The Complete Works: Poetry, Plays, Letters and Extensive Biographies - John Keats

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song. Away! Avaunt!

      O ’twas a cruel thing.”–”Now thou dost taunt

      So softly, Arethusa, that I think

      If thou wast playing on my shady brink,

      Thou wouldst bathe once again. Innocent maid!

      Stifle thine heart no more:–nor be afraid

      Of angry powers: there are deities

      Will shade us with their wings. Those fitful sighs

      ’Tis almost death to hear: O let me pour

      A dewy balm upon them!–fear no more,

      Sweet Arethusa! Dian’s self must feel

      Sometimes these very pangs. Dear maiden, steal

      Blushing into my soul, and let us fly

      These dreary caverns for the open sky.

      I will delight thee all my winding course,

      From the green sea up to my hidden source

      About Arcadian forests; and will shew

      The channels where my coolest waters flow

      Through mossy rocks; where, ‘mid exuberant green,

      I roam in pleasant darkness, more unseen

      Than Saturn in his exile; where I brim

      Round flowery islands, and take thence a skim

      Of mealy sweets, which myriads of bees

      Buzz from their honied wings: and thou shouldst please

      Thyself to choose the richest, where we might

      Be incense-pillow’d every summer night.

      Doff all sad fears, thou white deliciousness,

      And let us be thus comforted; unless

      Thou couldst rejoice to see my hopeless stream

      Hurry distracted from Sol’s temperate beam,

      And pour to death along some hungry sands.”–

      “What can I do, Alpheus? Dian stands

      Severe before me: persecuting fate!

      Unhappy Arethusa! thou wast late

      A huntress free in”–At this, sudden fell

      Those two sad streams adown a fearful dell.

      The Latmian listen’d, but he heard no more,

      Save echo, faint repeating o’er and o’er

      The name of Arethusa. On the verge

      Of that dark gulph he wept, and said: “I urge

      Thee, gentle Goddess of my pilgrimage,

      By our eternal hopes, to soothe, to assuage,

      If thou art powerful, these lovers pains;

      And make them happy in some happy plains.

      He turn’d–there was a whelming sound–he stept,

      There was a cooler light; and so he kept

      Towards it by a sandy path, and lo!

      More suddenly than doth a moment go,

      The visions of the earth were gone and fled–

      He saw the giant sea above his head.

      Endymion Book III

      There are who lord it o’er their fellow-men

      With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen

      Their baaing vanities, to browse away

      The comfortable green and juicy hay

      From human pastures; or, O torturing fact!

      Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack’d

      Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe

      Our gold and ripe-ear’d hopes. With not one tinge

      Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight

      Able to face an owl’s, they still are dight

      By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests,

      And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts,

      Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount

      To their spirit’s perch, their being’s high account,

      Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones–

      Amid the fierce intoxicating tones

      Of trumpets, shoutings, and belabour’d drums,

      And sudden cannon. All! how all this hums,

      In wakeful ears, like uproar past and gone–

      Like thunder clouds that spake to Babylon,

      And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks.–

      Are then regalities all gilded masks?

      No, there are throned seats unscalable

      But by a patient wing, a constant spell,

      Or by ethereal things that, unconfin’d,

      Can make a ladder of the eternal wind,

      And poise about in cloudy thunder-tents

      To watch the abysm-birth of elements.

      Aye, ‘bove the withering of old-lipp’d Fate

      A thousand Powers keep religious state,

      In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne;

      And, silent as a consecrated urn,

      Hold sphery sessions for a season due.

      Yet few of these far majesties, ah, few!

      Have bared their operations to this globe–

      Few, who with gorgeous pageantry enrobe

      Our piece of heaven–whose benevolence

      Shakes hand with our own Ceres; every sense

      Filling with spiritual sweets to plenitude,

      As bees gorge full their cells. And, by the feud

      ‘Twixt Nothing and Creation, I here swear,

      Eterne Apollo! that thy Sister fair

      Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest.

      When thy gold breath is misting in the west,

      She unobserved steals unto her throne,

      And there she sits most meek and most alone;

      As if she had not pomp subservient;

      As if thine eye, high Poet! was not bent

      Towards her with the Muses in thine heart;

      As if the ministring stars kept not apart,

      Waiting for silver-footed messages.

      O Moon! the oldest shades ‘mong oldest trees

      Feel palpitations when thou lookest in:

      O Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din

      The while they feel thine airy fellowship.

      Thou dost bless every where, with silver lip

      Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine,

      Couched in thy brightness, dream of fields divine:

      Innumerable mountains rise, and rise,

      Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes;

      And yet thy benediction passeth not

      One obscure hiding-place, one little spot

      Where pleasure may be sent: the nested wren

      Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken,

      And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf

      Takes glimpses of thee; thou art a relief

      To

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