Selected Poems and Letters. John Keats

with brede

      Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

      With forest branches and the trodden weed;

      Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

      As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

      When old age shall this generation waste,

      Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

      Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

      “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all

      Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

       Ode on Melancholy

      1.

      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.

      2.

      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.

      3.

      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.

       Ode to a Nightingale

      I.

      My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

      My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

      Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

      One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

      ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

      But being too happy in thine happiness, –

      That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

      In some melodious plot

      Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

      Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

      II.

      O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

      Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

      Tasting of Flora and the country green,

      Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

      O for a beaker full of the warm South,

      Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

      With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

      And purple-stained mouth;

      That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

      And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

      III.

      Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

      What thou among the leaves hast never known,

      The weariness, the fever, and the fret

      Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

      Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

      Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

      Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

      And leaden-eyed despairs,

      Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

      Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

      IV.

      Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

      Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

      But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

      Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

      Already with thee! tender is the night,

      And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

      Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;

      But here there is no light,

      Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

      Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

      V.

      I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

      Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

      But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

      Wherewith the seasonable month endows

      The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

      White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

      Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;

      And mid-May’s eldest child,

      The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

      The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

      VI.

      Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

      I have been half in love with easeful Death,

      Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

      To take into the air my quiet breath;

      Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

      To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

      While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

      In such an ecstasy!

      Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain –

      To thy high requiem become a sod.

      VII.

      Thou