In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:

'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!

O latest born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!

Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,

Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers;

Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan

Upon the midnight hours;

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming;

No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,

Under date the 15th of April [1819] Keats writes to George and his wife, of this Ode, "The following poem, the last I have written, is the first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains; I have, for the most part, dashed off my lines in a hurry; this one I have done leisurely; I think it reads the more richly for it, and it will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time of Apuleius the Platonist, who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour, and perhaps never thought of in the old religion: I am more orthodox than to let a heathen goddess be so neglected." This is an instance in which Keats seems to have gone beyond Lemprière's Classical Dictionary for his information; but I presume we may not unsafely take the portraiture of Cupid and Psyche in the first stanza as an adapted reminiscence of his other favourite text book, Spence's Polymetis, in Plate VI of which the well known kissing Cupid and Psyche are admirably engraved from the statue at Florence.

When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir'd

From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan

Upon the midnight hours;

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;

40

45

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

59

50

In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;

55

And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,

The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,

60

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,

Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:

Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion contains a very interesting copy of these verses, dated 1818, from which an extract was given in The Athenæum of the 15th

Through the thought still spread beyond her:

Open wide the mind's cage-door,

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.

Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overaw'd,

Fancy, high-commission'd: - send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, altogether,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up

Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it: — thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear;

40

of September 1877. The variations noted below show Keats's usual good judgment in regard to change and exclusion.

(6) In the manuscript this line is —

Towards heaven still spread beyond her.

(15-16) In the manuscript, we read kissing in place of tasting, and in an ingle for

by the ingle.

(28) She'll have, in the manuscript.

(29) The manuscript reads —

She will bring thee spite of frost...

(43-5) In the manuscript these lines stand thus:

And in the same moment hark

To the early April lark

And the rooks with busy caw...

(50) In the manuscript we read Hedge-row primrose.
(54) In the manuscript we read same soft shower.
(57-8) In the manuscript, thus -

And the snake all winter-shrank
Cast its skin on sunny bank...

(66) There is an additional couplet after this line in the manuscript –

For the same sleek-throated mouse

To store up in its winter house.

(67-8) Instead of this couplet the manuscript has the following four lines:

O sweet fancy let her loose!
Every sweet is spoilt by use
Every pleasure every joy
Not a mistress but doth cloy...

55

60

65

Where's the cheek that doth not fade,
Too much gaz'd at? Where's the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, winged Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-ey'd as Ceres' daughter,

Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe's, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,

While she held the goblet sweet,

And Jove grew languid. · · Break the mesh
Of the Fancy's silken leash;

(73) Does in the manuscript.

(76) The manuscript reads too oft and oft.

(81)

Proserpin gathering flowers,

Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis

Was gathered-which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world-

Paradise Lost, Book IV, lines 269-72.

70

75

80

85

90

(89-91) Instead of these three lines the manuscript has the following seventeen:

And Jove grew languid. Mistress fair!

Thou shalt have that tressed hair
Adonis tangled all for spite
And the mouth he would not kiss
And the treasure he would miss ;
And the hand he would not press
And the warmth he would distress
O the ravishment - the bliss-
Fancy has her there she is!
Never fulsome-ever new

There she steps! and tell me who

Has a mistress so divine?

Be the palate ne'er so fine

She cannot sicken. Break the mesh

Of the Fancy's silken leash

Where she's tether'd to the heart

Quick break her prison string...