Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt 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-stained 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, 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,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

K

But, in embalmëd 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 covered 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, Called him soft names in many a musëd 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 ofttimes hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very sound 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!

KEATS.

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 mossed 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'erbrimmed 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 in a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes, like a gleaner, thou dost keep
Steady thy laden 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?
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 bourne;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

KEATS.

ADONIS SLEEPING.

IN midst of all there lay a sleeping youth,
Of fondest beauty. Sideway his face reposed
On one white arm, and tenderly unclosed,
By tenderest passion, a faint damask mouth
To slumbery pout; just as the coming south
Disparts a dew-lipped rose. Above his head
Four lily stalks did their white honours wed
To make a coronal; and round him grew
All tendrils green of every form and hue,
Together intertwined and trammeled fresh :
The vine of glossy sprout; the ivy mesh,
Shading its Ethiop berries; and woodbine
Of velvet leaves, and bugle-blooms divine.

Hard by

Stood serene cupids, watching silently,

One, kneeling to a lyre, touched the strings,
Muffling to death the pathos with his wings;
And, ever and anon, uprose to look
At the youth's slumber; while another took
A willow bough, distilling odorous dew,
And shook it on his hair; another flew
In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise
Rained violets upon his sleeping eyes.

KEATS.

THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.

"TWAS in the prime of summer time,

An evening calm and cool, And four-and-twenty happy boys

Came bounding out of school:

There were some that ran, and some that leapt,

Like troutlets in a pool.

Away they sped with gamesome minds,

And souls untouched by sin,

To a level mead they came, and there
They drave the wickets in:
Pleasantly shone the setting sun

Over the town of Lynn.

Like sportive deer they coursed about,
And shouted as they ran,

Turning to mirth all things of earth,
As only boyhood can: