And leaves a gulph austere
To be fill'd with worldly fear.
Aye, when the soul is fled
To high above our head,
Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze,
As doth a mother wild,
When her young infant child
Is in an eagle's claws-
And is not this the cause
Of madness?-God of Song,
Thou bearest me along

Through sights I scarce can bear:
O let me, let me share

With the hot lyre and thee,
The staid Philosophy.
Temper my lonely hours,
And let me see thy bowers
More unalarm'd!

SONNET

TO THE NILE

30

40

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 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 sun-rise, green isles hast thou too, And to the sea as happily dost haste.

6-8 Art thou so beautiful, or a wan smile

10

Pleasant but to those men who, sick with toil, Rest them a space 'twixt Cairo and Dekan? Woodhouse. 10 And ignorance doth make a barren waste... Woodhouse.

SONNET

TO A LADY SEEN FOR A FEW MOMENTS AT VAUXHALL

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 budding 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

WRITTEN IN ANSWER TO A SONNET ENDING THUS:

Dark eyes are dearer far

Than those that mock the hyacinthine bellBy 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.

1 Life's sea hath been five times at its slow ebb,
Hood's Magazine.

13-14 Other delights with thy remembering
And sorrow to my darling joys doth bring.

Hood's Magazine.

With all its tributary streams, pools numberless,

Athenæum.

8 Subside but to a dark blue Nativeness. Draft.

10

Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,

Married to green in all the sweetest flowers,— 10 Forget-me-not, the Blue bell,-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

TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.

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! 10 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.

WHAT THE THRUSH SAID

LINES FROM A LETTER TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS

O THOU whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phoebus was away,
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge-I have none,

And yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge-I have none,

And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens

At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

11

SONNET

THE HUMAN SEASONS

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.

10

EXTRACTS FROM AN OPERA

O! WERE I one of the Olympian twelve,
Their godships should pass this into a law,-
That when a man doth set himself in toil
After some beauty veiled far away,

Each step he took should make his lady's hand
More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair;
And for each briar-berry he might eat,

A kiss should bud upon the tree of love,
And pulp and ripen richer every hour,

To melt away upon the traveller's lips.

10

The text of the Sonnet is that contributed by Keats to Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Book." An earlier version is preserved by Woodhouse.

2 Four seasons are there. Woodhouse.

6-10 He chews the honied cud of fair spring thoughts,
Till in his soul, dissolv'd, they come to be
Part of himself: He hath his Autumn Ports
And havens of repose, when his tired wings
Are folded up, and he content to look Woodhouse.

When wedding fiddles are a-playing,
Huzza for folly O!

And when maidens go a-maying,
Huzza, &c.

When a milk-pail is upset,