The Complete Works of John Keats: Poems, Plays & Personal Letters. John Keats

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The Complete Works of John Keats: Poems, Plays & Personal Letters - John  Keats


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lo! the poppies hung

       Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung

       A heavy ditty, and the sullen day

       Had chidden herald Hesperus away,

       With leaden looks: the solitary breeze

       Bluster’d, and slept, and its wild self did teaze

       With wayward melancholy; and I thought,

       Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought

       Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus!– Away I wander’d–all the pleasant hues

       Of heaven and earth had faded: deepest shades

       Were deepest dungeons; heaths and sunny glades

       Were full of pestilent light; our taintless rills

       Seem’d sooty, and o’erspread with upturn’d gills

       Of dying fish; the vermeil rose had blown

       In frightful scarlet, and its thorns outgrown

       Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird

       Before my heedless footsteps stirr’d, and stirr’d

       In little journeys, I beheld in it A disguis’d demon, missioned to knit

       My soul with under darkness; to entice

       My stumblings down some monstrous precipice:

       Therefore I eager followed, and did curse

       The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse,

       Rock’d me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven!

       These things, with all their comfortings, are given

       To my down-sunken hours, and with thee,

       Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea

      Of weary life.”

      Thus ended he, and both

      Sat silent: for the maid was very loth

       To answer; feeling well that breathed words

       Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords

       Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps

       Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps,

       And wonders; struggles to devise some blame;

       To put on such a look as would say, Shame

       On this poor weakness! but, for all her strife,

       She could as soon have crush’d away the life From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause,

       She said with trembling chance: “Is this the cause?

       This all? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas!

       That one who through this middle earth should pass

       Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave

       His name upon the harp-string, should achieve

       No higher bard than simple maidenhood,

       Singing alone, and fearfully,–how the blood

       Left his young cheek; and how he used to stray

       He knew not where; and how he would say, nay, If any said ’twas love: and yet ’twas love;

       What could it be but love? How a ring-dove

       Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path;

       And how he died: and then, that love doth scathe,

       The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses;

       And then the ballad of his sad life closes

       With sighs, and an alas!–Endymion!

       Be rather in the trumpet’s mouth,–anon

       Among the winds at large–that all may hearken!

       Although, before the crystal heavens darken, I watch and dote upon the silver lakes

       Pictur’d in western cloudiness, that takes

       The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands,

       Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands

       With horses prancing o’er them, palaces

       And towers of amethyst,–would I so tease

       My pleasant days, because I could not mount

       Into those regions? The Morphean fount

       Of that fine element that visions, dreams,

       And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams Into its airy channels with so subtle,

       So thin a breathing, not the spider’s shuttle,

       Circled a million times within the space

       Of a swallow’s nest-door, could delay a trace,

       A tinting of its quality: how light

       Must dreams themselves be; seeing they’re more slight

       Than the mere nothing that engenders them!

       Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem

       Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?

       Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick For nothing but a dream?” Hereat the youth

       Look’d up: a conflicting of shame and ruth

       Was in his plaited brow: yet, his eyelids

       Widened a little, as when Zephyr bids

       A little breeze to creep between the fans

       Of careless butterflies: amid his pains

       He seem’d to taste a drop of manna-dew,

       Full palatable; and a colour grew

       Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake.

      “Peona! ever have I long’d to slake My thirst for the world’s praises: nothing base,

       No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace

       The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar’d–

       Though now ’tis tatter’d; leaving my bark bar’d

       And sullenly drifting: yet my higher hope

       Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope,

       To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks.

       Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks

       Our ready minds to fellowship divine,

       A fellowship with essence; till we shine, Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold

       The clear religion of heaven! Fold

       A rose leaf round thy finger’s taperness,

       And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress

       Of music’s kiss impregnates the free winds,

       And with a sympathetic touch unbinds

       Eolian magic from their lucid wombs:

       Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;

       Old ditties sigh above their father’s grave;

       Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave Round every spot were trod Apollo’s foot;

       Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,

       Where long ago a giant battle was;

       And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass

       In every place where infant Orpheus slept.

       Feel we these things?–that moment have we stept

       Into a sort of oneness, and our state

       Is like a floating spirit’s. But there are

       Richer entanglements, enthralments far

       More self-destroying, leading, by degrees, To the chief intensity: the crown of these

       Is made of love and friendship,


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