The Flower of the Mind

Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool;
But she was trained in Nature’s school,
         Nature had blest her.
A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind;
A hawk’s keen sight ye cannot blind,
         Ye could not Hester.

My sprightly neighbour! gone before
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet, as heretofore,
         Some summer morning—
When from thy cheerful eyes a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day,
A bliss that would not go away,
         A sweet fore-warning?

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM
1784–1842

A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA

A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
   A wind that follows fast
And fills the white and rustling sail
   And bends the gallant mast;
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
   While like the eagle free
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
   Old England on the lee.

There’s tempest in yon horned moon,
   And lightning in yon cloud;
But hark the music, mariners!
   The wind is piping loud;
The wind is piping loud, my boys,
   The lightning flashes free—
While the hollow oak our palace is,
   Our heritage the sea.

GEORGE NOEL GORDON, LORD BYRON
1788–1823

THE ISLES OF GREECE

The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece!
   Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
   Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

The mountains look on Marathon,
   And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
   I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For, standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not think myself a slave.

A king sate on the rocky brow
   Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
   And men in nations;—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou,
   My country?  On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now—
   The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

’Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
   Though linked among a fettered race
To feel at least a patriot’s shame,
   Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush—for Greece a tear.

What, silent still? and silent all?
   Ah! no;—the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent’s fall,
   And answer, ‘Let one living head,
But one, arise,—we come, we come!’
’Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain—in vain: strike other chords;
   Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
   And shed the blood of Scio’s vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call—
How answers each bold bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
   Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
   The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave—
Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
   We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon’s song divine:
   He served—but served Polycrates—
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
   On Suli’s rock, and Parga’s shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
   Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks—
   They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords, and native ranks,
   The only hope of courage dwells;
But Turkish force, and Latin fraud,
Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
   Our virgins dance beneath the shade—
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
   But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium’s marbled steep,
   Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
   There, swan-like, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne’er be mine—
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

HELLAS

The world’s great age begins anew,
   The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
   Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
   From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
   Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
   Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
   And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

O write no more the tale of Troy,
   If earth Death’s scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
   Which dawns upon the free:
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

* * * * *

O cease! must hate and death return?
   Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
   Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past,
O might it die or rest at last!

WILD WITH WEEPING

My head is wild with weeping for a grief
   Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.
I walk into the air (but no relief
   To seek,—or haply, if I sought, to find;
It came unsought); to wonder that a chief
   Among men’s spirits should be cold and blind.

TO THE NIGHT

Swiftly walk over the western wave,
         Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear
Which make thee terrible and dear,—
         Swift be thy flight!

When I arose and saw the dawn,
         I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest
Lingering like an unloved guest,
         I sighed for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried
         Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noon-tide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?—And I replied
         No, not thee!

Death will come when thou art dead,
         Soon, too soon—
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night—
Swift be thine approaching flight,
         Come soon, soon!

         Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
            Bird thou never wert!
         That from heaven, or near it,
            Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

         Higher still and higher
            From the earth thou springest,
         Like a cloud of fire,
            The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

         In the golden lightning
            Of the sunken sun
         O’er which clouds are brightening,
            Thou dost float and run
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

         The pale purple even
            Melts around thy flight:
         Like a star of heaven
            In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight;

         Keen as are the arrows
            Of that silver sphere,
         Whose intense lamp narrows
            In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

         What thou art we know not;
            What is most like thee?
         From rainbow clouds there flow not
            Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody;—

         Like a poet hidden
            In the light of thought,
         Singing hymns unbidden,
            Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;

         Like a high-born maiden
            In a palace tower,
         Soothing her love-laden
            Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

         Like a glow-worm golden
            In a dell of dew,
         Scattering unbeholden
            Its aërial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

         Sound of vernal showers
            On the twinkling grass,
         Rain-awakened flowers,
            All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

         Teach us, sprite or bird,
            What sweet thoughts are thine:
         I have never heard
            Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

         Chorus hymeneal
            Or triumphal chaunt
         Matched with thine, would be all
            But an empty vaunt—
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

         What objects are the fountains
            Of thy happy strain?
         What fields, or waves, or mountains?
            What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

         Waking or asleep
            Thou of death must deem
         Things more true and deep
            Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

         We look before and after,
            And pine for what is not:
         Our sincerest laughter
            With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

         Yet if we could scorn
            Hate, and pride, and fear;
         If we were things born
            Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

         Better than all measures
            Of delightful sound,
         Better than all treasures
            That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

         Teach me half the gladness
            That thy brain must know,
         Such harmonious madness
            From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

      Art thou pale for weariness
   Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
      Wandering companionless
   Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

THE QUESTION

I dreamed that as I wandered by the way
   Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
   Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
   Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
   Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
   Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.

And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
   There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,
And starry river-buds among the sedge,
   And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
   With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers
   I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
   Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
   Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come
That I might there present it—O! to Whom?

THE WANING MOON

And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver: Hear, oh hear!

   Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height—
The locks of the approaching storm.  Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

   If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than Thou, O uncontrollable!  If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision,—I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

RARELY, RARELY COMEST THOU

Rarely, rarely comest thou,
      Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
      Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
’Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me
      Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
      Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.

Let me set my mournful ditty
      To a merry measure,
Thou wilt never come for pity,
      Thou wilt come for pleasure.
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest,
      Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,
      And the starry night,
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow, and all the forms
      Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms—
      Everything almost
Which is Nature’s, and may be
Untainted by man’s misery.

I love tranquil solitude,
      And such society
As is quiet, wise and good;
      Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

THE INVITATION, TO JANE

THE RECOLLECTION

Now the last day of many days
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead:
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up—to thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled,
For now the earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the heaven’s brow.

We paused amid the pines that stood
   The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
   As serpents interlaced,—
And soothed by every azure breath
   That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
   As tender as its own:
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep
   Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
   The ocean-woods may be.

ODE TO HEAVEN

Chorus of Spirits

FIRST SPIRIT

Palace roof of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!
   Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now and which wert then
   Of the present and the past,
Of the eternal where and when,
   Presence-chamber, temple, home,
   Ever canopying dome
   Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth’s company;
   Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
   And green worlds that glide along;
And swift stars with flashing tresses;
   And icy moons most cold and bright,
   And mighty suns beyond the night,
   Atoms of intensest light.

SECOND SPIRIT

Thou art but the mind’s first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
   Like weak insects in a cave,
Lighted up by stalactites;
   By the portal of the grave,
Where a world of new delights
   Will make thy best glories seem
   But a dim and noonday gleam
   From the shadow of a dream!

THIRD SPIRIT

Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn
At your presumption, atom-born!
   What is heaven, and what are ye
Who its brief expanse inherit?
   What are suns and spheres which flee
With the instinct of that spirit
   Of which ye are but a part?
   Drops which Nature’s mighty heart
   Drives through thinnest veins.  Depart!

LIFE OF LIFE

Life of Life! thy lips enkindle
   With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
   Make the cold air fire; then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.

Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
   Thro’ the vest which seeks to hide them;
As the radiant lines of morning
   Thro’ the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe’er thou shinest.

Fair are others; none beholds thee,
   But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
   From the sight, that liquid splendour,
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever!

AUTUMN

A Dirge

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
                  And the year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
                  Is lying.
            Come, months, come away,
            From November to May,
            In your saddest array;
            Follow the bier
            Of the dead cold year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
                  For the year;
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
                  To his dwelling;
            Come, months, come away;
            Put on white, black, and grey;
            Let your light sisters play—
            Ye, follow the bier
            Of the dead cold year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.

      The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
      The waves are dancing fast and bright,
      Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
      The purple noon’s transparent might:
      The breath of the moist earth is light
      Around its unexpanded buds;
      Like many a voice of one delight—
      The winds’, the birds’, the ocean-floods’—
The city’s voice itself is soft like Solitude’s.

      I see the deep’s untrampled floor
      With green and purple sea-weeds strown;
      I see the waves upon the shore
      Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown:
      I sit upon the sands alone;
      The lightning of the noon-tide ocean
      Is flashing round me, and a tone
      Arises from its measured motion—
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

      Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
      Nor peace within nor calm around,
      Nor that content, surpassing wealth,
      The sage in meditation found,
      And walked with inward glory crowned—
      Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure;
      Others I see whom these surround—
      Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR

Orphan hours, the year is dead,
   Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,
   For the year is but asleep.
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.

As an earthquake rocks a corse
   In its coffin in the clay,
So White Winter, that rough nurse,
   Rocks the death-cold year to-day;
Solemn hours! wail aloud
For your mother in her shroud.

As the wild air stirs and sways
   The tree-swung cradle of a child,
So the breath of these rude days
   Rocks the year:—be calm and mild;
Trembling hours, she will arise
With new love within her eyes.

A WIDOW BIRD

A widow bird sat mourning for her love
      Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
      The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
      No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
      Except the mill-wheel’s sound.

THE TWO SPIRITS

First Spirit

O thou, who plumed with strong desire
      Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A shadow tracks the flight of fire—
               Night is coming!
      Bright are the regions of the air,
And among the winds and beams
      It were delight to wander there—
               Night is coming!

The deathless stars are bright above;
      If I would cross the shade of night,
Within my heart is the lamp of love,
               And that is day!
      And the moon will smile with gentle light
On my golden plumes where’er they move;
      The meteors will linger round my flight,
               And make night day.

First Spirit

But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
      Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain;
See, the bounds of the air are shaken—
               Night is coming!
      The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken;
      The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain—
               Night is coming!

Second Spirit

I see the light, and I hear the sound;
      I’ll sail on the flood of the tempests dark,
With the calm within and the light around
               Which makes night day:
      And then, when the gloom is deep and stark,
Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound;
      My moon-like flight thou then may’st mark
               On high, far away.

Some say, when nights are dry and clear,
      And the death-dews sleep on the morass,
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,
               Which make night day;
      And a silver shape, like his early love, doth pass
Up-borne by her wild and glittering hair,
      And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,
               He finds night day.

JOHN KEATS
1795–1821

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 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 lulled me asleep,
   And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamed
   On the cold hill’s side.

‘I saw their starved lips in the gloam
   With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here
   On the cold hill’s side.

‘And this is why I sojourn here
   Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
   And no birds sing.’

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S HOMER

Much have I travelled 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-browed 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 stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked on each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

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 lulling 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 hushed casket of my soul.

THE GENTLE SOUTH

After dark vapours have oppressed 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 from its pains,
      Takes as a long-lost sight the feel of May,
      The eyelids with the passing coolness play,
Like rose-leaves with the drip of summer rains.
The calmest thoughts come round us—as of leaves
      Budding; fruit ripening in stillness; autumn suns
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves;
      Sweet Sappho’s cheek; a sleeping infant’s breath;
The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs;
      A woodland rivulet; a poet’s death.

Bright Star! would I were steadfast 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 steadfast, 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.

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-winged Dryad of the trees,
            In some melodious plot
   Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
      Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

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,
      Clustered 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.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time
   I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
   To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
   To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
      While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
            In such an ecstasy!
   Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
      To thy high requiem become a sod.

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.

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!

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 its 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 sayest,
   ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
      Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

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-eaves 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’erbrimmed 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 twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

ODE TO PSYCHE

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
   By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that my secrets should be sung
   Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
   The winged Psyche with awakened eyes?
I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,
   And on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures couched side by side
   In deepest grass, beneath the whispering roof
   Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
            A brooklet scarce espied:
’Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers fragrant-eyed,
   Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass,
   Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
   Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
   At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
            The winged boy I knew;
   But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
            His Psyche true!

ODE TO 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.

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 grapes against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
      And be among her cloudy trophies hung.