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    The Complete Works of John Keats
    The Complete Works of John Keats
    The Complete Works of John Keats
    Ebook2,149 pages30 hours

    The Complete Works of John Keats

    By John Keats

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    John Keats (1795–1821) was an English Romantic poet. The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English literature.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigiCat
    Release dateNov 13, 2022
    ISBN8596547385509
    The Complete Works of John Keats
    Author

    John Keats

    John Keats was born in London in 1795. He and his siblings were orphaned at a young age - his father died in a riding accident in 1804 and his mother died six years later. Keats then left Enfield school to train as an apothecary and a surgeon but he was to leave his profession to dedicate his time to poetry. His first volume, Poems, was published in 1817 and only two more volumes, in 1818 and 1820, were published during his lifetime. In 1818 he fell in love with his neighbour Fanny Brawne, but he broke off their engagement due to his increasing ill health and lack of funds. In 1820 he moved to Italy where he died a year later of tuberculosis, the disease that claimed his mother and his brother Tom.

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      The Complete Works of John Keats - John Keats

      John Keats

      The Complete Works of John Keats

      EAN 8596547385509

      DigiCat, 2022

      Contact: DigiCat@okpublishing.info

      Table of Contents

      Poems:

      Ode

      Ode on a Grecian Urn

      Ode to Apollo

      Ode to Fanny

      Ode on Indolence

      Ode on Melancholy

      Ode to Psyche

      Ode to a Nightingale

      Sonnet: When I have fears that I may cease to be

      Sonnet on the Sonnet

      Sonnet to Chatterton

      Sonnet Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition

      Sonnet: Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell

      Sonnet to a Cat

      Sonnet Written upon the Top of Ben Nevis

      Sonnet: This pleasant tale is like a little copse

      Sonnet - The Human Seasons

      Sonnet to Homer

      Sonnet to a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall

      Sonnet on Visiting the Tomb of Burns

      Sonnet on Leigh Hunt’s Poem ‘The Story of Rimini’

      Sonnet: A Dream, after Reading Dante’s Episode of Paulo and Francesco

      Sonnet to Sleep

      Sonnet Written in Answer to a Sonnet Ending thus:

      Sonnet: After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains

      Sonnet to John Hamilton Reynolds

      Sonnet on Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

      Sonnet: Before he went to feed with owls and bats

      Sonnet Written in the Cottage where Burns was Born

      Sonnet to the Nile

      Sonnet on Peace

      Sonnet on Hearing the Bagpipe and

      Sonnet: Oh! how I love, on a fair summer’s eve

      Sonnet to Byron

      Sonnet to Spenser

      Sonnet: As from the darkening gloom a silver dove

      Sonnet on the Sea

      Sonnet to Fanny

      Sonnet to Ailsa Rock

      Sonnet on a Picture of Leander

      Translation from a Sonnet of Ronsard

      Lamia Part I

      Lamia Part II

      Isabella

      Endymion Book I

      Endymion Book II

      Endymion Book III

      Endymion Book IV

      Hyperion Book I

      Hyperion Book II

      Hyperion Book III

      Stanzas

      Spenserian Stanza

      Spenserian Stanzas on Charles Armitage Brown

      Stanzas to Miss Wylie

      Robin Hood

      The Eve of St. Agnes

      Modern Love

      On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

      Imitation of Spenser

      The Gadfly

      Ben Nevis - a Dialogue

      Fill for me a brimming bowl

      On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour

      To My Brothers

      La Belle Dame Sans Merci

      Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art

      Staffa

      To George Felton Mathew

      Faery Songs

      Acrostic

      Folly’s Song

      The Devon Maid

      Song: Hush, hush! tread softly! hush, hush my dear!

      Lines On Seeing a Lock of Milton’s Hair

      Addressed to Haydon

      On Death

      Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds

      Lines

      Sleep and Poetry

      To G. A. W.

      To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses

      An Extempore

      To a Young Lady who Sent Me a Laurel Crown

      What the Thrush Said

      Song: The stranger lighted from his steed

      Song: I had a dove and the sweet dove died

      Written on the Day That Mr. Leigh Hunt Left Prison

      On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt

      A Song of Opposites

      The Castle Builder - Fragments of a Dialogue

      Teignmouth

      The Fall of Hyperion

      To Some Ladies

      Calidore

      To Kosciusko

      Happy is England! I Could Be Content

      Lines Written in the Highlands after a Visit to Burns’s Country

      To Charles Cowden Clarke

      A Party of Lovers

      How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time!

      Apollo and the Graces

      Daisy’s Song

      Sharing Eve’s Apple

      Epistles

      On the Grasshopper and Cricket

      The Poet - A Fragment

      Oh, I am frighten’d with most hateful thoughts!

      Meg Merrilies

      To Autumn

      Lines to Fanny

      To Haydon

      Lines on the Mermaid Tavern

      To Hope

      Fame, like a wayward Giri, will still be coy

      The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!

      O! Were I one of the Olympian twelve

      Two or Three

      To the Ladies who Saw Me Crown’d

      A Draught of Sunshine

      To My Brother George

      To My Brother George

      A Prophecy: to George Keats in America

      On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

      Song: Spirit here that reignest!

      I Stood Tip-toe Upon a Little Hill

      To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent

      A Song About Myself

      Keen, Fitful Gusts are Whisp’ring Here and There

      Lines Supposed to Have Been Addressed to Fanny Brawne

      Specimen of an Induction to a Poem

      The Eve of Saint Mark

      Dawlish Fair

      O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell

      Song of Four Faeries - Fire, Air, Earth, and Water -

      Fragment of an Ode to Maia,

      Women, Wine, and Snuff

      On Oxford A Parody

      How fever’d is the man, who cannot look

      The Cap and Bells

      To —

      To

      To

      You Say You Love

      Fancy

      A Galloway Song

      Hymn to Apollo

      Addressed to the Same

      On Receiving a Curious Shell, And a Copy of Verses, From the Same Ladies

      Plays:

      King Stephen

      Otho the Great

      Letters

      Biographies:

      Life of John Keats by Sidney Colvin

      Life, letters, and literary remains, of John Ketas by Richard Monckton Milnes

      Poems:

      Table of Contents

      Ode

      Table of Contents

      Bards of Passion and of Mirth,

      Ye have left your souls on earth!

      Have ye souls in heaven too,

      Double-lived in regions new?

      Yes, and those of heaven commune

      With the spheres of sun and moon;

      With the noise of fountains wond’rous,

      And the parle of voices thund’rous;

      With the whisper of heaven’s trees

      And one another, in soft ease Seated on Elysian lawns

      Brows’d by none but Dian’s fawns

      Underneath large bluebells tented,

      Where the daisies are rose-scented,

      And the rose herself has got

      Perfume which on earth is not;

      Where the nightingale doth sing

      Not a senseless, tranced thing,

      But divine melodious truth;

      Philosophic numbers smooth; Tales and golden histories

      Of heaven and its mysteries.

      Thus ye live on high, and then

      On the earth ye live again;

      And the souls ye left behind you

      Teach us, here, the way to find you,

      Where your other souls are joying,

      Never slumber’d, never cloying.

      Here, your earth-born souls still speak

      To mortals, of their little week; Of their sorrows and delights;

      Of their passions and their spites;

      Of their glory and their shame;

      What doth strengthen and what maim.

      Thus ye teach us, every day,

      Wisdom, though fled far away.

      Bards of Passion and of Mirth,

      Ye have left your souls on earth!

      Ye have souls in heaven too,

      Double-lived in regions new!

      Ode on a Grecian Urn

      Table of Contents

      1.

      Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

      Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

      Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

      A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

      What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

      Of deities or mortals, or of both,

      In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

      What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

      What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

      What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

      2.

      Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

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

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

      Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

      Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

      Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

      Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

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

      She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

      For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

      3.

      Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

      Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

      And, happy melodist, unwearied,

      For ever piping songs for ever new;

      More happy love! more happy, happy love!

      For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

      For ever panting, and for ever young;

      All breathing human passion far above,

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

      A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

      4.

      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.

      5.

      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.

      The original manuscript

      Ode to Apollo

      Table of Contents

      In thy western halls of gold

      When thou sittest in thy state,

      Bards, that erst sublimely told

      Heroic deeds, and sang of fate,

      With fervour seize their adamantine lyres,

      Whose chords are solid rays, and twinkle radiant fires.

      Here Homer with his nervous arms

      Strikes the twanging harp of war,

      And even the western splendour warms,

      While the trumpets sound afar: But, what creates the most intense surprise,

      His soul looks out through renovated eyes.

      Then, through thy Temple wide, melodious swells

      The sweet majestic tone of Maro’s lyre:

      The soul delighted on each accent dwells, -

      Enraptur’d dwells, - not daring to respire,

      The while he tells of grief around a funeral pyre.

      ’Tis awful silence then again;

      Expectant stand the spheres;

      Breathless the laurell’d peers, Nor move, till ends the lofty strain,

      Nor move till Milton’s tuneful thunders cease,

      And leave once more the ravish’d heavens in peace.

      Thou biddest Shakespeare wave his hand,

      And quickly forward spring

      The Passions - a terrific band -

      And each vibrates the string

      That with its tyrant temper best accords,

      While from their Master’s lips pour forth the inspiring words.

      A silver trumpet Spenser blows, And, as its martial notes to silence flee,

      From a virgin chorus flows

      A hymn in praise of spotless Chastity.

      ’Tis still! Wild warblings from the Aeolian lyre

      Enchantment softly breathe, and tremblingly expire.

      Next thy Tasso’s ardent numbers

      Float along the pleased air,

      Calling youth from idle slumbers,

      Rousing them from Pleasure’s lair: -

      Then o’er the strings his fingers gently move, And melt the soul to pity and to love.

      But when Thou joinest with the Nine,

      And all the powers of song combine,

      We listen here on earth:

      The dying tones that fill the air,

      And charm the ear of evening fair,

      From thee, great God of Bards, receive their heavenly birth.

      Ode to Fanny

      Table of Contents

      I

      Physician Nature! let my spirit blood!

      O ease my heart of verse and let me rest;

      Throw me upon thy Tripod, till the flood

      Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.

      A theme! a theme! great nature! give a theme;

      Let me begin my dream.

      I come - I see thee, as thou standest there,

      Beckon me out into the wintry air.

      II

      Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears,

      And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries. -

      Tonight, if I may guess, thy beauty wears

      A smile of such delight,

      As brilliant and as bright.

      As when with ravished, aching, vassal eyes,

      Lost in soft amaze,

      I gaze, I gaze!

      III

      Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast?

      What stare outfaces now my silver moon!

      Ah! keep that hand unravished at the least;

      Let, let, the amorous burn -

      But, pr’ythee, do not turn

      The current of your heart from me so soon

      O! save, in charity,

      The quickest pulse for me.

      IV

      Save it for me, sweet love! though music breathe

      Voluptuous visions into the warm air;

      Though swimming through the dance’s dangerous wreath,

      Be like an April day,

      Smiling and cold and gay,

      A temperate lily, temperate as fair;

      Then, Heaven! there will be

      A warmer June for me.

      V

      Why, this - you’ll say, my Fanny! is not true

      Put your soft hand upon your snowy side,

      Where the heart beats: confess - ’tis nothing new -

      Must not a woman be

      A feather on the sea,

      Sway’d to and fro by every wind and tide?

      Of as uncertain speed

      As blow-ball from the mead?

      VI

      I know it - and to know it is despair

      To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny!

      Whose heart goes fluttering for you everywhere,

      Nor, when away you roam,

      Dare keep its wretched home,

      Love, love alone, his pains severe and many:

      Then, loveliest! keep me free,

      From torturing jealousy.

      VII

      Ah! if you prize my subdued soul above

      The poor, the fading, brief, pride of an hour;

      Let none profane my Holy See of love,

      Or with a rude hand break

      The sacramental cake:

      Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;

      If not - may my eyes close,

      Love! on their lost repose.

      Ode on Indolence

      Table of Contents

      I

      They toil not, neither do they spin.

      One mom before me were three figures seen,

      With bowed necks, and joined 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 um 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.

      II

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

      How came ye muffled in so hush a mask?

      Was it a silent deep-disguised 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?

      III

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

      Each one the face a moment whiles to me;

      Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d

      And ach’d 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 fatigued 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.

      IV

      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 honied 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 commonsense!

      V

      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-leav’d 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.

      VI

      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!

      Ode on Melancholy

      Table of Contents

      1.

      No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

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

      Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d

      By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;

      Make not your rosary of yew-berries,

      Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be

      Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

      A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;

      For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

      And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

      2.

      But when the melancholy fit shall fall

      Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

      That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

      And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

      Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,

      Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,

      Or on the wealth of globed peonies;

      Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

      Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,

      And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

      3.

      She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die;

      And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

      Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

      Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

      Ay, in the very temple of Delight

      Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

      Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

      Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;

      His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,

      And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

      Ode to Psyche

      Table of Contents

      O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung

      By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,

      And pardon that thy secrets should be sung

      Even into thine own soft-conched ear:

      Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see

      The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?

      I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,

      And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,

      Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side

      In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran

      A brooklet, scarce espied:

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

      Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,

      They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;

      Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;

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

      As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,

      And ready still past kisses to outnumber

      At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love: The winged boy I knew;

      But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?

      His Psyche true!

      O latest born and loveliest vision far

      Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!

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

      Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;

      Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,

      Nor altar heap’d with flowers;

      Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours;

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

      From chain-swung censer teeming;

      No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat

      Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

      O brightest! though too late for antique vows,

      Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,

      When holy were the haunted forest boughs,

      Holy the air, the water, and the fire;

      Yet even in these days so far retir’d From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,

      Fluttering among the faint Olympians,

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

      So let me be thy choir, and make a moan

      Upon the midnight hours;

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

      From swinged censer teeming;

      Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat

      Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

      Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind,

      Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

      Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

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

      Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;

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

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

      And in the midst of this wide quietness

      A rosy sanctuary will I dress

      With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain, With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

      With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,

      Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:

      And there shall be for thee all soft delight

      That shadowy thought can win,

      A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,

      To let the warm Love in!

      Ode to a Nightingale

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      1.

      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.

      2.

      O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

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

      Tasting of Flora and the country green,

      Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

      O for a beaker full of the warm South,

      Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

      With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

      And purple-stained mouth;

      That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

      And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

      3.

      Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

      What thou among the leaves hast never known,

      The weariness, the fever, and the fret

      Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

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

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

      Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

      And leaden-eyed despairs,

      Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

      Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

      4.

      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.

      5.

      I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

      Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

      But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

      Wherewith the seasonable month endows

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

      White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

      Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;

      And mid-May’s eldest child,

      The coming muskrose, full of dewy wine,

      The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

      6.

      Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

      I have been half in love with easeful Death,

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

      To take into the air my quiet breath;

      Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

      To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

      While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

      In such an ecstasy!

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

      To thy high requiem become a sod.

      7.

      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 selfsame 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 ofttimes hath

      Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

      Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

      8.

      Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

      To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

      Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

      As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

      Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

      Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

      Up the hillside; 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?

      The original manuscript

      Sonnet: When I have fears that I may cease to be

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      When I have fears that I may cease to be

      Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

      Before high-piled books, in charactery,’

      Hold like rich gamers the full ripen’d grain;

      When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d 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.

      Sonnet on the Sonnet

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

      And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet

      Fetter’d, in spite of pained 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.

      Sonnet to Chatterton

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      O Chatterton! how very sad thy fate!

      Dear child of sorrow - son of misery!

      How soon the film of death obscur’d that eye,

      Whence Genius mildly flash’d, and high debate.

      How soon that voice, majestic and elate,

      Melted in dying numbers! Oh! how nigh

      Was night to thy fair morning. Thou didst die

      A half-blown flow’ret which cold blasts amate.

      But this is past: thou art among the stars

      Of highest Heaven: to the rolling spheres Thou sweetly singest: naught thy hymning mars,

      Above the ingrate world and human fears.

      On earth the good man base detraction bars

      From thy fair name, and waters it with tears.

      Sonnet Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition

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      The church bells toll a melancholy round,

      Calling the people to some other prayers,

      Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,

      More hearkening 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 crown’d.

      Still, still they toll, 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.

      Sonnet: Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell

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      Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:

      No God, no Demon of severe response,

      Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell.

      Then to my human heart I turn at once.

      Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone;

      I say, why did I laugh! O mortal pain!

      O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,

      To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.

      Why did I laugh? I know this Being’s lease,

      My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads; Yet would I on this very midnight cease,

      And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds;

      Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,

      But Death intenser - Death is Life’s high meed.

      Sonnet to a Cat

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      Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric,

      How many mice and rats hast in thy days

      Destroy’d? - How many tit bits stolen? Gaze

      With those bright languid segments green, and prick

      Those velvet ears - but pr’ythee do not stick

      Thy latent talons in me - and upraise

      Thy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays

      Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.

      Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists -

      For all the wheezy asthma, - and for all Thy tail’s tip is nick’d off - and though the fists

      Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,

      Still is that fur as soft as when the lists

      In youth thou enter’dst on glass bottled wall.

      Sonnet Written upon the Top of Ben Nevis

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      Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud

      Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!

      I look into the chasms, and a shroud

      Vapourous doth hide them, - just so much I wist

      Mankind do know of hell; I look o’erhead,

      And there is sullen mist, - even so much

      Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread

      Before the earth, beneath me, - even such,

      Even so vague is man’s sight of himself!

      Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet, - Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,

      I tread on them, - that all my eye doth meet

      Is mist and crag, not only on this height,

      But in the world of thought and mental might!

      Sonnet: This pleasant tale is like a little copse

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      Written at the end of "The Floure and the Lefe’

      This pleasant tale is like a little copse:

      The honied lines do freshly interlace

      To keep the reader in so sweet a place,

      So that he here and there full-hearted stops;

      And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops

      Come cool and suddenly against his face,

      And by the wandering melody may trace

      Which way the tender-legged linnet hops.

      Oh! what a power hath white simplicity!

      What mighty power has this gentle story! I that for ever feel athirst for glory

      Could at this moment be content to lie

      Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings

      Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.

      Sonnet - The Human Seasons

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      Four seasons fill the measure of the year;

      There are four seasons in the mind of man:

      He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

      Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

      He has his Summer, when luxuriously

      Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves

      To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh

      His nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

      His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

      He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness - to let fair things

      Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

      He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

      Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

      Sonnet to Homer

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      Standing aloof in giant ignorance,

      Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,

      As one who sits ashore and longs perchance

      To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.

      So thou wast blind; - but then the veil was rent,

      For Jove uncurtain’d Heaven to let thee live,

      And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,

      And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;

      Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,

      And precipices show untrodden green, There is a budding morrow in midnight,

      There is a triple sight in blindness keen;

      Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell

      To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

      Sonnet to a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall

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      Time’s sea hath been five years at its slow ebb,

      Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand,

      Since I was tangled in thy beauty’s web,

      And snared by the ungloving of thine hand.

      And yet I never look on midnight sky,

      But I behold thine eyes’ well memory’d light;

      I cannot look upon the rose’s dye,

      But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight.

      I cannot look on any building flower,

      But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips

      And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour

      Its sweets in the wrong sense: - Thou dost eclipse

      Every delight with sweet remembering,

      And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.

      Sonnet on Visiting the Tomb of Burns

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      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-liv’d, paly summer is but won

      From winter’s ague, for one hour’s gleam;

      Though 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! Bums! with honour due

      I oft have honour’d thee. Great shadow, hide

      Thy face; I sin against thy native skies.

      Sonnet on Leigh Hunt’s Poem ‘The Story of Rimini’

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      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 moralise 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.

      Sonnet: A Dream, after Reading Dante’s Episode of Paulo and Francesco

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      As Hermes once took to his feathers light,

      When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,

      So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright

      So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft

      The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;

      And, seeing it asleep, so fled away -

      Not to pure Ida’ with its snow-cold skies,

      Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d a day;

      But to that second circle of sad hell,

      Where ‘mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw Of rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell

      Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,

      Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form

      I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

      Sonnet to Sleep

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      O soft embalmer of the still midnight,

      Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,

      Our gloom - pleas’d eyes, embower’d 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.

      Sonnet Written in Answer to a Sonnet Ending thus:

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      Dark eyes are dearer far

      Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell!

      J. H. Reynolds

      Blue! ’Tis the life of heaven, - the domain

      Of Cynthia, - the wide palace of the sun, -

      The tent of Hesperus, and all his train, -

      The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun.

      Blue! Tis the life of waters: - Ocean

      And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,

      May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can

      Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness.

      Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,

      Married to green in all the sweetest flowers, - Forget-me-not, - the bluebell, - and, that queen

      Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers

      Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,

      When in an Eye thou art, alive with fate!

      Sonnet: After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains

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      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 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 smiling infant’s breath -

      The gradual sand that through an hourglass runs -

      A woodland rivulet - a Poet’s death.

      Sonnet to John Hamilton Reynolds

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      O that a week could be an age, and we

      Felt parting and warm meeting every week,

      Then one poor year a thousand years would be,

      The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:

      So could we live long life in little space,

      So time itself would be annihilate,

      So a day’s journey in oblivious haze

      To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate.

      O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!

      To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant! In little time a host of joys to bind,

      And keep our souls in one eternal pant!

      This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught

      Me how to harbour such a happy thought.

      Sonnet on Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

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      O golden tongued Romance, with serene lute!

      Fair plumed Syren, Queen of far-away!

      Leave melodising on this wintry day,

      Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:

      Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute

      Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay

      Must I burn through; once more humbly assay

      The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit:

      Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,

      Begetters of our deep eternal theme! When through the old oak forest I am gone,

      Let me not wander in a barren dream,

      But, when I am consumed in the fire,

      Give me new Phoenix wings’ to fly at my desire.

      Sonnet: Before he went to feed with owls and bats

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      Before he went to feed with owls and bats

      Nebuchadnezzar had an ugly dream,

      Worse than an hus’if s when she thinks her cream

      Made a naumachia for mice and rats.

      So scared, he sent for that ‘Good King of Cats’

      Young Daniel, who soon did pluck away the beam

      From out his eye, and said he did not deem

      The sceptre worth a straw - his cushions old door-mats.

      A horrid nightmare similar somewhat

      Of late has haunted a most motley crew, Most loggerheads and chapmen - we are told

      That any Daniel tho’ he be a sot

      Can make the lying lips turn pale of hue

      By belching out ‘ye are that head of gold.’

      Sonnet Written in the Cottage where Burns was Born

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      This mortal body of a thousand days

      Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room,

      Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,

      Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!

      My pulse is warm with thine own barley-bree,

      My head is light with pledging a great soul,

      My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,

      Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;

      Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,

      Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find The meadow thou hast tramped o’er and o’er, -

      Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind, -

      Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name, -

      O smile among the shades, for this is fame!

      Sonnet to the Nile

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      Son of the old moon-mountains African!

      Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!

      We call thee fruitful, and, that very while,

      A desert fills our seeing’s inward span;

      Nurse of swart nations since the world began,

      Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile

      Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,

      Rest for a space ‘twixt Cairo and Decan?

      O, O may dark fancies err! they surely do;

      ’Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste Of all beyond itself, thou dost bedew

      Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste

      The pleasant sunrise, green isles hast thou too,

      And to the sea as happily dost haste.

      Sonnet on Peace

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      O Peace! and dost thou with thy presence bless

      The dwellings of this war-surrounded Isle;

      Soothing with placid brow our late distress,

      Making the triple kingdom brightly smile?

      Joyful I hail thy presence; and I hail

      The sweet companions that await on thee;

      Complete my joy - let not my first wish fail,

      Let the sweet mountain nymph thy favourite be,

      With England’s happiness proclaim Europa’s Liberty.

      O Europe! let not sceptred tyrants see That thou must shelter in thy former state;

      Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free;

      Give thy kings law - leave not uncurbed the great;

      So with the horrors past thou’lt win thy happier fate!

      Sonnet on Hearing the Bagpipe and

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      Seeing ‘The Stranger’ Played at Inverary

      Of late two dainties were before me plac’d

      Sweet, holy, pure, sacred and innocent,

      From the ninth sphere to me benignly sent

      That Gods might know my own particular taste:

      First the soft Bagpipe moum’d with zealous haste,

      The Stranger next with head on bosom bent

      Sigh’d; rueful again the piteous Bagpipe went,

      Again the Stranger sighings fresh did waste.

      O Bagpipe thou didst steal my heart away -

      O Stranger thou my nerves from Pipe didst charm - O Bagpipe thou didst reassert thy sway -

      Again thou Stranger gav’st me fresh alarm -

      Alas! I could not choose. Ah! my poor heart.

      Mum chance art thou with both oblig’d to part.

      Sonnet: Oh! how I love, on a fair summer’s eve

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      Oh! how I love, on a fair summer’s eve,

      When streams of light pour down the golden west,

      And on the balmy zephyrs tranquil rest

      The silver clouds, far - far away to leave

      All meaner thoughts, and take a sweet reprieve

      From little cares; to find, with easy quest,

      A fragrant wild, with Nature’s beauty drest,

      And there into delight my soul deceive.

      There warm my breast with patriotic lore,

      Musing on Milton’s fate - on Sydney’s bier - Till their stern forms before my mind arise:

      Perhaps on wing of Poesy upsoar,

      Full often dropping a delicious tear,

      When some melodious sorrow spells mine eyes.

      Sonnet to Byron

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      Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody!

      Attuning still the soul to tenderness,

      As if soft Pity, with unusual stress,

      Had touch’d her plaintive lute, and thou, being by,

      Hadst caught the tones, nor suffer’d them to die.

      O’ershadowing sorrow doth not make thee less

      Delightful: thou thy griefs dost dress

      With a bright halo, shining beamily,

      As when a cloud the golden moon doth veil,

      Its sides are ting’d with a resplendent glow, Through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail,

      And like fair veins in sable marble flow;

      Still warble, dying swan! still tell the tale,

      The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe.

      Sonnet to Spenser

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      Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine,

      A forester deep in thy midmost trees,

      Did last eve ask my promise to refine

      Some English that might strive thine ear to please.

      But Elfin Poet ’tis impossible

      For an inhabitant of wintry earth

      To rise like Phoebus with a golden quell

      Firewing’d and make a morning in his mirth.

      It is impossible to escape from toil

      O’ the sudden and receive thy spiriting: The flower must drink the nature of the soil

      Before it can put forth its blossoming:

      Be with me in the summer days and I

      Will for thine honour and his pleasure try.

      Sonnet: As from the darkening gloom a silver dove

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      As from the darkening gloom a silver dove

      Upsoars, and darts into the eastern light,

      On pinions that naught moves but pure delight,

      So fled thy soul into the realms above,

      Regions of peace and everlasting love;

      Where happy spirits, crown’d with circlets bright

      Of starry beam, and gloriously bedight,

      Taste the high joy none but the blest can prove.

      There thou or joinest the immortal quire

      In melodies that even heaven fair Fill with superior bliss, or, at desire

      Of the omnipotent Father, cleavest the air

      On holy message sent - What pleasures higher?

      Wherefore does any grief our joy impair?

      Sonnet on the Sea

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      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 mov’d for days from where it sometime fell,

      When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.

      Oh ye! who have your eyeballs vex’d and tir’d,

      Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea; Oh ye! whose ears are dinn’d 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 quir’d!

      Sonnet to Fanny

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      I cry your mercy - pity - love! - aye, love!

      Merciful love that tantalises not,

      One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,

      Unmask’d, and being seen - without a blot!

      O! let me have thee whole, - all - all - be mine!

      That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest

      Of love, your kiss, - those hands, those eyes divine,

      That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, -

      Yourself - your soul - in pity give me all,

      Withhold no atom’s atom or I die,

      Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,

      Forget, in the mist of idle misery,

      Life’s purposes, - the palate of my mind

      Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

      Sonnet to Ailsa Rock

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      Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid!

      Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowls’ screams!

      When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?

      When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid?

      How long is’t since the mighty power bid

      Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams?

      Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams,

      Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid.

      Thou answer’st not; for thou art dead asleep;

      Thy life is but two dead eternities - The last in air, the former in the deep;

      First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies -

      Drown’d wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep,

      Another cannot wake thy giant size.

      Sonnet on a Picture of Leander

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      Come hither all sweet maidens soberly,

      Down-looking aye, and with a chasten’d light,

      Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white,

      And meekly let your fair hands joined be,

      As if so gentle that ye could not see,

      Untouch’d, a victim of your beauty bright,

      Sinking away to his young spirit’s night, -

      Sinking bewilder’d ‘mid the dreary sea:

      ’Tis young Leander toiling to his death;

      Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips

      For Hero’s cheek, and smiles against her smile.

      O horrid dream! see how his body dips

      Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile:

      He’s gone: up bubbles all his amorous breath!

      Translation from a Sonnet of Ronsard

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      Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies,

      For more adornment, a full thousand years;

      She took their cream of beauty’s fairest dyes,

      And shap’d and tinted her above all Peers’

      Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings,

      And underneath their shadow fill’d her eyes

      With such a richness that the cloudy Kings

      Of high Olympus utter’d slavish sighs.

      When from the heavens I saw her first descend,

      My heart took fire, and only burning pains, They were my pleasures - they my life’s sad end;

      Love pour’d her beauty into my warm veins …

      Lamia Part I

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      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 Phoebean 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 0 To keep it unaffronted, unassail’d

      By the love-glances of unlovely eyes,

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

      Pale grew her immortality, for woe

      Of all these lovers, and she grieved so

      I took compassion on her, bade her steep

      Her hair in weird syrops, that would keep

      Her loveliness invisible, yet free

      To wander as she loves, in liberty.

      Thou shalt behold her, Hermes, thou alone, If thou wilt, as thou swearest, grant my boon!"

      Then, once again, the charmed God began

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

      Warm, tremulous, devout, psalterian.

      Ravish’d, she lifted her Circean head,

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

      "I was a woman, let me have once more

      A woman’s shape, and charming as before.

      I love a youth of Corinth — O the bliss!

      Give me my woman’s form, and place me where he is. Stoop, Hermes, let me breathe upon thy brow,

      And thou shalt see thy sweet nymph even now."

      The God on half-shut feathers sank serene,

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

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

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

      Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass

      Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.

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

      Dash’d by the wood-nymph’s beauty, so he burn’d; Then, lighting on the printless verdure, turn’d

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

      Delicate, put to proof the lythe Caducean charm.

      So done, upon the nymph his eyes he bent

      Full of adoring tears and blandishment,

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

      Faded before him, cower’d, nor could restrain

      Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower

      That faints into itself at evening hour:

      But the God fostering her chilled hand, She felt the warmth, her eyelids open’d bland,

      And, like new flowers at morning song of bees,

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

      Into the green-recessed woods they flew;

      Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do.

      Left to herself, the serpent now began

      To change; her elfin blood in madness ran,

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

      Wither’d at dew so sweet and virulent;

      Her eyes in torture fix’d, and anguish drear, Hot, glaz’d, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear,

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

      The colours all inflam’d throughout her train,

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

      A deep volcanian yellow took the place

      Of all her milder-mooned body’s grace;

      And, as the lava ravishes the mead,

      Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede;

      Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks and bars,

      Eclips’d her crescents, and lick’d up her stars: So that, in moments few, she was undrest

      Of all her sapphires, greens, and amethyst,

      And rubious-argent: of all these bereft,

      Nothing but pain and ugliness were left.

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

      Melted and disappear’d as suddenly;

      And in the air, her new voice luting soft,

      Cried, Lycius! gentle Lycius! — Borne aloft

      With the bright mists about the mountains hoar

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

      Whither fled Lamia, now a lady bright,

      A full-born beauty new and exquisite?

      She fled into that valley they pass o’er

      Who go to Corinth from Cenchreas’ shore;

      And rested at the foot of those wild hills,

      The rugged founts of the Peræan rills,

      And of that other ridge whose barren back

      Stretches, with all its mist and cloudy rack,

      South-westward to Cleone. There she stood

      About a young bird’s flutter from a wood, Fair, on a sloping green of mossy tread,

      By a clear pool, wherein she passioned

      To see herself escap’d from so sore ills,

      While her robes flaunted with the daffodils.

      Ah, happy Lycius! — for she was a maid

      More beautiful than ever twisted braid,

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

      Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy:

      A virgin purest lipp’d, yet in the lore

      Of love deep learned to the red heart’s core: Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain

      To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain;

      Define their pettish limits, and estrange

      Their points of contact, and swift counterchange;

      Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart

      Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art;

      As though in Cupid’s college she had spent

      Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent,

      And kept his rosy terms in idle languishment.

      Why this fair creature chose so fairily 0 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

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