The Complete Works of John Keats: Poems, Plays & Personal Letters. John Keats
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Sonnet to the Nile
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, 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 sunrise, green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.
Sonnet on Peace
O Peace! and dost thou with thy presence bless
The dwellings of this war-surrounded Isle;
Soothing with placid brow our late distress,
Making the triple kingdom brightly smile?
Joyful I hail thy presence; and I hail
The sweet companions that await on thee;
Complete my joy - let not my first wish fail,
Let the sweet mountain nymph thy favourite be,
With England’s happiness proclaim Europa’s Liberty.
O Europe! let not sceptred tyrants see That thou must shelter in thy former state;
Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free;
Give thy kings law - leave not uncurbed the great;
So with the horrors past thou’lt win thy happier fate!
Sonnet on Hearing the Bagpipe and
Seeing ‘The Stranger’ Played at Inverary
Of late two dainties were before me plac’d
Sweet, holy, pure, sacred and innocent,
From the ninth sphere to me benignly sent
That Gods might know my own particular taste:
First the soft Bagpipe moum’d with zealous haste,
The Stranger next with head on bosom bent
Sigh’d; rueful again the piteous Bagpipe went,
Again the Stranger sighings fresh did waste.
O Bagpipe thou didst steal my heart away -
O Stranger thou my nerves from Pipe didst charm - O Bagpipe thou didst reassert thy sway -
Again thou Stranger gav’st me fresh alarm -
Alas! I could not choose. Ah! my poor heart.
Mum chance art thou with both oblig’d to part.
Sonnet: Oh! how I love, on a fair summer’s eve
Oh! how I love, on a fair summer’s eve,
When streams of light pour down the golden west,
And on the balmy zephyrs tranquil rest
The silver clouds, far - far away to leave
All meaner thoughts, and take a sweet reprieve
From little cares; to find, with easy quest,
A fragrant wild, with Nature’s beauty drest,
And there into delight my soul deceive.
There warm my breast with patriotic lore,
Musing on Milton’s fate - on Sydney’s bier - Till their stern forms before my mind arise:
Perhaps on wing of Poesy upsoar,
Full often dropping a delicious tear,
When some melodious sorrow spells mine eyes.
Sonnet to Byron
Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody!
Attuning still the soul to tenderness,
As if soft Pity, with unusual stress,
Had touch’d her plaintive lute, and thou, being by,
Hadst caught the tones, nor suffer’d them to die.
O’ershadowing sorrow doth not make thee less
Delightful: thou thy griefs dost dress
With a bright halo, shining beamily,
As when a cloud the golden moon doth veil,
Its sides are ting’d with a resplendent glow, Through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail,
And like fair veins in sable marble flow;
Still warble, dying swan! still tell the tale,
The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe.
Sonnet to Spenser
Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine,
A forester deep in thy midmost trees,
Did last eve ask my promise to refine
Some English that might strive thine ear to please.
But Elfin Poet ’tis impossible
For an inhabitant of wintry earth
To rise like Phoebus with a golden quell
Firewing’d and make a morning in his mirth.
It is impossible to escape from toil
O’ the sudden and receive thy spiriting: The flower must drink the nature of the soil
Before it can put forth its blossoming:
Be with me in the summer days and I
Will for thine honour and his pleasure try.
Sonnet: As from the darkening gloom a silver dove
As from the darkening gloom a silver dove
Upsoars, and darts into the eastern light,
On pinions that naught moves but pure delight,
So fled thy soul into the realms above,
Regions of peace and everlasting love;
Where happy spirits, crown’d with circlets bright
Of starry beam, and gloriously bedight,