Save it for me, sweet love ! though music breathe Voluptuous visions into the warm air, Though swimming through the dance's dan gerous wreath; Smiling and cold and gay, Then, Heaven ! there will be cesca. To George and Georgiana Keats, April 18 or 19, 1819, Keats writes: "The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more — it is that one in which he meets with Paolo and Fran I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated about the whirling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined as it seemed for an age — and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm even flowery tree-tops sprung up, and we rested on them, sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew us away again. I tried a sonnet upon it — there are fourteen lines, but nothing of what I felt in it- that I could dream it every night.' Keats afterwards printed the sonnet in The Indicator for June 28, 1820. As Hermes once took to his feathers light, When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright DUSKETHA Let me to my glooms retire ! BREAMA I to green-weed rivers bright ! SALAMANDER Gentle Breama ! by the first sometime follow me Happy, happy glowing fire ! their live tapestries; Free from cold, and every care, Of chilly rain, and shivering air. ΙΟ 60 20 SALAMANDER Out, ye aguish Faeries, out! with frozen breath, Colder than the mortal death. Adder-eyed Dusketha, speak, Shall we leave them, and go seek In the earth's wide entrails old Couches warm as theirs is cold ? O for a fiery gloom and thee, 70 Breathe upon them, fiery Spright ! ZEPHYR, BREAMA (to each other) Away! away to our delight ! II SALAMANDER Go, feed on icicles, while we Bedded in tongued flames will be. DUSKETHA Lead me to these fev'rous glooms, Spright of Fire ! BREAMA Me to the blooms, Blue eyed Zephyr of those flowers Far in the west where the May-cloud lowers: And the beams of still Vesper, where winds are all whist, Are shed thro' the rain and the milder mist, And twilight your floating bowers. Ah! woe is me! poor silver-wing! That I must chant thy lady's dirge, And death to this fair haunt of spring, Of melody, and streams of flowery verge, Poor silver-wing ! ah ! woe is me ! That I must see Go, pretty page ! and in her ear Softly tell her not to fear Go, pretty page! and soothly tell, The blossoms hang by a melting spell, And fall they must, ere a star wink thrice Upon her closed eyes, That now in vain are weeping their last tears, At sweet life leaving, and those arbours green, Rich dowry from the Spirit of the Spheres, Alas! poor Queen! 100 FAERY SONGS These two songs are given in Life, Letters and Literary Remains, but without date. It are ! Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye ON FAME Make your best bow to her and bid adieu, 'You cannot eat your cake and have it too.' – Proverb. Then, if she likes it, she will follow you. Sent with the next two to George and Georgiana Keats, April 30, 1819, and printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. TO SLEEP How fever'd is that man, who cannot look O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight, Upon his mortal days with temperate Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, blood, Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book, the light, And robs his fair name of its maiden- Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: hood: O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, It is as if the rose should pluck herself, close, Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom; In midst of this thine hymn, my willing As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf, eyes, Should darken her pure grot with muddy Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws gloom. Around my bed its dewy charities; But the rose leaves herself upon the brier, Then save me, or the passed day will For winds to kiss and grateful bees to shine feed, Upon my pillow, breeding many woes; And the ripe plum still wears its dim at- Save me from curious conscience, that tire, still lords The undisturbed lake has crystal space: Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a Why then should man, teasing the mole; world for grace, Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed? And seal the hushed casket of my soul. a 6 ANOTHER ON FAME ODE TO PSYCHE • The following poem the last I have writFAME, like a wayward girl, will still be coy ten is the first and only one with which I have To those who woo her with too slavish taken even moderate pains. I have, for the knees, most part, dashed off my lines in a hurry. This But makes surrender to some thoughtless I have done leisurely - I think it reads the more boy, richly for it, and will I hope encourage me to And dotes the more upon a heart at ease; write other things in even a more pea able She is a Gipsy, — will not speak to those and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Who have not learnt to be content with- Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before out her; the time of Apuleius the Platonist, who lived A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd after the Augustan age, and consequently the close, Goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour - and perhaps Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her; never thought of in the old religion - I am more orthodox than to let a heathen Goddess A very Gipsy is she, Nilus-born, be so neglected.' Keats to his Brother and Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar; Sister, April 30, 1819. He afterward included Ye lovesick Bards ! repay her scorn for the poem in his volume, Lamia, Isabella, The scorn; Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems, 1820. a |