1820.

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-eyed as Ceres' daughter
Ere the god of torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
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
Of the Fancy's silken leash;

Quickly break her prison-string,

And such joys as these she 'll bring.-
Let the winged Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home.

John Keats

90

TO A WATERFOWL

WHITHER, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps

of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

4

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-
The desert and illimitable air-

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

8

12

16

20

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest..

Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

24

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain

flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

1818.

28

32

William Cullen Bryant.

AUTUMN

I SAW old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

Where are the songs of Summer?-With the

sun,

Oping the dusky eyelids of the south,

8

Till shade and silence waken up as one,
And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth.
Where are the merry birds?-Away, away,
On panting wings through the inclement skies,
Lest owls should prey

Undazzled at noon-day,

And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes., 17

Where are the blooms of Summer?-In the west, Blushing their last to the last sunny hours, When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest Like tearful Proserpine, snatch'd from her

flow'rs

To a most gloomy breast.

Where is the pride of Summer,-the green

prime,

The many, many leaves all twinkling?-Three
On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime
Trembling, and one upon the old oak-tree!
Where is the Dryad's immortality?--
Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,
Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through
In the smooth holly's green eternity.

The squirrel gloats on his accomplish'd hoard, The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain,

And honey bees have stored

The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; The swallows all have wing'd across the main; But here the Autumn melancholy dwells,

And sighs her tearful spells

30

Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.

Alone, alone,

Upon a mossy stone,

She sits and reckons up the dead and gone,
With the last leaves for a love-rosary;
Whilst all the wither'd world looks drearily,
Like a dim picture of the drownèd past
In the hush'd mind's mysterious far-away,
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last
Into that distance, gray upon the gray.

O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded
Under the languid downfall of her hair;
She wears a coronal of flowers faded
Upon her forehead, and a face of care;—
There is enough of wither'd everywhere
To make her bower,-and enough of gloom;
There is enough of sadness to invite,

If only for the rose that died, whose doom
Is Beauty's, she that with the living bloom
Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light:
There is enough of sorrowing, and quite
Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,—
Enough of chilly droppings for her bowl;
Enough of fear and shadowy despair,
To frame her cloudy prison for the soul!

1823.

47

Thomas Hood.