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From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet

From swinged censer teeming ;

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat

Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

In some untrodden region of my mind,

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Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant

pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; 55 And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,

The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight

That shadowy thought can win,

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,

To let the warm Love in!

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FANCY.

EVER let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;

Then let winged Fancy wander

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Through the thought still spread beyond her:

Open wide the mind's cage-door,

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;

ΙΟ

15

Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion contains a very interesting copy of these verses, dated 1818, from which an extract was given in The Athenæum of the 15th of September 1877. The variations noted below show Keats's usual good judgment in regard to change and exclusion.

(6) In the manuscript this line is

Towards heaven still spread beyond her.

(15-16) In the manuscript, we read kissing in place of tasting, and in an ingle for by the ingle.

When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.

Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overaw'd,

Fancy, high-commission'd:-send her!
She has vassals to attend her :
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray ;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:

She will mix these pleasures up

Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it :-thou shalt hear

Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reaped corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn :

And, in the same moment-hark!

'Tis the early April lark,

Or the rooks, with busy caw,

(28) She'll have, in the manuscript.

(29) The manuscript reads

She will bring thee spite of frost...

(43-5) In the manuscript these lines stand thus:

And in the same moment hark

To the early April lark

And the rooks with busy caw...

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Foraging for sticks and straw.

Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plum'd lillies, and the first

Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;

Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;

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(50) In the manuscript we read Hedge-row primrose.
(54) In the manuscript we read same soft shower.
(57-8) In the manuscript, thus-

And the snake all winter-shrank

Cast its skin on sunny bank...

(66) There is an additional couplet after this line in the manuscript

For the same sleek-throated mouse

To store up in its winter house.

(67-8) Instead of this couplet the manuscript has the following four lines:

Where's the cheek that doth not fade,
Too much gaz'd at? Where's the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, winged Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-ey'd as Ceres' daughter,
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side

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White as Hebe's, when her zone

Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
While she held the goblet sweet,
And Jove grew languid.-Break the mesh

O sweet fancy let her loose!
Every sweet is spoilt by use

Every pleasure every joy

Not a mistress but doth cloy...

(73) Does in the manuscript.

(76) The manuscript reads too oft and oft.

(81)

... Proserpin gathering flowers,

Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis

Was gathered-which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world—

Paradise Lost, Book IV, lines 269-72.

(89-91) Instead of these three lines the manuscript has the follow

ing seventeen :

And Jove grew languid. Mistress fair!

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