Poetry, John Keats [grave mercy .txt] 📗

eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,
Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;
Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,
Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find
The meadow thou hast tramped o’er and o’er,⁠—
Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind,⁠—
Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name,⁠—
O smile among the shades, for this is fame! Lines Written in the Highlands After a Visit to Burns’s Country

There is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain,
Where patriot battle has been fought, where glory had the gain;
There is a pleasure on the heath where Druids old have been,
Where mantles gray have rustled by and swept the nettles green;
There is Joy in every spot made known by times of old,
New to the feet, although each tale a hundred times be told;
There is a deeper Joy than all, more solemn in the heart,
More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart,
When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf,
Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or sea-shore iron scurf,
Toward the Castle or the Cot, where long ago was born
One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn.
Light heather-bells may tremble then, but they are far away;
Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern,⁠—the Sun may hear his Lay;
Runnels may kiss the grass on shelves and shallows clear,
But their low voices are not heard, though come on travels drear;
Blood-red the sun may set behind black mountain peaks;
Blue tides may sluice and drench their time in Caves and weedy creeks;
Eagles may seem to sleep wing-wide upon the Air;
Ring-doves may fly convuls’d across to some high-cedar’d lair;
But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground,
As Palmer’s, that with weariness, mid-desert shrine hath found.

At such a time the soul’s a child, in childhood is the brain;
Forgotten is the worldly heart⁠—alone, it heats in vain.⁠—
Aye, if a Madman could have leave to pass a healthful day
To tell his forehead’s swoon and faint when first began decay,
He might make tremble many a one whose spirit had gone forth
To find a Bard’s low cradle-place about the silent North.
Scanty the hour and few the steps beyond the bourn of Care,
Beyond the sweet and bitter world,⁠—beyond it unaware!
Scanty the hour and few the steps, because a longer stay
Would bar return, and make a man forget his mortal way:
O horrible! to lose the sight of well remember’d face,
Of Brother’s eyes, of Sister’s brow⁠—constant to every place;
Filling the Air, as on we move, with Portraiture intense;
More warm than those heroic tints that pain a Painter’s sense,
When shapes of old come striding by, and visages of old,
Locks shining black, hair scanty gray, and passions manifold.
No, no, that horror cannot be, for at the cable’s length
Man feels the gentle anchor pull and gladdens in its strength:⁠—
One hour, half-idiot, he stands by mossy water-fall,
But in the very next he reads his soul’s Memorial:⁠—
He reads it on the mountain’s height, where chance he may sit down
Upon rough marble diadem⁠—that hill’s eternal Crown.
Yet be his Anchor e’er so fast, room is there for a prayer
That man may never lose his Mind on Mountains black and bare;
That he may stray league after league some great birthplace to find
And keep his vision clear from speck, his inward sight unblind.

At Fingal’s Cave

Not Aladdin magian
Ever such a work began;
Not the wizard of the Dee
Ever such a dream could see;
Not St. John, in Patmos’ isle,
In the passion of his toil,
When he saw the churches seven,
Golden aisled, built up in heaven,
Gazed at such a rugged wonder,
As I stood its roofing under.
Lo! I saw one sleeping there,
On the marble cold and bare;
While the surges wash’d his feet,
And his garments white did beat
Drench’d about the sombre rocks;
On his neck his well-grown locks,
Lifted dry above the main,
Were upon the curl again.
“What is this? and what art thou?”
Whisper’d I, and touch’d his brow;
“What art thou? and what is this?”
Whisper’d I, and strove to kiss
The spirit’s hand, to wake his eyes;
Up he started in a trice:
“I am Lycidas,” said he,
“Famed in funeral minstrelsy!
This was architectured thus
By the great Oceanus!⁠—
Here his mighty waters play
Hollow organs all the day;
Here, by turns, his dolphins all,
Finny palmers, great and small,
Come to pay devotion due,⁠—
Each a mouth of pearls must strew!
Many a mortal of these days
Dares to pass our sacred ways;
Dares to touch, audaciously,
This cathedral of the sea!
I have been the pontiff-priest,
Where the waters never rest,
Where a fledgy sea-bird choir
Soars for ever! Holy fire
I have hid from mortal man;
Proteus is my Sacristan!
But the dulled eye of mortal
Hath pass’d beyond the rocky portal;
So for ever will I leave
Such a taint, and soon unweave
All the magic of the place.”
So saying, with a Spirit’s glance
He dived!

Written Upon the Top of Ben Nevis

Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!
I look into the chasms, and a shroud
Vaporous doth hide them,⁠—just so much wist
Mankind do know of hell; I look o’erhead,
And there is sullen mist,⁠—even so much
Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread
Before the earth, beneath me,⁠—even such,
Even so vague is man’s sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,⁠—
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,
I tread on them,⁠—that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag, not only on this height,
But in the world of thought and mental might!

The Gadfly

All gentle folks who owe a grudge
To any living thing
Open your ears and stay your trudge
Whilst I in dudgeon sing.

The Gadfly he hath stung me sore⁠—
O may he ne’er sting you!
But we have many a horrid bore,⁠—
He may sting black and blue.

Has any here an old gray Mare
With three legs all her store,
O put it to her Buttocks bare
And straight she’ll run on four.

Has any here a Lawyer suit
Of 1743,
Take Lawyer’s nose and put it to ’t
And you the end will see.

Is there a Man in Parliament
Dumbfounder’d in his