SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell, Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep, Nature's observatory-whence the dell, In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilioned, where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell. But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee, Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. JOHN KEATS. APPY is England! I could be content To see no other verdure than its own; Through its tall woods with high romances blent : For skies Italian, and an inward groan And half forget what world or worldling meant. Enough their simple loveliness for me, Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging: Yet do I often warmly burn to see Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters. JOHN KEATS. TO SLEEP. SOFT embalmer of the still midnight! Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: O soothest sleep! if so it please thee, close, In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes, Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws, Around my bed its lulling charities; Then save me, or the passed day will shine Uson my pillow, breeding many woes ; Save me from curious conscience, that still lords Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul. JOHN KEATS. B KEATS'S LAST SONNET. RIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of snow upon the mountains and the moors. - Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest ; Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, JOHN KEATS. LIBERTY. AY, What is Freedom? What the right of souls And who knows not, is dead? In vain ye pry In musty archives, or retentive scrolls, Charters and statutes, constitutions, rolls, And remnants of the old world's history These show what has been, not what ought to be, Or teach at best how wiser Time controls Of restless factions, who, in lawless will, A lawless rule-an anarchy of ill: But what is Freedom? Rightly understood, A universal license to be good. HARTLEY Coleridge. |