The Complete Works of John Keats: Poems, Plays & Personal Letters. John Keats
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And melt the soul to pity and to love.
But when Thou joinest with the Nine,
And all the powers of song combine,
We listen here on earth:
The dying tones that fill the air,
And charm the ear of evening fair,
From thee, great God of Bards, receive their heavenly birth.
Ode to Fanny
I
Physician Nature! let my spirit blood!
O ease my heart of verse and let me rest;
Throw me upon thy Tripod, till the flood
Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.
A theme! a theme! great nature! give a theme;
Let me begin my dream.
I come - I see thee, as thou standest there,
Beckon me out into the wintry air.
II
Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears,
And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries. -
Tonight, if I may guess, thy beauty wears
A smile of such delight,
As brilliant and as bright.
As when with ravished, aching, vassal eyes,
Lost in soft amaze,
I gaze, I gaze!
III
Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast?
What stare outfaces now my silver moon!
Ah! keep that hand unravished at the least;
Let, let, the amorous burn -
But, pr’ythee, do not turn
The current of your heart from me so soon
O! save, in charity,
The quickest pulse for me.
IV
Save it for me, sweet love! though music breathe
Voluptuous visions into the warm air;
Though swimming through the dance’s dangerous wreath,
Be like an April day,
Smiling and cold and gay,
A temperate lily, temperate as fair;
Then, Heaven! there will be
A warmer June for me.
V
Why, this - you’ll say, my Fanny! is not true
Put your soft hand upon your snowy side,
Where the heart beats: confess - ’tis nothing new -
Must not a woman be
A feather on the sea,
Sway’d to and fro by every wind and tide?
Of as uncertain speed
As blow-ball from the mead?
VI
I know it - and to know it is despair
To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny!
Whose heart goes fluttering for you everywhere,
Nor, when away you roam,
Dare keep its wretched home,
Love, love alone, his pains severe and many:
Then, loveliest! keep me free,
From torturing jealousy.
VII
Ah! if you prize my subdued soul above
The poor, the fading, brief, pride of an hour;
Let none profane my Holy See of love,
Or with a rude hand break
The sacramental cake:
Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;
If not - may my eyes close,
Love! on their lost repose.
Ode on Indolence
I
They toil not, neither do they spin.
One mom before me were three figures seen,
With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp’d serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
They pass’d, like figures on a marble urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the um once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.
II
How is it, Shadows! that I knew ye not?
How came ye muffled in so hush a mask?
Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower:
O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
Unhaunted quite of all but - nothingness?
III
A third time pass’d they by, and, passing, tum’d
Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d
And ach’d for wings because I knew the three;
The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name;
The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
And ever watchful with fatigued eye;
The last, whom I love more, the more of blame
Is heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek, -
I knew to be my demon’ Poesy.
IV
They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
O folly! What is love! and where is it?
And for that poor Ambition! it springs
From a man’s little heart’s short fever-fit;
For Poesy! - no, - she has not a joy, -
At least for me, - so sweet as drowsy noons,
And evenings steep’d in honied indolence;
O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,
That I may never know how change the moons,
Or hear the voice of busy commonsense!
V
And once more came they by; - alas! wherefore?
My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams;