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The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;

And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the mead

Full beautiful, a fairy's child;

Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long; For sidelong would she bend, and sing A fairy song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew; And sure in language strange she said"I love thee true."

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sighed full sore; And there I shut her wild, wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulléd me asleep;

And there I dreamed-Ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dreamed On the cold hill's side.

I saw pale kings and princes too-
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried: "La belle dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapéd wide;
And I awoke and found me here

On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing.

SONNET.

There was a season when the fabled name
Of high Parnassus and Apollo's lyre
Seemed terms of excellence to my desire;
Therefore a youthful bard I may not blame.

But when the page of everlasting Truth
Has on the attentive mind its force impressed,
Then vanish all the affections dear in youth,
And Love immortal fills the grateful breast.
The wonders of all-ruling Providence,
The joys that from celestial Mercy flow,
Essential beauty, perfect excellence,
Ennoble and refine the native glow

The poet feels; and thence his best resource
To paint his feelings with sublimest force.

TO A YOUNG LADY WHO SENT ME A LAUREL CROWN.

Fresh morning gusts have blown away all fear From my glad bosom-now from gloominess

I mount forever-not an atom less

Than the proud laurel shall content my bier.
No! by the eternal stars! or why sit here
In the Sun's eye, and 'gainst my temples press
Apollo's very leaves, woven to bless

By thy white fingers and thy spirit clear?
Lo! who dares say, "Do this?" Who dares call down
My will from its high purpose? Who say, "Stand,"
Or "Go?" This mighty moment I would frown
On abject Cæsars-not the stoutest band
Of mailéd heroes should tear off my crown:
Yet would I kneel and kiss thy gentle hand!

SONNET.

In a letter to his brother and sister in America (May, 1819), Keats introduces this sounet thus: "I have been endeavoring to discover a better Sonnet stanza than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language well, from the pouncing rhymes: the other appears too elegiac, and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a pleasing effect. I do not pretend to have succeeded. It will explain itself."

If by dull rhymes our English must be chained,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fettered, in spite of painéd loveliness,
Let us find out, if we must be constrained,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of Poesy;

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gained
By ear industrious and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay-wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.

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.

KEATS'S LAST SONNET.

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless eremite,
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,-
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.

FAIRY 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 redLook 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!

FANCY.

Ever let the fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let wingéd Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind's cage-door,
She'll dart forth and cloudward soar.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoiled by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumu's red-lipped fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear fagot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the cakéd snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky,
-Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overawed,
Fancy, high-commissioned :-send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heapéd Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it:-thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reapéd corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn

And, in the same moment-hark!

"Tis the early April lark,

Or the rooks, with busy caw,

Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plumed lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf and every flower
Pearled with the self-same shower.
Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its celléd sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,
When the hen-bird's wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
Acorus ripe down-pattering,
While the autumu breezes sing.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Everything is spoiled by use:
Where's the cheek that doth not fade,
Too much gazed at? where's the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, wingéd Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter,
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe's, when her zone
Slipped its golden clasp, and down

Fell her kirtle to her feet,

While she held the goblet sweet,

And Jove grew languid.-Break the mesh
Of the Fancy's silken leash;
Quickly break her prison-string,

And such joys as these she'll bring:
-Let the wingéd Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

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-ward had sunk :
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—
That thou, light-wingéd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Oh for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvéd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! Oh 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,
But, in embalméd 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 muséd 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 vainTo 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 word 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.

Adier 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?

ODE 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-eves
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 on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinéd flowers;
And sometimes 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? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,While barród 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 red-breast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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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,
Forever 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, unweariéd,

Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting and forever 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 dressed? 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 say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," that is all

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

Hartley Coleridge.

The eldest son of the poet Coleridge, Hartley (17961849), born at Clevedon, inherited much of his father's genius, but also some of his defects of organization and temperament. At six years of age he attracted, by his superior gifts, the attention of Wordsworth, who wrote of him :

"O thou, whose fancies from afar are brought,
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought

The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;
Thou fairy voyager! that dost float

In such clear water, that thy boat

May rather seem

To brood on air than on an earthly stream:

I think of thee with many fears

For what may be thy lot in future years."

What would have become of the elder Coleridge but for the friends in whose home his later years found a refuge, no one can say. With no such friends or home, poor Hartley became a castaway. In 1815 he was a student at Oxford, and obtained a fellowship-elect at Oriel; but he

was dismissed, on the ground of intemperance, before his probationary year had passed. After some ineffectual literary efforts in London, he went to Ambleside, and sought for pupils; but his tutorial life, owing to his unfortunate habits, was a failure. The rest of his life was very sad, and its melancholy tone is in his verse. It was passed without any settled employment. He read diligently, thought deeply, and wrote charmingly; but his occasional fits of inebriety disqualified him for any responsible work, and at times overshadowed his mind with a depression which was pitiable.

Few men have lived more beloved (especially by the poor who surrounded him) than Hartley. At Grasmere and Rydal all knew his one infirmity; but they also knew and loved his many virtues, while they admired his great talents. His name long continued a household word among the cottagers, whom he seems to have inspired with the affection they might have felt for a very dear though erring child. With hair white as snow, he had, as a friend remarked, "a heart green as May." As a poet, Hartley is esteemed chiefly for his sonnets, some of which possess a charm almost peculiar to themselves, even in an age which has abounded in that form of composition.

STILL I AM A CHILD.

Long time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,—
For yet I lived like one not born to die;
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep; and waking,
I waked to sleep no more, at once o'ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is gray,
For I have lost the race I never ran :
A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, though I be old,
Time is my debtor for my years untold.

SONG.

She is not fair to outward view
As many maidens be,

Her loveliness I never knew

Until she smiled on me;

Oh! then I saw her eye was bright,

A well of love, a spring of light.

But now her looks are coy and cold,
To mine they ne'er reply;
And yet I cease not to behold
The lovelight in her eye:
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are.

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