John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd 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 Upon 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.

To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair And gentle tale of love and languishment? Returning home at evening, with an ear Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, He mourns that day so soon has glided by: E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently.

Standing aloof in giant ignorance, Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, As one who sits ashore and longs perchance To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. So thou wast blind;—but then the veil was rent, For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent, And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive; Aye on the shores of darkness there is light, And precipices show untrodden green, There is a budding morrow in midnight, There is a triple sight in blindness keen; Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

I cry your mercy—pity—love! Aye, love! Merciful love that tantalizes not, One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, Unmasked, and being seen—without a blot! O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine! That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine, That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,— Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all, Withhold no atom’s atom or I die, Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall, Forget, in the mist of idle misery, Life’s purposes,—the palate of my mind Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring Conspiring Working together; literally, to conspire is “to breathe together” (OED) with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves thatch-eves Thatch-eaves, the edge of thatched roofs 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'er-brimm'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 winnowing Separating the wheat from the chaff, the heavy from the light wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook hook Scythe Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner gleaner One who gathers the remaining food after the reaper has harvested the field thou dost keep Steady thy laden laden Loaded down head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Where are they? Rhetorical convention known as ubi sunt , often appearing in poems that meditate on the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death. Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom bloom “to colour with a soft warm tint or glow” (OED) the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains stubble-plains Fields made up of stubble, the remaining stumps of grain left after reaping with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows sallows Willow trees , 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 garden-croft A croft is a small enclosed field ; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Had I a man’s fair form, then might my sighs Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell Thine ear, and find thy gentle heart; so well Would passion arm me for the enterprise; But ah! I am no knight whose foeman dies; No cuirass glistens on my bosom’s swell; I am no happy shepherd of the dell Whose lips have trembled with a maiden’s eyes. Yet must I dote upon thee—call thee sweet, Sweeter by far than Hybla’s honied roses When steep’d in dew rich to intoxication. Ah! I will taste that dew, for me ‘tis meet, And when the moon her pallid face discloses, I’ll gather some by spells, and incantation.

This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again, And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is– I hold it towards you.

TO A FRIEND No! those days are gone away And their hours are old and gray, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden pall Of the leaves of many years: Many times have winter's shears, Frozen North, and chilling East, Sounded tempests to the feast Of the forest's whispering fleeces, Since men knew nor rent nor leases. No, the bugle sounds no more, And the twanging bow no more; Silent is the ivory shrill Past the heath and up the hill; There is no mid-forest laugh, Where lone Echo gives the half To some wight, amaz'd to hear Jesting, deep in forest drear. On the fairest time of June You may go, with sun or moon, Or the seven stars to light you, Or the polar ray to right you; But you never may behold Little John, or Robin bold; Never one, of all the clan, Thrumming on an empty can Some old hunting ditty, while He doth his green way beguile To fair hostess Merriment, Down beside the pasture Trent; For he left the merry tale Messenger for spicy ale. Gone, the merry morris din; Gone, the song of Gamelyn; Gone, the tough-belted outlaw Idling in the "grenè shawe"; All are gone away and past! And if Robin should be cast Sudden from his turfed grave, And if Marian should have Once again her forest days, She would weep, and he would craze: He would swear, for all his oaks, Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes, Have rotted on the briny seas; She would weep that her wild bees Sang not to her—strange! that honey Can't be got without hard money! So it is: yet let us sing, Honour to the old bow-string! Honour to the bugle-horn! Honour to the woods unshorn! Honour to the Lincoln green! Honour to the archer keen! Honour to tight little John, And the horse he rode upon! Honour to bold Robin Hood, Sleeping in the underwood! Honour to maid Marian, And to all the Sherwood-clan! Though their days have hurried by Let us two a burden try.

The Poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead In summer luxury,—he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.