ODE Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Brows'd by none but Dian's fawns; Thus ye live on high, and then On the earth ye live again; To mortals, of their little week; Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; 30 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! 35 "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, JOHN KEATS And there she wept and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes, With kisses four. And there I dream'd 28 "And there she lulled me asleep, 32 - ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd On the cold hill's side. 36 The poetry of earth is never dead: 44 48 When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper's - he takes the lead In summer luxury, he has never done 6 With his delights; for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost 10 Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul. When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact'ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, 5 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, 10 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. Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils 15 With the green world they live in; and clear rills That for themselves a cooling covert make And such too is the grandeur of the dooms 20 "This river does not see the naked sky, 540 Till it begins to progress silverly Around the western border of the wood, Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood Seems at the distance like a crescent moon: And in that nook, the very pride of June, 545 Had I been us'd to pass my weary eyes; The rather for the sun unwilling leaves So dear a picture of his sovereign power, And I could witness his most kingly hour, When he doth tighten up the golden reins, 550 And paces leisurely down amber plains His snorting four. Now when his chariot last Its beams against the zodiac-lion 1 cast, 1 much; 640 645 636 Methought I fainted at the charmed touch, Yet held my recollection, even as one Who dives three fathoms where the waters run Gurgling in beds of coral: for anon, I felt upmounted in that region Where falling stars dart their artillery forth, And eagles struggle with the buffeting north That balances the heavy meteor-stone; Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone; But lapp'd and lull'd along the dangerous sky. Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high, And straightway into frightful eddies swoop'd; Such as ay muster where grey time has scoop'd Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side: There hollow sounds arous'd me, and I sigh'd To faint once more by looking on my bliss I was distracted; madly did I kiss The wooing arms which held me, and did give My eyes at once to death: but 'twas to live, To take in draughts of life from the gold fount Of kind and passionate looks; to count, and count - 653 The moments, by some greedy help that seem'd 61 I have no comfort for thee, no, not one: 66 70 |