TO AUTUMN. SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness! eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft ; Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. ODE ON MELANCHOLY. No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; 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. 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. LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN. SOULS of poets dead and gone, I have heard that on a day To a sheepskin gave the story,— |