Betwixt Hell torment and impassion'd clay Must I burn through; once more assay The bitter sweet of this Shakespearian fruit. Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme, But when I am consumed with the Fire, Jan. 1818. IV. FROM RONSARD. FRAGMENT OF A SONNET. ATURE withheld Cassandra in the skies For more adornment, a full thousand years; She took their cream of Beauty, fairest dies, And shaped and tinted her above all peers: Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings, And underneath their shadow fill'd her eyes With such a richness that the cloudy Kings Of high Olympus utter'd slavish sighs. When from the Heavens I saw her first descend, My heart took fire, and only burning painsThey were my pleasures-they my Life's sad end; Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins. V. ANSWER TO A SONNET BY J. H. B "Dark eyes are dearer far Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell." LUE! 'Tis the life of heaven,—the domain Of Cynthia,—the wide palace of the sun,— The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey, and dun. Blue! 'Tis the life of waters-ocean And all its vassal streams: pools numberless May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can Subside, if not to dark-blue nativeness. Blue! gentle cousin of the forest-green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowersForget-me-not,- the blue-bell,—and, that queen Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate! Feb. 1818. S VI. TO HOMER. TANDING aloof in giant ignorance, Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, As one who sits ashore and longs perchance To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. So thou wast blind!-but then the veil was rent; For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spermy tent, And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive; Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light, And precipices show untrodden green; There is a budding morrow in midnight; There is a triple sight in blindness keen; Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel, To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell. 1818. O VII. THAT a week could be an age, and we Felt parting and warm meeting every week, Then one poor year a thousand years would be, The flush of welcome ever on the cheek: So could we live long life in little space, So time itself would be annihilate, So a day's journey in oblivious haze To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate. O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind! To land each' Tuesday from the rich Levant! In little time a host of joys to bind, And keep our souls in one eternal pant! This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught Me how to harbour such a happy thought. VIII. . ΤΟ IME'S sea hath been five years at its slow ebb; Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand; Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web, And snared by the ungloving of thine hand. And yet I never look on midnight sky, But I behold thine eyes' well memoried light; I cannot look upon the rose's dye, But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight; I cannot look on any budding flower, But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips, And harkening for a love-sound, doth devour Its sweets in the wrong sense:-Thou dost eclipse Every delight with sweet remembering, And grief unto my darling joys dost bring. O IX. TO SLEEP. SOFT embalmer of the still midnight! Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine; O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close, A lady whom he saw for some few moments at Vauxhall. Around my bed its lulling charities; Then save me, or the passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes; Save me from curious conscience, that still lords Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul.' 1819. X. ON FAME. AME, like a wayward girl, will still be coy To those who woo her with too slavish knees, But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy, And dotes the more upon a heart at ease; The rough draft of this sonnet is to be seen in the flyleaf of the "Paradise Lost," that contains Keats's Notes on Milton-published in the American magazine, "The Dial." It is as follows: "O soft embalmer of the still midnight, O soothest Sleep, if so it please thee, close My willing eyes in midst of this thine hymn, Or wait the amen ere thy poppy throws Its sweet dark dews o'er every pulse and limb, The rest is illegible and unfinished. The version in Keats's own copy of "Endymion" only differs from the VOL. III, 36 text in the substitution, in the eighth line, of the epithet 'dewy' for 'lulling.' |