Ode to a Nightingale.

I.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk;
'T is not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

II.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

III.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

IV.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Clustered around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

V.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunts of flies on summer eves.

VI.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstacy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become sod.

VII.

Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

VIII.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 't is buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:-do I wake or sleep?

Early Morning.

SEE, the day begins to break,
And the light shoots like a streak
Of subtle fire; the wind blows cold,
While the morning doth unfold;
Now the birds begin to rouse,
And the squirrel from the boughs
Leaps, to get him nuts and fruit;
The early lark, that erst was mute,
Carols to the rising day

Many a note and many a lay.

KEATS.

FLETCHER.

Flowers.

SPAKE full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden Stars that in earth's firmament do shine.

Stars they are, wherein we read our history,
As astrologers and seers of eld;

Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery,
Like the burning stars, which they beheld.

Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, God hath written in those stars above; But not less in the bright flowerets under us Stands the revelation of his love.

Bright and glorious is that revelation,
Written all over this great world of ours:
Making evident our own creation,

In these stars of earth-these golden flowers.

And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing,

Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part

Of the self-same universal being,

Which is throbbing in his brain and heart.

Gorgeous flowerets in the sun-light shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay;