All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them!
Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

37

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below. The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

49

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh, hear! 42

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have
striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

45

48

51

54

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd One too like thee: tameless and swift, and

proud.

56

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

59

62

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

1820.

65

68

Percy Bysshe Shelley,

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 thine 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.

30

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt
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

20

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.

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:

30

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,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding

mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

40

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 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.

50

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 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 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 fam'd 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?

70

Fled is that music:-Do I wake or sleep? 80

1819.

ODE

John Keats.

BARDS of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?

Yes, and those of heaven commune