The poem's The winged words on which my soul would
Into the height of love's rare Universe
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire. ---
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet,
And say "We are the masters of thy slave; "What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?"
Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave, All singing loud: "Love's very pain is sweet. "But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.'
So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste
Over the hearts of men, until ye meet
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,
And bid them love each other and be bless'd:
And leave the troop which errs, and which
reproves,
And come and be my guest, ---for I am
Love's.
AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN
KEATS, AUTHOR OF ENDYMION,
HYPERION, &c.
Αστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες ἐνὶ ζώοισιν ἐῶος.
Νῦν δὲ θανὼν λάμπεις ἕσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις.
φάρμακον ἦλθε, Βίων, τοτὶ σὸν στόμα, φάρμακον εἶδες·
Πῶς τευ τοῖς χείλεσσι ποτέδραμε, κοὐκ ἐγλυκάνθη;
Τίς δὲ βροτὸς τοσσοῦτον ἀνάμερος ἢ κεράσαι τοι,
Ἢ δοῦναι λαλέοντι τὸ φάρμακον ; ἔκφυγεν ᾠδάν.
MOSCHUS, Epitaph. Bion.
IT is my intention to subjoin to the London An error edition of this poem a criticism the claims Keats's of its lamented object to be classed among the age writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled prove[s] at least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.
John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the - of
and was buried in the romantic and
Joint
regency of
Mary and
Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive
Earth,
Emilia This world of love, this me; and into birth
Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart
Magnetic might into its central heart;
And lift its billows and its mists, and guide
By everlasting laws each wind and tide
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;
And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave
Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers
The armies of the rainbow-winged showers;
And, as those married lights, which from the
Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe
In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;
And all their many-mingled influence blend,
If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end ;—
So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway 360
Govern my sphere of being, night and day!
Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;
Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;
And, through the shadow of the seasons three,
From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity,
Light it into the Winter of the tomb,
Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.
Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe
Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that
convulsion,
Alternating attraction and repulsion,
Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;
Oh, float into our azure heaven again!
Be there love's folding-star at thy return;
The living Sun will feed thee from its urn
Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn
In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn
Will worship thee with incense of calm breath
And lights and shadows; as the star of Death
And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild
Called Hope and Fear-upon the heart are
piled
Their offerings, of this sacrifice divine
A World shall be the altar.
Lady mine, Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading
Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts
forth
Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,
Will be as of the trees of Paradise.
The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. To whatsoe'er of dull mortality
Is mine, remain a vestal sister still;
To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,
Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united
Even as a bride, delighting and delighted.
The hour is come: --- the destined Star has risen
Which shall descend upon a vacant prison.
The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set
The sentinels---but true love never yet
Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:
Like lightning, with invisible violence
Piercing its continents; like Heaven's free
Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,
Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way
The ship Through temple, tower, and palace, and the
Of arms more strength has Love than he or
For it can burst his charnel, and make free
The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,
The soul in dust and chaos.
Emily,
A ship is floating in the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel has ever ploughed that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles ;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit, while
Night
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise;
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,-
Simple and spirited, innocent and bold.
The blue Ægean girds this chosen home,
With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
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