And still more, later flowers for the bees, Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flow ers; And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by 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. ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE By John Keats Written in the spring of 1819, when suffering from physical depression, the precursor of his death, which happened soon after. Y 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- 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Oh for a draught of vintage, that hath been Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! Oh for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 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 specter-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 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, Clustered 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, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Now more than ever seems it rich to die, Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain, 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 ofttimes hath Charmed magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in fairy-lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: Do I wake or sleep? THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN OW vainly men themselves amaze, To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their incessant labors see or tree, Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, |