Selected Poems and Letters. John Keats

potion, drunk by chance,

      Which saves a sick man from the feather’d pall

      For some few gasping moments; like a lance,

      Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall

      With cruel pierce, and bringing him again

      Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

      XXXV.

      It was a vision. – In the drowsy gloom,

      The dull of midnight, at her couch’s foot

      Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb

      Had marr’d his glossy hair which once could shoot

      Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom

      Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute

      From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears

      Had made a miry channel for his tears.

      XXXVI.

      Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake;

      For there was striving, in its piteous tongue,

      To speak as when on earth it was awake,

      And Isabella on its music hung:

      Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake,

      As in a palsied Druid’s harp unstrung;

      And through it moan’d a ghostly under-song,

      Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among.

      XXXVII.

      Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright

      With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof

      From the poor girl by magic of their light,

      The while it did unthread the horrid woof

      Of the late darken’d time, – the murderous spite

      Of pride and avarice, – the dark pine roof

      In the forest, – and the sodden turfed dell,

      Where, without any word, from stabs he fell.

      XXXVIII.

      Saying moreover, “Isabel, my sweet!

      Red whortle-berries droop above my head,

      And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;

      Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed

      Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat

      Comes from beyond the river to my bed:

      Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,

      And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

      XXXIX.

      “I am a shadow now, alas! alas!

      Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling

      Alone: I chant alone the holy mass,

      While little sounds of life are round me knelling,

      And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,

      And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,

      Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me,

      And thou art distant in Humanity.

      XL.

      “I know what was, I feel full well what is,

      And I should rage, if spirits could go mad;

      Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss,

      That paleness warms my grave, as though I had

      A Seraph chosen from the bright abyss

      To be my spouse: thy paleness makes me glad;

      Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel

      A greater love through all my essence steal.”

      XLI.

      The Spirit mourn’d “Adieu!” – dissolv’d, and left

      The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;

      As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,

      Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,

      We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,

      And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:

      It made sad Isabella’s eyelids ache,

      And in the dawn she started up awake;

      XLII.

      “Ha! ha!” said she, “I knew not this hard life,

      I thought the worst was simple misery;

      I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife

      Portion’d us – happy days, or else to die;

      But there is crime – a brother’s bloody knife!

      Sweet Spirit, thou hast school’d my infancy:

      I’ll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes,

      And greet thee morn and even in the skies.”

      XLIII.

      When the full morning came, she had devised

      How she might secret to the forest hie;

      How she might find the clay, so dearly prized,

      And sing to it one latest lullaby;

      How her short absence might be unsurmised,

      While she the inmost of the dream would try.

      Resolv’d, she took with her an aged nurse,

      And went into that dismal forest-hearse.

      XLIV.

      See, as they creep along the river side,

      How she doth whisper to that aged Dame,

      And, after looking round the champaign wide,

      Shows her a knife. – “What feverous hectic flame

      Burns in thee, child? – What good can thee betide,

      That thou should’st smile again?” – The evening came,

      And they had found Lorenzo’s earthy bed;

      The flint was there, the berries at his head.

      XLV.

      Who hath not loiter’d in a green church-yard,

      And let his spirit, like a demon-mole,

      Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard,

      To see scull, coffin’d bones, and funeral stole;

      Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr’d,

      And filling it once more with human soul?

      Ah! this is holiday to what was felt

      When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt.

      XLVI.

      She gaz’d into the fresh-thrown mould, as though

      One glance did fully all its secrets tell;

      Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know

      Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;

      Upon the murderous spot she seem’d to grow,

      Like to a native lily of the dell:

      Then with her knife, all sudden, she began

      To dig more fervently than misers can.

      XLVII.