XVI.

ON A DREAM. *

1819.

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,

When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept, So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright,

So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes,
And seeing it asleep, so fled away,

Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day,
But to that second circle of sad Hell,

Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows,―pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

XVII.

1819.

IF by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd,

And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet

Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
poesy;

To fit the naked foot of

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd
By ear industrious, and attention meet;

Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be

Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;

So, if we may not let the Muse be free,

She will be bound with garlands of her own.

XVIII.

1819.

THE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!

Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer

breast,

Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,

Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous

waist!

Faded the flower and all its budded charms,

Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise-
Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve,

When the dusk holiday-or holinight

Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I've read love's missal through to-day,
He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

XIX.

1819.

I CRY your mercy-pity-love!-aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalises not,

One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask'd, and being seen-without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole,-all-all-be mine!

That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine, That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, Yourself your soul-in pity give me all,

Withhold no atom's atom or I die,

Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,

Life's purposes, the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

I,72.

XX.

KEATS'S LAST SONNET.

BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.*

* Another reading :

Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death.

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.