Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

[from the title page:]

“THE STRETCHED METRE OF AN ANTIQUE SONG”

[from the dedication page:]

INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS CHATTERTON.

PREFACE.

[on pages vii-ix of the original text]

KNOWING within myself the manner in which this Poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public.

What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the press; nor should they if I thought a year’s castigation would do them any good;—it will not: the foundations are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit to live.

This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a punishment: but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it: he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honour of English literature.

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.

I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of Greece and dulled its brightness: for I wish to try once more, before I bid it farewel [sic].

Teignmouth,
April 10, 1818.

ENDYMION

BOOK 1.

• A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
• Its loveliness increases; it will never
• Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
• A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
• Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
• Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
• A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
• Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
• Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
• Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
• Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
• Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
• From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
• Trees old, and young sprouting a shady boon
• For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
• With the green world they live in; and clear rills
• That for themselves a cooling covert make
• ’Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
• Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
• And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
• We have imagined for the mighty dead;
• All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
• An endless fountain of immortal drink,
• Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

• Nor do we merely feel these essences
• For one short hour; no, even as the trees
• That whisper round a temple become soon
• Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
• The passion poesy, glories infinite,
• Haunt us till they become a cheering light
• Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
• That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,
• They alway must be with us, or we die.

• Therefore, ’tis with full happiness that I
• Will trace the story of Endymion.
• The very music of the name has gone
• Into my being, and each pleasant scene
• Is growing fresh before me as the green
• Of our own vallies: so I will begin
• Now while I cannot hear the city’s din;
• Now while the early budders are just new,
• And run in mazes of the youngest hue
• About old forests; while the willow trails
• Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
• Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
• Grows lush in juicy stalks, I’ll smoothly steer
• My little boat, for many quiet hours,
• With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
• Many and many a verse I hope to write,
• Before the daisies, vermeil rimm’d and white,
• Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
• Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
• I must be near the middle of my story.
• O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
• See it half finished: but let autumn bold,
• With universal tinge of sober gold,
• Be all about me when I make an end.
• And now at once, adventuresome, I send
• My herald thought into a wilderness:
• There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
• My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
• Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

• Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread
• A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed
• So plenteously all weed-hidden roots
• Into o’er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits.
• And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,
• Where no man went; and if from shepherd’s keep
• A lamb strayed far a-down those inmost glens,
• Never again saw he the happy pens
• Whither his brethren, bleating with content,
• Over the hills at every nightfall went.
• Among the shepherds, ’twas believed ever,
• That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever
• From the white flock, but pass’d unworried
• By angry wolf, or pard with prying head,
• Until it came to some unfooted plains
• Where fed the herds of Pan: ay great his gains
• Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many,
• Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,
• And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly
• To a wide lawn, whence one could only see
• Stems thronging all around between the swell
• Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell
• The freshness of the space of heaven above,
• Edg’d round with dark tree tops? through which a dove
• Would often beat its wings, and often too
• A little cloud would move across the blue.

• Full in the middle of this pleasantness
• There stood a marble altar, with a tress
• Of flowers budded newly; and the dew
• Had taken fairy phantasies to strew
• Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,
• And so the dawned light in pomp receive.
• For ’twas the morn: Apollo’s upward fire
• Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
• Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
• A melancholy spirit well might win
• Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
• Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine
• Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
• The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
• To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
• Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass
• Of nature’s lives and wonders puls’d tenfold,
• To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.

• Now while the silent workings of the dawn
• Were busiest, into that self-same lawn
• All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped
• A troop of little children garlanded;
• Who gathering round the altar, seemed to pry
• Earnestly round as wishing to espy
• Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited
• For many moments, ere their ears were sated
• With a faint breath of music, which ev’n then
• Fill’d out its voice, and died away again.
• Within a little space again it gave
• Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,
• To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking
• Through copse-clad vallies, — ere their death, o’ertaking
• The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.

• And now, as deep into the wood as we
• Might mark a lynx’s eye, there glimmered light
• Fair faces and a rush of garments white,
• Plainer and plainer shewing, till at last
• Into the widest alley they all past,
• Making directly for the woodland altar.
• O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter
• In telling of this goodly company,
• Of their old piety, and of their glee:
• But let a portion of ethereal dew
• Fall on my head, and presently unmew
• My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring,
• To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing.

• Leading the way, young damsels danced along,
• Bearing the burden of a shepherd song;
• Each having a white wicker over brimm’d
• With April’s tender younglings: next, well trimm’d,
• A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
• As may be read of in Arcadian books;
• Such as sat listening round Apollo’s pipe,
• When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
• Let his divinity o’er-flowing die
• In music, through the vales of Thessaly:
• Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground,
• And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound
• With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,
• Now coming from beneath the forest trees,
• A venerable priest full soberly,
• Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye
• Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept,
• And after him his sacred vestments swept.
• From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white,
• Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light;
• And in his left he held a basket full
• Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull:
• Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still
• Than Leda’s love, and cresses from the rill.
• His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath,
• Seem’d like a poll of ivy in the teeth
• Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd
• Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud
• Their share of the ditty. After them appear’d,
• Up-followed by a multitude that rear’d
• Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car,
• Easily rolling so as scarce to mar
• The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown:
• Who stood therein did seem of great renown
• Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,
• Shewing like Ganymede to manhood grown;
• And, for those simple times, his garments were
• A chieftain king’s: beneath his breast, half bare,
• Was hung a silver bugle, and between
• His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen.
• A smile was on his countenance; he seem’d,
• To common lookers on, like one who dream’d
• Of idleness in groves Elysian:
• But there were some who feelingly could scan
• A lurking trouble in his nether lip,
• And see that oftentimes the reins would slip
• Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,
• And think of yellow leaves, of owlet’s cry,
• Of logs piled solemnly. — Ah, well-a-day,
• Why should our young Endymion pine away!

• Soon the assembly, in a circle rang’d,
• Stood silent round the shrine: each look was chang’d
• To sudden veneration: women meek
• Beckon’d their sons to silence; while each cheek
• Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear.
• Endymion too, without a forest peer,
• Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face,
• Among his brothers of the mountain chase.
• In midst of all, the venerable priest
• Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least,
• And, after lifting up his aged hands,
• Thus spake he: “Men of Latmos! shepherd bands!
• Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks:
• Whether descended from beneath the rocks
• That overtop your mountains; whether come
• From vallies where the pipe is never dumb;
• Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs
• Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze
• Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge
• Nibble their fill at ocean’s very marge,
• Whose mellow reeds are touch’d with sounds forlorn
• By the dim echoes of old Triton’s horn:
• Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare
• The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air;
• And all ye gentle girls who foster up
• Udderless lambs, and in a little cup
• Will put choice honey for a favoured youth:
• Yea, every one attend! for in good truth
• Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan.
• Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than
• Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains
• Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains
• Green’d over April’s lap? No howling sad
• Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had
• Great bounty from Endymion our lord.
• The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour’d
• His early song against yon breezy sky,
• That spreads so clear o’er our solemnity.”

• Thus ending, on the shrine he heap’d a spire
• Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;
• Anon he stain’d the thick and spongy sod
• With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god.
• Now while the earth was drinking it, and while
• Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,
• And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright
• ’Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light
• Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang:

• “O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang
• From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
• Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death
• Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;
• Who lov’st to see the hamadryads dress
• Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;
• And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken
• The dreary melody of bedded reeds —
• In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds
• The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;
• Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth
• Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx — do thou now,
• By thy love’s milky brow!
• By all the trembling mazes that she ran,
• Hear us, great Pan!

• “O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles
• Passion their voices cooingly ’mong myrtles,
• What time thou wanderest at eventide
• Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side
• Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom
• Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom
• Their ripen’d fruitage; yellow girted bees
• Their golden honeycombs; our village leas
• Their fairest blossom’d beans and poppied corn;
• The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,
• To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries
• Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies
• Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year
• All its completions — be quickly near,
• By every wind that nods the mountain pine,
• O forester divine!

• “Thou, to whom every faun and satyr flies
• For willing service; whether to surprise
• The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;
• Or upward ragged precipices flit
• To save poor lambkins from the eagle’s maw;
• Or by mysterious enticement draw
• Bewildered shepherds to their path again;
• Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,
• And gather up all fancifullest shells
• For thee to tumble into Naiads’ cells,
• And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;
• Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
• The while they pelt each other on the crown
• With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown —
• By all the echoes that about thee ring,
• Hear us, O satyr king!

• “O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears,
• While ever and anon to his shorn peers
• A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,
• When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn
• Anger our huntsmen: Breather round our farms,
• To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:
• Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,
• That come a swooning over hollow grounds,
• And wither drearily on barren moors:
• Dread opener of the mysterious doors
• Leading to universal knowledge — see,
• Great son of Dryope,
• The many that are come to pay their vows
• With leaves about their brows!

• “Be still the unimaginable lodge
• For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
• Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
• Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,
• That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
• Gives it a touch ethereal — a new birth:
• Be still a symbol of immensity;
• A firmament reflected in a sea;
• An element filling the space between;
• An unknown — but no more: we humbly screen
• With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,
• And giving out a shout most heaven rending,
• Conjure thee to receive our humble paean,
• Upon thy Mount Lycean!”

• Even while they brought the burden to a close,
• A shout from the whole multitude arose,
• That lingered in the air like dying rolls
• Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals
• Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine.
• Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine,
• Young companies nimbly began dancing
• To the swift treble pipe, and humming string.
• Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly
• To tunes forgotten — out of memory:
• Fair creatures! whose young childrens’ children bred
• Thermopylae its heroes — not yet dead,
• But in old marbles ever beautiful.
• High genitors, unconscious did they cull
• Time’s sweet first-fruits — they danc’d to weariness,
• And then in quiet circles did they press
• The hillock turf, and caught the latter end
• Of some strange history, potent to send
• A young mind from its bodily tenement.
• Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
• On either side; pitying the sad death
• Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
• Of Zephyr slew him, — Zephyr penitent,
• Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,
• Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.
• The archers too, upon a wider plain,
• Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft,
• And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft
• Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top,
• Call’d up a thousand thoughts to envelope
• Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee
• And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,
• Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young
• Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue
• Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,
• And very, very deadliness did nip
• Her motherly cheeks. Arous’d from this sad mood
• By one, who at a distance loud halloo’d,
• Uplifting his strong bow into the air,
• Many might after brighter visions stare:
• After the Argonauts, in blind amaze
• Tossing about on Neptune’s restless ways,
• Until, from the horizon’s vaulted side,
• There shot a golden splendour far and wide,
• Spangling those million poutings of the brine
• With quivering ore: ’twas even an awful shine
• From the exaltation of Apollo’s bow;
• A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe.
• Who thus were ripe for high contemplating
• Might turn their steps towards the sober ring
• Where sat Endymion and the aged priest
• ’Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas’d
• The silvery setting of their mortal star.
• There they discours’d upon the fragile bar
• That keeps us from our homes ethereal;
• And what our duties there: to nightly call
• Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;
• To summon all the downiest clouds together
• For the sun’s purple couch; to emulate
• In ministring the potent rule of fate
• With speed of fire-tailed exhalations;
• To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons
• Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,
• A world of other unguess’d offices.
• Anon they wander’d, by divine converse,
• Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse
• Each one his own anticipated bliss.
• One felt heart-certain that he could not miss
• His quick gone love, among fair blossom’d boughs,
• Where every zephyr-sigh pouts, and endows
• Her lips with music for the welcoming.
• Another wish’d, mid that eternal spring,
• To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,
• Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales:
• Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,
• And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;
• And, ever after, through those regions be
• His messenger, his little Mercury.
• Some were athirst in soul to see again
• Their fellow huntsmen o’er the wide champaign
• In times long past; to sit with them, and talk
• Of all the chances in their earthly walk;
• Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores
• Of happiness, to when upon the moors,
• Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,
• And shar’d their famish’d scrips. Thus all out-told
• Their fond imaginations, — saving him
• Whose eyelids curtain’d up their jewels dim,
• Endymion: yet hourly had he striven
• To hide the cankering venom, that had riven
• His fainting recollections. Now indeed
• His senses had swoon’d off: he did not heed
• The sudden silence, or the whispers low,
• Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe,
• Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,
• Or maiden’s sigh, that grief itself embalms:
• But in the self-same fixed trance he kept,
• Like one who on the earth had never stept —
• Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man,
• Frozen in that old tale Arabian.

• Who whispers him so pantingly and close?
• Peona, his sweet sister: of all those,
• His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made,
• And breath’d a sister’s sorrow to persuade
• A yielding up, a cradling on her care.
• Her eloquence did breathe away the curse:
• She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse
• Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,
• Along a path between two little streams, —
• Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,
• From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow
• From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;
• Until they came to where these streamlets fall,
• With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,
• Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush
• With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.
• A little shallop, floating there hard by,
• Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;
• And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,
• And dipt again, with the young couple’s weight, —
• Peona guiding, through the water straight,
• Towards a bowery island opposite;
• Which gaining presently, she steered light
• Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,
• Where nested was an arbour, overwove
• By many a summer’s silent fingering;
• To whose cool bosom she was used to bring
• Her playmates, with their needle broidery,
• And minstrel memories of times gone by.

• So she was gently glad to see him laid
• Under her favourite bower’s quiet shade,
• On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,
• Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves
• When last the sun his autumn tresses shook,
• And the tann’d harvesters rich armfuls took.
• Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest:
• But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest
• Peona’s busy hand against his lips,
• And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips
• In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps
• A patient watch over the stream that creeps
• Windingly by it, so the quiet maid
• Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade
• Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling
• Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling
• Among sere leaves and twigs, might all be heard.

• O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,
• That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind
• Till it is hush’d and smooth! O unconfin’d
• Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key
• To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,
• Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,
• Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves
• And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world
• Of silvery enchantment! — who, upfurl’d
• Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour,
• But renovates and lives? — Thus, in the bower,
• Endymion was calm’d to life again.
• Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain,
• He said: “I feel this thine endearing love
• All through my bosom: thou art as a dove
• Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings
• About me; and the pearliest dew not brings
• Such morning incense from the fields of May,
• As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray
• From those kind eyes, — the very home and haunt
• Of sisterly affection. Can I want
• Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears?
• Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears
• That, any longer, I will pass my days
• Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise
• My voice upon the mountain-heights; once more
• Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar:
• Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll
• Around the breathed boar: again I’ll poll
• The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow:
• And, when the pleasant sun is getting low,
• Again I’ll linger in a sloping mead
• To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed
• Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered, sweet,
• And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat
• My soul to keep in its resolved course.”

• Hereat Peona, in their silver source,
• Shut her pure sorrow drops with glad exclaim,
• And took a lute, from which there pulsing came
• A lively prelude, fashioning the way
• In which her voice should wander. ’Twas a lay
• More subtle cadenced, more forest wild
• Than Dryope’s lone lulling of her child;
• And nothing since has floated in the air
• So mournful strange. Surely some influence rare
• Went, spiritual, through the damsel’s hand;
• For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann’d
• The quick invisible strings, even though she saw
• Endymion’s spirit melt away and thaw
• Before the deep intoxication.
• But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon
• Her self-possession — swung the lute aside,
• And earnestly said: “Brother, ’tis vain to hide
• That thou dost know of things mysterious,
• Immortal, starry; such alone could thus
• Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn’d in aught
• Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught
• A Paphian dove upon a message sent?
• Thy deathful bow against some dear-herd bent,
• Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen
• Her naked limbs among the alders green;
• And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace
• Something more high perplexing in thy face!”

• Endymion look’d at her, and press’d her hand,
• And said, “Art thou so pale, who wast so bland
• And merry in our meadows? How is this?
• Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss! —
• Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change
• Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange?
• Or more complete to overwhelm surmise?
• Ambition is no sluggard: ’tis no prize,
• That toiling years would put within my grasp,
• That I have sigh’d for: with so deadly gasp
• No man e’er panted for a mortal love.
• So all have set my heavier grief above
• These things which happen. Rightly have they done:
• I, who still saw the horizontal sun
• Heave his broad shoulder o’er the edge of the world,
• Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl’d
• My spear aloft, as signal for the chace —
• I, who, for very sport of heart, would race
• With my own steed from Araby; pluck down
• A vulture from his towery perching; frown
• A lion into growling, loth retire —
• To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire,
• And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast
• Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest.

• “This river does not see the naked sky,
• Till it begins to progress silverly
• Around the western border of the wood,
• Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood
• Seems at the distance like a crescent moon:
• And in that nook, the very pride of June,
• Had I been used to pass my weary eves;
• The rather for the sun unwilling leaves
• So dear a picture of his sovereign power,
• And I could witness his most kingly hour,
• When he doth tighten up the golden reins,
• And paces leisurely down amber plains
• His snorting four. Now when his chariot last
• Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast,
• There blossom’d suddenly a magic bed
• Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red:
• At which I wondered greatly, knowing well
• That but one night had wrought this flowery spell;
• And, sitting down close by, began to muse
• What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus,
• In passing here, his owlet pinions shook;
• Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook
• Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth,
• Had dipt his rod in it: such garland wealth
• Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought,
• Until my head was dizzy and distraught.
• Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole
• A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul;
• And shaping visions all about my sight
• Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light;
• The which became more strange, and strange, and dim,
• And then were gulph’d in a tumultuous swim:
• And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell
• The enchantment that afterwards befel?
• Yet it was but a dream: yet such a dream
• That never tongue, although it overteem
• With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring,
• Could figure out and to conception bring
• All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay
• Watching the zenith, where the milky way
• Among the stars in virgin splendour pours;
• And travelling my eye, until the doors
• Of heaven appear’d to open for my flight,
• I became loth and fearful to alight
• From such high soaring by a downward glance:
• So kept me stedfast in that airy trance,
• Spreading imaginary pinions wide.
• When, presently, the stars began to glide,
• And faint away, before my eager view:
• At which I sigh’d that I could not pursue,
• And dropt my vision to the horizon’s verge;
• And lo! from the opening clouds, I saw emerge
• The loveliest moon, that ever silver’d o’er
• A shell for Neptune’s goblet: she did soar
• So passionately bright, my dazzled soul
• Commingling with her argent spheres did roll
• Through clear and cloudy, even when she went
• At last into a dark and vapoury tent —
• Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train
• Of planets all were in the blue again.
• To commune with those orbs, once more I rais’d
• My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed
• By a bright something, sailing down apace,
• Making me quickly veil my eyes and face:
• Again I look’d, and, O ye deities,
• Who from Olympus watch our destinies!
• Whence that completed form of all completeness?
• Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness?
• Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O where
• Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair?
• Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun;
• Not — thy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun
• Such follying before thee — yet she had,
• Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad;
• And they were simply gordian’d up and braided,
• Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded,
• Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow;
• The which were blended in, I know not how,
• With such a paradise of lips and eyes,
• Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs,
• That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings
• And plays about its fancy, till the stings
• Of human neighbourhood envenom all.
• Unto what awful power shall I call?
• To what high fane? — Ah! see her hovering feet,
• More bluely vein’d, more soft, more whitely sweet
• Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose
• From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows
• Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion;
• ’Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million
• Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed,
• Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed,
• Handfuls of daisies.” — “Endymion, how strange!
• Dream within dream!” — “She took an airy range,
• And then, towards me, like a very maid,
• Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid,
• And press’d me by the hand: Ah! ’twas too much;
• Methought I fainted at the charmed touch,
• Yet held my recollection, even as one
• Who dives three fathoms where the waters run
• Gurgling in beds of coral: for anon,
• I felt upmounted in that region
• Where falling stars dart their artillery forth,
• And eagles struggle with the buffeting north
• That balances the heavy meteor-stone; —
• Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone,
• But lapp’d and lull’d along the dangerous sky.
• Soon, as it seem’d, we left our journeying high,
• And straightway into frightful eddies swoop’d;
• Such as aye muster where grey time has scoop’d
• Huge dens and caverns in a mountain’s side:
• There hollow sounds arous’d me, and I sigh’d
• To faint once more by looking on my bliss —
• I was distracted; madly did I kiss
• The wooing arms which held me, and did give
• My eyes at once to death: but ’twas to live,
• To take in draughts of life from the gold fount
• Of kind and passionate looks; to count, and count
• The moments, by some greedy help that seem’d
• A second self, that each might be redeem’d
• And plunder’d of its load of blessedness.
• Ah, desperate mortal! I ev’n dar’d to press
• Her very cheek against my crowned lip,
• And, at that moment, felt my body dip
• Into a warmer air: a moment more,
• Our feet were soft in flowers. There was store
• Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes
• A scent of violets, and blossoming limes,
• Loiter’d around us; then of honey cells,
• Made delicate from all white-flower bells;
• And once, above the edges of our nest,
• An arch face peep’d, — an Oread as I guess’d.

• “Why did I dream that sleep o’er-power’d me
• In midst of all this heaven? Why not see,
• Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark,
• And stare them from me? But no, like a spark
• That needs must die, although its little beam
• Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream
• Fell into nothing — into stupid sleep.
• And so it was, until a gentle creep,
• A careful moving caught my waking ears,
• And up I started: Ah! my sighs, my tears,
• My clenched hands; — for lo! the poppies hung
• Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung
• A heavy ditty, and the sullen day
• Had chidden herald Hesperus away,
• With leaden looks: the solitary breeze
• Bluster’d, and slept, and its wild self did teaze
• With wayward melancholy; and I thought,
• Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought
• Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus! —
• Away I wander’d — all the pleasant hues
• Of heaven and earth had faded: deepest shades
• Were deepest dungeons; heaths and sunny glades
• Were full of pestilent light; our taintless rills
• Seem’d sooty, and o’er-spread with upturn’d gills
• Of dying fish; the vermeil rose had blown
• In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown
• Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird
• Before my heedless footsteps stirr’d, and stirr’d
• In little journeys, I beheld in it
• A disguis’d demon, missioned to knit
• My soul with under darkness; to entice
• My stumblings down some monstrous precipice:
• Therefore I eager followed, and did curse
• The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse,
• Rock’d me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven!
• These things, with all their comfortings, are given
• To my down-sunken hours, and with thee,
• Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea
• Of weary life.”

• Thus ended he, and both
• Sat silent: for the maid was very loth
• To answer; feeling well that breathed words
• Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords
• Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps
• Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps,
• And wonders; struggles to devise some blame;
• To put on such a look as would say, Shame
• On this poor weakness! but, for all her strife,
• She could as soon have crush’d away the life
• From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause,
• She said with trembling chance: “Is this the cause?
• This all? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas!
• That one who through this middle earth should pass
• Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave
• His name upon the harp-string, should achieve
• No higher bard than simple maidenhood,
• Singing alone, and fearfully, — how the blood
• Left his young cheek; and how he used to stray
• He knew not where; and how he would say, nay,
• If any said ’twas love: and yet ’twas love;
• What could it be but love? How a ring-dove
• Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path;
• And how he died: and then, that love doth scathe
• The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses;
• And then the ballad of his sad life closes
• With sighs, and an alas! — Endymion!
• Be rather in the trumpet’s mouth, — anon
• Among the winds at large — that all may hearken!
• Although, before the crystal heavens darken,
• I watch and dote upon the silver lakes
• Pictur’d in western cloudiness, that takes
• The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands,
• Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands
• With horses prancing o’er them, palaces
• And towers of amethyst, — would I so tease
• My pleasant days, because I could not mount
• Into those regions? The Morphean fount
• Of that fine element that visions, dreams,
• And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams
• Into its airy channels with so subtle,
• So thin a breathing, not the spider’s shuttle,
• Circled a million times within the space
• Of a swallow’s nest-door, could delay a trace,
• A tinting of its quality: how light
• Must dreams themselves be; seeing they’re more slight
• Than the mere nothing that engenders them!
• Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem
• Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?
• Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick
• For nothing but a dream?” Hereat the youth
• Look’d up: a conflicting of shame and ruth
• Was in his plaited brow: yet, his eyelids
• Widened a little, as when Zephyr bids
• A little breeze to creep between the fans
• Of careless butterflies: amid his pains
• He seem’d to taste a drop of manna-dew,
• Full palatable; and a colour grew
• Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake.

• “Peona! ever have I long’d to slake
• My thirst for the world’s praises: nothing base,
• No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace
• The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar’d —
• Though now ’tis tatter’d; leaving my bark bar’d
• And sullenly drifting: yet my higher hope
• Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope,
• To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks.
• Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
• Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
• A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
• Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold
• The clear religion of heaven! Fold
• A rose leaf round thy finger’s taperness,
• And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress
• Of music’s kiss impregnates the free winds,
• And with a sympathetic touch unbinds
• Eolian magic from their lucid wombs:
• Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;
• Old ditties sigh above their father’s grave;
• Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave
• Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot;
• Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
• Where long ago a giant battle was;
• And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass
• In every place where infant Orpheus slept.
• Feel we these things? — that moment have we stept
• Into a sort of oneness, and our state
• Is like a floating spirit’s. But there are
• Richer entanglements, enthralments far
• More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
• To the chief intensity: the crown of these
• Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
• Upon the forehead of humanity.
• All its more ponderous and bulky worth
• Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth
• A steady splendour; but at the tip-top,
• There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop
• Of light, and that is love: its influence,
• Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense,
• At which we start and fret; till in the end,
• Melting into its radiance, we blend,
• Mingle, and so become a part of it, —
• Nor with aught else can our souls interknit
• So wingedly: when we combine therewith,
• Life’s self is nourish’d by its proper pith,
• And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.
• Aye, so delicious is the unsating food,
• That men, who might have tower’d in the van
• Of all the congregated world, to fan
• And winnow from the coming step of time
• All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime
• Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,
• Have been content to let occasion die,
• Whilst they did sleep in love’s elysium.
• And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb,
• Than speak against this ardent listlessness:
• For I have ever thought that it might bless
• The world with benefits unknowingly;
• As does the nightingale, upperched high,
• And cloister’d among cool and bunched leaves —
• She sings but to her love, nor e’er conceives
• How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood.
• Just so may love, although ’tis understood
• The mere commingling of passionate breath,
• Produce more than our searching witnesseth:
• What I know not: but who, of men, can tell
• That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
• To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
• The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
• The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
• The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
• Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,
• If human souls did never kiss and greet?

• “Now, if this earthly love has power to make
• Men’s being mortal, immortal; to shake
• Ambition from their memories, and brim
• Their measure of content; what merest whim,
• Seems all this poor endeavour after fame,
• To one, who keeps within his stedfast aim
• A love immortal, an immortal too.
• Look not so wilder’d; for these things are true,
• And never can be born of atomies
• That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies,
• Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I’m sure,
• My restless spirit never could endure
• To brood so long upon one luxury,
• Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
• A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
• My sayings will the less obscured seem,
• When I have told thee how my waking sight
• Has made me scruple whether that same night
• Was pass’d in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona!
• Beyond the matron-temple of Latona,
• Which we should see but for these darkening boughs,
• Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows
• Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart,
• And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught,
• And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide
• Past them, but he must brush on every side.
• Some moulder’d steps lead into this cool cell,
• Far as the slabbed margin of a well,
• Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye
• Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky.
• Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set
• Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet
• Edges them round, and they have golden pits:
• ’Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits
• In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat,
• When all above was faint with mid-day heat.
• And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed,
• I’d bubble up the water through a reed;
• So reaching back to boy-hood: make me ships
• Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips,
• With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be
• Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily,
• When love-lorn hours had left me less a child,
• I sat contemplating the figures wild
• Of o’er-head clouds melting the mirror through.
• Upon a day, while thus I watch’d, by flew
• A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver;
• So plainly character’d, no breeze would shiver
• The happy chance: so happy, I was fain
• To follow it upon the open plain,
• And, therefore, was just going; when, behold!
• A wonder, fair as any I have told —
• The same bright face I tasted in my sleep,
• Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap
• Through the cool depth. — It moved as if to flee —
• I started up, when lo! refreshfully,
• There came upon my face, in plenteous showers,
• Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,
• Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,
• Bathing my spirit in a new delight.
• Aye, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss
• Alone preserved me from the drear abyss
• Of death, for the fair form had gone again.
• Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain
• Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth
• On the deer’s tender haunches: late, and loth,
• ’Tis scar’d away by slow returning pleasure.
• How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure
• Of weary days, made deeper exquisite,
• By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night!
• Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still,
• Than when I wander’d from the poppy hill:
• And a whole age of lingering moments crept
• Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept
• Away at once the deadly yellow spleen.
• Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen;
• Once more been tortured with renewed life.
• When last the wintry gusts gave over strife
• With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies
• Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes
• In pity of the shatter’d infant buds, —
• That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs,
• My hunting cap, because I laugh’d and smil’d,
• Chatted with thee, and many days exil’d
• All torment from my breast; — ’twas even then,
• Straying about, yet, coop’d up in the den
• Of helpless discontent, — hurling my lance
• From place to place, and following at chance,
• At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck,
• And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck
• In the middle of a brook, — whose silver ramble
• Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble,
• Tracing along, it brought me to a cave,
• Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave
• The nether sides of mossy stones and rock, —
• ’Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock
• Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead,
• Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread
• Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph’s home.
• `Ah! impious mortal, whither do I roam?’
• Said I, low voic’d `ah, whither! ’tis the grot
• Of Proserpine, when hell, obscure and hot,
• Doth her resign; and where her tender hands
• She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands:
• Or ’tis the cell of Echo, where she sits,
• And babbles thorough silence, till her wits
• Are gone in tender madness, and anon,
• Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone
• Of sadness. O that she would take my vows,
• And breathe them sighingly among the boughs,
• To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head,
• Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed,
• And weave them dyingly — send honey-whispers
• Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers
• May sigh my love unto her pitying!
• O charitable Echo! hear, and sing
• This ditty to her! — tell her’ — so I stay’d
• My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid,
• Stood stupefied with my own empty folly,
• And blushing for the freaks of melancholy.
• Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name
• Most fondly lipp’d, and then these accents came:
• ’Endymion! the cave is secreter
• Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir
• No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
• Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
• And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.’
• At that oppress’d I hurried in. — Ah! where
• Are those swift moments? Whither are they fled?
• I’ll smile no more, Peona; nor will wed
• Sorrow the way to death; but patiently
• Bear up against it: so farewel, sad sigh;
• And come instead demurest meditation,
• To occupy me wholly, and to fashion
• My pilgrimage for the world’s dusky brink.
• No more will I count over, link by link,
• My chain of grief: no longer strive to find
• A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind
• Blustering about my ears: aye, thou shalt see,
• Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be;
• What a calm round of hours shall make my days.
• There is a paly flame of hope that plays
• Where’er I look: but yet, I’ll say ’tis naught —
• And here I bid it die. Have not I caught,
• Already, a more healthy countenance?
• By this the sun is setting; we may chance
• Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car.”

• This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star
• Through autumn mists, and took Peona’s hand:
• They stept into the boat, and launch’d from land.

• In drear-nighted December,
• Too happy, happy tree,
• Thy branches ne’er remember
• Their green felicity —
• The north cannot undo them,
• With a sleety whistle through them,
• Nor frozen thawings glue them
• From budding at the prime.

• In 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.

• Ah! would ’twere so with many
• A gentle girl and boy —
• But were there ever any
• Writh’d not of passed joy?
• To know the change and feel it,
• When there is none to heal it,
• Nor numbed sense to steel it,
• Was never said in rhyme.