For, poor soul! she has a husband and young orphans, as I knew;

Well, Ma'am, you won't believe it, but it's Gospel fact and true,

But these words is all she whispered'Why, where is the powder blew ?""

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

BY JOHN KEATS.

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-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows number

less,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

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 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 grey

hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectrethin, 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,

VOL. III.

F

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,

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, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the

boughs,

But, in embalmëd darkness, guess each

sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows