ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, O for a draught of vintage, that hath been. Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, Darkling I listen; and, for many a time, I have been half in love with easeful Death, Now more than ever seems it rich to die, Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Was it a vision, or a waking dream? ODE ON A GRECIAN URN. THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness! A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape? Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone : Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal-yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed For ever piping songs for ever new ; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever panting and for ever young; Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, What little town by river or sea-shore, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. SONNETS. To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye That falls through the clear ether silently. HAPPY is England! I could be content To see no other verdure than its own; Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment And half forget what world or worldling meant. Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging: Yet do I often warmly burn to see Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters. STANZAS. In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them, With a sleety whistle through them; Nor frozen thawings glue them In a drear-nighted December, But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time. Ah! would 'twere so with many |