In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely; he doth bear
His part, with the one Spirit's plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling
there

All new successions to the forms they wear,
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might

From trees and hearts and men into the heavens' light.

The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot

The brightness it may veil.

When lofty thought

Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,

And love and life contend in it, for what

Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there,

And move like winds of light on dark and storiny air.

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown

Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,

Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton

Rose pale, his solemn agony had not
Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell, and as he lived and loved,
Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,

Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved ;
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.

And many more, whose names on earth are dark,
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.

"Thou art become as one of us," they cry;

"It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long

Swung blind in unascended majesty,

Silent alone amid an Heaven of song..

Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng !"

(Adonais.)

JOHN KEATS.

[Born, 1795. "Poems," published, 1817; "Endymion," 1818; "Lamia, Isabella," &c., 1820.

Died,

1821.]

POETS LEAVE THEIR SOULS ON EARTII.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,

Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wondrous,
And the parle of voices thund'rous;

With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysium lawns,

Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing,
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.
Thus ye live on high, and then
On the earth ye live again;
And the souls ye left behind you
Teach us, here, the way to find you,
Where your other souls are joying,
Never slumber'd, never cloying.
Here, your earth-born souls will speak
To mortals, of their little week;
Of their sorrows and delights;
Of their passions and their spites;

Of their glory and their shame ;
What doth strengthen and what maim.
Thus ye teach us, every day,
Wisdom, though fled far away.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Ye have souls in heaven too,

Double-lived in regions new!

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER. Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne :
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold :
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortes when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surprise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.