So it is yet let us sing,
Honour to the old bow-string!
Honour to the bugle-horn!

Honour to the woods unshorn!
Honour to the Lincoln green!
Honour to the archer keen!
Honour to tight little John,
And the horse he rode upon!
Honour to bold Robin Hood,
Sleeping in the underwood!
Honour to maid Marian,

And to all the Sherwood-clan!

Though their days have hurried by
Let us two a burden try.

TO AUTUMN

I.

50

60

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run ;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

II.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

49 yet] then Draft, cancelled.

61 Though their Pleasures Draft, rejected.

62

You and I a stave will try. Draft.

I 4 The vines with fruit that round the thatch-eves run;

Holograph and Museum.

6 ripeness] sweetness Holograph and Museum.

fruit] fruits Museum.

8 sweet] white Holograph.

II 1 Who hath not seen thee, for thy haunts are many

2 abroad] for thee Holograph.

Holograph.

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd 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.

III.

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 red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

II 5-8 While bright the sun slants through the husky barn Or sound asleep in a half reaped field

Dozed with red poppies while thy reaping hook Spares from some slumbrous minutes while warm slumbers creep... Holograph.

6,7 Dozéd with a fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next sheath and all its honied flowers;

Museum.

7 Spares for some slumbrous minutes the next swath;

9 laden] leaden Museum.

11 oozings] oozing Holograph and Museum.

Holograph.

III 3 While a gold cloud gilds the soft dying day Holograph.

4 And touch] Touching Holograph.

6 borne aloft] on thee borne aloft Holograph.

7 or dies] and dies Holograph.

9 with treble] again full Holograph and Museum. 11 And new flock still Holograph, rejected.

ODE ON MELANCHOLY

I.

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.

II.

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.

Of the Ode on Melancholy Lord Houghton gives the following stanza as a rejected opening from the original manuscript :

Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones,
And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,

Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans
To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast;

Although your rudder be a dragon's tail
Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony,
Your cordage large uprootings from the skull

Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail
To find the Melancholy-whether she
Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull...

II 4 hill] hills Museum.

III.

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.

III 1 dwells with] lives in Museum.

HYPERION

A FRAGMENT

BOOK I

DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head

Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity

Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,
No further than to where his feet had stray'd,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;

Heading] Hyperion-Book Ist MS: compare II and III. 3 eve's one] evening MS., cancelled.

6 about 1820: above MS.

10

7 Like clouds that whose bosoms thunderous bosoms MS., cancelled.

a young vulture's wing
what an eagles wing

Would spread upon a field of green-ear'd corn:

MS., cancelled.

9 Robs not at all the dandelion's fleece; MS. and Woodhouse. 13 Spreading a shade] Spreading across it MS., cancelled. 16 stray'd] stay'd MS. and Woodhouse. 17 And slept without a motion: since that time MS., cancelled. nerveless, dead, supine,

18 nerveless, listless, dead,]nerveless on the ground.

MS., cancelled.

} MS., cancelled.