Selected Poems and Letters. John Keats

      Her silk had play’d in purple phantasies,

      She kiss’d it with a lip more chill than stone,

      And put it in her bosom, where it dries

      And freezes utterly unto the bone

      Those dainties made to still an infant’s cries:

      Then ’gan she work again; nor stay’d her care,

      But to throw back at times her veiling hair.

      XLVIII.

      That old nurse stood beside her wondering,

      Until her heart felt pity to the core

      At sight of such a dismal labouring,

      And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,

      And put her lean hands to the horrid thing:

      Three hours they labour’d at this travail sore;

      At last they felt the kernel of the grave,

      And Isabella did not stamp and rave.

      XLIX.

      Ah! wherefore all this wormy circumstance?

      Why linger at the yawning tomb so long?

      O for the gentleness of old Romance,

      The simple plaining of a minstrel’s song!

      Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance,

      For here, in truth, it doth not well belong

      To speak: – O turn thee to the very tale,

      And taste the music of that vision pale.

      L.

      With duller steel than the Perséan sword

      They cut away no formless monster’s head,

      But one, whose gentleness did well accord

      With death, as life. The ancient harps have said,

      Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord:

      If Love impersonate was ever dead,

      Pale Isabella kiss’d it, and low moan’d.

      ’Twas love; cold, – dead indeed, but not dethroned.

      LI.

      In anxious secrecy they took it home,

      And then the prize was all for Isabel:

      She calm’d its wild hair with a golden comb,

      And all around each eye’s sepulchral cell

      Pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam

      With tears, as chilly as a dripping well,

      She drench’d away: – and still she comb’d, and kept

      Sighing all day – and still she kiss’d, and wept.

      LII.

      Then in a silken scarf, – sweet with the dews

      Of precious flowers pluck’d in Araby,

      And divine liquids come with odorous ooze

      Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully, –

      She wrapp’d it up; and for its tomb did choose

      A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by,

      And cover’d it with mould, and o’er it set

      Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.

      LIII.

      And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,

      And she forgot the blue above the trees,

      And she forgot the dells where waters run,

      And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;

      She had no knowledge when the day was done,

      And the new morn she saw not: but in peace

      Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,

      And moisten’d it with tears unto the core.

      LIV.

      And so she ever fed it with thin tears,

      Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew,

      So that it smelt more balmy than its peers

      Of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew

      Nurture besides, and life, from human fears,

      From the fast mouldering head there shut from view:

      So that the jewel, safely casketed,

      Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread.

      LV.

      O Melancholy, linger here awhile!

      O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!

      O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,

      Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us – O sigh!

      Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile;

      Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily,

      And make a pale light in your cypress glooms,

      Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs.

      LVI.

      Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe,

      From the deep throat of sad Melpomene!

      Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go,

      And touch the strings into a mystery;

      Sound mournfully upon the winds and low;

      For simple Isabel is soon to be

      Among the dead: She withers, like a palm

      Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm.

      LVII.

      O leave the palm to wither by itself;

      Let not quick Winter chill its dying hour! –

      It may not be – those Baälites of pelf,

      Her brethren, noted the continual shower

      From her dead eyes; and many a curious elf,

      Among her kindred, wonder’d that such dower

      Of youth and beauty should be thrown aside

      By one mark’d out to be a Noble’s bride.

      LVIII.

      And, furthermore, her brethren wonder’d much

      Why she sat drooping by the Basil green,

      And why it flourish’d, as by magic touch;

      Greatly they wonder’d what the thing might mean:

      They could not surely give belief, that such

      A very nothing would have power to wean

      Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay,

      And even remembrance of her love’s delay.

      LIX.

      Therefore they watch’d a time when they might sift

      This hidden whim; and long they watch’d in vain;

      For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift,

      And seldom felt she any hunger-pain;

      And when she left, she hurried back, as swift

      As bird on wing to breast its eggs again;

      And, patient, as a hen-bird, sat her there

      Beside her Basil, weeping through