Page images
PDF
EPUB

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;

The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine.

In one another's being mingle —
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

[ocr errors]

10

15

5

JOHN KEATS

1795-1821

KEATS was born of humble parentage in London. After a few years' schooling he was apprenticed to a surgeon. He worked for a while in the hospitals of London, but his sensitive nature recoiled from such scenes. Moreover, his poetic faculties were awakened by Spenser's Faerie Queene, which has quickened the imagination and fired the ambition of so many poets. He now

set to work in earnest to write verse. His education had been scant, but he supplemented it by wide reading, especially in translations of the Greek and Roman classics. His first long poem, Endymion, was harshly criticised by the reviewers; but he again worked with greater determination. When Hyperion appeared it was recognized that a new poet of brilliant powers had arisen. These two works, together with the shorter poems, The Eve of St. Agnes, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, and the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, gave promise of far greater things. But this promise was not fulfilled. Keats died of consumption at Rome in the twenty-sixth year of

his age.

Keats's poetry shows a profound love of beauty in all its forms, an imagination of very high order, a gift for melodious expression, and an intense love for everything that appeals to the senses. He loved shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound." On the other hand, the political, social, and religious controversies of the day, with all their clash of opinion, seem to have passed over his head. If he heard them, he did not heed. His whole soul was filled with the old Greek love of beauty for beauty's sake. His range therefore is, according to modern standards, somewhat narrow, but within this range he has a place that is high and

⚫ secure.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

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:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—
That thou, light-wingéd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

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

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvéd 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:

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 gray 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.

5

10

15

20

25

30

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,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,

35

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 40

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalméd 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 cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a muséd rime, To take into the air my quiet breath;

45

50

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

55

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

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

60

Thou wast 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

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

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.

65

70

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

75

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?

80

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen:
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne :
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

5

« PreviousContinue »