And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

Thać orbed maiden, with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,

By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof

The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in

my

wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone,

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, ,

Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march,

With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my

chair
Is the million-coloured bow ;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky:
I
pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build

up

the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

a

KEATS.

JOHN KEATS. Born 1796; Died 1820.
Keats was of humble birth, and was at first apprenticed to a

surgeon. He became an ardent student, and in classical
mythology he found the first stimulant to the strong poetic

power which he possessed. His genius was fervent and luxuriant, but untrained. His early

death prevented his realising the promise given in the exquisite beauty of the poems he has left.

TO 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'er-brimmed 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 on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swathe and all its twinèd flowers;
And sometime, like a gleaner, thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they :

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barrèd 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 bourn ; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

Much have I travelled 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-browed 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 Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise

Silont, upon a peak in Darien.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

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. .