XLVIII

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought
That ages, empires, and religions, there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend, they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

XLIX

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Go thou to Rome, at once the paradise,'

The grave, the city, and the wilderness;

And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,

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And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress

The bones of Desolation's nakedness

Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access

Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead

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A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;

L

And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time

Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;

And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand

445

Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,

A field is spread, on which a newer band

Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.

450

LI

Here pause these graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,

Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.

What Adonais is, why fear we to become?

LII

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments.

Die,

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled!- Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

LIII

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
A light is past from the revolving year,

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And man, and woman; and what still is dear

Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.

The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near: 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,

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No more let Life divide what Death can join together.

LIV

That light whose smile kindles the Universe,
That beauty in which all things work and move,
That benediction which the eclipsing curse

Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
Which through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

LV

The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven,
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given ;
The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven !
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar;

Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

A LAMENT

O WORLD! O life! O time!

On whose last steps I climb,

Trembling at that where I had stood before;

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When will return the glory of your prime?

No more-oh, never more!

Out of the day and night

A joy has taken flight;

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more - oh, never more!

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10

JOHN KEATS

1795-1821

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

I

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 numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

II

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

5

ΙΟ

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

15

Full of the true, the blissful 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:

III

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

20

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, 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.

IV

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

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Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night,

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And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered 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.

V

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorne, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

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