010.

Wentworth Place

My

dear Fanny,

Treceived

last. An

acce dent

Hunts household opened a Letter

upon which I umme :

mine - upon

не

Your affectionate Beaton John.

VOL. IV.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme :
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities, or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone!
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal-yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss ;
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair !

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new ;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting, and for ever young ;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayest, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

K

TO HOMER.

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 uncurtained 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.

FROM "HYPERION," BOOK II.

Thus in alternate uproar and sad peace

Amazed were those Titans utterly.

O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes;

For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:

A solitary sorrow best befits

Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief.

Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find
Many a fallen old Divinity

Wandering in vain about bewildered shores.
Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp,
And not a wind of heaven but will breathe
In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute !
For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse.
Flush everything that hath a vermeil hue ;
Let the rose glow intense and warm the air;
And let the clouds of even and of morn
Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills;
Let the red wine within the goblet boil,
Cold as a bubbling well; let faint-lipped shells
On sands, or in great deeps, vermilion turn
Through all their labyrinths; and let the maid
Blush keenly, as with some warm kiss surprised.
Chief isle of the embowered Cyclades,
Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives green,
And poplars, and lawn-shading palms, and beech,
In which the Zephyr breathes the loudest song,
And hazels thick, dark-stemmed beneath the shade;
Apollo is once more the golden theme!

SONNET.

Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell :
No God, no Demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once.

Heart! Thou and I are here, sad and alone;
I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,

To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain. Why did I laugh? I know this Being's lease,

My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads; Yet would I on this very midnight cease,

And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds; Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, But Death intenser-Death is Life's high meed.

FAERY SONG.

Shed no tear! oh shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! oh weep no more!

Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
Dry your eyes! oh dry your eyes!

For I was taught in Paradise

To ease my breast of melodies

Shed no tear.

Overhead look overhead!

'Mong the blossoms white and red-
Look up, look up. I flutter now
On this flush pomegranate bough.
See me! 'tis this silvery bill

Ever cures the good man's ill.

Shed no tear! Oh, shed no tear!

The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu !-I fly, adieu !

I vanish in the heaven's blue

Adieu! Adieu !

SONG.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree !
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity;

The north cannot undo them

With a sleepy whistle through them,

Nor frozen thawings glue them

From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook!
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look ;

But, with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting

About the frozen time.