THE

KEATS

HE young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;

The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told! The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold To the red rising moon, and loud and deep The nightingale is singing from the steep; It is midsummer, but the air is cold; Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold

A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep. Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,

On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name

Was writ in water."

Of his sweet singing?

And was this the meed

Rather let me write :

"The smoking flax before it burst to flame

Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised

reed."

THE GALAXY

ORRENT of light and river of the air,

TORE

Along whose bed the glimmering stars are

seen

Like gold and silver sands in some ravine Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!

The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where
His patron saint descended in the sheen
Of his celestial armor, on serene

And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair. Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable

Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies Where'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod; But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable, The star-dust, that is whirled aloft and flies From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.

THE SOUND OF THE SEA

THE

HE sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and
wide

I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied

As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,

The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

A SUMMER DAY BY THE SEA

HE sun is set; and in his latest beams

THE

Yon little cloud of ashen gray and gold, Slowly upon the amber air unrolled,

The falling mantle of the Prophet seems. From the dim headlands many a lighthouse gleams, The street-lamps of the ocean; and behold, O'erhead the banners of the night unfold; The day hath passed into the land of dreams. O summer day beside the joyous sea!

O summer day so wonderful and white,
So full of gladness and so full of pain!
Forever and forever shalt thou be

To some the gravestone of a dead delight,
To some the landmark of a new domain.

I

THE TIDES

SAW the long line of the vacant shore, The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand, And the brown rocks left bare on every hand, As if the ebbing tide would flow no more. Then heard I, more distinctly than before, The ocean breathe and its great breast expand, And hurrying came on the defenceless land The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar. All thought and feeling and desire, I said,

Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of song Have ebbed from me forever! Suddenly o'er

me

They swept again from their deep ocean bed,
And in a tumult of delight, and strong

As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me.