The Complete Works: Poetry, Plays, Letters and Extensive Biographies. John Keats
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in another picture, nymphs are wiping
Cherishingly Diana’s timorous limbs; —
A fold of lawny mantle dabbling swims
At the bath’s edge, and keeps a gentle motion
With the subsiding crystal: as when ocean
Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothiness o’er
Its rocky marge, and balances once more
The patient weeds; that now unshent by foam
Feel all about their undulating home.
Sappho’s meek head was there half smiling down
At nothing; just as though the earnest frown
Of over thinking had that moment gone
From off her brow, and left her all alone.
Great Alfred’s too, with anxious, pitying eyes,
As if he always listened to the sighs
Of the goaded world; and Kosciusko’s worn
By horrid suffrance – mightily forlorn.
Petrarch, outstepping from the shady green,
Starts at the sight of Laura; nor can wean
His eyes from her sweet face. Most happy they!
For over them was seen a free display
Of outspread wings, and from between them shone
The face of Poesy: from off her throne
She overlook’d things that I scarce could tell.
The very sense of where I was might well
Keep Sleep aloof: but more than that there came
Thought after thought to nourish up the flame
Within my breast; so that the morning light
Surprised me even from a sleepless night;
And up I rose refresh’d, and glad, and gay,
Resolving to begin that very day
These lines; and howsoever they be done,
I leave them as a father does his son.
To G. A. W
Nymph of the downward smile, and sidelong glance,
In what diviner moments of the day
Art thou most lovely? When gone far astray
Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance?
Or when serenely wand’ring in a trance
Of sober thought? Or when starting away,
With careless robe, to meet the morning ray,
Thou spar’st the flowers in thy mazy dance?
Haply ’tis when thy ruby lips part sweetly,
And so remain, because thou listenest:
But thou to please wert nurtured so completely
That I can never tell what mood is best.
I shall as soon pronounce which grace more neatly
Trips it before Apollo than the rest.
To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses
As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the sky-lark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert; – when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields:
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown muskrose; ’twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,
I thought the garden-rose it far excell’d:
But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me
My sense with their deliciousness was spell’d:
Soft voices had they, that with tender plea
Whisper’d of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquell’d.
An Extempore
From a Letter to George Keats and His Wife
When they were come into the Faery’s Court
They rang – no one at home – all gone to sport
And dance and kiss and love as faeries do
For Fa[e]ries be as humans, lovers true -
Amid the woods they were, so lone and wild,
Where even the Robin feels himself exil’d
And where the very brooks as if afraid
Hurry along to some less magic shade.
‘No one at home!’ the fretful princess cried
‘And all for nothing such a dre[a]ry ride,
And all for nothing my new diamond cross,
No one to see my Persian feathers toss,
No one to see my Ape, my Dwarf, my Fool,
Or how I pace my Otaheitan mule.
Ape, Dwarf and Fool, why stand you gaping there?
Burst the door open, quick – or I declare
I’ll switch you soundly and in pieces tear.’
The dwarf began to tremble and the ape
Star’d at the fool, the fool was all agape,
The Princess grasp’d her switch, but just in time
The dwarf with piteous face began to rhyme.
‘O mighty Princess did you ne’er hear tell
What your poor servants know but too too well?
Know you the three great crimes in faery land?
The first, alas! poor Dwarf, I understand -
I made a whipstock of a faery’s wand -
The next is snoring in their company -
The next, the last, the direst of the three
Is making free when they are not at home.
I was a Prince – a baby prince – my doom
You see, I made a whipstock of a wand -
My top has henceforth slept in faery land.
He was a Prince, the Fool, a grown up Prince,
But he has never been a King’s son since
He fell a-snoring at a faery Ball -
Your poor Ape was a prince and he, poor thing,
Picklock’d a faery’s boudour – now no king,
But ape – so pray your highness stay awhile;
’Tis sooth indeed, we know it to our sorrow -
Persist and you may be an ape tomorrow -
While the Dwarf spake the Princess all for spite
Peal’d [sic] the brown hazel twig to lily white,
Clench’d her small teeth, and held her lips apart,
Try’d to look unconcem’d with beating heart.
They saw her highness had made up her mind
And quaver’d like the reeds before the wind,
And they had had it, but, O happy chance!
The Ape for very fear began to dance
And