Selected Poems and Letters. John Keats

they contriv’d to steal the Basil-pot,

      And to examine it in secret place:

      The thing was vile with green and livid spot,

      And yet they knew it was Lorenzo’s face:

      The guerdon of their murder they had got,

      And so left Florence in a moment’s space,

      Never to turn again. – Away they went,

      With blood upon their heads, to banishment.

      LXI.

      O Melancholy, turn thine eyes away!

      O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!

      O Echo, Echo, on some other day,

      From isles Lethean, sigh to us – O sigh!

      Spirits of grief, sing not your “Well-a-way!”

      For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die;

      Will die a death too lone and incomplete,

      Now they have ta’en away her Basil sweet.

      LXII.

      Piteous she look’d on dead and senseless things,

      Asking for her lost Basil amorously;

      And with melodious chuckle in the strings

      Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry

      After the Pilgrim in his wanderings,

      To ask him where her Basil was; and why

      ’Twas hid from her: “For cruel ’tis,” said she,

      “To steal my Basil-pot away from me.”

      LXIII.

      And so she pined, and so she died forlorn,

      Imploring for her Basil to the last.

      No heart was there in Florence but did mourn

      In pity of her love, so overcast.

      And a sad ditty of this story born

      From mouth to mouth through all the country pass’d:

      Still is the burthen sung – “O cruelty,

      To steal my Basil-pot away from me!”

       La Belle Dame Sans Merci

      Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms

      Alone and palely loitering?

      The sedge has withered from the Lake

      And no birds sing.

      Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms

      So haggard, and so woe begone?

      The Squirrel’s granary is full

      And the harvest’s done.

      I see a lily on thy brow

      With anguish moist and fever dew,

      And on thy cheeks a fading rose

      Fast withereth too.

      I met a Lady in the Meads

      Full beautiful, a faery’s child,

      Her hair was long, her foot was light

      And her eyes were wild.

      I made a garland for her head,

      And bracelets too, and fragrant zone,

      She look’d at me as she did love

      And made sweet moan.

      I set her on my pacing steed,

      And nothing else saw all day long,

      For sidelong would she bend and sing

      A Faery’s song.

      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,

      And there she wept and sigh’d full sore,

      And there I shut her wild, wild eyes

      With kisses four.

      And there she lulled me asleep,

      And there I dream’d, Ah! Woe betide!

      The latest dream I ever dreamt

      On the cold hill side.

      I saw pale Kings, and Princes too,

      Pale warriors, death pale were they all;

      They cried, La belle dame sans merci,

      Thee hath in thrall.

      I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam

      With horrid warning gaped wide,

      And I awoke, and found me here

      On the cold hill’s side.

      And this is why I sojourn here

      Alone and palely loitering;

      Though the sedge is withered from the Lake

      And no birds sing …

       Lamia

      PART I.

      Upon a time, before the faery broods

      Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,

      Before King Oberon’s bright diadem,

      Sceptre, and mantle, clasp’d with dewy gem,

      Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns

      From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip’d lawns,

      The ever-smitten Hermes empty left

      His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft:

      From high Olympus had he stolen light,

      On this side of Jove’s clouds, to escape the sight

      Of his great summoner, and made retreat

      Into a forest on the shores of Crete.

      For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt

      A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt;

      At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured

      Pearls, while on land they wither’d and adored.

      Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont,

      And in those meads where sometime she might haunt,

      Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse,

      Though Fancy’s casket were unlock’d to choose.

      Ah, what a world of love was at her feet!

      So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat

      Burnt from his winged heels to either ear,

      That from a whiteness, as the lily clear,

      Blush’d into roses ’mid his golden hair,

      Fallen in jealous curls