XIV. ON FAME. "You cannot eat your cake and have it too."-Proverb. How fever'd is the man, who cannot look Upon his mortal days with temperate blood, Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book, And robs his fair name of its maidenhood; It is as if the rose should pluck herself, Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom, As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf, Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom: But the rose leaves herself upon the brier, For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed, And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire, Why then should man, teasing the world for grace, 1819. XV. Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell : To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain. And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds ; Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, But Death intenser-Death is Life's high meed. XVI. ON A DREAM.* As Hermes once took to his feathers light, So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft And seeing it asleep, so fled away, Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day, Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw 1819. p. 179 XVII. IF by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd, Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness; To fit the naked foot of poesy; Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress 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. 1819. * (See page 179.) XVIII. THE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! 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, Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave 1819 XIX. I CRY your mercy-pity-love-aye, love! One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, Withhold no atom's atom, or I die, Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall, XX. KEATS'S LAST SONNET. BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art- Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, Of snow upon the mountains and the moorsNo-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, * Another reading : Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death. |