Snapping his lucid fingers merrily!Ah, Zephyrus! art here, and Flora too! Ye tender bibbers of the rain and dew, Young playmates of the rose and daffodil, Be careful, ere ye enter in, to fill Your baskets high With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines, Savory, latter mint, and columbines, Cool parsley, basil sweet, and sunny thyme; Yea, every flower and leaf of every clime, All gather'd in the dewy morning: hie Away fly, fly! Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven, Aquarius! to whom king Jove has given Two liquid pulse streams 'stead of feather'd wings, Two fan-like fountains,--thine illuminings For Dian play: Let thy white shoulders silvery and bare Shew cold through watery pinions; make more bright The Star-Queen's crescent on her marriage night: Haste, haste away! Castor has tamed the planet Lion, see! Speeding away swift as the eagle bird? The Centaur's arrow ready seems to pierce Some enemy: far forth his bow is bent Into the blue of heaven. He'll be shent, Pale unrelentor, When he shall hear the wedding lutes aplaying.- Andromeda ! sweet woman! why delaying Sotimidly among the stars: come hither! Join this bright throng, and nimbly follow whither They all are going. Thee, gentle lady, did he disenthral: 1817. 1818. ROBIN HOOD No! those days are gone away, No, the bugle sounds no more, Past the heath and up the hill; On the fairest time of June Gone, the merry morris din; Gone, the song of Gamelyn; Gone, the tough-belted outlaw Idling in the "grené shawe;" All are gone away and past! And if Robin should be cast Sudden from his turfed grave, And if Marian should have Once again her forest days, She would weep, and he would craze : He would swear, for all his oaks, Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes, Have rotted on the briny seas; She would weep that her wild bees Sang not to her-strange! that honey Can't be got without hard money! So it is: yet let us sing, Honor to the old bow-string! Honor to the bugle-horn! Honor to the woods unshorn! Honor to the Lincoln green! Thy life is but two dead eternities— The last in air, the former in the deep, First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant size. July, 1818. 1819. THE HUMAN SEASONS FOUR Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear To ruminate, and by such dreaming high He furleth close; contented so to look TO HOMER STANDING aloof in giant ignorance, To visit Dolphin-coral in deep seas. For Jove uncurtained Heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent, And Pan made sing for thee his foresthive. Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light, And precipices show untrodden green, There is a budding morrow in midnight,1 There is a triple sight in blindness keen; Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell. 1818. 1848. Forman records in his notes that Rossetti considered this to be "Keats' finest single line of poetry." (Keats' Works, II., 238.) LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN SOULS of Poets dead and gone, I have heard that on a day And pledging with contented smack The Mermaid in the Zodiac. Open wide the mind's cage-door, When the Night doth meet the Noon To banish Even from her sky. Fancy, high-commission'd:-send her! And thou shalt quaff it:-thou shalt hear Distant harvest-carols clear; Sweet birds antheming the morn: Or the rooks, with busy caw, Sapphire queen of the mid-May; When the bee-hive casts its swarm ; Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose; Every thing is spoilt by use: Where's the cheek that doth not fade, Too much gaz'd at? Where's the maid Whose lip mature is ever new? Where's the eye, however blue, Doth not weary? Where's the face One would meet in every place? Where's the voice, however soft, One would hear so very oft? At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth Like to bubbles when rain pelteth. Let, then, winged Fancy find While she held the goblet sweet, Of the Fancy's silken leash; And such joys as these she'll bring.— Pleasure never is at home. 1818. 1820. ISABELLA OR THE POT OF BASIL A STORY FROM BOCCACCIO FAIR Isabel, poor simple Isabel! Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye! They could not in the self-same mansion dwell Without some stir of heart, some malady; They could not sit at meals but feel how well It soothed each to be the other by ; They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep But to each other dream, and nightly weep. With every morn their love grew tenderer, With every eve deeper and tenderer still; He might not in house, field, or garden stir, But her full shape would all his seeing fill; And his continual voice was pleasanter To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill; Her lute-string gave an echo of his name, She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same. He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch, Before the door had given her to his eyes; |