John Keats

ENDYMION. A Poetic Romance. “THE STRETCHED METRE OF AN AN ANTIQUE SONG.” INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS CHATTERTON. Book I A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it

There are who lord it o’er their fellow-men With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen Their baaing vanities, to browse away The comfortable green and juicy hay From human pastures; or, O torturing fact! Who,

O solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,- Nature’s observatory-whence the dell, Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal

St. Agnes’ Eve Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were

Unfelt unheard, unseen, I’ve left my little queen, Her languid arms in silver slumber lying: Ah! through their nestling touch, Who – who could tell how much There is for madness – cruel, or

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike

Where’s the Poet? show him! show him, Muses nine! that I may know him. ‘Tis the man who with a man Is an equal, be he King, Or poorest of the beggar-clan Or any

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute! Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,

MOTHER of Hermes! and still youthful Maia! May I sing to thee As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiae? Or may I woo thee In earlier Sicilian? or thy smiles Seek as

Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals, And their faint cracklings o’er our silence creep Like whispers of the household gods that keep A gentle empire o’er fraternal souls. And while for rhymes

Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home: At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, Like to bubbles when rain pelteth; Then let winged Fancy wander Through the thought still spread beyond her:

Think not of it, sweet one, so; – Give it not a tear; Sigh thou mayst, and bid it go Any – anywhere. Do not lool so sad, sweet one, – Sad and fadingly;

God of the golden bow, And of the golden lyre, And of the golden hair, And of the golden fire, Charioteer Of the patient year, Where – where slept thine ire, When like a

Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy To those who woo her with too slavish knees, But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy, And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;

Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric, How many mice and rats hast in thy days Destroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze With those bright languid segments green, and prick Those velvet ears

Where be ye going, you Devon maid? And what have ye there i’ the basket? Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy, Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?

O SORROW! Why dost borrow The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips? To give maiden blushes To the white rose bushes? Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips? O Sorrow! Why

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse! O first-born on the mountains! by the hues Of heaven on the spiritual air begot: Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot, While yet our England

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loviliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams,

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ‘Tis not

Why did I laugh tonight? 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!

to a friend No! those days are gone away And their hours are old and gray, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden pall Of the leaves of many years: Many times have

Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody! Attuning still the soul to tenderness, As if soft Pity, with unusual stress, Had touch’d her plaintive lute, and thou, being by, Hadst caught the tones, nor suffer’d

The church bells toll a melancholy round, Calling the people to some other prayers, Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, More harkening to the sermon’s horrid sound. Surely the mind of man is closely

O that a week could be an age, and we Felt parting and warm meeting every week, Then one poor year a thousand years would be, The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its lovliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams,

Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak Definitively of these mighty things; Forgive me, that I have not eagle’s wings, That what I want I know not where to seek, And think that I

I cry your mercy-pity-love!-aye, love! Merciful love that tantalizes not, One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, Unmasked, and being seen-without a blot! O! let me have thee whole,-all-all-be mine! That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor

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;

Happy is England! I could be content To see no other verdure than its own; To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent; Yet do I

How many bards gild the lapses of time! A few of them have ever been the food Of my delighted fancy,-I could brood Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime: And often, when I sit

O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In

As late I rambled in the happy fields, What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew From his lush clover covert;-when anew Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields; I saw the sweetest flower

Fill for me a brimming bowl And in it let me drown my soul: But put therein some drug, designed To Banish Women from my mind: For I want not the stream inspiring That

This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou

What though, for showing truth to flattered state, Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he, In his immortal spirit, been as free As the sky-searching lark, and as elate. Minion of grandeur!

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! – Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their

O Sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm! All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm, And shadowy, through the mist of passed years: For others, good or bad, hatred and tears Have

When by my solitary hearth I sit, And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom; When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit, And the bare heath of life presents no bloom; Sweet

Had I a man’s fair form, then might my sighs Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell, Thine ear, and find thy gentle heart; so well Would passion arm me for the enterprise: But

My spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the