Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale, And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, It was felt like an odour within the sense; And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air The soul of her beauty and love lay bare; And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky; And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, And on the stream whose inconstant bosom Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, And starry river-buds glimmered by, And around them the soft stream did glide and dance And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells And flow'rets which, drooping as day drooped too, And from this undefilèd Paradise The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet When heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them, Shone smiling to heaven, and every one For each one was interpenetrated With the light and the odour its neighbour shed, But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit 1 For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full, The light winds which, from unsustaining wings, The beams which dart from many a star The plumèd insects swift and free, The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie The quivering vapours of dim noontide, Each and all like ministering angels were And when evening descended from heaven above, And the earth was all rest, and the air was all love, And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep— And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned In an ocean of dreams without a sound; Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress The light sand which paves it—consciousness ; (Only overhead the sweet nightingale Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, And snatches of its Elysian chant Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant). The Sensitive Plant was the earliest THE POET'S DREAM. ON a Poet's lips I slept, Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept; Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, But feeds on the aërial kisses Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses. The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see what things they be― But from these create he can Forms more real than living Man, Nurslings of Immortality! THE John Keats. EVE OF ST. AGNES.1 I. T. AGNES' Eve-Ah! bitter chill it was: ST The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass, Numb were the beadsman's fingers while he told Seemed taking flight for heaven without a death Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. II. His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man, 1 St. Agnes was a Roman virgin, who suffered martyrdom in the reign of Dioclesian. Her parents, a few days after her decease, are said to have had a vision of her, surrounded by angels and attended by a white lamb, which afterwards became sacred to her. In the Catholic Church, formerly, the nuns used to bring a couple of lambs to her altar during mass. The superstition is, that, by taking certain measures of divination, damsels may get a sight of their future husbands in a dream. The ordinary process seems to have been by fasting. Aubrey (as quoted in "Brand's Popular Antiquities") mentions another, which is, to take a row of pins, and pull them out one by one, saying a Paternoster; after which, upon going to bed, the dream is sure to ensue. |