Genius Rises from a Stable
October 29, 2014 |
| John Keats |
John Keats (1795–1821)
Vol. 41, pp. 874-882 of
The Harvard Classics
(John Keats born
Oct. 29, 1795.)
Though the son of a
stable man, John Keats wrote the most exquisite and sublime poetry in
our language. He was the friend of Shelley, Lord Byron, and the other
literary leaders of the time - his genius recognized by all.
The
Mermaid Tavern
SOULS of Poets dead and
gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of Venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his Maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
I have heard that on a day
Mine host’s sign-board flew away
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer’s old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story—
Said he saw you in your glory
Underneath a new-old Sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac!
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known—
Happy field or mossy cavern—
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Happy Insensibility
IN a drear-nighted
December,
Too happy, happy Tree,
Thy branches ne’er remember
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 ’twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passe´d joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbe´d sense to steal it—
Was never said in rhyme.
Ode to a Nightingale
MY heart aches, and a
drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had
drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had
sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—
That thou, light-winge´d
Dryad of the trees,
In
some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows
numberless,
Singest of summer in
full-throated ease.
O, far a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the
deep-delve´d earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Proven¸al song, and
sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful
Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles
winking at the brim,
And
purple-staine´d mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the
forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never
known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each
other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and
spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to
be full of sorrow
And
leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous
eyes,
Or new Love pine at them
beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his
pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and
retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her
throne,
Cluster’d around by all
her starry Fays;
But
here there is no light
Save what from heaven is with the
breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms
and winding mossy ways,
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the
boughs,
But, in embalme´d darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral
eglantine;
Fast fading violets
cover’d up in leaves;
And
mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy
wine,
The murmurous haunt of
flies on summer eves.
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 muse´d 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
’tis 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 a Grecian Urn
THOU still unravish’d
bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow
Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our
rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both
In Tempe or the dales of
Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What
maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels?
What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes,
play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not
leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be
bare;
Bold Lover, never, never
canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though
thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be
fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring
adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting and for
ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and
cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a
parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious
priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with
garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful
citadel,
Is emptied of its folk,
this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to
tell
Why thou art desolate, can
e’er return.
O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out
of thought
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation
waste,
Thou shalt remain, in
midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom
thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all
ye need to know.’
Ode to Autumn
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 twine´d
flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-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 barre´d 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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Ode to Psyche
O GODDESS! hear these
tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance
dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own
soft-conchèd ear:
Surely I dream’d to-day, or did I see
The wingèd Psyche with awaken’d
eyes?
I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with
surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couchèd side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the
whisp’ring roof
Of leaves and trembled
blossoms, where there ran
A
brooklet, scarce espied:
’Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers
fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embracèd, and their
pinions too;
Their lips touch’d not, but had not
bade adieu,
As if disjoinèd by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The
wingèd boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O happy, happy
dove?
His
Psyche true!
O latest-born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phœbe’s sapphire-region’d star,
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the
sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
Nor
altar heap’d with flowers;
Nor Virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon
the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.
O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond
believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retired
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon
the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swingèd censer teeming:
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.
Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant
pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the
wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees
Fledge the wild-ridgèd mountains
steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and
bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d
to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars
without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,
Who, breeding flowers, will never
breed the same;
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can
win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!
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 kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of
Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth
be
Your mournful Psyche, nor
the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too
drowsily,
And drown the wakeful
anguish of the soul.
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.
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