Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown : Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 't is buried deep In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream ?
Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?
ODE ON MELANCHOLY
No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be
But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globèd peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease; For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, — While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
"O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.
"O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms ! So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
"I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too."
"I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan.
"I set her on my pacing steed And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery's song.
"She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said 'I love thee true.'
"She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh'd full sore; And there I shut her wild wild eyes
"I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:
'La Belle Dame sans Merci
"I saw their starved lips in the gloam With horrid warning gapèd wide, And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill's side.
"And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing."
IN A DREAR-NIGHTED DECEMBER
IN a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them,
Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime.
In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting
About the frozen time.
Ah! would 't were so with many A gentle girl and boy! But were there ever any Writhed not at passèd joy? To know the change and feel it, When there is none to heal it, Nor numbèd sense to steal it, Was never said in rhyme.
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S
MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne : Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold :
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