THE HUMAN SEASONS.

OUR Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man :

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span :

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness-to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter, too, of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

JOHN KEATS.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

HE poetry of earth is never dead :

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead : This is the grasshopper's-he takes the lead

In summer luxury,-he has never done

With his delights, for when tired out with fun,

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

JOHN KEATS.

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ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S

HOMER.

UCH have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne :

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold :
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

JOHN KEATS.

ADDRESSED TO HAYDON.

|REAT spirits now on earth are sojourning : He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,

Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,

The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake :
And lo whose steadfastness would never take

A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;

These, these will give the world another heart
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum

Of mighty workings?—

Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.

JOHN KEATS.

And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair

And gentle tale of love and languishment ?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.