Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, But votive tears and symbol flowers.

Oh, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.

The world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!

Final Chorus from Hellas.

TO-MORROW

WHERE art thou, beloved To-morrow?
When young and old and strong and
weak,
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,
Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,-
In thy place-ah! well-a-day!
We find the thing we fled-To-day.

1821. 1824.

TO

ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it.

One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother, And pity from thee more dear Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above

And the Heavens reject not, The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow? 1821. 1824.

WITH A GUITAR, TO JANE

ARIEL to Miranda.-Take
This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee,
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain;
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who,

From life to life, must still pursue
Your happiness ;-for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own.
From Prospero's enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples, he
Lit you o'er the trackless sea,
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent Moon,
In her interlunar swoon,
Is not sadder in her cell
Than deserted Ariel.
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen star of birth,
Ariel guides you o'er the sea
Of life from your nativity.
Many changes have been run,
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps, and served
your will;

Now, in humbler, happier lot,
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned, for some fault of his,
In a body like a grave ;—
From you he only dares to crave,
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.

The artist who this idol wrought,
To echo all harmonious thought,
Felled a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
And some of Spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree,-
Oh that such our death may be !-
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again:
From which, beneath Heaven's fairest

star,

The artist wrought this loved Guitar,
And taught it justly to reply,
To all who question skilfully,
In language gentle as thine own ;
Whispering in enamored tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
For it had learnt all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voicéd fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,

The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound,
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way-
All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it ;
't talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
s heard than has been felt before,
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day:
But sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest, holiest tone
For our belovéd Jane alone.

1822. 1832-1833.

When hearts have once mingled
Love first leaves the well-built nest,
The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest

The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high:
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home

Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold winds come. 1822. 1824.

SONG FROM CHARLES THE FIRST A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her love

Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound.
1822. 1824.

A DIRGE

ROUGH wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,
Wail, for the world's wrong!

1822. 1824.

IMITATION OF SPENSER1

Now Morning from her orient chamber

came,

And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill; Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,

Silv'ring the untainted gushes of its rill; Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill,

And after parting beds of simple flowers, By many streams a little lake did fill, Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,

And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.

There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright

Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below; Whose silken fins, and golden scales light Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow:

There saw the swan his neck of arched snow, And oar'd himself along with majesty; Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show Beneath the waves like Afric's ebony, And on his back a fay reclined voluptuously.

Ah! could I tell the wonders of an isle That in that fairest lake had placed been,

I could e'en Dido of her grief beguile; Or rob from aged Lear his bitter teen : For sure so fair a place was never seen, Of all that ever charm'd romantic eye:

"It was the Faerie Queene that awakened his genius. In Spenser's fairy-land he was enchanted, breathed in a new world, and became another being; till, enamored of the stanza, he attempted to imitate it, and succeeded. This, his earliest attempt, the Imitation of Spenser', is in his first volume of poems." (Quoted by Colvin from the Houghton MSS.)

TO SOLITUDE

O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,

Nature's observatory-whence the dell, Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd where the deer's swift leap

Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.

But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee, Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,

Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd,

Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. 1815. May 5, 1816.2

1 The dates for Keats' poems are made up from Sidney Colvin's careful study of the order of composition of the poems, in his Life of Keats, and from H. Buxton Forman's excellent notes in his edition of Keats' Works.

In Leigh Hunt's Examiner. Probably the first lines of Keats ever printed.