooden

As in England–

So he stood in his shoes

And he wondered,

He wondered,

He stood in his

Shoes and he wondered.

Note:

This poem was written during Keats’s walking tour of the Lake District and Scotland in 1818, and was included in a letter to his younger sister Fanny, who was about 15 at the time.

Keats added: ‘My dear Fanny, I am ashamed of writing you such stuff, nor would I if it were not for being tired after my day’s walking, and ready to tumble into bed so fatigued that when I am asleep you might sew my nose to my great toe and trundle me round the town, like a Hoop, without waking me.’ (July 4th 1818)

↑

On Visiting the Tomb of Burns (1818)

The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,

The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem

Though beautiful, cold – strange – as in a dream

I dreamed long ago. Now new begun,

The short-lived, paly summer is but won

From winter's ague for one hour's gleam;

Through sapphire warm their stars do never beam:

All is cold Beauty; pain is never done.

For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,

The real of Beauty, free from that dead hue

Sickly imagination and sick pride

Cast wan upon it? Burns! with honour due

I oft have honoured thee. Great shadow, hide

Thy face; I sin against thy native skies.

Note:

This poem was included in a letter from Keats to his brother Tom, during his walking tour in Scotland. The Scottish poet Robert Burns died in 1796 and is buried in Dumfries: Keats added in his letter, ‘Burns’s tomb is in the Churchyard corner, not very much to my taste, though on a scale large enough to show they wanted to honour him.’ (July 1st, 1818.)

↑

Mrs. Cameron and Ben Nevis (extract) (1819)

Mrs. C.

Upon my Life Sir Nevis I am piqued

That I have so far panted tugged and reeked

To do an honour to your old bald pate

And now am sitting on you just to bait,

Without your paying me one compliment.

Alas ’tis so with all, when our intent

Is plain, and in the eye of all Mankind

We fair ones show a preference, too blind!

You Gentle man immediately turn tail–

O let me then my hapless fate bewail!

Ungrateful Baldpate have I not disdained

The pleasant Valleys – have I not madbrained

Deserted all my Pickles and preserves

My China closet too – with wretched Nerves

To boot – say wretched ingrate have I not

Left my soft cushion chair and caudle pot.

’Tis true I had no corns – no! thank the fates

My Shoemaker was always Mr. Bates.

And if not Mr. Bates why I’m not old!

Still dumb ungrateful Nevis – still so cold!

Ben Nevis.

What whining bit of tongue and Mouth thus dares

Disturb my slumber of a thousand years?

Even so long my sleep has been secure–

And to be so awaked I’ll not endure.

Oh pain – for since the Eagle’s earliest scream

I’ve had a damn’d confounded ugly dream,

A Nightmare sure. What Madam was it you?

It cannot be! My old eyes are not true!

Red-Crag, my Spectacles! Now let me see!

Good Heavens Lady how the gemini

Did you get here? O I shall split my sides!

I shall earthquake–

Mrs. C.

Sweet Nevis do not quake, for though I love

Your honest Countenance all things above

Truly I should not like to be conveyed

So far into your Bosom – gentle Maid

Loves not too rough a treatment gentle Sir –

Pray thee be calm and do not quake nor stir...

*   *   *

Note:

Included in a letter to Keats’s brother Tom during Keats’s walking tour, after he had climbed Ben Nevis (Scotland and Britain’s highest mountain.) Keats wrote: ‘I am heartily glad it is done – it is almost like a fly crawling up a wainscoat. Imagine the task of mounting ten Saint Pauls without the convenience of Staircases...

‘There was one Mrs. Cameron of 50 years of age and the fattest woman in all Inverness-shire who got up this Mountain some few years ago…’Tis said a little conversation took place between the mountain and the Lady.’ (Aug 3rd, 1818)

↑

I had a dove and the sweet dove died (1819)

I had a dove and the sweet dove died,

And I have thought it died of grieving:

O what could it mourn for? it was tied

With a silken thread of my own hand’s weaving.

Sweet little red-feet why did you die?

Why would you leave me – sweet dove why?

You lived alone on the forest tree.

Why pretty thing could you not live with me?

I kissed you oft and I gave you white peas.

Why not live sweetly as in the green trees?

Note:

Included in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, ‘a little thing I wrote off to some Music as it was playing.’' (Jan 2nd, 1819)

↑

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O what can ail thee Knight at arms

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake

And no birds sing.

O 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 looked 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 sighed full sore,

And there I shut her wild, wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,

And there I dreamed – Ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dreamed

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 starved lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gapèd 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.

Notes:

There are two versions of this poem, with minor differences. Keats included it in a letter of 1819 to George and Georgiana Keats. Despite its haunting and ominous tone, he added a flippant post-script:

‘Why four kisses – you will say – why four, because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse – she would have fain said ‘score’ without hurting the rhyme – but we must temper the Imagination, as the Critics say, with Judgment. I was obliged to choose an even number, that both eyes might have fair play, and to speak truly I think two a piece quite sufficient. Suppose I had said seven there would have been three and a half apiece – a very awkward affair, and well got out of on my side–’ (April 28th, 1819)

Keats may have taken the title from a French love poem of the same name but different subject and style, written in 1424 by Alain Chartier. The French poem describes a sorrowful lover who is rejected by a lady. Keats refers to it in The Eve of Saint Agnes.

↑

Sonnet (1819)

If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d,

And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet

Fetter’d, in spite of painèd loveliness;

Let us find out, if we must be constrain’d,

Sandals more interwoven and complete

To fit the naked foot of poesy;

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress

Of every chord, and see what may be gain’d

By ear industrious, and attention meet:

Misers of sound and syllable, no less

Than Midas of his coinage, let us be

Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;

So, if we may not let the Muse be free,

She will be bound with garlands of her own.

Note

In a letter to his brother George, after copying out the Ode to Psyche, Keats wrote:

‘I have been endeavouring to discover a better Sonnet Stanza than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language over well from the pouncing rhymes – the other kind appears too elegiac – and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a pleasing effect – I do not pretend to have succeeded – it will explain itself.’ This sonnet followed. (April 30th,1819)

↑

To Sleep

O soft embalmer of the still midnight

Shutting with careful fingers and benign

Our gloom-pleased eyes embowered from the light

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine–

O soothest sleep, if so it please thee close

In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,

Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws

Around my bed its dewy Charities.

Then save me or the passed day will shine

Upon my pillow breeding many woes.

Save me from curious conscience that still lords

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a Mole–

Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,

And seal the hushèd Casket of my soul.

↑

The Eve of Saint Mark (extract) (1819)

Upon a Sabbath-day it fell;

Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell,

That call’d the folk to evening prayer;

The city streets were clean and fair

From wholesome drench of April rains;

And, when on western window panes,

The chilly sunset faintly told

Of unmatured green vallies cold,

Of the green thorny bloomless hedge,

Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge,

Of primroses by shelter’d rills,

And daisies on the aguish hills.

Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell:

The silent streets were crowded well

With staid and pious companies,

Warm from their fireside orat’ries;

And moving, with demurest air,

To even-song, and vesper prayer.

Each arched porch, and entry low,

Was fill’d with patient folk and slow,

With whispers hush, and shuffling feet,

While play’d the organ loud and sweet.

The bells had ceas’d, the prayers begun,

And Bertha had not yet half done

A curious volume, patch’d and torn,

That all day long, from earliest morn,

Had taken captive her two eyes,

Among its golden broideries;

Perplex’d her with a thousand things,–

The stars of Heaven, and angels’ wings,

Martyrs in a fiery blaze,

Azure saints and silver rays,

Moses’ breastplate, and the seven

Candlesticks John saw in Heaven,

The winged Lion of St. Mark,

And the Covenantal Ark,

With its many mysteries,

Cherubim and golden mice.

Bertha was a maiden fair,

Dwelling in the old Minster-square;

From her fireside she could see,

Sidelong, its rich antiquity,

Far as the Bishop’s garden-wall,

Where sycamores and elm-trees tall,

Full-leav’d the forest had outstript,

By no sharp north-wind ever nipt,

So shelter’d by the mighty pile.

Bertha arose, and read awhile,

With forehead ’gainst the window-pane.

Again she try’d, and then again,

Until the dusk eve left her dark

Upon the legend of St. Mark.

From plaited lawn-frill, fine and thin,

She lifted up her soft warm chin,

With aching neck and swimming eyes,

And dazed with saintly imageries…

*   *   *

Note:

This unfinished poem was included in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, with the comment: ‘I hope you will like this for all its carelessness.’ (Sept 20th, 1819)

The poem may have been intended to refer to an old English custom about St Mark’s Eve (24th April); it was said that anyone who kept watch through the night in the church porch would see the ghosts of those about to die.

*

↑

Endymion (extracts)

Note: in Greek Mythology, Endymion was a shepherd who fell in love with the moon goddess, Selene – also known as Cynthia.

In the poem, Endymion is sometimes called Latmian or Carian, because he was said to live on Mount Latmos in Caria (northern Greece).

Book I

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways

Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,

Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon

For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in; and clear rills

That for themselves a cooling covert make

’Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,

Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead;

All lovely tales that we have heard or read:

An endless fountain of immortal drink,

Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences

For one short hour; no, even as the trees

That whisper round a temple become soon

Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,

The passion poesy, glories infinite,

Haunt us till they become a cheering light

Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,

That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,

They alway must be with us, or we die.

Therefore, ’tis with full happiness that I

Will trace the story of Endymion.

The very music of the name has gone

Into my being, and each pleasant scene

Is growing fresh before me as the green

Of our own valleys: so I will begin

Now while I cannot hear the city’s din;

Now while the early budders are just new,

And run in mazes of the youngest hue

About old forests; while the willow trails

Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails

Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year

Grows lush in juicy stalks, I’ll smoothly steer

My little boat, for many quiet hours,

With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.

Many and many a verse I hope to write,

Before the daisies, vermeil rimm’d and white,

Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees

Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,

I must be near the middle of my story.

O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,

See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,

With universal tinge of sober gold,

Be all about me when I make an end.

And now at once, adventuresome, I send

My herald thought into a wilderness:

There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress

My uncertain path with green, that I may speed

Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread

A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed

So plenteously all weed-hidden roots

Into o’er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits.

And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,

Where no man went; and if from shepherd’s keep

A lamb strayed far a-down those inmost glens,

Never again saw he the happy pens

Whither his brethren, bleating with content,

Over the hills at every nightfall went.

Among the shepherds, ’twas believed ever,

That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever

From the white flock, but pass’d unworrièd

By angry wolf, or pard with prying head,

Until it came to some unfooted plains

Where fed the herds of Pan: ay great his gains

Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many,

Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,

And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly

To a wide lawn, whence one could only see

Stems thronging all around between the swell

Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell

The freshness of the space of heaven above,

Edged round with dark tree tops? through which a dove

Would often beat its wings, and often too

A little cloud would move across the blue.

Full in the middle of this pleasantness

There stood a marble altar, with a tress

Of flowers budded newly; and the dew

Had taken fairy phantasies to strew

Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,

And so the dawnèd light in pomp receive.

For ’twas the morn: Apollo’s upward fire

Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre

Of brightness so unsullied, that therein

A melancholy spirit well might win

Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine

Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine

Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;

The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run

To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;

Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass

Of nature’s lives and wonders pulsed tenfold,

To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.

Now while the silent workings of the dawn

Were busiest, into that self-same lawn

All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped

A troop of little children garlanded;

Who gathering round the altar, seemed to pry

Earnestly round as wishing to espy

Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited

For many moments, ere their ears were sated

With a faint breath of music, which ev’n then

Filled out its voice, and died away again.

Within a little space again it gave

Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,

To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking

Through copse-clad valleys, – ere their death, o’ertaking

The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.

And now, as deep into the wood as we

Might mark a lynx’s eye, there glimmered light

Fair faces and a rush of garments white,

Plainer and plainer shewing, till at last

Into the widest alley they all past,

Making directly for the woodland altar.

O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue falter

In telling of this goodly company,

Of their old piety, and of their glee:

But let a portion of ethereal dew

Fall on my head, and presently unmew

My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring,

To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing.

Leading the way, young damsels danced along,

Bearing the burden of a shepherd song;

Each having a white wicker over brimmed

With April’s tender younglings: next, well trimmed,

A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks

As may be read of in Arcadian books;

Such as sat listening round Apollo’s pipe,

When the great deity, for earth too ripe,

Let his divinity o’er-flowing die

In music, through the vales of Thessaly:

Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground,

And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound

With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,

Now coming from beneath the forest trees,

A venerable priest full soberly,

Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye

Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept,

And after him his sacred vestments swept.

From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white,

Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light;

And in his left he held a basket full

Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull:

Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still

Than Leda’s love, and cresses from the rill.

His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath,

Seemed like a poll of ivy in the teeth

Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd

Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud

Their share of the ditty. After them appeared,

Up-followed by a multitude that reared

Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car,

Easily rolling so as scarce to mar

The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown:

Who stood therein did seem of great renown

Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,

Shewing like Ganymede to manhood grown;

And, for those simple times, his garments were

A chieftain king’s: beneath his breast, half bare,

Was hung a silver bugle, and between

His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen.

A smile was on his countenance; he seemed,

To common lookers on, like one who dreamed

Of idleness in groves Elysian:

But there were some who feelingly could scan

A lurking trouble in his nether lip,

And see that oftentimes the reins would slip

Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,

And think of yellow leaves, of owlet’s cry,

Of logs piled solemnly. –Ah, well-a-day,

Why should our young Endymion pine away!

Soon the assembly, in a circle ranged,

Stood silent round the shrine: each look was changed

To sudden veneration: women meek

Beckoned their sons to silence; while each cheek

Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear.

Endymion too, without a forest peer,

Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face,

Among his brothers of the mountain chase.

In midst of all, the venerable priest

Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least…

*   *   *

(The priest addresses the crowd, reminding them that they need to give thanks to the great god Pan for his bounty.  He lights a fire and pours a libation of wine, while the people sing a hymn to the ‘satyr king’, dance, and shoot arrows into the air.

Endymion and the priest and elders then discuss their spiritual duties.)

Anon they wander’d, by divine converse,

Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse

Each one his own anticipated bliss.

One felt heart-certain that he could not miss

His quick gone love, among fair blossom’d boughs,

Where every zephyr-sigh pouts, and endows

Her lips with music for the welcoming.

Another wish’d, mid that eternal spring,

To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,

Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales:

Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,

And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;

And, ever after, through those regions be

His messenger, his little Mercury,

Some were athirst in soul to see again

Their fellow huntsmen o’er the wide champaign

In times long past; to sit with them, and talk

Of all the chances in their earthly walk;

Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores

Of happiness, to when upon the moors,

Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,

And shared their famished scrips. Thus all out-told

Their fond imaginations, – saving him

Whose eyelids curtained up their jewels dim,

Endymion: yet hourly had he striven

To hide the cankering venom, that had riven

His fainting recollections. Now indeed

His senses had swooned off: he did not heed

The sudden silence, or the whispers low,

Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe,

Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,

Or maiden’s sigh, that grief itself embalms:

But in the self-same fixed trance he kept,

Like one who on the earth had never slept.

Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man,

Frozen in that old tale Arabian.

Who whispers him so pantingly and close?

Peona, his sweet sister: of all those,

His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made,

And breathed a sister’s sorrow to persuade

A yielding up, a cradling on her care.

Her eloquence did breathe away the curse:

She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse

Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,

Along a path between two little streams,–

Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,

From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow

From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;

Until they came to where these streamlets fall,

With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,

Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush

With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.

A little shallop, floating there hard by,

Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;

And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,

And dipt again, with the young couple’s weight,–

Peona guiding, through the water straight,

Towards a bowery island opposite;

Which gaining presently, she steered light

Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,

Where nested was an arbour, overwove

By many a summer’s silent fingering;

To whose cool bosom she was used to bring

Her playmates, with their needle broidery,

And minstrel memories of times gone by.

So she was gently glad to see him laid

Under her favourite bower’s quiet shade,

On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,

Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves

When last the sun his autumn tresses shook,

And the tanned harvesters rich armfuls took.

Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest:

But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest

Peona’s busy hand against his lips,

And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips

In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps

A patient watch over the stream that creeps

Windingly by it, so the quiet maid

Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade

Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling

Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling

Among sere leaves and twigs, might all be heard.

O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,

That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind

Till it is hush’d and smooth! O unconfined

Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key

To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,

Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,

Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves

And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world

Of silvery enchantment! – who, upfurled

Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour,

But renovates and lives? – Thus, in the bower,

Endymion was calm’d to life again.

*   *   *

(Endymion awakes refreshed. His sister sings to him; and then says,)

“Brother, ’tis vain to hide

That thou dost know of things mysterious,

Immortal, starry; such alone could thus

Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinned in aught

Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught

A Paphian dove upon a message sent?

Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent,

Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen

Her naked limbs among the alders green;

And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace

Something more high perplexing in thy face!”

Endymion looked at her, and pressed her hand,

And said, “Art thou so pale, who wast so bland

And merry in our meadows? How is this?

Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!–

Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change

Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange?

Or more complete to overwhelm surmise?

Ambition is no sluggard: ’tis no prize,

That toiling years would put within my grasp,

That I have sighed for: with so deadly gasp

No man e’er panted for a mortal love.

So all have set my heavier grief above

These things which happen. Rightly have they done:

I, who still saw the horizontal sun

Heave his broad shoulder o’er the edge of the world,

Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurled

My spear aloft, as signal for the chase–

I, who, for very sport of heart, would race

With my own steed from Araby; pluck down

A vulture from his towery perching; frown

A lion into growling, loth retire–

To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire,

And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast

Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest.

“This river does not see the naked sky

Till it begins to progress silverly

Around the western border of the wood,

Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood

Seems at the distance like a crescent moon:

And in that nook, the very pride of June,

Had I been used to pass my weary eves;

The rather for the sun unwilling leaves

So dear a picture of his sovereign power,

And I could witness his most kingly hour,

When he doth lighten up the golden reins,

And paces leisurely down amber plains

His snorting four. Now when his chariot last

Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast,

There blossomed suddenly a magic bed

Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red:

At which I wondered greatly, knowing well

That but one night had wrought this flowery spell;

And, sitting down close by, began to muse

What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus,

In passing here, his owlet pinions shook;

Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook

Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth,

Had dipt his rod in it: such garland wealth

Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought,

Until my head was dizzy and distraught.

Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole

A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul;

And shaping visions all about my sight

Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light;

The which became more strange, and strange, and dim,

And then were gulphed in a tumultuous swim:

And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell

The enchantment that afterwards befell?

Yet it was but a dream: yet such a dream

That never tongue, although it overteem

With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring,

Could figure out and to conception bring

All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay

Watching the zenith, where the milky way

Among the stars in virgin splendour pours;

And travelling my eye, until the doors

Of heaven appeared to open for my flight,

I became loth and fearful to alight

From such high soaring by a downward glance:

So kept me stedfast in that airy trance,

Spreading imaginary pinions wide.

When, presently, the stars began to glide,

And faint away, before my eager view:

At which I sighed that I could not pursue,

And dropt my vision to the horizon’s verge;

And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge

The loveliest moon, that ever silvered o’er

A shell for Neptune’s goblet: she did soar

So passionately bright, my dazzled soul

Commingling with her argent spheres did roll

Through clear and cloudy, even when she went

At last into a dark and vapoury tent–

Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyèd train

Of planets all were in the blue again.

To commune with those orbs, once more I raised

My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed

By a bright something, sailing down apace,

Making me quickly veil my eyes and face:

Again I looked, and, O ye deities,

Who from Olympus watch our destinies!

Whence that completed form of all completeness?

Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness?

Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O where

Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair?

Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun;

Not – thy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun

Such follying before thee – yet she had,

Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad;

And they were simply gordianed up and braided,

Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded,

Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbèd brow;

The which were blended in, I know not how,

With such a paradise of lips and eyes,

Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs,

That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings

And plays about its fancy, till the stings

Of human neighbourhood envenom all.

Unto what awful power shall I call?

To what high fane? – Ah! see her hovering feet,

More bluely vein’d, more soft, more whitely sweet

Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose

From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows

Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion;

’Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million

Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed,

Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed,

Handfuls of daisies.” – “Endymion, how strange!

Dream within dream!” – “She took an airy range,

And then, towards me, like a very maid,

Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid,

And pressed me by the hand: Ah! ’twas too much;

Methought I fainted at the charmèd touch,

Yet held my recollection, even as one

Who dives three fathoms where the waters run

Gurgling in beds of coral: for anon,

I felt upmounted in that region

Where falling stars dart their artillery forth,

And eagles struggle with the buffeting north

That balances the heavy meteor-stone;–

Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone,

But lapped and lulled along the dangerous sky.

Soon, as it seemed, we left our journeying high,

And straightway into frightful eddies swooped;

Such as ay muster where grey time has scooped

Huge dens and caverns in a mountain’s side:

There hollow sounds aroused me, and I sighed

To faint once more by looking on my bliss–

I was distracted; madly did I kiss

The wooing arms which held me, and did give

My eyes at once to death: but ’twas to live,

To take in draughts of life from the gold fount

Of kind and passionate looks; to count, and count

The moments, by some greedy help that seemed

A second self, that each might be redeemed

And plundered of its load of blessedness.

Ah, desperate mortal! I ev’n dar’d to press

Her very cheek against my crownèd lip,

And, at that moment, felt my body dip

Into a warmer air: a moment more,

Our feet were soft in flowers. There was store

Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes

A scent of violets, and blossoming limes,

Loiter’d around us; then of honey cells,

Made delicate from all white-flower bells;

And once, above the edges of our nest,

An arch face peep’d,– an Oread as I guessed.

“Why did I dream that sleep o’er-power’d me

In midst of all this heaven? Why not see,

Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark,

And stare them from me? But no, like a spark

That needs must die, although its little beam

Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream

Fell into nothing – into stupid sleep.

And so it was, until a gentle creep,

A careful moving caught my waking ears,

And up I started: Ah! my sighs, my tears,

My clenchèd hands;– for lo! the poppies hung

Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung

A heavy ditty, and the sullen day

Had chidden herald Hesperus away,

With leaden looks: the solitary breeze

Blustered, and slept, and its wild self did teaze

With wayward melancholy; and I thought,

Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought

Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus!–

Away I wandered – all the pleasant hues

Of heaven and earth had faded: deepest shades

Were deepest dungeons; heaths and sunny glades

Were full of pestilent light; our taintless rills

Seem’d sooty, and o’er-spread with upturn’d gills

Of dying fish; the vermeil rose had blown

In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown

Like spiked aloe…”

*   *   *

(Peona weeps for her brother; and then tries to persuade him not to be grieved about a dream. He replies that love is essential for man’s soul, continuing,)

“…My sayings will the less obscurèd seem,

When I have told thee how my waking sight

Has made me scruple whether that same night

Was passed in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona!

Beyond the matron-temple of Latona,

Which we should see but for these darkening boughs,

Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows

Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart,

And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught,

And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide

Past them, but he must brush on every side.

Some moulder’d steps lead into this cool cell,

Far as the slabbed margin of a well,

Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye

Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky.

Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set

Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet

Edges them round, and they have golden pits:

’Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits

In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat,

When all above was faint with mid-day heat.

And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed,

I’d bubble up the water through a reed;

So reaching back to boy-hood: make me ships

Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips,

With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be

Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily,

When love-lorn hours had left me less a child,

I sat contemplating the figures wild

Of o’er-head clouds melting the mirror through.

Upon a day, while thus I watched, by flew

A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver;

So plainly charactered, no breeze would shiver

The happy chance: so happy, I was fain

To follow it upon the open plain,

And, therefore, was just going; when, behold!

A wonder, fair as any I have told–

The same bright face I tasted in my sleep,

Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap

Through the cool depth. – It moved as if to flee–

I started up, when lo! refreshfully,

There came upon my face, in plenteous showers,

Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,

Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,

Bathing my spirit in a new delight.

Aye, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss

Alone preserved me from the drear abyss

Of death, for the fair form had gone again.

Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain

Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth

On the deer’s tender haunches: late, and loth,

’Tis scared away by slow returning pleasure.

How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure

Of weary days, made deeper exquisite,

By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night!

Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still,

Than when I wandered from the poppy hill:

And a whole age of lingering moments crept

Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept

Away at once the deadly yellow spleen.

Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen;

Once more been tortured with renewèd life.

When last the wintry gusts gave over strife

With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies

Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes

In pity of the shatter’d infant buds,–

That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs,

My hunting cap, because I laughed and smiled,

Chatted with thee, and many days exiled

All torment from my breast;– ’twas even then,

Straying about, yet, cooped up in the den

Of helpless discontent, – hurling my lance

From place to place, and following at chance,

At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck,

And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck

In the middle of a brook,– whose silver ramble

Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble,

Tracing along, it brought me to a cave,

Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave

The nether sides of mossy stones and rock,–

’Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock

Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead,

Hung a lush scene of drooping weeds, and spread

Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph’s home.

‘Ah! impious mortal, whither do I roam?’

Said I, low voiced: ‘Ah, whither! ’Tis the grot

Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot,

Doth her resign; and where her tender hands

She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands:

Or ’tis the cell of Echo, where she sits,

And babbles thorough silence, till her wits

Are gone in tender madness, and anon,

Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone

Of sadness. O that she would take my vows,

And breathe them sighingly among the boughs,

To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head,

Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed,

And weave them dyingly – send honey-whispers

Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers

May sigh my love unto her pitying!

O charitable echo! hear, and sing

This ditty to her! – tell her’ – so I stay’d

My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid,

Stood stupefied with my own empty folly,

And blushing for the freaks of melancholy.

Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name

Most fondly lipped, and then these accents came:

‘Endymion! the cave is secreter

Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir

No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise

Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys

And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.’

At that oppressed I hurried in. – Ah! where

Are those swift moments? Whither are they fled?

I’ll smile no more, Peona; nor will wed

Sorrow the way to death; but patiently

Bear up against it: so farewell, sad sigh;

And come instead demurest meditation,

To occupy me wholly, and to fashion

My pilgrimage for the world’s dusky brink.

No more will I count over, link by link,

My chain of grief: no longer strive to find

A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind

Blustering about my ears: aye, thou shalt see,

Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be;

What a calm round of hours shall make my days.

There is a paly flame of hope that plays

Where’er I look: but yet, I’ll say ’tis naught–

And here I bid it die. Have not I caught,

Already, a more healthy countenance?

By this the sun is setting; we may chance

Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car.”

This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star

Through autumn mists, and took Peona’s hand:

They stept into the boat, and launched from land.

↑

Book II

O sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!

All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,

And shadowy, through the mist of passèd years:

For others, good or bad, hatred and tears

Have become indolent; but touching thine,

One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,

One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.

The woes of Troy, towers smothering o’er their blaze,

Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades,

Struggling, and blood, and shrieks – all dimly fades

Into some backward corner of the brain;

Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain

The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.

Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat!

Swart planet in the universe of deeds!

Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds

Along the pebbled shore of memory!

Many old rotten-timber’d boats there be

Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified

To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,

And golden keel’d, is left unlaunch’d and dry.

But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly

About the great Athenian admiral’s mast?

What care, though striding Alexander past

The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?

Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers

The glutted Cyclops, what care? – Juliet leaning

Amid her window-flowers,– sighing,– weaning

Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow,

Doth more avail than these: the silver flow

Of Hero’s tears, the swoon of Imogen,

Fair Pastorella in the bandit’s den,

Are things to brood on with more ardency

Than the death-day of empires. Fearfully

Must such conviction come upon his head,

Who, thus far, discontent, has dared to tread,

Without one muse’s smile, or kind behest,

The path of love and poesy. But rest,

In chaffing restlessness, is yet more drear

Than to be crush’d, in striving to uprear

Love’s standard on the battlements of song.

So once more days and nights aid me along,

Like legion’d soldiers.

Brain-sick shepherd prince,

What promise hast thou faithful guarded since

The day of sacrifice? Or, have new sorrows

Come with the constant dawn upon thy morrows?

Alas! ’tis his old grief. For many days,

Has he been wandering in uncertain ways:

Through wilderness, and woods of mossèd oaks;

Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes

Of the lone woodcutter; and listening still,

Hour after hour, to each lush-leav’d rill.

Now he is sitting by a shady spring,

And elbow-deep with feverous fingering

Stems the upbursting cold: a wild rose tree

Pavilions him in bloom, and he doth see

A bud which snares his fancy: lo! but now

He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water: how!

It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight;

And, in the middle, there is softly pight

A golden butterfly; upon whose wings

There must be surely character’d strange things,

For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft.

Lightly this little herald flew aloft,

Follow’d by glad Endymion’s clasped hands:

Onward it flies. From languor’s sullen bands

His limbs are loos’d, and eager, on he hies

Dazzled to trace it in the sunny skies.

It seem’d he flew, the way so easy was;

And like a new-born spirit did he pass

Through the green evening quiet in the sun,

O’er many a heath, through many a woodland dun,

Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams

The summer time away. One track unseams

A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue

Of ocean fades upon him; then, anew,

He sinks adown a solitary glen,

Where there was never sound of mortal men,

Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences

Melting to silence, when upon the breeze

Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet,

To cheer itself to Delphi. Still his feet

Went swift beneath the merry-wingèd guide,

Until it reached a splashing fountain’s side

That, near a cavern’s mouth, for ever pour’d

Unto the temperate air: then high it soar’d,

And, downward, suddenly began to dip,

As if, athirst with so much toil, ’twould sip

The crystal spout-head: so it did, with touch

Most delicate, as though afraid to smutch

Even with mealy gold the waters clear.

But, at that very touch, to disappear

So fairy-quick, was strange! Bewildered,

Endymion sought around, and shook each bed

Of covert flowers in vain; and then he flung

Himself along the grass. What gentle tongue,

What whisperer disturb’d his gloomy rest?

It was a nymph uprisen to the breast

In the fountain’s pebbly margin, and she stood

’Mong lilies, like the youngest of the brood.

To him her dripping hand she softly kist,

And anxiously began to plait and twist

Her ringlets round her fingers…

*   *   *

(The nymph expesses pity for Endymion, telling him that he must wander far, before she vanishes. Endymion sits down, longing for Cynthia and begging for her help in finding her.)

“..How beautiful thou art! The world how deep!

How tremulous-dazzlingly the wheels sweep

Around their axle! Then these gleaming reins,

How lithe! When this thy chariot attains

Its airy goal, haply some bower veils

Those twilight eyes?– Those eyes! – my spirit fails–

Dear goddess, help! or the wide-gaping air

Will gulph me – help!” – At this with maddened stare,

And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood;

Like old Deucalion mountain’d o’er the flood,

Or blind Orion hungry for the morn.

And, but from the deep cavern there was borne

A voice, he had been froze to senseless stone;

Nor sigh of his, nor plaint, nor passion’d moan

Had more been heard. Thus swell’d it forth: “Descend,

Young mountaineer! descend where alleys bend

Into the sparry hollows of the world!”

*   *   *

(Endymion descends, finding caverns sparkling with gems which seem to lay a trail.)

…now, far in the deep abyss,

It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss

Fancy into belief: anon it leads

Through winding passages, where sameness breeds

Vexing conceptions of some sudden change;

Whether to silver grots, or giant range

Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge

Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge

Now fareth he, that o’er the vast beneath

Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth

A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come

But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb

His bosom grew, when first he, far away,

Descried an orbed diamond, set to fray

Old darkness from his throne: ’twas like the sun

Uprisen o’er chaos: and with such a stun

Came the amazement, that, absorb’d in it,

He saw not fiercer wonders – past the wit

Of any spirit to tell, but one of those

Who, when this planet’s sphering time doth close,

Will be its high remembrancers: who they?

The mighty ones who have made eternal day

For Greece and England. While astonishment

With deep-drawn sighs was quieting, he went

Into a marble gallery, passing through

A mimic temple, so complete and true

In sacred custom, that he well nigh fear’d

To search it inwards; whence far off appear’d,

Through a long pillar’d vista, a fair shrine,

And, just beyond, on light tiptoe divine,

A quiver’d Dian…

*   *   *

(Lost and alone, Endymion prays to the goddess Diana for help, ending:)

“Young goddess! let me see my native bowers!

Deliver me from this rapacious deep!”

Thus ending loudly, as he would o’erleap

His destiny, alert he stood: but when

Obstinate silence came heavily again,

Feeling about for its old couch of space

And airy cradle, lowly bow’d his face

Desponding, o’er the marble floor’s cold thrill.

But ’twas not long; for, sweeter than the rill

To its old channel, or a swollen tide

To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied,

And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns

Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns

Itself, and strives its own delights to hide–

Nor in one spot alone; the floral pride

In a long whispering birth enchanted grew

Before his footsteps; as when heav’d anew

Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore,

Down whose green back the short-liv’d foam, all hoar,

Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.

Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense,

Upon his fairy journey on he hastes;

So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes

One moment with his hand among the sweets:

Onward he goes – he stops – his bosom beats

As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm

Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm,

This sleepy music, forc’d him walk tiptoe:

For it came more softly than the east could blow

Arion’s magic to the Atlantic isles;

Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles

Of thron’d Apollo, could breathe back the lyre

To seas Ionian and Tyrian.

O did he ever live, that lonely man,

Who lov’d – and music slew not? ’Tis the pest

Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest;

That things of delicate and tenderest worth

Are swallow’d all, and made a seared dearth,

By one consuming flame: it doth immerse

And suffocate true blessings in a curse.

Half-happy, by comparison of bliss,

Is miserable. ’Twas even so with this

Dew-dropping melody, in the Carian’s ear;

First heaven, then hell, and then forgotten clear,

Vanish’d in elemental passion.

And down some swart abysm he had gone,

Had not a heavenly guide benignant led

To where thick myrtle branches, ’gainst his head

Brushing, awakened: then the sounds again

Went noiseless as a passing noontide rain

Over a bower, where little space he stood;

For as the sunset peeps into a wood

So saw he panting light, and towards it went

Through winding alleys; and lo, wonderment!

Upon soft verdure saw, one here, one there,

Cupids a-slumbering on their pinions fair.

After a thousand mazes overgone,

At last, with sudden step, he came upon

A chamber, myrtle wall’d, embowered high,

Full of light, incense, tender minstrelsy,

And more of beautiful and strange beside:

For on a silken couch of rosy pride,

In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth

Of fondest beauty; fonder, in fair sooth,

Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach:

And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach,

Or ripe October’s faded marigolds,

Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds–

Not hiding up an Apollonian curve

Of neck and shoulder, nor the tenting swerve

Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light;

But rather, giving them to the filled sight

Officiously. Sideway his face repos’d

On one white arm, and tenderly unclos’d,

By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth

To slumbery pout; just as the morning south

Disparts a dew-lipp’d rose …

*   *   *

(The sleeping youth is Adonis, guarded by Cupids. His lover, the goddess Venus, arrives and recognises Endymion as one who loves “some fair immortal,” continuing:)

“…Endymion! one day thou wilt be blest:

So still obey the guiding hand that fends

Thee safely through these wonders for sweet ends.

’Tis a concealment needful in extreme;

And if I guess’d not so, the sunny beam

Thou shouldst mount up to with me. Now adieu!

Here must we leave thee.” – At these words up flew

The impatient doves, up rose the floating car,

Up went the hum celestial. High afar

The Latmian saw them minish into nought;

And, when all were clear vanish’d, still he caught

A vivid lightning from that dreadful bow.

When all was darkened, with Etnean throe

The earth clos’d – gave a solitary moan–

And left him once again in twilight lone.

He did not rave, he did not stare aghast,

For all those visions were o’ergone, and past,

And he in loneliness: he felt assur’d

Of happy times, when all he had endur’d

Would seem a feather to the mighty prize.

So, with unusual gladness, on he hies

Through caves, and palaces of mottled ore,

Gold dome, and crystal wall, and turquois floor,

Black polish’d porticos of awful shade,

And, at the last, a diamond balustrade,

Leading afar past wild magnificence,

Spiral through ruggedest loopholes, and thence

Stretching across a void, then guiding o’er

Enormous chasms, where, all foam and roar,

Streams subterranean tease their granite beds;

Then heighten’d just above the silvery heads

Of a thousand fountains, so that he could dash

The waters with his spear; but at the splash,

Done heedlessly, those spouting columns rose

Sudden a poplar’s height, and ’gan to enclose

His diamond path with fretwork, streaming round

Alive, and dazzling cool, and with a sound,

Haply, like dolphin tumults, when sweet shells

Welcome the float of Thetis. Long he dwells

On this delight; for, every minute’s space,

The streams with changed magic interlace:

Sometimes like delicatest lattices,

Cover’d with crystal vines; then weeping trees,

Moving about as in a gentle wind,

Which, in a wink, to watery gauze refin’d,

Pour’d into shapes of curtain’d canopies,

Spangled, and rich with liquid broideries

Of flowers, peacocks, swans, and naiads fair.

Swifter than lightning went these wonders rare…

*   *   *

(Endymion continues to follow the trail until it ends in mid-air.)

…He was indeed wayworn;

Abrupt, in middle air, his way was lost;

To cloud-borne Jove he bowed, and there crost

Towards him a large eagle, ’twixt whose wings,

Without one impious word, himself he flings,

Committed to the darkness and the gloom:

Down, down, uncertain to what pleasant doom,

Swift as a fathoming plummet down he fell

Through unknown things; till exhaled asphodel,

And rose, with spicy fannings interbreath’d,

Came swelling forth where little caves were wreath’d

So thick with leaves and mosses, that they seem’d

Large honey-combs of green, and freshly teem’d

With airs delicious. In the greenest nook

The eagle landed him, and farewell took.

It was a jasmine bower, all bestrown

With golden moss. His every sense had grown

Ethereal for pleasure; ’bove his head

Flew a delight half-graspable; his tread

Was Hesperean; to his capable ears

Silence was music from the holy spheres;

A dewy luxury was in his eyes;

The little flowers felt his pleasant sighs

And stirr’d them faintly…

*   *   *

(Despite his pleasant surroundings, Endymion regrets his solitude and longs for Cynthia.)

…Thus spake he, and that moment felt endued

With power to dream deliciously; so wound

Through a dim passage, searching till he found

The smoothest mossy bed and deepest, where

He threw himself, and just into the air

Stretching his indolent arms, he took, O bliss!

A naked waist: “Fair Cupid, whence is this?”

A well-known voice sigh’d, “Sweetest, here am I!”

At which soft ravishment, with doating cry

They trembled to each other. –Helicon!

O fountain’d hill! Old Homer’s Helicon!

That thou wouldst spout a little streamlet o’er

These sorry pages; then the verse would soar

And sing above this gentle pair, like lark

Over his nested young: but all is dark

Around thine agèd top, and thy clear fount

Exhales in mists to heaven. Aye, the count

Of mighty Poets is made up; the scroll

Is folded by the Muses; the bright roll

Is in Apollo’s hand: our dazèd eyes

Have seen a new tinge in the western skies:

The world has done its duty. Yet, oh yet,

Although the sun of poesy is set,

These lovers did embrace, and we must weep

That there is no old power left to steep

A quill immortal in their joyous tears.

Long time in silence did their anxious fears

Question that thus it was; long time they lay

Fondling and kissing every doubt away;

Long time ere soft caressing sobs began

To mellow into words, and then there ran

Two bubbling springs of talk from their sweet lips.

“O known Unknown! from whom my being sips

Such darling essence, wherefore may I not

Be ever in these arms? in this sweet spot

Pillow my chin for ever? ever press

These toying hands and kiss their smooth excess?

Why not for ever and for ever feel

That breath about my eyes? Ah, thou wilt steal

Away from me again, indeed, indeed–

Thou wilt be gone away, and wilt not heed

My lonely madness. Speak, my kindest fair!”…

*   *   *

(Cynthia vows her love for him, although this does not find favour with the other gods on Olympus. She says,)

“Now a soft kiss–

Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss,

An immortality of passion’s thine:

Ere long I will exalt thee to the shine

Of heaven ambrosial; and we will shade

Ourselves whole summers by a river glade;

And I will tell thee stories of the sky,

And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy.

My happy love will overwing all bounds!

O let me melt into thee; let the sounds

Of our close voices marry at their birth;

Let us entwine hoveringly – O dearth

Of human words! roughness of mortal speech!

Lispings empyrean will I sometime teach

Thine honied tongue–lute-breathings, which I gasp

To have thee understand, now while I clasp

Thee thus, and weep for fondness – I am pain’d,

Endymion: woe! woe! is grief contain’d

In the very deeps of pleasure, my sole life?”–

Hereat, with many sobs, her gentle strife

Melted into a languor. He return’d

Entranced vows and tears…

*   *   *

(Endymion awakes to find his lover gone.)

…Loth was he to move

From the imprinted couch, and when he did,

’Twas with slow, languid paces, and face hid

In muffling hands. So temper’d, out he stray’d

Half seeing visions that might have dismay’d

Alecto’s serpents; ravishments more keen

Than Hermes’ pipe, when anxious he did lean

Over eclipsing eyes: and at the last

It was a sounding grotto, vaulted, vast,

O’er studded with a thousand, thousand pearls,

And crimson mouthèd shells with stubborn curls,

Of every shape and size, even to the bulk

In which whales arbour close, to brood and sulk

Against an endless storm. Moreover too,

Fish-semblances, of green and azure hue,

Ready to snort their streams. In this cool wonder

Endymion sat down, and ’gan to ponder

On all his life…

*   *   *

(While he is reflecting, he hears a sound.)

The humming tone

Came louder, and behold, there as he lay,

On either side outgush’d, with misty spray,

A copious spring; and both together dash’d

Swift, mad, fantastic round the rocks, and lash’d

Among the conchs and shells of the lofty grot,

Leaving a trickling dew. At last they shot

Down from the ceiling’s height, pouring a noise

As of some breathless racers whose hopes poize

Upon the last few steps, and with spent force

Along the ground they took a winding course.

Endymion follow’d – for it seem’d that one

Ever pursued, the other strove to shun–

Follow’d their languid mazes, till well nigh

He had left thinking of the mystery,–

And was now rapt in tender hoverings

Over the vanish’d bliss...

*   *   *

(Endymion follows the streams until they disappear down a chasm.)

On the verge

Of that dark gulph he wept, and said: “I urge

Thee, gentle Goddess of my pilgrimage,

By our eternal hopes, to soothe, to assuage,

If thou art powerful, these lovers pains;

And make them happy in some happy plains.

He turn’d – there was a whelming sound – he stept,

There was a cooler light; and so he kept

Towards it by a sandy path, and lo!

More suddenly than doth a moment go,

The visions of the earth were gone and fled–

He saw the giant sea above his head.

↑

BOOK III

(The narrator talks of the Powers that rule the water and air.)

…I here swear,

Eterne Apollo! that thy Sister fair

Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest.

When thy gold breath is misting in the west,

She unobserved steals unto her throne,

And there she sits most meek and most alone;

As if she had not pomp subservient;

As if thine eye, high Poet! was not bent

Towards her with the Muses in thine heart;

As if the ministring stars kept not apart,

Waiting for silver-footed messages.

O Moon! the oldest shades ’mong oldest trees

Feel palpitations when thou lookest in:

O Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din

The while they feel thine airy fellowship.

Thou dost bless every where, with silver lip

Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine,

Couched in thy brightness, dream of fields divine:

Innumerable mountains rise, and rise,

Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes;

And yet thy benediction passeth not

One obscure hiding-place, one little spot

Where pleasure may be sent: the nested wren

Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken,

And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf

Takes glimpses of thee; thou art a relief

To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps

Within its pearly house.– The mighty deeps,

The monstrous sea is thine – the myriad sea!

O Moon! far-spuming Ocean bows to thee,

And Tellus feels his forehead’s cumbrous load.

Cynthia! where art thou now? What far abode

Of green or silvery bower doth enshrine

Such utmost beauty? Alas, thou dost pine

For one as sorrowful: thy cheek is pale

For one whose cheek is pale: thou dost bewail

His tears, who weeps for thee. Where dost thou sigh?

Ah! surely that light peeps from Vesper’s eye,

Or what a thing is love! ’Tis She, but lo!

How chang’d, how full of ache, how gone in woe!

She dies at the thinnest cloud; her loveliness

Is wan on Neptune’s blue: yet there’s a stress

Of love-spangles, just off yon cape of trees,

Dancing upon the waves, as if to please

The curly foam with amorous influence.

O, not so idle: for down-glancing thence

She fathoms eddies, and runs wild about

O’erwhelming water-courses; scaring out

The thorny sharks from hiding-holes, and fright’ning

Their savage eyes with unaccustomed lightning.

Where will the splendor be content to reach?

O love! how potent hast thou been to teach

Strange journeyings! Wherever beauty dwells,

In gulf or aerie, mountains or deep dells,

In light, in gloom, in star or blazing sun,

Thou pointest out the way, and straight ’tis won.

Amid his toil thou gav’st Leander breath;

Thou leddest Orpheus through the gleams of death;

Thou madest Pluto bear thin element;

And now, O winged Chieftain! thou hast sent

A moon-beam to the deep, deep water-world,

To find Endymion.

On gold sand impearl’d

With lily shells, and pebbles milky white,

Poor Cynthia greeted him, and sooth’d her light

Against his pallid face: he felt the charm

To breathlessness, and suddenly a warm

Of his heart’s blood: ’twas very sweet; he stay’d

His wandering steps, and half-entrancèd laid

His head upon a tuft of straggling weeds,

To taste the gentle moon, and freshening beads,

Lashed from the crystal roof by fishes’ tails.

And so he kept, until the rosy veils

Mantling the east, by Aurora’s peering hand

Were lifted from the water’s breast, and faun’d

Into sweet air; and sober’d morning came

Meekly through billows:– when like taper-flame

Left sudden by a dallying breath of air,

He rose in silence, and once more ’gan fare

Along his fated way…

*   *   *

(As he travels, Endymion praises the moon.)

…. as he lifted up his eyes to swear

How his own goddess was past all things fair,

He saw far in the concave green of the sea

An old man sitting calm and peacefully.

Upon a weeded rock this old man sat,

And his white hair was awful, and a mat

Of weeds were cold beneath his cold thin feet;

And, ample as the largest winding-sheet,

A cloak of blue wrapp’d up his agèd bones,

O’erwrought with symbols by the deepest groans

Of ambitious magic: every ocean-form

Was woven in with black distinctness; storm,

And calm, and whispering, and hideous roar

Were emblem’d in the woof; with every shape

That skims, or dives, or sleeps, ’twixt cape and cape.

The gulphing whale was like a dot in the spell,

Yet look upon it, and ’twould size and swell

To its huge self; and the minutest fish

Would pass the very hardest gazer’s wish,

And shew his little eye’s anatomy.

Then there was pictur’d the regality

Of Neptune; and the sea nymphs round his state,

In beauteous vassalage, look up and wait.

Beside this old man lay a pearly wand,

And in his lap a book, the which he conn’d

So stedfastly, that the new denizen

Had time to keep him in amazed ken,

To mark these shadowings, and stand in awe.

The old man rais’d his hoary head and saw

The wilder’d stranger – seeming not to see,

His features were so lifeless. Suddenly

He woke as from a trance; his snow-white brows

Went arching up, and like two magic ploughs

Furrow’d deep wrinkles in his forehead large,

Which kept as fixedly as rocky marge,

Till round his wither’d lips had gone a smile.

Then up he rose, like one whose tedious toil

Had watch’d for years in forlorn hermitage,

Who had not from mid-life to utmost age

Eas’d in one accent his o’er-burden’d soul,

Even to the trees. He rose: he grasp’d his stole,

With convuls’d clenches waving it abroad,

And in a voice of solemn joy, that aw’d

Echo into oblivion, he said:–

“Thou art the man! Now shall I lay my head

In peace upon my watery pillow: now

Sleep will come smoothly to my weary brow.

O Jove! I shall be young again, be young!

O shell-borne Neptune, I am pierc’d and stung

With new-born life! What shall I do? Where go,

When I have cast this serpent-skin of woe?–

I’ll swim to the syrens, and one moment listen

Their melodies, and see their long hair glisten;

Anon upon that giant’s arm I’ll be,

That writhes about the roots of Sicily:

To northern seas I’ll in a twinkling sail,

And mount upon the snortings of a whale

To some black cloud; thence down I’ll madly sweep

On forked lightning, to the deepest deep,

Where through some sucking pool I will be hurl’d

With rapture to the other side of the world!

O, I am full of gladness! Sisters three,

I bow full hearted to your old decree!

Yes, every god be thank’d, and power benign,

For I no more shall wither, droop, and pine.

Thou art the man!” Endymion started back

Dismay’d…

*   *   *

(Endymion is afraid of the old man; yet when he comes closer, feels pity for him. The old man greets Endymion as a saviour, and as they walk together, the old man tells his story.)

“I was a fisher once, upon this main,

And my boat danc’d in every creek and bay;

Rough billows were my home by night and day,–

The sea-gulls not more constant; for I had

No housing from the storm and tempests mad,

But hollow rocks,– and they were palaces

Of silent happiness, of slumberous ease:

Long years of misery have told me so.

Aye, thus it was one thousand years ago.

One thousand years! – Is it then possible

To look so plainly through them? to dispel

A thousand years with backward glance sublime?

To breathe away as ’twere all scummy slime

From off a crystal pool, to see its deep,

And one’s own image from the bottom peep?

Yes: now I am no longer wretched thrall,

My long captivity and moanings all

Are but a slime, a thin-pervading scum,

The which I breathe away, and thronging come

Like things of yesterday my youthful pleasures.

“I touch’d no lute, I sang not, trod no measures:

I was a lonely youth on desert shores.

My sports were lonely, ’mid continuous roars,

And craggy isles, and sea-mew’s plaintive cry

Plaining discrepant between sea and sky.

Dolphins were still my playmates; shapes unseen

Would let me feel their scales of gold and green,

Nor be my desolation; and, full oft,

When a dread waterspout had rear’d aloft

Its hungry hugeness, seeming ready ripe

To burst with hoarsest thunderings, and wipe

My life away like a vast sponge of fate,

Some friendly monster, pitying my sad state,

Has dived to its foundations, gulph’d it down,

And left me tossing safely. But the crown

Of all my life was utmost quietude:

More did I love to lie in cavern rude,

Keeping in wait whole days for Neptune’s voice….

*   *   *

… “Woe, alas!

That love should be my bane! Ah, Scylla fair!

Why did poor Glaucus ever – ever dare

To sue thee to his heart? Kind stranger-youth!

I lov’d her to the very white of truth,

And she would not conceive it. Timid thing!

She fled me swift as sea-bird on the wing,

Round every isle, and point, and promontory,

From where large Hercules wound up his story

Far as Egyptian Nile. My passion grew

The more, the more I saw her dainty hue

Gleam delicately through the azure clear:

Until ’twas too fierce agony to bear;

And in that agony, across my grief

It flash’d, that Circe might find some relief–

Cruel enchantress! So above the water

I rear’d my head, and look’d for Phœbus’ daughter.

Ææa’s isle was wondering at the moon:–

It seem’d to whirl around me, and a swoon

Left me dead-drifting to that fatal power.

“When I awoke, ’twas in a twilight bower;

Just when the light of morn, with hum of bees,

Stole through its verdurous matting of fresh trees.

How sweet, and sweeter! for I heard a lyre,

And over it a sighing voice expire.

It ceased – I caught light footsteps; and anon

The fairest face that morn e’er look’d upon

Push’d through a screen of roses. Starry Jove!

With tears, and smiles, and honey-words she wove

A net whose thraldom was more bliss than all

The range of flower’d Elysium. Thus did fall

The dew of her rich speech: “Ah! Art awake?

O let me hear thee speak, for Cupid’s sake!

I am so oppress’d with joy! Why, I have shed

An urn of tears, as though thou wert cold dead;

And now I find thee living, I will pour

From these devoted eyes their silver store,

Until exhausted of the latest drop,

So it will pleasure thee, and force thee stop

Here, that I too may live…”

*   *   *

…She took me like a child of suckling time,

And cradled me in roses. Thus condemn’d,

The current of my former life was stemm’d,

And to this arbitrary queen of sense

I bow’d a tranced vassal: nor would thence

Have mov’d, even though Amphion’s harp had woo’d

Me back to Scylla o’er the billows rude.

For as Apollo each eve doth devise

A new appareling for western skies;

So every eve, nay every spendthrift hour

Shed balmy consciousness within that bower.

And I was free of haunts umbrageous;

Could wander in the mazy forest-house

Of squirrels, foxes shy, and antler’d deer,

And birds from coverts innermost and drear

Warbling for very joy mellifluous sorrow–

To me new born delights!

“Now let me borrow,

For moments few, a temperament as stern

As Pluto’s sceptre, that my words not burn

These uttering lips, while I in calm speech tell

How specious heaven was changed to real hell.

“One morn she left me sleeping: half awake

I sought for her smooth arms and lips, to slake

My greedy thirst with nectarous camel-draughts;

But she was gone. Whereat the barbed shafts

Of disappointment stuck in me so sore,

That out I ran and search’d the forest o’er.

Wandering about in pine and cedar gloom

Damp awe assail’d me; for there ’gan to boom

A sound of moan, an agony of sound,

Sepulchral from the distance all around.

Then came a conquering earth-thunder, and rumbled

That fierce complain to silence: while I stumbled

Down a precipitous path, as if impell’d.

I came to a dark valley. – Groanings swell’d

Poisonous about my ears, and louder grew,

The nearer I approach’d a flame’s gaunt blue,

That glar’d before me through a thorny brake.

This fire, like the eye of gordian snake,

Bewitch’d me towards; and I soon was near

A sight too fearful for the feel of fear:

In thicket hid I curs’d the haggard scene –

The banquet of my arms, my arbour queen,

Seated upon an uptorn forest root;

And all around her shapes, wizard and brute,

Laughing, and wailing, groveling, serpenting,

Shewing tooth, tusk, and venom-bag, and sting!

O such deformities! Old Charon’s self,

Should he give up awhile his penny pelf,

And take a dream ’mong rushes Stygian,

It could not be so phantasied. Fierce, wan,

And tyrannizing was the lady’s look,

As over them a gnarled staff she shook…

*   *   *

(The beasts are dismissed in a magical whirlwind, and replaced by fauns and satyrs, who address the fisherman’s lover thus:)

“ ‘Potent goddess! chief

Of pains resistless! make my being brief,

Or let me from this heavy prison fly:

Or give me to the air, or let me die!

I sue not for my happy crown again;

I sue not for my phalanx on the plain;

I sue not for my lone, my widow’d wife;

I sue not for my ruddy drops of life,

My children fair, my lovely girls and boys!

I will forget them; I will pass these joys;

Ask nought so heavenward, so too – too high:

Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die,

Or be deliver’d from this cumbrous flesh,

From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh,

And merely given to the cold bleak air.

Have mercy, Goddess! Circe, feel my prayer!’

“That curst magician’s name fell icy numb

Upon my wild conjecturing: truth had come

Naked and sabre-like against my heart.

I saw a fury whetting a death-dart;

And my slain spirit, overwrought with fright,

Fainted away in that dark lair of night.

Think, my deliverer, how desolate

My waking must have been! disgust, and hate,

And terrors manifold divided me

A spoil amongst them. I prepar’d to flee

Into the dungeon core of that wild wood:

I fled three days – when lo! before me stood

Glaring the angry witch…

*   *   *

(Circe curses the fisherman, saying,)

“ ‘But such a love is mine, that here I chase

Eternally away from thee all bloom

Of youth, and destine thee towards a tomb.

Hence shalt thou quickly to the watery vast;

And there, ere many days be overpast,

Disabled age shall seize thee; and even then

Thou shalt not go the way of aged men;

But live and wither, cripple and still breathe

Ten hundred years: which gone, I then bequeath

Thy fragile bones to unknown burial.

Adieu, sweet love, adieu!” – As shot stars fall,

She fled ere I could groan for mercy. Stung

And poisoned was my spirit: despair sung

A war-song of defiance ’gainst all hell.

A hand was at my shoulder to compel

My sullen steps; another ’fore my eyes

Moved on with pointed finger. In this guise

Enforced, at the last by ocean’s foam

I found me; by my fresh, my native home.

Its tempering coolness, to my life akin,

Came salutary as I waded in;

And, with a blind voluptuous rage, I gave

Battle to the swollen billow-ridge, and drave

Large froth before me, while there yet remain’d

Hale strength, nor from my bones all marrow drain’d.

“Young lover, I must weep – such hellish spite

With dry cheek who can tell? While thus my might

Proving upon this element, dismay’d,

Upon a dead thing’s face my hand I laid;

I look’d – ’twas Scylla! Cursed, cursed Circe!

O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy?

Could not thy harshest vengeance be content,

But thou must nip this tender innocent

Because I lov’d her? – Cold, O cold indeed

Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed

The sea-swell took her hair. Dead as she was

I clung about her waist, nor ceas’d to pass

Fleet as an arrow through unfathom’d brine,

Until there shone a fabric crystalline,

Ribb’d and inlaid with coral, pebble, and pearl.

Headlong I darted; at one eager swirl

Gain’d its bright portal, enter’d, and behold!

’Twas vast, and desolate, and icy-cold;

And all around – But wherefore this to thee

Who in few minutes more thyself shalt see?–

I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled.

My fever’d parchings up, my scathing dread

Met palsy half way: soon these limbs became

Gaunt, wither’d, sapless, feeble, cramp’d, and lame…

*   *   *

(Glaucus the fisherman tells how he led a hopeless existence, until one day he rescued a book from a shipwreck and read it.)

“I read these words, and read again, and tried

My eyes against the heavens, and read again.

O what a load of misery and pain

Each Atlas-line bore off! – a shine of hope

Came gold around me, cheering me to cope

Strenuous with hellish tyranny. Attend!

For thou hast brought their promise to an end.

“ ‘In the wide sea there lives a forlorn wretch,

Doom’d with enfeebled carcase to outstretch

His loath’d existence through ten centuries,

And then to die alone. Who can devise

A total opposition? No one. So

One million times ocean must ebb and flow,

And he oppressed. Yet he shall not die,

These things accomplish’d:– If he utterly

Scans all the depths of magic, and expounds

The meanings of all motions, shapes, and sounds;

If he explores all forms and substances

Straight homeward to their symbol-essences;

He shall not die. Moreover, and in chief,

He must pursue this task of joy and grief

Most piously;– all lovers tempest-tost,

And in the savage overwhelming lost,

He shall deposit side by side, until

Time’s creeping shall the dreary space fulfil:

Which done, and all these labours ripened,

A youth, by heavenly power lov’d and led,

Shall stand before him; whom he shall direct

How to consummate all. The youth elect

Must do the thing, or both will be destroy’d.’ ”–

“Then,” cried the young Endymion, overjoy’d,

“We are twin brothers in this destiny!”…

*   *   *

(Glaucus tells Endymion how to undo the spell.)

“…Now, Carian, break

This wand against yon lyre on the pedestal.”

’Twas done: and straight with sudden swell and fall

Sweet music breath’d her soul away, and sigh’d

A lullaby to silence. – “Youth! now strew

These minced leaves on me, and passing through

Those files of dead, scatter the same around,

And thou wilt see the issue.” – ’Mid the sound

Of flutes and viols, ravishing his heart,

Endymion from Glaucus stood apart,

And scatter’d in his face some fragments light.

How lightning-swift the change! a youthful wight

Smiling beneath a coral diadem,

Out-sparkling sudden like an upturn’d gem,

Appear’d, and, stepping to a beauteous corse,

Kneel’d down beside it, and with tenderest force

Press’d its cold hand, and wept, – and Scylla sigh’d!

Endymion, with quick hand, the charm applied–

The nymph arose: he left them to their joy,

And onward went upon his high employ,

Showering those powerful fragments on the dead.

And, as he pass’d, each lifted up its head,

As doth a flower at Apollo’s touch.

Death felt it to his inwards: ’twas too much:

Death fell a weeping in his charnel-house…

*   *   *

(Glaucus, Scylla and others revived from the dead march on Neptune’s palace.)

…this Paphian army took its march,

Into the outer courts of Neptune’s state:

Whence could be seen, direct, a golden gate,

To which the leaders sped; but not half raught

Ere it burst open swift as fairy thought,

And made those dazzled thousands veil their eyes

Like callow eagles at the first sunrise.

Soon with an eagle nativeness their gaze

Ripe from hue-golden swoons took all the blaze,

And then, behold! large Neptune on his throne

Of emerald deep: yet not exalt alone;

At his right hand stood winged Love, and on

His left sat smiling Beauty’s paragon.

Far as the mariner on highest mast

Can see all round upon the calmèd vast,

So wide was Neptune’s hall: and as the blue

Doth vault the waters, so the waters drew

Their doming curtains, high, magnificent,

Aw’d from the throne aloof;– and when storm-rent

Disclos’d the thunder-gloomings in Jove’s air;

But sooth’d as now, flash’d sudden everywhere,

Noiseless, sub-marine cloudlets, glittering

Death to a human eye: for there did spring

From natural west, and east, and south, and north,

A light as of four sunsets, blazing forth…

*   *   *

(The goddess Venus is with Neptune in his palace. After Neptune blesses Glaucus, she addresses Endymion.)

…“Endymion! Ah! still wandering in the bands

Of love? Now this is cruel. Since the hour

I met thee in earth’s bosom, all my power

Have I put forth to serve thee. What, not yet

Escap’d from dull mortality’s harsh net?

A little patience, youth! ’twill not be long,

Or I am skilless quite: an idle tongue,

A humid eye, and steps luxurious,

Where these are new and strange, are ominous.

Aye, I have seen these signs in one of heaven,

When others were all blind; and were I given

To utter secrets, haply I might say

Some pleasant words:– but Love will have his day.

So wait awhile expectant. Pr’ythee soon,

Even in the passing of thine honey-moon,

Visit my Cytherea: thou wilt find

Cupid well-natured, my Adonis kind;

And pray persuade with thee – Ah, I have done,

All blisses be upon thee, my sweet son”–

Thus the fair goddess: while Endymion

Knelt to receive those accents halcyon…

*   *   *

(All sing a hymn to Neptune.)

…The palace whirls

Around giddy Endymion; seeing he

Was there far strayed from mortality.

He could not bear it – shut his eyes in vain;

Imagination gave a dizzier pain.

“O I shall die! sweet Venus, be my stay!

Where is my lovely mistress? Well-away!

I die – I hear her voice – I feel my wing –”

At Neptune’s feet he sank. A sudden ring

Of Nereids were about him, in kind strife

To usher back his spirit into life:

But still he slept. At last they interwove

Their cradling arms, and purpos’d to convey

Towards a crystal bower far away.

Lo! while slow carried through the pitying crowd,

To his inward senses these words spake aloud;

Written in star-light on the dark above:

– “Dearest Endymion! my entire love!

How have I dwelt in fear of fate: ’tis done–

Immortal bliss for me too hast thou won.

Arise then! for the hen-dove shall not hatch

Her ready eggs, before I’ll kissing snatch

Thee into endless heaven. Awake! awake!”–

The youth at once arose: a placid lake

Came quiet to his eyes; and forest green,

Cooler than all the wonders he had seen,

Lull’d with its simple song his fluttering breast.

How happy once again in grassy nest!

↑

BOOK IV

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse!

O first-born on the mountains! by the hues

Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:

Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,

While yet our England was a wolfish den;

Before our forests heard the talk of men;

Before the first of Druids was a child;–

Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild

Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude…

*   *   *

…“Ah, woe is me! that I should fondly part

From my dear native land! Ah, foolish maid!

Glad was the hour, when, with thee, myriads bade

Adieu to Ganges and their pleasant fields!

To one so friendless the clear freshet yields

A bitter coolness; the ripe grape is sour:

Yet I would have, great gods! but one short hour

Of native air – let me but die at home.”

Endymion to heaven’s airy dome

Was offering up a hecatomb of vows,

When these words reach’d him. Whereupon he bows

His head through thorny-green entanglement

Of underwood, and to the sound is bent,

Anxious as hind towards her hidden fawn.

“Is no one near to help me? No fair dawn

Of life from charitable voice? No sweet saying

To set my dull and sadden’d spirit playing?

No hand to toy with mine? No lips so sweet

That I may worship them? No eyelids meet

To twinkle on my bosom? No one dies

Before me, till from these enslaving eyes

Redemption sparkles!– I am sad and lost.”

Thou, Carian lord, hadst better have been tost

Into a whirlpool. Vanish into air,

Warm mountaineer! for canst thou only bear

A woman’s sigh alone and in distress?

See not her charms! Is Phœbe passionless?

Phœbe is fairer far – O gaze no more:–

Yet if thou wilt behold all beauty’s store,

Behold her panting in the forest grass!

Do not those curls of glossy jet surpass

For tenderness the arms so idly lain

Amongst them?...

*   *   *

…Upon a bough

He leant, wretched. He surely cannot now

Thirst for another love: O impious,

That he can even dream upon it thus!–

Thought he, “Why am I not as are the dead,

Since to a woe like this I have been led

Through the dark earth, and through the wondrous sea?

Goddess! I love thee not the less: from thee

By Juno’s smile I turn not – no, no, no–

While the great waters are at ebb and flow.–

I have a triple soul! O fond pretence–

For both, for both my love is so immense,

I feel my heart is cut in twain for them.”

And so he groan’d, as one by beauty slain.

The lady’s heart beat quick, and he could see

Her gentle bosom heave tumultuously.

He sprang from his green covert: there she lay,

Sweet as a muskrose upon new-made hay;

With all her limbs on tremble, and her eyes

Shut softly up alive. To speak he tries.

“Fair damsel, pity me! forgive that I

Thus violate thy bower’s sanctity!

O pardon me, for I am full of grief–

Grief born of thee, young angel! fairest thief!

Who stolen hast away the wings wherewith

I was to top the heavens. Dear maid, sith

Thou art my executioner, and I feel

Loving and hatred, misery and weal,

Will in a few short hours be nothing to me,

And all my story that much passion slew me;

Do smile upon the evening of my days:

And, for my tortur’d brain begins to craze,

Be thou my nurse; and let me understand

How dying I shall kiss that lily hand.–

Dost weep for me? Then should I be content.

Scowl on, ye fates! until the firmament

Outblackens Erebus, and the full-cavern’d earth

Crumbles into itself. By the cloud girth

Of Jove, those tears have given me a thirst

To meet oblivion.” – As her heart would burst

The maiden sobb’d awhile, and then replied:

“Why must such desolation betide

As that thou speakest of? Are not these green nooks

Empty of all misfortune? Do the brooks

Utter a gorgon voice? Does yonder thrush,

Schooling its half-fledg’d little ones to brush

About the dewy forest, whisper tales?–

Speak not of grief, young stranger, or cold snails

Will slime the rose to night. Though if thou wilt,

Methinks ’twould be a guilt – a very guilt–

Not to companion thee, and sigh away

The light – the dusk – the dark – till break of day!”

“Dear lady,” said Endymion, “ ’tis past:

I love thee! and my days can never last.

That I may pass in patience still speak:

Let me have music dying, and I seek

No more delight – I bid adieu to all.

Didst thou not after other climates call,

And murmur about Indian streams?” –Then she,

Sitting beneath the midmost forest tree,

For pity sang this roundelay—

“O Sorrow,

Why dost borrow

The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?

To give maiden blushes

To the white rose bushes?

Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?

“O Sorrow,

Why dost borrow

The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?–

To give the glow-worm light?

Or, on a moonless night,

To tinge, on syren shores, the salt sea-spry?

“O Sorrow,

Why dost borrow

The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue?–

To give at evening pale

Unto the nightingale,

That thou mayst listen the cold dews among?...

“…Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,

I sat a weeping: in the whole world wide

There was no one to ask me why I wept,–

And so I kept

Brimming the water-lily cups with tears

Cold as my fears…”

*   *   *

(The maiden, Pheobe, describes how she saw Bacchus and his train pass by.)

“I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown

Before the vine-wreath crown!

I saw parch’d Abyssinia rouse and sing

To the silver cymbals’ ring!

I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce

Old Tartary the fierce!

The kings of Inde their jewel-sceptres vail,

And from their treasures scatter pearled hail;

Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans,

And all his priesthood moans;

Before young Bacchus’ eye-wink turning pale.–

Into these regions came I following him,

Sick hearted, weary – so I took a whim

To stray away into these forests drear

Alone, without a peer…”

*   *   *

…O what a sigh she gave in finishing,

And look, quite dead to every worldly thing!

Endymion could not speak, but gazed on her;

And listened to the wind that now did stir

About the crispèd oaks full drearily,

Yet with as sweet a softness as might be

Remember’d from its velvet summer song.

At last he said: “Poor lady, how thus long

Have I been able to endure that voice?

Fair Melody! kind Syren! I’ve no choice;

I must be thy sad servant evermore:

I cannot choose but kneel here and adore.

Alas, I must not think – by Phœbe, no!

Let me not think, soft Angel! shall it be so?

Say, beautifullest, shall I never think?

O thou could’st foster me beyond the brink

Of recollection! make my watchful care

Close up its bloodshot eyes, nor see despair!

Do gently murder half my soul, and I

Shall feel the other half so utterly!–

I’m giddy at that cheek so fair and smooth;

O let it blush so ever! let it soothe

My madness! let it mantle rosy-warm

With the tinge of love, panting in safe alarm.–

This cannot be thy hand, and yet it is;

And this is sure thine other softling – this

Thine own fair bosom, and I am so near!

Wilt fall asleep? O let me sip that tear!

And whisper one sweet word that I may know

This is this world – sweet dewy blossom!” –Woe!

Woe! Woe to that Endymion! Where is he?–

Even these words went echoing dismally

Through the wide forest – a most fearful tone,

Like one repenting in his latest moan;

And while it died away a shade pass’d by,

As of a thunder cloud. When arrows fly

Through the thick branches, poor ring-doves sleek forth

Their timid necks and tremble; so these both

Leant to each other trembling, and sat so

Waiting for some destruction – when lo,

Foot-feather’d Mercury appear’d sublime

Beyond the tall tree tops; and in less time

Than shoots the slanted hail-storm, down he dropt

Towards the ground…

*   *   *

(At Mercury’s command, two winged black horses spring up and carry Endymion and Phoebe away. Endymion dreams; and when he wakes– )

…Beheld awake his very dream: the gods

Stood smiling; merry Hebe laughs and nods;

And Phoebe bends towards him crescented.

O state perplexing! On the pinion bed,

Too well awake, he feels the panting side

Of his delicious lady. He who died

For soaring too audacious in the sun,

Where that same treacherous wax began to run,

Felt not more tongue-tied than Endymion.

His heart leapt up as to its rightful throne,

To that fair shadow’d passion puls’d its way–

Ah, what perplexity! Ah, well a day!

So fond, so beauteous was his bed-fellow,

He could not help but kiss her: then he grew

Awhile forgetful of all beauty save

Young Phoebe’s, golden hair’d; and so ’gan crave

Forgiveness: yet he turn’d once more to look

At the sweet sleeper,– all his soul was shook,–

She press’d his hand in slumber; so once more

He could not help but kiss her and adore.

At this the shadow wept, melting away.

The Latmian started up: “Bright goddess, stay!

Search my most hidden breast! By truth’s own tongue,

I have no dædale heart: why is it wrung

To desperation? Is there nought for me,

Upon the bourne of bliss, but misery?”

These words awoke the stranger of dark tresses:

Her dawning love-look rapt Endymion blesses

With ’haviour soft. Sleep yawned from underneath.

“Thou swan of Ganges, let us no more breathe

This murky phantasm! thou contented seem’st

Pillow’d in lovely idleness, nor dream’st

What horrors may discomfort thee and me.

Ah, shouldst thou die from my heart-treachery!–

Yet did she merely weep – her gentle soul

Hath no revenge in it: as it is whole

In tenderness, would I were whole in love!

Can I prize thee, fair maid, till price above,

Even when I feel as true as innocence?

I do, I do. – What is this soul then? Whence

Came it? It does not seem my own, and I

Have no self-passion or identity.

Some fearful end must be: where, where is it?

By Nemesis, I see my spirit flit

Alone about the dark – Forgive me, sweet:

Shall we away?” He rous’d the steeds: they beat

Their wings chivalrous into the clear air,

Leaving old Sleep within his vapoury lair.

The good-night blush of eve was waning slow,

And Vesper, risen star, began to throe

In the dusk heavens silvery, when they

Thus sprang direct towards the Galaxy.

Nor did speed hinder converse soft and strange–

Eternal oaths and vows they interchange,

In such wise, in such temper, so aloof

Up in the winds, beneath a starry roof,

So witless of their doom, that verily

’Tis well nigh past man’s search their hearts to see;

Whether they wept, or laugh’d, or griev’d, or toy’d–

Most like with joy gone mad, with sorrow cloy’d.

Fell facing their swift flight, from ebon streak,

The moon put forth a little diamond peak,

No bigger than an unobserved star,

Or tiny point of fairy scimitar;

Bright signal that she only stoop’d to tie

Her silver sandals, ere deliciously

She bow’d into the heavens her timid head.

Slowly she rose, as though she would have fled,

While to his lady meek the Carian turn’d,

To mark if her dark eyes had yet discern’d

This beauty in its birth – Despair! despair!

He saw her body fading gaunt and spare

In the cold moonshine. Straight he seiz’d her wrist;

It melted from his grasp: her hand he kiss’d,

And, horror! kiss’d his own – he was alone.

Her steed a little higher soar’d, and then

Dropt hawkwise to the earth…

*   *   *

(Aeriel voices sing of the gods as Endymion flies on alone on his winged horse.)

…More

Endymion heard not: down his steed him bore,

Prone to the green head of a misty hill.

His first touch of the earth went nigh to kill.

“Alas!” said he, “were I but always borne

Through dangerous winds, had but my footsteps worn

A path in hell, for ever would I bless

Horrors which nourish an uneasiness

For my own sullen conquering: to him

Who lives beyond earth’s boundary, grief is dim,

Sorrow is but a shadow: now I see

The grass; I feel the solid ground – Ah, me!

It is thy voice – divinest! Where? – who? who

Left thee so quiet on this bed of dew?

Behold upon this happy earth we are;

Let us ay love each other; let us fare

On forest-fruits, and never, never go

Among the abodes of mortals here below,

Or be by phantoms duped. O destiny!

Into a labyrinth now my soul would fly,

But with thy beauty will I deaden it.

Where didst thou melt too? By thee will I sit

For ever: let our fate stop here – a kid

I on this spot will offer: Pan will bid

Us live in peace, in love and peace among

His forest wildernesses. I have clung

To nothing, lov’d a nothing, nothing seen

Or felt but a great dream! O I have been

Presumptuous against love, against the sky,

Against all elements, against the tie

Of mortals each to each, against the blooms

Of flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombs

Of heroes gone! Against his proper glory

Has my own soul conspired: so my story

Will I to children utter, and repent.

There never liv’d a mortal man, who bent

His appetite beyond his natural sphere,

But starv’d and died. My sweetest Indian, here,

Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast

My life from too thin breathing: gone and past

Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewell!

And air of visions, and the monstrous swell

Of visionary seas! No, never more

Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore

Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast.

Adieu, my daintiest Dream! although so vast

My love is still for thee. The hour may come

When we shall meet in pure elysium.

On earth I may not love thee; and therefore

Doves will I offer up, and sweetest store

All through the teeming year: so thou wilt shine

On me, and on this damsel fair of mine,

And bless our simple lives. My Indian bliss!

My river-lily bud! one human kiss!

One sigh of real breath – one gentle squeeze,

Warm as a dove’s nest among summer trees,

And warm with dew at ooze from living blood!

Whither didst melt? Ah, what of that! – all good

We’ll talk about – no more of dreaming. – Now,

Where shall our dwelling be? Under the brow

Of some steep mossy hill, where ivy dun

Would hide us up, although spring leaves were none;

And where dark yew trees, as we rustle through,

Will drop their scarlet berry cups of dew?

O thou wouldst joy to live in such a place;

Dusk for our loves, yet light enough to grace

Those gentle limbs on mossy bed reclin’d:

For by one step the blue sky shouldst thou find,

And by another, in deep dell below,

See, through the trees, a little river go

All in its mid-day gold and glimmering.

Honey from out the gnarled hive I’ll bring,

And apples, wan with sweetness, gather thee,–

Cresses that grow where no man may them see,

And sorrel untorn by the dew-claw’d stag:

Pipes will I fashion of the syrinx flag,

That thou mayst always know whither I roam,

When it shall please thee in our quiet home

To listen and think of love.…

*   *   *

(Phoebe answers with regret.)

“Ah, bitter strife!

I may not be thy love: I am forbidden–

Indeed I am – thwarted, affrighted, chidden,

By things I trembled at, and gorgon wrath.

Twice hast thou ask’d whither I went: henceforth

Ask me no more! I may not utter it,

Nor may I be thy love. We might commit

Ourselves at once to vengeance; we might die;

We might embrace and die: voluptuous thought!

Enlarge not to my hunger, or I’m caught

In trammels of perverse deliciousness.

No, no, that shall not be: thee will I bless,

And bid a long adieu.”

The Carian

No word return’d: both lovelorn, silent, wan,

Into the valleys green together went.

Far wandering, they were perforce content

To sit beneath a fair lone beechen tree;

Nor at each other gaz’d…

*   *   *

…O treachery!

Why does his lady smile, pleasing her eye

With all his sorrowing? He sees her not.

But who so stares on him? His sister sure!

Peona of the woods! – Can she endure–

Impossible – how dearly they embrace!

His lady smiles; delight is in her face;

It is no treachery.

“Dear brother mine!

Endymion, weep not so! Why shouldst thou pine

When all great Latmos so exalt will be?

Thank the great gods, and look not bitterly;

And speak not one pale word, and sigh no more.

Sure I will not believe thou hast such store

Of grief, to last thee to my kiss again.

Thou surely canst not bear a mind in pain,

Come hand in hand with one so beautiful.

Be happy both of you! for I will pull

The flowers of autumn for your coronals.

Pan’s holy priest for young Endymion calls;

And when he is restor’d, thou, fairest dame,

Shalt be our queen. Now, is it not a shame

To see ye thus, – not very, very sad?

Perhaps ye are too happy to be glad:

O feel as if it were a common day;

Free-voic’d as one who never was away.

No tongue shall ask, whence come ye? but ye shall

Be gods of your own rest imperial.

Not even I, for one whole month, will pry

Into the hours that have pass’d us by,

Since in my arbour I did sing to thee.

O Hermes! on this very night will be

A hymning up to Cynthia, queen of light;

For the soothsayers old saw yesternight

Good visions in the air, – whence will befall,

As say these sages, health perpetual

To shepherds and their flocks; and furthermore,

In Dian's face they read the gentle lore:

Therefore for her these vesper-carols are.

Our friends will all be there from nigh and far.

Many upon thy death have ditties made;

And many, even now, their foreheads shade

With cypress, on a day of sacrifice.

New singing for our maids shalt thou devise,

And pluck the sorrow from our huntsmen's brows.

Tell me, my lady-queen, how to espouse

This wayward brother to his rightful joys!”…

*   *   *

(But Endymion vows to remain chaste, and to devote himself to the goddess Diana. He cannot marry Phoebe, but begs just to see her once more.)

At this he press’d

His hands against his face, and then did rest

His head upon a mossy hillock green,

And so remain’d as he a corpse had been

All the long day; save when he scantly lifted

His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted

With the slow move of time, – sluggish and weary

Until the poplar tops, in journey dreary,

Had reach’d the river’s brim. Then up he rose,

And, slowly as that very river flows,

Walk’d towards the temple grove with this lament:

“Why such a golden eve? The breeze is sent

Careful and soft, that not a leaf may fall

Before the serene father of them all

Bows down his summer head below the west.

Now am I of breath, speech, and speed possest,

But at the setting I must bid adieu

To her for the last time. Night will strew

On the damp grass myriads of lingering leaves,

And with them shall I die; nor much it grieves

To die, when summer dies on the cold sward.

Why, I have been a butterfly, a lord

Of flowers, garlands, love-knots, silly posies,

Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbour roses;

My kingdom’s at its death, and just it is

That I should die with it: so in all this

We miscall grief, bale, sorrow, heartbreak, woe,

What is there to plain of? By Titan’s foe

I am but rightly serv’d….”

*   *   *

…Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles.

He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles,

Wan as primroses gather’d at midnight

By chilly finger’d spring. “Unhappy wight!

Endymion!” said Peona, “we are here!

What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier?”

Then he embrac’d her, and his lady’s hand

Press’d, saying: “Sister, I would have command,

If it were heaven’s will, on our sad fate.”

At which that dark-eyed stranger stood elate

And said, in a new voice, but sweet as love,

To Endymion’s amaze: “By Cupid’s dove,

And so thou shalt! and by the lily truth

Of my own breast thou shalt, beloved youth!”

And as she spake, into her face there came

Light, as reflected from a silver flame:

Her long black hair swell’d ampler, in display

Full golden; in her eyes a brighter day

Dawn’d blue and full of love. Aye, he beheld

Phœbe, his passion! joyous she upheld

Her lucid bow, continuing thus: “Drear, drear

Has our delaying been; but foolish fear

Withheld me first; and then decrees of fate;

And then ’twas fit that from this mortal state

Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlook’d for change

Be spiritualiz’d. Peona, we shall range

These forests, and to thee they safe shall be

As was thy cradle; hither shalt thou flee

To meet us many a time.” Next Cynthia bright

Peona kiss’d, and bless’d with fair good night:

Her brother kiss’d her too, and knelt adown

Before his goddess, in a blissful swoon.

She gave her fair hands to him, and behold,

Before three swiftest kisses he had told,

They vanish’d far away! – Peona went

Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.

Notes

Phoebe is at the end of the poem revealed to be the same as Cynthia, goddess of the moon. Keats did not make this entirely clear, possibly because he expected his readers to be familiar with the myth.

Glaucus was a figure in Greek myth; the Roman poet Ovid relates the story of how he fell in love with the nymph Scylla, but the jealous witch Circe poisoned Scylla’s pool so that she turned into a monster.

The appearance in the poem of Adonis echoes the situation of Endymion: Adonis was also a beautiful mortal beloved by a goddess (Venus, or Aphrodite.)

Keats wrote much of Endymion while staying at Oxford with a friend, Benjamin Bailey, who reported that Keats worked on it for several hours a day; and ‘sat down to his task, which was about fifty lines a day, with his paper before him, and wrote with as much regularity and apparently with as much ease as he wrote his letters.’ (Quoted in W.M. Rossetti, Life of John Keats). Keats himself wrote to Bailey that Endymion would be ‘a test of my powers of imagination, and chiefly of my invention... and when I consider that this is a great task, and that when done it will take me but a dozen paces towards the temple of fame – it makes me say – God forbid that I should be without such a task!’ (8th Oct, 1817)

*

From Poems of 1820

↑

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 charmèd 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 passionèd

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 learnèd 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-linèd 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 spicèd wood,

Each by a sacred tripod held aloft,

Whose slender feet wide-swerv’d upon the soft

Wool-woofèd 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 gnomèd 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-recessèd 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 vanishèd:

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.

Note

This story was taken from Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, written in 1621. Burton, discussing lovers who take non-human forms, wrote:

“Philostratus in his fourth book de vita Apollonii, hath a memorable instance in this kind… of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, that going between Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which taking him by the hand, carried him home to her house in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if he would tarry with her, ‘he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; but she being fair and lovely would live and die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold.’ The young man… tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius, who, by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia, and that all her furniture was like Tantalus’s gold described by Homer, no substance, but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant.”

↑

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 soothèd 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 eves, 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 resolvèd 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 indoor 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 convulsèd 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 loamèd 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 skull, 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!”

Note

This tale is told in Boccaccio’s Decameron, an Italian collection of 100 stories completed in about 1353, which by Keats’s day had been translated several times into English.

↑

The Eve of Saint 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 carvèd 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 agèd 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 archèd 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,

“O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom

Which none but secret sisterhood may see,

When they St. Agnes’ wool are weaving piously.”

XIV.

“St. Agnes! Ah! it is St. Agnes’ Eve–

Yet men will murder upon holy days:

Thou must hold water in a witch’s sieve,

And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays,

To venture so: it fills me with amaze

To see thee, Porphyro! – St. Agnes’ Eve!

God’s help! my lady fair the conjuror plays

This very night: good angels her deceive!

But let me laugh awhile, I’ve mickle time to grieve.”

XV.

Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon,

While Porphyro upon her face doth look,

Like puzzled urchin on an agèd crone

Who keepeth clos’d a wond’rous riddle-book,

As spectacled she sits in chimney nook.

But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told

His lady’s purpose; and he scarce could brook

Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold

And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old.

XVI.

Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,

Flushing his brow, and in his painèd heart

Made purple riot: then doth he propose

A stratagem, that makes the beldame start:

“A cruel man and impious thou art:

Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream

Alone with her good angels, far apart

From wicked men like thee. Go, go! – I deem

Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem.”

XVII.

“I will not harm her, by all saints I swear,”

Quoth Porphyro: “O may I ne’er find grace

When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer,

If one of her soft ringlets I displace,

Or look with ruffian passion in her face:

Good Angela, believe me by these tears;

Or I will, even in a moment’s space,

Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen’s ears,

And beard them, though they be more fang’d than wolves and bears.”

XVIII.

“Ah! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul?

A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing,

Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll;

Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening,

Were never miss’d.” – Thus plaining, doth she bring

A gentler speech from burning Porphyro;

So woful, and of such deep sorrowing,

That Angela gives promise she will do

Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe.

XIX.

Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy,

Even to Madeline’s chamber, and there hide

Him in a closet, of such privacy

That he might see her beauty unespied,

And win perhaps that night a peerless bride,

While legion’d fairies pac’d the coverlet,

And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed.

Never on such a night have lovers met,

Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt.

XX.

“It shall be as thou wishest,” said the Dame:

“All cates and dainties shall be stored there

Quickly on this feast-night: by the tambour frame

Her own lute thou wilt see: no time to spare,

For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare

On such a catering trust my dizzy head.

Wait here, my child, with patience; kneel in prayer

The while: Ah! thou must needs the lady wed,

Or may I never leave my grave among the dead.”

XXI.

So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear.

The lover’s endless minutes slowly pass’d;

The dame return’d, and whisper’d in his ear

To follow her; with agèd eyes aghast

From fright of dim espial. Safe at last,

Through many a dusky gallery, they gain

The maiden’s chamber, silken, hush’d, and chaste;

Where Porphyro took covert, pleas’d amain.

His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain.

XXII.

Her falt’ring hand upon the balustrade,

Old Angela was feeling for the stair,

When Madeline, St. Agnes’ charmèd maid,

Rose, like a mission’d spirit, unaware:

With silver taper’s light, and pious care,

She turn’d, and down the agèd gossip led

To a safe level matting. Now prepare,

Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;

She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray’d and fled.

XXIII.

Out went the taper as she hurried in;

Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:

She clos’d the door, she panted, all akin

To spirits of the air, and visions wide:

No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!

But to her heart, her heart was voluble,

Paining with eloquence her balmy side;

As though a tongueless nightingale should swell

Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

XXIV.

A casement high and triple-arch’d there was,

All garlanded with carven imag’ries

Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,

And diamonded with panes of quaint device,

Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,

As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;

And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,

And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,

A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.

XXV.

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,

And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,

As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;

Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,

And on her silver cross soft amethyst,

And on her hair a glory, like a saint:

She seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest,

Save wings, for heaven: – Porphyro grew faint:

She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

XXVI.

Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,

Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;

Unclasps her warmèd jewels one by one;

Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees

Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:

Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,

Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,

In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,

But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.

XXVII.

Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,

In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay,

Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’d

Her soothèd limbs, and soul fatigued away;

Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;

Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain;

Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray;

Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

XXVIII.

Stol’n to this paradise, and so entranced,

Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress,

And listen’d to her breathing, if it chanced

To wake into a slumberous tenderness;

Which when he heard, that minute did he bless,

And breath’d himself: then from the closet crept,

Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness,

And over the hush’d carpet, silent, stept,

And ’tween the curtains peep’d, where, lo! – how fast she slept.

XXIX.

Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon

Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set

A table, and, half anguish’d, threw thereon

A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet:–

O for some drowsy Morphean amulet!

The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion,

The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarionet,

Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:–

The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone.

XXX.

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,

In blanchèd linen, smooth, and lavender’d,

While he from forth the closet brought a heap

Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd

With jellies soother than the creamy curd,

And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;

Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d

From Fez; and spicèd dainties, every one,

From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.

XXXI.

These delicates he heap’d with glowing hand

On golden dishes and in baskets bright

Of wreathèd silver: sumptuous they stand

In the retired quiet of the night,

Filling the chilly room with perfume light.–

“And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake!

Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite:

Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes’ sake,

Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache.”

XXXII.

Thus whispering, his warm, unnervèd arm

Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream

By the dusk curtains:– ’twas a midnight charm

Impossible to melt as icèd stream:

The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam;

Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies:

It seem’d he never, never could redeem

From such a stedfast spell his lady’s eyes;

So mus’d awhile, entoil’d in woofèd phantasies.

XXXIII.

Awakening up, he took her hollow lute,–

Tumultuous, – and, in chords that tenderest be,

He play’d an ancient ditty, long since mute,

In Provence call’d, “La belle dame sans mercy:”

Close to her ear touching the melody;–

Wherewith disturb’d, she utter’d a soft moan:

He ceased – she panted quick – and suddenly

Her blue affrayèd eyes wide open shone:

Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone.

XXXIV.

Her eyes were open, but she still beheld,

Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep:

There was a painful change, that nigh expell’d

The blisses of her dream so pure and deep

At which fair Madeline began to weep,

And moan forth witless words with many a sigh;

While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep;

Who knelt, with joinèd hands and piteous eye,

Fearing to move or speak, she look’d so dreamingly.

XXXV.

“Ah, Porphyro!” said she, “but even now

Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear,

Made tuneable with every sweetest vow;

And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear:

How chang’d thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear!

Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,

Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!

Oh leave me not in this eternal woe,

For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go.”

XXXVI.

Beyond a mortal man impassion’d far

At these voluptuous accents, he arose,

Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing star

Seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose

Into her dream he melted, as the rose

Blendeth its odour with the violet,–

Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows

Like Love’s alarum pattering the sharp sleet

Against the window-panes; St. Agnes’ moon hath set.

XXXVII.

’Tis dark: quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet:

“This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline!”

’Tis dark: the iced gusts still rave and beat:

“No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine!

Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine.–

Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring?

I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine

Though thou forsakest a deceivèd thing;–

A dove forlorn and lost with sick unprunèd wing.”

XXXVIII.

“My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride!

Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest?

Thy beauty’s shield, heart-shap’d and vermeil dyed?

Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest

After so many hours of toil and quest,

A famish’d pilgrim, – saved by miracle.

Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest

Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think’st well

To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel.

XXXIX.

“Hark! ’tis an elfin-storm from faery land,

Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:

Arise – arise! the morning is at hand;–

The bloated wassaillers will never heed:–

Let us away, my love, with happy speed;

There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,–

Drown’d all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:

Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,

For o’er the southern moors I have a home for thee.”

XL.

She hurried at his words, beset with fears,

For there were sleeping dragons all around,

At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears–

Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.–

In all the house was heard no human sound.

A chain-droop’d lamp was flickering by each door;

The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,

Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;

And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

XLI.

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;

Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide;

Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,

With a huge empty flagon by his side:

The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,

But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:

By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:–

The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;–

The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

XLII.

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago

These lovers fled away into the storm.

That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,

And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form

Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,

Were long be-nightmar’d. Angela the old

Died palsy-twitch’d, with meagre face deform;

The Beadsman, after thousand avés told,

For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.

Notes

St Agnes’s Eve, on 20th January, was according to folk tradition the night on which girls might dream of their future husbands, if they followed certain rituals before going to bed. The type of ritual varied in different areas of Britain. The tradition probably originated in the Middle Ages, when the poem is set. The characters appear to be Keats’s invention.

A beadsman is someone who prays for another’s soul, sometimes in return for money.

↑

Ode to a Nightingale

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-wingèd Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd 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-stainèd mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

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 grey 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.

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.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmèd 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 covered 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.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Called him soft names in many a musèd 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.

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

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

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 famed 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?

Notes

Lethe: in Greek myth, the river Lethe was in the Underworld. It brought oblivion and forgetfulness to those who were immersed in its waters.

Hippocrene: this was a spring on Mount Helicon in Greece, which was sacred to the Muses and was said to bring poetic inspiration to those who drank from it.

↑

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravished 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-fringed 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?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

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

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,

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!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearièd,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

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.

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.”

Notes

Tempe is a valley in Thessaly, Greece; the ancient Greeks considered it the home of Apollo (god of music and poetry) and the Muses. Arcady (Arcadia) is an area of the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece, which was renowned as a place of unspoilt pastoral contentment.

Attic means Greek (Attica was the area around Athens.)

The poem does not appear to refer to any one particular Greek vase. Keats had seen a number of examples of Greek art, and etchings of urns. He traced one such etching, of the Sosibius vase: his sketch may be seen online at Wikipedia and elsewhere.

↑

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-conchèd ear:

Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see

The wingèd Psyche with awakened eyes?

I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,

And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,

Saw two fair creatures, couchèd side by side

In deepest grass, beneath the whispering 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 embracèd, and their pinions too;

Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,

As if disjoinèd by soft-handed slumber,

And ready still past kisses to outnumber

At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:

The wingèd 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-regioned star,

Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;

Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,

Nor altar heaped 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-mouthed 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 retired

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 swingèd censer teeming;

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat

Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.

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

In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-clustered trees

Fledge the wild-ridgèd mountains steep by steep;

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

The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep;

And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreathed 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!

Notes

In Greek and Roman myth, Cupid, or Eros, was the god of love who fell in love with the human girl Psyche; she had to undergo many trials before she was given immortality and the couple were united.

Phoebe was one of the Titans, amongst the earliest Greek gods, and was associated with the moon.

Vesper (or Hesperus in Greek) was the god of the evening star.

A fane is a temple or shrine.

↑

Ode on Indolence

‘They toil not, neither do they spin.’

One morn before me were three figures seen,

With bowèd necks, and joinèd hands, side-faced;

And one behind the other stepp’d serene,

In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;

They pass’d, like figures on a marble urn,

When shifted round to see the other side;

They came again; as when the urn once more

Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;

And they were strange to me, as may betide

With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.

How is it, Shadows! that I knew ye not?

How came ye muffled in so hush a mask?

Was it a silent deep-disguisèd plot

To steal away, and leave without a task

My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;

The blissful cloud of summer-indolence

Benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;

Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower:

O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense

Unhaunted quite of all but – nothingness?

A third time pass’d they by, and, passing, turn’d

Each one the face a moment whiles to me;

Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d

And ached for wings, because I knew the three;

The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name;

The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,

And ever watchful with fatiguèd eye;

The last, whom I love more, the more of blame

Is heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek,–

I knew to be my demon Poesy.

They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:

O folly! What is Love? and where is it?

And for that poor Ambition! it springs

From a man’s little heart’s short fever-fit;

For Poesy! – no, – she has not a joy,–

At least for me, – so sweet as drowsy noons,

And evenings steep’d in honey’d indolence;

O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,

That I may never know how change the moons,

Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!

And once more came they by:– alas! wherefore?

My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams;

My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er

With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:

The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,

Tho’ in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;

The open casement press’d a new-leaved vine,

Let in the budding warmth and throstle’s lay;

O Shadows! ’twas a time to bid farewell!

Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.

So, ye three Ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise

My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;

For I would not be dieted with praise,

A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!

Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more

In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;

Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,

And for the day faint visions there is store;

Vanish, ye Phantoms! from my idle spright,

Into the clouds, and never more return!

Notes

Phidian lore: Phidias was a sculptor and painter in ancient Greece.

Spright = spirit

↑

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 wingèd 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 heapèd 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 reapèd 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

Pearlèd with the self-same shower.

Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep

Meagre from its cellèd 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, wingèd 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 wingèd Fancy roam

Pleasure never is at home.

Notes

Ceres’ daughter: Ceres was the Roman goddess of agriculture; her daughter, Proserpina (symbolising fertility) was abducted by the god of the underworld.

Hebe was the goddess of youth.

↑

To Autumn

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 mossed 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-brimmed their clammy cells.

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-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

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

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

While barrèd 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.

Note

Keats wrote this whilst staying in Winchester in September 1819. In a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, he said: ‘I never liked stubble-fields so much as now – Aye better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm – in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it.’ (22nd Sept 1819)

↑

Ode on Melancholy

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

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

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed

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.

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 globèd 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.

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

Veiled 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.

Notes

Lethe: river of forgetfulness in Ancient Greek myth

Wolf’s-bane = aconitum, a poisonous plant also known as monkshood. Nightshade and yew-berries are poisonous likewise.

↑

Hyperion: a Fragment

Note: In Greek mythology, Hyperion was a Titan, and god of the sun. The King of the Titans was Saturn (Kronos in Greek,) who with his sister Thea, the wife of Hyperion, appears at the start of the poem. The Titans were giant deities who preceded the gods of Olympus; they were overthrown by Jove (Zeus) and other rebel gods.

BOOK I

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,

Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,

Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,

Still as the silence round about his lair;

Forest on forest hung about his head

Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,

Not so much life as on a summer’s day

Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass,

But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more

By reason of his fallen divinity

Spreading a shade: the Naiad ’mid her reeds

Press’d her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,

No further than to where his feet had stray’d,

And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground

His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,

Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;

While his bow’d head seem’d list’ning to the Earth,

His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

It seem’d no force could wake him from his place;

But there came one, who with a kindred hand

Touch’d his wide shoulders, after bending low

With reverence, though to one who knew it not.

She was a Goddess of the infant world;

By her in stature the tall Amazon

Had stood a pigmy’s height: she would have ta’en

Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;

Or with a finger stay’d Ixion’s wheel.

Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,

Pedestal’d haply in a palace court,

When sages look’d to Egypt for their lore.

But oh! how unlike marble was that face:

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made

Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty’s self.

There was a listening fear in her regard,

As if calamity had but begun;

As if the vanward clouds of evil days

Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear

Was with its storèd thunder labouring up.

One hand she press’d upon that aching spot

Where beats the human heart, as if just there,

Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain:

The other upon Saturn’s bended neck

She laid, and to the level of his ear

Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake

In solemn tenour and deep organ tone:

Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue

Would come in these like accents; O how frail

To that large utterance of the early Gods!

“Saturn, look up!– though wherefore, poor old King?

I have no comfort for thee, no not one:

I cannot say, ‘O wherefore sleepest thou?’

For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth

Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God;

And ocean too, with all its solemn noise,

Has from thy sceptre pass’d; and all the air

Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.

Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,

Rumbles reluctant o’er our fallen house;

And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands

Scorches and burns our once serene domain.

O aching time! O moments big as years!

All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth,

And press it so upon our weary griefs

That unbelief has not a space to breathe.

Saturn, sleep on:– O thoughtless, why did I

Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?

Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?

Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep.”

As when, upon a trancèd summer-night,

Those green-rob’d senators of mighty woods,

Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,

Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,

Save from one gradual solitary gust

Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,

As if the ebbing air had but one wave;

So came these words and went; the while in tears

She touch’d her fair large forehead to the ground,

Just where her falling hair might be outspread

A soft and silken mat for Saturn’s feet.

One moon, with alteration slow, had shed

Her silver seasons four upon the night,

And still these two were postured motionless,

Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern;

The frozen God still couchant on the earth,

And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:

Until at length old Saturn lifted up

His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,

And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,

And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake,

As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard

Shook horrid with such aspen-malady:

“O tender spouse of gold Hyperion,

Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;

Look up, and let me see our doom in it;

Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape

Is Saturn’s; tell me, if thou hear’st the voice

Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling brow,

Naked and bare of its great diadem,

Peers like the front of Saturn. Who had power

To make me desolate? whence came the strength?

How was it nurtur’d to such bursting forth,

While Fate seem’d strangled in my nervous grasp?

But it is so; and I am smother’d up,

And buried from all godlike exercise

Of influence benign on planets pale,

Of admonitions to the winds and seas,

Of peaceful sway above man’s harvesting,

And all those acts which Deity supreme

Doth ease its heart of love in.– I am gone

Away from my own bosom: I have left

My strong identity, my real self,

Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit

Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!

Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round

Upon all space: space starr’d, and lorn of light;

Space region’d with life-air; and barren void;

Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.–

Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest

A certain shape or shadow, making way

With wings or chariot fierce to repossess

A heaven he lost erewhile: it must – it must

Be of ripe progress – Saturn must be King.

Yes, there must be a golden victory;

There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown

Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival

Upon the gold clouds metropolitan,

Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir

Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be

Beautiful things made new, for the surprise

Of the sky-children; I will give command:

Thea! Thea! Thea! where is Saturn?”

This passion lifted him upon his feet,

And made his hands to struggle in the air,

His Druid locks to shake and ooze with sweat,

His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease.

He stood, and heard not Thea’s sobbing deep;

A little time, and then again he snatch’d

Utterance thus. – “But cannot I create?

Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth

Another world, another universe,

To overbear and crumble this to nought?

Where is another chaos? Where?” – That word

Found way unto Olympus, and made quake

The rebel three. – Thea was startled up,

And in her bearing was a sort of hope,

As thus she quick-voic’d spake, yet full of awe.

“This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends,

O Saturn! come away, and give them heart;

I know the covert, for thence came I hither.”

Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went

With backward footing through the shade a space:

He follow’d, and she turn’d to lead the way

Through agèd boughs, that yielded like the mist

Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest.

Meanwhile in other realms big tears were shed,

More sorrow like to this, and such like woe,

Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe:

The Titans fierce, self-hid, or prison-bound,

Groan’d for the old allegiance once more,

And listen’d in sharp pain for Saturn’s voice.

But one of the whole mammoth-brood still kept

His sov’reignty, and rule, and majesty;–

Blazing Hyperion on his orbèd fire

Still sat, still snuff’d the incense, teeming up

From man to the sun’s God; yet unsecure:

For as among us mortals omens drear

Fright and perplex, so also shuddered he–

Not at dog’s howl, or gloom-bird’s hated screech,

Or the familiar visiting of one

Upon the first toll of his passing-bell,

Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp;

But horrors, portion’d to a giant nerve,

Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright

Bastion’d with pyramids of glowing gold,

And touch’d with shade of bronzèd obelisks,

Glar’d a blood-red through all its thousand courts,

Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries;

And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds

Flush’d angerly: while sometimes eagle’s wings,

Unseen before by Gods or wondering men,

Darken’d the place; and neighing steeds were heard,

Not heard before by Gods or wondering men.

Also, when he would taste the spicy wreaths

Of incense, breath’d aloft from sacred hills,

Instead of sweets, his ample palate took

Savour of poisonous brass and metal sick:

And so, when harbour’d in the sleepy west,

After the full completion of fair day,–

For rest divine upon exalted couch

And slumber in the arms of melody,

He pac’d away the pleasant hours of ease

With stride colossal, on from hall to hall;

While far within each aisle and deep recess,

His wingèd minions in close clusters stood,

Amaz’d and full of fear; like anxious men

Who on wide plains gather in panting troops,

When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.

Even now, while Saturn, rous’d from icy trance,

Went step for step with Thea through the woods,

Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear,

Came slope upon the threshold of the west;

Then, as was wont, his palace-door flew ope

In smoothest silence, save what solemn tubes,

Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet

And wandering sounds, slow-breathèd melodies;

And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape,

In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye,

That inlet to severe magnificence

Stood full blown, for the God to enter in.

He enter’d, but he enter’d full of wrath;

His flaming robes stream’d out beyond his heels,

And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,

That scar’d away the meek ethereal Hours

And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared,

From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,

Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathèd light,

And diamond-pavèd lustrous long arcades,

Until he reach’d the great main cupola;

There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot,

And from the basements deep to the high towers

Jarr’d his own golden region; and before

The quavering thunder thereupon had ceas’d,

His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb,

To this result: “O dreams of day and night!

O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain!

O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!

O lank-eared Phantoms of black-weeded pools!

Why do I know ye? why have I seen ye? why

Is my eternal essence thus distraught

To see and to behold these horrors new?

Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall?

Am I to leave this haven of my rest,

This cradle of my glory, this soft clime,

This calm luxuriance of blissful light,

These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes,

Of all my lucent empire? It is left

Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine.

The blaze, the splendor, and the symmetry,

I cannot see – but darkness, death and darkness.

Even here, into my centre of repose,

The shady visions come to domineer,

Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp.–

Fall! – No, by Tellus and her briny robes!

Over the fiery frontier of my realms

I will advance a terrible right arm

Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove,

And bid old Saturn take his throne again.”

He spake, and ceas’d, the while a heavier threat

Held struggle with his throat but came not forth;

For as in theatres of crowded men

Hubbub increases more they call out “Hush!”

So at Hyperion’s words the Phantoms pale

Bestirr’d themselves, thrice horrible and cold;

And from the mirror’d level where he stood

A mist arose, as from a scummy marsh.

At this, through all his bulk an agony

Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown,

Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular

Making slow way, with head and neck convuls’d

From over-strainèd might. Releas’d, he fled

To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours

Before the dawn in season due should blush,

He breath’d fierce breath against the sleepy portals,

Clear’d them of heavy vapours, burst them wide

Suddenly on the ocean’s chilly streams.

The planet orb of fire, whereon he rode

Each day from east to west the heavens through,

Spun round in sable curtaining of clouds;

Not therefore veiled quite, blindfold, and hid,

But ever and anon the glancing spheres,

Circles, and arcs, and broad-belting colure,

Glow’d through, and wrought upon the muffling dark

Sweet-shapèd lightnings from the nadir deep

Up to the zenith, – hieroglyphics old,

Which sages and keen-eyed astrologers

Then living on the earth, with labouring thought

Won from the gaze of many centuries:

Now lost, save what we find on remnants huge

Of stone, or marble swart; their import gone,

Their wisdom long since fled. – Two wings this orb

Possess’d for glory, two fair argent wings,

Ever exalted at the God’s approach:

And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense

Rose, one by one, till all outspreaded were;

While still the dazzling globe maintain’d eclipse,

Awaiting for Hyperion’s command.

Fain would he have commanded, fain took throne

And bid the day begin, if but for change.

He might not: – No, though a primeval God:

The sacred seasons might not be disturb’d.

Therefore the operations of the dawn

Stay’d in their birth, even as here ’tis told.

Those silver wings expanded sisterly,

Eager to sail their orb; the porches wide

Open’d upon the dusk demesnes of night

And the bright Titan, phrenzied with new woes,

Unus’d to bend, by hard compulsion bent

His spirit to the sorrow of the time;

And all along a dismal rack of clouds,

Upon the boundaries of day and night,

He stretch’d himself in grief and radiance faint.

There as he lay, the Heaven with its stars

Look’d down on him with pity, and the voice

Of Cœlus, from the universal space,

Thus whisper’d low and solemn in his ear.

“O brightest of my children dear, earth-born

And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries

All unrevealèd even to the powers

Which met at thy creating; at whose joys

And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft,

I, Cœlus, wonder, how they came and whence;

And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be,

Distinct, and visible; symbols divine,

Manifestations of that beauteous life

Diffus’d unseen throughout eternal space:

Of these new-form’d art thou, oh brightest child!

Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses!

There is sad feud among ye, and rebellion

Of son against his sire. I saw him fall,

I saw my first-born tumbled from his throne!

To me his arms were spread, to me his voice

Found way from forth the thunders round his head!

Pale wox I, and in vapours hid my face.

Art thou, too, near such doom? vague fear there is:

For I have seen my sons most unlike Gods.

Divine ye were created, and divine

In sad demeanour, solemn, undisturb’d,

Unruffled, like high Gods, ye liv’d and ruled:

Now I behold in you fear, hope, and wrath;

Actions of rage and passion; even as

I see them, on the mortal world beneath,

In men who die. – This is the grief, O Son!

Sad sign of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall!

Yet do thou strive; as thou art capable,

As thou canst move about, an evident God;

And canst oppose to each malignant hour

Ethereal presence:– I am but a voice;

My life is but the life of winds and tides,

No more than winds and tides can I avail:–

But thou canst. – Be thou therefore in the van

Of circumstance; yea, seize the arrow’s barb

Before the tense string murmur. – To the earth!

For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes.

Meantime I will keep watch on thy bright sun,

And of thy seasons be a careful nurse.” –

Ere half this region-whisper had come down,

Hyperion arose, and on the stars

Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide

Until it ceas’d; and still he kept them wide:

And still they were the same bright, patient stars.

Then with a slow incline of his broad breast,

Like to a diver in the pearly seas,

Forward he stoop’d over the airy shore,

And plung’d all noiseless into the deep night.

↑

Book II

Just at the self-same beat of Time’s wide wings

Hyperion slid into the rustled air,

And Saturn gain’d with Thea that sad place

Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn’d.

It was a den where no insulting light

Could glimmer on their tears; where their own groans

They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar

Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse,

Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where.

Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem’d

Ever as if just rising from a sleep,

Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns;

And thus in thousand hugest phantasies

Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe.

Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon,

Couches of rugged stone, and slaty ridge

Stubborn’d with iron. All were not assembled:

Some chain’d in torture, and some wandering.

Cœus, and Gyges, and Briareüs,

Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion,

With many more, the brawniest in assault,

Were pent in regions of laborious breath;

Dungeon’d in opaque element, to keep

Their clenchèd teeth still clench’d, and all their limbs

Lock’d up like veins of metal, crampt and screw’d;

Without a motion, save of their big hearts

Heaving in pain, and horribly convuls’d

With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse.

Mnemosyne was straying in the world;

Far from her moon had Phœbe wandered;

And many else were free to roam abroad,

But for the main, here found they covert drear.

Scarce images of life, one here, one there,

Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque

Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,

When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,

In dull November, and their chancel vault,

The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.

Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave

Or word, or look, or action of despair.

Creüs was one; his ponderous iron mace

Lay by him, and a shatter’d rib of rock

Told of his rage, ere he thus sank and pined.

Iäpetus another; in his grasp,

A serpent’s plashy neck; its barbèd tongue

Squeez’d from the gorge, and all its uncurl’d length

Dead; and because the creature could not spit

Its poison in the eyes of conquering Jove.

Next Cottus: prone he lay, chin uppermost,

As though in pain; for still upon the flint

He ground severe his skull, with open mouth

And eyes at horrid working. Nearest him

Asia, born of most enormous Caf,

Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs,

Though feminine, than any of her sons:

More thought than woe was in her dusky face,

For she was prophesying of her glory;

And in her wide imagination stood

Palm-shaded temples, and high rival fanes,

By Oxus or in Ganges’ sacred isles.

Even as Hope upon her anchor leans,

So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk

Shed from the broadest of her elephants.

Above her, on a crag’s uneasy shelve,

Upon his elbow rais’d, all prostrate else,

Shadow’d Enceladus; once tame and mild

As grazing ox unworried in the meads;

Now tiger-passion’d, lion-thoughted, wroth,

He meditated, plotted, and even now

Was hurling mountains in that second war,

Not long delay’d, that scar’d the younger Gods

To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird.

Not far hence Atlas; and beside him prone

Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons. Neighbour’d close

Oceanus, and Tethys, in whose lap

Sobb’d Clymene among her tangled hair.

In midst of all lay Themis, at the feet

Of Ops the queen all clouded round from sight;

No shape distinguishable, more than when

Thick night confounds the pine-tops with the clouds:

And many else whose names may not be told.

For when the Muse’s wings are air-ward spread,

Who shall delay her flight? And she must chaunt

Of Saturn, and his guide, who now had climb’d

With damp and slippery footing from a depth

More horrid still. Above a sombre cliff

Their heads appear’d, and up their stature grew

Till on the level height their steps found ease:

Then Thea spread abroad her trembling arms

Upon the precincts of this nest of pain,

And sidelong fix’d her eye on Saturn’s face:

There saw she direst strife; the supreme God

At war with all the frailty of grief,

Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge,

Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair.

Against these plagues he strove in vain; for Fate

Had pour’d a mortal oil upon his head,

A disanointing poison: so that Thea,

Affrighted, kept her still, and let him pass

First onwards in, among the fallen tribe.

As with us mortal men, the laden heart

Is persecuted more, and fever’d more,

When it is nighing to the mournful house

Where other hearts are sick of the same bruise;

So Saturn, as he walk’d into the midst,

Felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest,

But that he met Enceladus’s eye,

Whose mightiness, and awe of him, at once

Came like an inspiration; and he shouted,

“Titans, behold your God!” at which some groan’d;

Some started on their feet; some also shouted;

Some wept, some wail’d, all bow’d with reverence;

And Ops, uplifting her black folded veil,

Show’d her pale cheeks, and all her forehead wan,

Her eye-brows thin and jet, and hollow eyes.

There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines

When Winter lifts his voice; there is a noise

Among immortals when a God gives sign,

With hushing finger, how he means to load

His tongue with the full weight of utterless thought,

With thunder, and with music, and with pomp:

Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines;

Which, when it ceases in this mountain’d world,

No other sound succeeds; but ceasing here,

Among these fallen, Saturn’s voice therefrom

Grew up like organ, that begins anew

Its strain, when other harmonies, stopt short,

Leave the dinn’d air vibrating silverly.

Thus grew it up – “Not in my own sad breast,

Which is its own great judge and searcher out,

Can I find reason why ye should be thus:

Not in the legends of the first of days,

Studied from that old spirit-leaved book

Which starry Uranus with finger bright

Sav’d from the shores of darkness, when the waves

Low-ebb’d still hid it up in shallow gloom;–

And the which book ye know I ever kept

For my firm-based footstool: – Ah, infirm!

Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent

Of element, earth, water, air, and fire,–

At war, at peace, or inter-quarreling

One against one, or two, or three, or all

Each several one against the other three,

As fire with air loud warring when rain-floods

Drown both, and press them both against earth’s face,

Where, finding sulphur, a quadruple wrath

Unhinges the poor world; – not in that strife,

Wherefrom I take strange lore, and read it deep,

Can I find reason why ye should be thus:

No, nowhere can unriddle, though I search,

And pore on Nature’s universal scroll

Even to swooning, why ye, Divinities,

The first-born of all shap’d and palpable Gods,

Should cower beneath what, in comparison,

Is untremendous might. Yet ye are here,

O’erwhelm’d, and spurn’d, and batter’d, ye are here!

O Titans, shall I say ‘Arise!’ – Ye groan:

Shall I say ‘Crouch!’ – Ye groan. What can I then?

O Heaven wide! O unseen parent dear!

What can I? Tell me, all ye brethren Gods,

How we can war, how engine our great wrath!

O speak your counsel now, for Saturn’s ear

Is all a-hunger’d. Thou, Oceanus,

Ponderest high and deep; and in thy face

I see, astonied, that severe content

Which comes of thought and musing: give us help!”

So ended Saturn; and the God of the Sea,

Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove,

But cogitation in his watery shades,

Arose, with locks not oozy, and began,

In murmurs, which his first-endeavouring tongue

Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands.

“O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung,

Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies!

Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears,

My voice is not a bellows unto ire.

Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof

How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop:

And in the proof much comfort will I give,

If ye will take that comfort in its truth.

We fall by course of Nature’s law, not force

Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou

Hast sifted well the atom-universe;

But for this reason, that thou art the King,

And only blind from sheer supremacy,

One avenue was shaded from thine eyes,

Through which I wandered to eternal truth.

And first, as thou wast not the first of powers,

So art thou not the last; it cannot be:

Thou art not the beginning nor the end.

From chaos and parental darkness came

Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil,

That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends

Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came,

And with it light, and light, engendering

Upon its own producer, forthwith touch’d

The whole enormous matter into life.

Upon that very hour, our parentage,

The Heavens and the Earth, were manifest:

Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race,

Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms.

Now comes the pain of truth, to whom ’tis pain;

O folly! for to bear all naked truths,

And to envisage circumstance, all calm,

That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well!

As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far

Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;

And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth

In form and shape compact and beautiful,

In will, in action free, companionship,

And thousand other signs of purer life;

So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,

A power more strong in beauty, born of us

And fated to excel us, as we pass

In glory that old Darkness: nor are we

Thereby more conquer’d, than by us the rule

Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil

Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed,

And feedeth still, more comely than itself?

Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves?

Or shall the tree be envious of the dove

Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings

To wander wherewithal and find its joys?

We are such forest-trees, and our fair boughs

Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves,

But eagles golden-feather’d, who do tower

Above us in their beauty, and must reign

In right thereof; for ’tis the eternal law

That first in beauty should be first in might:

Yea, by that law, another race may drive

Our conquerors to mourn as we do now.

Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas,

My dispossessor? Have ye seen his face?

Have ye beheld his chariot, foam’d along

By noble wingèd creatures he hath made?

I saw him on the calmèd waters scud,

With such a glow of beauty in his eyes,

That it enforc’d me to bid sad farewell

To all my empire: farewell sad I took,

And hither came, to see how dolorous fate

Had wrought upon ye; and how I might best

Give consolation in this woe extreme.

Receive the truth, and let it be your balm.”

Whether through poz’d conviction, or disdain,

They guarded silence, when Oceanus

Left murmuring, what deepest thought can tell?

But so it was, none answer’d for a space,

Save one whom none regarded, Clymene;

And yet she answer’d not, only complain’d,

With hectic lips, and eyes up-looking mild,

Thus wording timidly among the fierce:

“O Father, I am here the simplest voice,

And all my knowledge is that joy is gone,

And this thing woe crept in among our hearts,

There to remain for ever, as I fear:

I would not bode of evil, if I thought

So weak a creature could turn off the help

Which by just right should come of mighty Gods;

Yet let me tell my sorrow, let me tell

Of what I heard, and how it made me weep,

And know that we had parted from all hope.

I stood upon a shore, a pleasant shore,

Where a sweet clime was breathèd from a land

Of fragrance, quietness, and trees, and flowers.

Full of calm joy it was, as I of grief;

Too full of joy and soft delicious warmth;

So that I felt a movement in my heart

To chide, and to reproach that solitude

With songs of misery, music of our woes;

And sat me down, and took a mouthèd shell

And murmur’d into it, and made melody–

O melody no more! for while I sang,

And with poor skill let pass into the breeze

The dull shell’s echo, from a bowery strand

Just opposite, an island of the sea,

There came enchantment with the shifting wind,

That did both drown and keep alive my ears.

I threw my shell away upon the sand,

And a wave fill’d it, as my sense was fill’d

With that new blissful golden melody.

A living death was in each gush of sounds,

Each family of rapturous hurried notes,

That fell, one after one, yet all at once,

Like pearl beads dropping sudden from their string:

And then another, then another strain,

Each like a dove leaving its olive perch,

With music wing’d instead of silent plumes,

To hover round my head, and make me sick

Of joy and grief at once. Grief overcame,

And I was stopping up my frantic ears,

When, past all hindrance of my trembling hands,

A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune,

And still it cried, ‘Apollo! young Apollo!

The morning-bright Apollo! young Apollo!’

I fled, it follow’d me, and cried ‘Apollo!’

O Father, and O Brethren, had ye felt

Those pains of mine; O Saturn, hadst thou felt,

Ye would not call this too indulgèd tongue

Presumptuous, in thus venturing to be heard.”

So far her voice flow’d on, like timorous brook

That, lingering along a pebbled coast,

Doth fear to meet the sea: but sea it met,

And shudder’d; for the overwhelming voice

Of huge Enceladus swallow’d it in wrath:

The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves

In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks,

Came booming thus, while still upon his arm

He lean’d; not rising, from supreme contempt.

“Or shall we listen to the over-wise,

Or to the over-foolish, Giant-Gods?

Not thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all

That rebel Jove’s whole armoury were spent,

Not world on world upon these shoulders piled,

Could agonize me more than baby-words

In midst of this dethronement horrible.

Speak! roar! shout! yell! ye sleepy Titans all.

Do ye forget the blows, the buffets vile?

Are ye not smitten by a youngling arm?

Dost thou forget, sham Monarch of the Waves,

Thy scalding in the seas? What, have I rous’d

Your spleens with so few simple words as these?

O joy! for now I see ye are not lost:

O joy! for now I see a thousand eyes

Wide glaring for revenge!” – As this he said,

He lifted up his stature vast, and stood,

Still without intermission speaking thus:

“Now ye are flames, I’ll tell you how to burn,

And purge the ether of our enemies;

How to feed fierce the crooked stings of fire,

And singe away the swollen clouds of Jove,

Stifling that puny essence in its tent.

O let him feel the evil he hath done;

For though I scorn Oceanus’s lore,

Much pain have I for more than loss of realms:

The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled;

Those days, all innocent of scathing war,

When all the fair Existences of heaven

Came open-eyed to guess what we would speak:–

That was before our brows were taught to frown,

Before our lips knew else but solemn sounds;

That was before we knew the wingèd thing,

Victory, might be lost, or might be won.

And be ye mindful that Hyperion,

Our brightest brother, still is undisgraced–

Hyperion, lo! his radiance is here!”

All eyes were on Enceladus’s face,

And they beheld, while still Hyperion’s name

Flew from his lips up to the vaulted rocks,

A pallid gleam across his features stern:

Not savage, for he saw full many a God

Wroth as himself. He look’d upon them all,

And in each face he saw a gleam of light,

But splendider in Saturn’s, whose hoar locks

Shone like the bubbling foam about a keel

When the prow sweeps into a midnight cove.

In pale and silver silence they remain’d,

Till suddenly a splendour, like the morn,

Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps,

All the sad spaces of oblivion,

And every gulf, and every chasm old,

And every height, and every sullen depth,

Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams:

And all the everlasting cataracts,

And all the headlong torrents far and near,

Mantled before in darkness and huge shade,

Now saw the light and made it terrible.

It was Hyperion: – a granite peak

His bright feet touch’d, and there he stay’d to view

The misery his brilliance had betray’d

To the most hateful seeing of itself.

Golden his hair of short Numidian curl,

Regal his shape majestic, a vast shade

In midst of his own brightness, like the bulk

Of Memnon’s image at the set of sun

To one who travels from the dusking East:

Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon’s harp

He utter’d, while his hands contemplative

He press’d together, and in silence stood.

Despondence seiz’d again the fallen Gods

At sight of the dejected King of Day,

And many hid their faces from the light:

But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes

Among the brotherhood; and, at their glare,

Uprose Iäpetus, and Creüs too,

And Phorcus, sea-born, and together strode

To where he towered on his eminence.

There those four shouted forth old Saturn’s name;

Hyperion from the peak loud answered, “Saturn!”

Saturn sat near the Mother of the Gods,

In whose face was no joy, though all the Gods

Gave from their hollow throats the name of “Saturn!”

↑

Book III

Thus in alternate uproar and sad peace,

Amazèd were those Titans utterly.

O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes;

For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:

A solitary sorrow best befits

Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief.

Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find

Many a fallen old Divinity

Wandering in vain about bewildered shores.

Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp,

And not a wind of heaven but will breathe

In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute;

For lo! ’tis for the Father of all verse.

Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue,

Let the rose glow intense and warm the air,

And let the clouds of even and of morn

Float in voluptuous fleeces o’er the hills;

Let the red wine within the goblet boil,

Cold as a bubbling well; let faint-lipp’d shells,

On sands, or in great deeps, vermilion turn

Through all their labyrinths; and let the maid

Blush keenly, as with some warm kiss surpris’d.

Chief isle of the embowered Cyclades,

Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives green,

And poplars, and lawn-shading palms, and beech,

In which the Zephyr breathes the loudest song,

And hazels thick, dark-stemm’d beneath the shade:

Apollo is once more the golden theme!

Where was he, when the Giant of the Sun

Stood bright, amid the sorrow of his peers?

Together had he left his mother fair

And his twin-sister sleeping in their bower,

And in the morning twilight wandered forth

Beside the osiers of a rivulet,

Full ankle-deep in lilies of the vale.

The nightingale had ceas’d, and a few stars

Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush

Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle

There was no covert, no retired cave

Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves,

Though scarcely heard in many a green recess.

He listen’d, and he wept, and his bright tears

Went trickling down the golden bow he held.

Thus with half-shut suffused eyes he stood,

While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by

With solemn step an awful Goddess came,

And there was purport in her looks for him,

Which he with eager guess began to read

Perplex’d, the while melodiously he said:

“How cam’st thou over the unfooted sea?

Or hath that antique mien and robèd form

Mov’d in these vales invisible till now?

Sure I have heard those vestments sweeping o’er

The fallen leaves, when I have sat alone

In cool mid-forest. Surely I have traced

The rustle of those ample skirts about

These grassy solitudes, and seen the flowers

Lift up their heads, as still the whisper pass’d.

Goddess! I have beheld those eyes before,

And their eternal calm, and all that face,

Or I have dream’d.” – “Yes,” said the supreme shape,

“Thou hast dream’d of me; and awaking up

Didst find a lyre all golden by thy side,

Whose strings touch’d by thy fingers, all the vast

Unwearied ear of the whole universe

Listen’d in pain and pleasure at the birth

Of such new tuneful wonder. Is’t not strange

That thou shouldst weep, so gifted? Tell me, youth,

What sorrow thou canst feel; for I am sad

When thou dost shed a tear: explain thy griefs

To one who in this lonely isle hath been

The watcher of thy sleep and hours of life,

From the young day when first thy infant hand

Pluck’d witless the weak flowers, till thine arm

Could bend that bow heroic to all times.

Show thy heart’s secret to an ancient Power

Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones

For prophecies of thee, and for the sake

Of loveliness new born.” – Apollo then,

With sudden scrutiny and gloomless eyes,

Thus answer’d, while his white melodious throat

Throbb’d with the syllables. – “Mnemosyne!

Thy name is on my tongue, I know not how;

Why should I tell thee what thou so well seest?

Why should I strive to show what from thy lips

Would come no mystery? For me, dark, dark,

And painful vile oblivion seals my eyes:

I strive to search wherefore I am so sad,

Until a melancholy numbs my limbs;

And then upon the grass I sit, and moan,

Like one who once had wings. – O why should I

Feel curs’d and thwarted, when the liegeless air

Yields to my step aspirant? why should I

Spurn the green turf as hateful to my feet?

Goddess benign, point forth some unknown thing:

Are there not other regions than this isle?

What are the stars? There is the sun, the sun!

And the most patient brilliance of the moon!

And stars by thousands! Point me out the way

To any one particular beauteous star,

And I will flit into it with my lyre,

And make its silvery splendour pant with bliss.

I have heard the cloudy thunder: Where is power?

Whose hand, whose essence, what divinity

Makes this alarum in the elements,

While I here idle listen on the shores

In fearless yet in aching ignorance?

O tell me, lonely Goddess, by thy harp,

That waileth every morn and eventide,

Tell me why thus I rave, about these groves!

Mute thou remainest – Mute! yet I can read

A wondrous lesson in thy silent face:

Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.

Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,

Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,

Creations and destroyings, all at once

Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,

And deify me, as if some blithe wine

Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,

And so become immortal.” – Thus the God,

While his enkindled eyes, with level glance

Beneath his white soft temples, stedfast kept

Trembling with light upon Mnemosyne.

Soon wild commotions shook him, and made flush

All the immortal fairness of his limbs;

Most like the struggle at the gate of death;

Or liker still to one who should take leave

Of pale immortal death, and with a pang

As hot as death’s is chill, with fierce convulse

Die into life: so young Apollo anguish’d:

His very hair, his golden tresses famed

Kept undulation round his eager neck.

During the pain Mnemosyne upheld

Her arms as one who prophesied. – At length

Apollo shriek’d; – and lo! from all his limbs

Celestial   *      *      *      *      *      *      *

*      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *

Notes

Keats abandoned Hyperion in 1818, for reasons that are not clear, although it seems that he felt the poem owed too much to Milton’s style. He wrote to John Hamilton Reynolds, ‘I have given up Hyperion – there were too many Miltonic inversions in it – cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist’s humour.’ (22nd Sept, 1819.)

Keats reworked the same theme in The Fall of Hyperion (below), but did not complete that work either.

The manuscript of Hyperion can be viewed on the British Library website, at:

https://www.bl.uk/works/hyperion

*

↑

The Fall of Hyperion - A Dream

Canto I

Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave

A paradise for a sect; the savage too

From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep

Guesses at Heaven; pity these have not

Trac’d upon vellum or wild Indian leaf

The shadows of melodious utterance.

But bare of laurel they live, dream, and die;

For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,

With the fine spell of words alone can save

Imagination from the sable charm

And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say,

“Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?”

Since every man whose soul is not a clod

Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved

And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.

Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse

Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known

When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.

Methought I stood where trees of every clime,

Palm, myrtle, oak, and sycamore, and beech,

With plantain, and spice blossoms, made a screen;

In neighbourhood of fountains, by the noise

Soft showering in my ears, and, by the touch

Of scent, not far from roses. Turning round

I saw an arbour with a drooping roof

Of trellis vines, and bells, and larger blooms,

Like floral censers swinging light in air;

Before its wreathed doorway, on a mound

Of moss, was spread a feast of summer fruits,

Which, nearer seen, seem’d refuse of a meal

By angel tasted or our Mother Eve;

For empty shells were scattered on the grass,

And grape stalks but half bare, and remnants more,

Sweet smelling, whose pure kinds I could not know.

Still was more plenty than the fabled horn

Thrice emptied could pour forth, at banqueting

For Proserpine return’d to her own fields,

Where the white heifers low. And appetite

More yearning than on earth I ever felt

Growing within, I ate deliciously;

And, after not long, thirsted, for thereby

Stood a cool vessel of transparent juice

Sipp’d by the wander’d bee, the which I took,

And, pledging all the mortals of the world,

And all the dead whose names are in our lips,

Drank. That full draught is parent of my theme.

No Asian poppy nor elixir fine

Of the soon fading jealous Caliphat,

No poison gender’d in close monkish cell

To thin the scarlet conclave of old men,

Could so have rapt unwilling life away.

Among the fragrant husks and berries crush’d,

Upon the grass I struggled hard against

The domineering potion; but in vain:

The cloudy swoon came on, and down I sunk

Like a Silenus on an antique vase.

How long I slumber’d ’tis a chance to guess.

When sense of life return’d, I started up

As if with wings; but the fair trees were gone,

The mossy mound and arbour were no more:

I look’d around upon the carvèd sides

Of an old sanctuary with roof august,

Builded so high, it seem’d that filmèd clouds

Might spread beneath, as o’er the stars of heaven;

So old the place was, I remember’d none

The like upon the earth: what I had seen

Of grey cathedrals, buttress’d walls, rent towers,

The superannuations of sunk realms,

Or Nature’s rocks toil’d hard in waves and winds,

Seem’d but the faulture of decrepit things

To that eternal domèd monument.

Upon the marble at my feet there lay

Store of strange vessels and large draperies,

Which needs had been of dyed asbestos wove,

Or in that place the moth could not corrupt,

So white the linen; so, in some, distinct

Ran imageries from a sombre loom.

All in a mingled heap confus’d there lay

Robes, golden tongs, censer and chafing dish,

Girdles, and chains, and holy jewelries.

Turning from these, with awe once more I rais’d

My eyes to fathom the space every way;

The embossed roof, the silent massy range

Of columns north and south, ending in mist

Of nothing, then to eastward, where black gates

Were shut against the sunrise evermore.

Then to the west I look’d, and saw far off

An image, huge of feature as a cloud,

At level of whose feet an altar slept,

To be approach’d on either side by steps,

And marble balustrade, and patient travail

To count with toil the innumerable degrees.

Towards the altar sober paced I went,

Repressing haste, as too unholy there;

And, coming nearer, saw beside the shrine

One minist’ring; and there arose a flame.

When in mid May the sickening East wind

Shifts sudden to the south, the small warm rain

Melts out the frozen incense from all flowers,

And fills the air with so much pleasant health

That even the dying man forgets his shroud;

Even so that lofty sacrificial fire,

Sending forth Maian incense, spread around

Forgetfulness of everything but bliss,

And clouded all the altar with soft smoke,

From whose white fragrant curtains thus I heard

Language pronounc’d: “If thou canst not ascend

These steps, die on that marble where thou art.

Thy flesh, near cousin to the common dust,

Will parch for lack of nutriment – thy bones

Will wither in few years, and vanish so

That not the quickest eye could find a grain

Of what thou now art on that pavement cold.

The sands of thy short life are spent this hour,

And no hand in the universe can turn

Thy hourglass, if these gummed leaves be burnt

Ere thou canst mount up these immortal steps.”

I heard, I look’d: two senses both at once,

So fine, so subtle, felt the tyranny

Of that fierce threat and the hard task proposed.

Prodigious seem’d the toil, the leaves were yet

Burning when suddenly a palsied chill

Struck from the paved level up my limbs,

And was ascending quick to put cold grasp

Upon those streams that pulse beside the throat:

I shriek’d; and the sharp anguish of my shriek

Stung my own ears – I strove hard to escape

The numbness; strove to gain the lowest step.

Slow, heavy, deadly was my pace: the cold

Grew stifling, suffocating, at the heart;

And when I clasp’d my hands I felt them not.

One minute before death, my iced foot touch’d

The lowest stair; and as it touch’d, life seem’d

To pour in at the toes: I mounted up,

As once fair angels on a ladder flew

From the green turf to Heaven. “Holy Power,”

Cried I, approaching near the hornèd shrine,

“What am I that should so be saved from death?

What am I that another death come not

To choke my utterance sacrilegious here?”

Then said the veiled shadow: “Thou hast felt

What ’tis to die and live again before

Thy fated hour. That thou hadst power to do so

Is thy own safety; thou hast dated on

Thy doom.” “High Prophetess,” said I, “purge off

Benign, if so it please thee, my mind’s film.”

“None can usurp this height,” return’d that shade,

“But those to whom the miseries of the world

Are misery, and will not let them rest.

All else who find a haven in the world,

Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days,

If by a chance into this fane they come,

Rot on the pavement where thou rotted’st half.”

“Are there not thousands in the world,” said I,

Encourag’d by the sooth voice of the shade,

“Who love their fellows even to the death;

Who feel the giant agony of the world;

And more, like slaves to poor humanity,

Labour for mortal good? I sure should see

Other men here; but I am here alone.”

“Those whom thou spak’st of are no vision’ries,”

Rejoin’d that voice; “they are no dreamers weak;

They seek no wonder but the human face,

No music but a happy noted voice;

They come not here, they have no thought to come;

And thou art here, for thou art less than they:

What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe,

To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing;

A fever of thyself – think of the Earth;

What bliss even in hope is there for thee?

What haven? Every creature hath its home;

Every sole man hath days of joy and pain,

Whether his labours be sublime or low–

The pain alone; the joy alone; distinct:

Only the dreamer venoms all his days,

Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve.

Therefore, that happiness be somewhat shar’d,

Such things as thou art are admitted oft

Into like gardens thou didst pass erewhile,

And suffer’d in these temples: for that cause

Thou standest safe beneath this statue’s knees.”

“That I am favour’d for unworthiness,

By such propitious parley medicin’d

In sickness not ignoble, I rejoice,

Aye, and could weep for love of such award.”

So answer’d I, continuing, “If it please,

Majestic shadow, tell me: sure not all

Those melodies sung into the world’s ear

Are useless: sure a poet is a sage;

A humanist, physician to all men.

That I am none I feel, as vultures feel

They are no birds when eagles are abroad.

What am I then? Thou spakest of my tribe:

What tribe?” The tall shade veil’d in drooping white

Then spake, so much more earnest, that the breath

Mov’d the thin linen folds that drooping hung

About a golden censer from the hand

Pendent. “Art thou not of the dreamer tribe?

The poet and the dreamer are distinct,

Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes.

The one pours out a balm upon the world,

The other vexes it.” Then shouted I

Spite of myself, and with a Pythia’s spleen,

“Apollo! Faded, O far flown Apollo!

Where is thy misty pestilence to creep

Into the dwellings, through the door crannies

Of all mock lyrists, large self worshipers,

And careless hectorers in proud bad verse.

Though I breathe death with them it will be life

To see them sprawl before me into graves.

Majestic shadow, tell me where I am,

Whose altar this; for whom this incense curls;

What image this whose face I cannot see,

For the broad marble knees; and who thou art,

Of accent feminine so courteous?”

Then the tall shade, in drooping linens veil’d,

Spoke out, so much more earnest, that her breath

Stirr’d the thin folds of gauze that drooping hung

About a golden censer from her hand

Pendent; and by her voice I knew she shed

Long treasured tears. “This temple, sad and lone,

Is all spar’d from the thunder of a war

Foughten long since by giant hierarchy

Against rebellion: this old image here,

Whose carved features wrinkled as he fell,

Is Saturn’s; I, Moneta, left supreme

Sole priestess of this desolation.”

I had no words to answer, for my tongue,

Useless, could find about its roofèd home

No syllable of a fit majesty

To make rejoinder to Moneta’s mourn.

There was a silence, while the altar’s blaze

Was fainting for sweet food: I look’d thereon,

And on the pavèd floor, where nigh were piled

Faggots of cinnamon, and many heaps

Of other crisped spice wood – then again

I look’d upon the altar, and its horns

Whiten’d with ashes, and its lang’rous flame,

And then upon the offerings again;

And so by turns – till sad Moneta cried,

“The sacrifice is done, but not the less

Will I be kind to thee for thy good will.

My power, which to me is still a curse,

Shall be to thee a wonder; for the scenes

Still swooning vivid through my globed brain

With an electral changing misery

Thou shalt with those dull mortal eyes behold,

Free from all pain, if wonder pain thee not.”

As near as an immortal’s sphered words

Could to a mother’s soften, were these last:

And yet I had a terror of her robes,

And chiefly of the veils, that from her brow

Hung pale, and curtain’d her in mysteries

That made my heart too small to hold its blood.

This saw that Goddess, and with sacred hand

Parted the veils. Then saw I a wan face,

Not pin’d by human sorrows, but bright blanch’d

By an immortal sickness which kills not;

It works a constant change, which happy death

Can put no end to; deathwards progressing

To no death was that visage; it had pass’d

The lily and the snow; and beyond these

I must not think now, though I saw that face–

But for her eyes I should have fled away.

They held me back, with a benignant light

Soft mitigated by divinest lids

Half closed, and visionless entire they seem’d

Of all external things; they saw me not,

But in blank splendour beam’d like the mild moon,

Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not

What eyes are upward cast. As I had found

A grain of gold upon a mountain side,

And twing’d with avarice strain’d out my eyes

To search its sullen entrails rich with ore,

So at the view of sad Moneta’s brow

I ached to see what things the hollow brain

Behind enwombed: what high tragedy

In the dark secret chambers of her skull

Was acting, that could give so dread a stress

To her cold lips, and fill with such a light

Her planetary eyes, and touch her voice

With such a sorrow. “Shade of Memory!”

Cried I, with act adorant at her feet,

“By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house,

By this last temple, by the golden age,

By great Apollo, thy dear Foster Child,

And by thyself, forlorn divinity,

The pale Omega of a withered race,

Let me behold, according as thou saidst,

What in thy brain so ferments to and fro!”

No sooner had this conjuration pass’d

My devout lips, than side by side we stood

(Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine)

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,

Far from the fiery noon and eve’s one star.

Onward I look’d beneath the gloomy boughs,

And saw, what first I thought an image huge,

Like to the image pedestal’d so high

In Saturn’s temple. Then Moneta’s voice

Came brief upon mine ear: “So Saturn sat

When he had lost his realms.” – Whereon there grew

A power within me of enormous ken

To see as a god sees, and take the depth

Of things as nimbly as the outward eye

Can size and shape pervade. The lofty theme

At those few words hung vast before my mind,

With half unravel’d web. I set myself

Upon an eagle’s watch, that I might see,

And seeing ne’er forget. No stir of life

Was in this shrouded vale, not so much air

As in the zoning of a summer’s day

Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass,

But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest:

A stream went voiceless by, still deaden’d more

By reason of the fallen divinity

Spreading more shade; the Naiad ’mid her reeds

Press’d her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin sand large footmarks went

No farther than to where old Saturn’s feet

Had rested, and there slept, how long a sleep!

Degraded, cold, upon the sodden ground

His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,

Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were clos’d,

While his bow’d head seem’d listening to the Earth,

His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

It seem’d no force could wake him from his place;

But there came one who with a kindred hand

Touch’d his wide shoulders after bending low

With reverence, though to one who knew it not.

Then came the griev’d voice of Mnemosyne,

And griev’d I hearken’d. “That divinity

Whom thou saw’st step from yon forlornest wood,

And with slow pace approach our fallen King,

Is Thea, softest natur’d of our brood.”

I mark’d the Goddess in fair statuary

Surpassing wan Moneta by the head,

And in her sorrow nearer woman’s tears.

There was a listening fear in her regard,

As if calamity had but begun;

As if the vanward clouds of evil days

Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear

Was with its storèd thunder labouring up.

One hand she press’d upon that aching spot

Where beats the human heart, as if just there,

Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain;

The other upon Saturn’s bended neck

She laid, and to the level of his hollow ear

Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake

In solemn tenor and deep organ tune;

Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue

Would come in this like accenting; how frail

To that large utterance of the early Gods!

“Saturn! look up – and for what, poor lost King?

I have no comfort for thee; no, not one;

I cannot cry, Wherefore thus sleepest thou?

For Heaven is parted from thee, and the Earth

Knows thee not, so afflicted, for a God;

And Ocean too, with all its solemn noise,

Has from thy sceptre pass’d, and all the air

Is emptied of thine hoary majesty:

Thy thunder, captious at the new command,

Rumbles reluctant o’er our fallen house;

And thy sharp lightning, in unpracticed hands,

Scorches and burns our once serene domain.

With such remorseless speed still come new woes,

That unbelief has not a space to breathe.

Saturn! sleep on: Me thoughtless, why should I

Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?

Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?

Saturn, sleep on, while at thy feet I weep.”

As when upon a tranced summer night

Forests, branch charmed by the earnest stars,

Dream, and so dream all night without a noise,

Save from one gradual solitary gust,

Swelling upon the silence; dying off;

As if the ebbing air had but one wave;

So came these words, and went; the while in tears

She press’d her fair large forehead to the earth,

Just where her fallen hair might spread in curls

A soft and silken mat for Saturn’s feet.

Long, long those two were postured motionless,

Like sculpture builded up upon the grave

Of their own power. A long awful time

I look’d upon them: still they were the same;

The frozen God still bending to the earth,

And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet,

Moneta silent. Without stay or prop

But my own weak mortality, I bore

The load of this eternal quietude,

The unchanging gloom, and the three fixed shapes

Ponderous upon my senses, a whole moon.

For by my burning brain I measured sure

Her silver seasons shedded on the night,

And ever day by day methought I grew

More gaunt and ghostly. Oftentimes I pray’d

Intense, that Death would take me from the vale

And all its burthens. Gasping with despair

Of change, hour after hour I curs’d myself;

Until old Saturn rais’d his faded eyes,

And look’d around and saw his kingdom gone,

And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,

And that fair kneeling Goddess at his feet.

As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves

Fills forest dells with a pervading air,

Known to the woodland nostril, so the words

Of Saturn fill’d the mossy glooms around,

Even to the hollows of time eaten oaks

And to the windings of the foxes’ hole,

With sad low tones, while thus he spake, and sent

Strange musings to the solitary Pan.

“Moan, brethren, moan; for we are swallow’d up

And buried from all Godlike exercise

Of influence benign on planets pale,

And peaceful sway above man’s harvesting,

And all those acts which Deity supreme

Doth ease its heart of love in. Moan and wail,

Moan, brethren, moan; for lo, the rebel spheres

Spin round, the stars their ancient courses keep,

Clouds still with shadowy moisture haunt the earth,

Still suck their fill of light from sun and moon,

Still buds the tree, and still the sea shores murmur;

There is no death in all the Universe,

No smell of death – there shall be death – Moan, moan,

Moan, Cybele, moan; for thy pernicious babes

Have changed a God into a shaking Palsy.

Moan, brethren, moan, for I have no strength left,

Weak as the reed – weak – feeble as my voice;

O, O, the pain, the pain of feebleness.

Moan, moan, for still I thaw – or give me help;

Throw down those imps, and give me victory.

Let me hear other groans, and trumpets blown

Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival

From the gold peaks of Heaven’s high piled clouds;

Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir

Of strings in hollow shells; and let there be

Beautiful things made new, for the surprise

Of the sky children.” So he feebly ceas’d,

With such a poor and sickly sounding pause,

Methought I heard some old man of the earth

Bewailing earthly loss; nor could my eyes

And ears act with that pleasant unison of sense

Which marries sweet sound with the grace of form,

And dolorous accent from a tragic harp

With large limb’d visions. More I scrutinized:

Still fix’d he sat beneath the sable trees,

Whose arms spread straggling in wild serpent forms,

With leaves all hush’d; his awful presence there

(Now all was silent) gave a deadly lie

To what I erewhile heard – only his lips

Trembled amid the white curls of his beard.

They told the truth, though, round, the snowy locks

Hung nobly, as upon the face of heaven

A mid day fleece of clouds. Thea arose,

And stretched her white arm through the hollow dark,

Pointing some whither: whereat he too rose

Like a vast giant, seen by men at sea

To grow pale from the waves at dull midnight.

They melted from my sight into the woods;

Ere I could turn, Moneta cried, “These twain

Are speeding to the families of grief,

Where roof’d in by black rocks they waste in pain

And darkness, for no hope.” And she spake on,

As ye may read who can unwearied pass

Onward from the antechamber of this dream,

Where even at the open doors awhile

I must delay, and glean my memory

Of her high phrase: perhaps no further dare.

↑

Canto II

“Mortal, that thou may’st understand aright,

I humanize my sayings to thine ear,

Making comparisons of earthly things;

Or thou might’st better listen to the wind,

Whose language is to thee a barren noise,

Though it blows legend laden through the trees.

In melancholy realms big tears are shed,

More sorrow like to this, and such like woe,

Too huge for mortal tongue, or pen of scribe.

The Titans fierce, self hid or prison bound,

Groan for the old allegiance once more,

Listening in their doom for Saturn’s voice.

But one of our whole eagle brood still keeps

His sov’reignty, and rule, and majesty;

Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire

Still sits, still snuffs the incense teeming up

From man to the sun’s God: yet unsecure,

For as upon the earth dire prodigies

Fright and perplex, so also shudders he:

Nor at dog’s howl or gloom bird’s even screech,

Or the familiar visitings of one

Upon the first toll of his passing bell:

But horrors portioned to a giant nerve

Make great Hyperion ache. His palace bright,

Bastion’d with pyramids of glowing gold,

And touch’d with shade of bronzèd obelisks,

Glares a blood red through all the thousand courts,

Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries:

And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds

Flush angerly; when he would taste the wreaths

Of incense breath’d aloft from sacred hills,

Instead of sweets his ample palate takes

Savour of poisonous brass and metals sick.

Wherefore when harbour’d in the sleepy West,

After the full completion of fair day,

For rest divine upon exalted couch

And slumber in the arms of melody,

He paces through the pleasant hours of ease

With strides colossal, on from hall to hall;

While far within each aisle and deep recess

His wingèd minions in close clusters stand

Amaz’d, and full of fear; like anxious men,

Who on a wide plain gather in sad troops,

When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.

Even now, while Saturn, roused from icy trance,

Goes step for step with Thea from yon woods,

Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear,

Is sloping to the threshold of the West.

Thither we tend.” Now in clear light I stood,

Reliev’d from the dusk vale. Mnemosyne

Was sitting on a square edg’d polish’d stone,

That in its lucid depth reflected pure

Her priestess garments. My quick eyes ran on

From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,

Through bow’rs of fragrant and enwreathèd light

And diamond pavèd lustrous long arcades.

Anon rush’d by the bright Hyperion;

His flaming robes stream’d out beyond his heels,

And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,

That scared away the meek ethereal hours

And made their dove wings tremble. On he flared

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Note

Keats seems to have worked on this version of the Hyperion poem until late 1819. It is not clear whether he abandoned it due to dissatisfaction with his work, or increasing illness. The poem was not published until 1856.

↑

Last Sonnet

Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art–

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priest-like task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–

No – yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever – or else swoon to death.

*

Sources

KEATS, John, Poems; 1817 (London)

KEATS, John, Poems Published in 1820, ed. M. Robertson; Clarendon Press, 1909

COLVIN, SIDNEY (ed), Letters of John Keats to his Family and Friends; MacMillan, 1891

SCUDDER, H.E.(ed), The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats; Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899

ROSSETTI, WILLIAM MICHAEL, Life of John Keats; Walter Scott, 1887

Other ebooks in this series:

Tennyson – Selected Poems

John Clare – Selected Poems

English Poetry of Landscape: An Anthology 1370 – 1928

All are free to download from

www.englishliteratureebooks.com

These poetry collections are based on works in the public domain, and are compiled as labours of love. You are welcome to copy or share them for any non-commercial purpose.

Return to start of book