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.

1

• St. Agnes’ Eve-Ah, bitter chill it was!
• The owl, for all it his feathers, was a-cold;
• The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
• And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
• Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told
• His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
• Like pious incense from a censer old,
• Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
• Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

2

• His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;
• Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,
• And back returnth, meagre, barefoot, wan,
• Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:
• The sculptur’d dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
• Emprison’d in black, purgatorial rails:
• Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat’ries,
• He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails
• To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails.

3

• Northward he turneth through a little door,
• And scarce three steps, ere Music’s golden tongue
• Flatter’d to the tears this aged man and poor;
• But no-already had his deathbell rung;
• The joys of all his life were said and sung:
• His was harsh penance on St. Agnes’ Eve:
• Another way he went,and soon among
• Rough ashes sat he for his soul’s reprieve,
• And all night kept awake, for sinners’ sake to grieve

4

• The ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft;
• And so it chanc’d, for many a door was wide,
• From a hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft,
• The silver, snarling trumpets’ gan to chide:
• The level chambers,ready with their pride,
• Were glowing to receive a thousand guests:
• The carved angels, ever eager-eyed,
• Star’d, where upon their heads the cornice rests,
• With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts.

5

• At length burst in the argent revelry,
• With plume, tiara, and all rich array,
• Numerous as the shadows haunting fairily
• The brain, new stuff’d, in youth, with triumphs gay
• Of old romance. These let us wish away,
• And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there,
• Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,
• On love, and wing’d St. Agnes’ saintly care,
• As she had heard old dames full many times declare.

6

• They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,
• Young virgins might have visions of delight,
• And soft adorings from their loves receive
• Upon the honey’d middle of the night,
• If the ceremonies due they did aright;
• As, supperless to bed they must retire,
• And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
• Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
• Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

7

• Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline:
• The music, yearning like a God in pain,
• She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine,
• Fix’d on the floor, saw many a sweeping train
• Pass by - she heeded not at all: in vain
• Came many a tiptoe,amorous cavalier,
• And back retir’d; not cool’d by high disdain,
• But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere:
• She sigh’d for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year.

8

• She danc’d along with vague, regardless eyes,
• Anxious lips, her breathing quick and short:
• The hallow’d hour was near at hand: she sighs
• Amid the timbrels, and the throng’d resort
• Of whisperers in anger, or in sport;
• ‘Mid looks of love, defiance, hate and scorn,
• Hoodwink’d with faery fancy; all amort,
• Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn,
• And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn.

9

• So, purposing each moment to retire,
• She linger’d still. Meantime,across the moors,
• Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire
• For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,
• Buttress’d from moonlight, stands he, and implores
• All saints to give him sight of Madeline,
• But for one moment in the tedious hours,
• That he might gaze and worship all unseen;
• Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss - in sooth such thing have been.

10

• He ventures in: let no buzz’d whisper tell:
• All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords
• Will storm his heart, Love’s fev’rous citadel:
• For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes,
• Hyena foeman, and hot-blooded lords,
• Whose very dogs would execrations howl
• Against his lineage: not one breast affords
• Him any mercy, in that mansion foul,
• Save one old beldame, weak in body and soul.

11

• Ah, happy chance! the aged creature came,
• Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand,
• To where he stood, hid from the torch’s flame,
• Behind a broad half-pillar, far beyond
• The sound of merriment and chorus bland:
• He startled her; but soon she knew his face,
• And grasp’s his fingers in her palsied hand,
• Saying, ″Mercy, Porphyro! hie thee from this place;
• They are all here to-night, the whole bloody thirsty race!

12

• ″Get hence! get hence! there’s dwarfish Hildebrand;
• He had a fever late, and in the fit
• He cursed three and thine, both the house and land:
• Then there’s that old Lord Maurice, not a whit
• More tame for his gray hairs- Alas me! flit!
• Flit like a ghost away. Ah,″-‶ Gossip dear,
• We’re safe enough; here in this arm-chair sit,
• And tell me how″-‶Good Saints! not here, not here;
• Follow me,child, or else these stones will be thy bier.‶

13

• He follow’d through a lowly arched way,
• Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume,
• And as she mutter’d ″Well-a-well-a-day!″
• He found him in a little moonlight room,
• Pale, lattic’d, chill, and silent as a tomb.
• ″Now tell me, where is Madeline,″ said he,
• ″O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom
• Which non but secret sisterhood may see,
• When they St. Agnes’ wool are we having piously.″

14

• ″St. Agnes! Ah! it is St. Agnes’ Eve-
• Yet men will murder upon holy days:
• Thou must hold water in a witch’ s sieve,
• And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays,
• To venture so: it fills me with amaze
• To see thee, Porphyro! - St. Agnes’ Eve!
• God’s help! my lady fair the conjuror plays
• This very night: good angels her deceive!
• But let me laugh awhile, I’ve mickle time to grieve.″

15

• Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon,
• While Porphyro upon her face doth look,
• Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone
• Who keepeth clos’d a wond’rous riddle-book,
• As spectacled she sits in chimney nook.
• But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told
• His lady’s purpose; and he scarce could brook
• Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold,
• And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old.

16

• Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
• Flushing his brow, and in his painted heart
• Made purple riot: then doth he purpose
• A stratagem, that makes the beldame start:
• “A cruel man and impious thou art:
• Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep and dream
• Alone with her good angles, far apart
• From wicked men like thee. Go, go!-I deem
• Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem.”

17

• “I will not harm her, by all the saints I swear,‶
• Quoth Porphyro: ″O may I ne′er find grace
• When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer,
• If one of her soft ringlets I displace,
• Or look with ruffian passion in her face:
• Good Angela, believe me by these tears;
• Or will, even in a moment′s space,
• Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen′s ears,
• And beard them, though they be more fang′d than wolves and bears.”

18

• “Ah! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul?
• A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing,
• Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll;
• Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening,
• Were never miss’d” - Thus plaining, doth she bring
• A gentler speech from burning Porphyro;
• So woful, and of such deep sorrowing,
• That Angela gives promise she will do
• Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe.

19

• Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy,
• Even to Madeline’s chamber, and there hide
• Him in closet, of such privacy
• That he might see her beauty unespy’d,
• And win perhaps that night a peerless bride,
• While legion’d faeries pac’d the coverlet,
• And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed.
• Never on such a night have lovers met,
• Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt.

20

• “It shall be as thou wishest,” said the Dame:
• “All cates and dainties shall be stored there
• Quickly on this feast-night: by the tambour frame
• Her own lute thou wilt see: no time to spare,
• For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare
• On such a catering trust my dizzy head.
• Wait here, my child, with patience; kneel in prayer
• The while: Ah! thou must needs the lady wed,
• Or may I never leave my grave among the dead.”

21

• So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear.
• The lover’s endless minutes slowly pass’d;
• The dame return’d, and whisper’d in his ear
• To follow her; with aged eyes aghast
• From fright of dim espial. Safe at last,
• Through many a dusky gallery, they gain
• The maiden’s chamber, silken, hush’d, and chaste;
• Where Porphyro took covert, pleas’d amain.
• His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain.

22

• Her falt’ring hand upon the balustrade,
• Old Angela was feeling for the stair,
• When Madeline, St. Agnes’ charmed maid,
• Rose, like a mission’d spirit, unaware:
• With silver taper’s light, and pious care,
• She turn’d, and down the aged gossip led
• To a safe level matting. Now prepare,
• Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;
• She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray’d and fled.

23

• Out went the taper as she hurried in;
• Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:
• She clos’d the door, she panted, all akin
• To spirits of the air, and visions wide:
• No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!
• But to her heart, her heart was voluble,
• Paining with eloquence her balmy side;
• As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
• Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

24

• A casement high and triple-arch’d there was,
• All garlanded with carven imag’ries
• Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
• And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
• Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
• As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;
• And in the midst, ‘mong thousand heraldries,
• And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
• A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.

25

• Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
• And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
• As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;
• Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
• And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
• And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
• She seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest,
• Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint:
• She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

26

• Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,
• Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
• Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
• Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees
• Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
• Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
• Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
• In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,
• But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.

27

• Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
• In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay,
• Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’d
• Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;
• Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;
• Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain;
• Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
• Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
• As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

28

• Stol’n to this paradise, and so entranced,
• Porphyro gaz’d upon her empty dress,
• And listen’d to her breathing, if it chanced
• To wake into a slumberous tenderness;
• Which when he heard, that minute did he bless,
• And breath’d himself: then from the closet crept,
• Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness,
• And over the hush’d carpet, silent, stept,
• And ‘tween the curtains peep’d, where, lo!—how fast she slept.

29

• Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon
• Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set
• A table, and, half anguish’d, threw thereon
• A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet:—
• O for some drowsy Morphean amulet!
• The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion,
• The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarinet,
• Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:—
• The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone.

30

• And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
• In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d,
• While he forth from the closet brought a heap
• Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
• With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
• And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
• Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d
• From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
• From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.

31

• These delicates he heap’d with glowing hand
• On golden dishes and in baskets bright
• Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand
• In the retired quiet of the night,
• Filling the chilly room with perfume light.—
• “And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake!
• Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite:
• Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes’ sake,
• Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache.”

32

• Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm
• Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream
• By the dusk curtains:—’twas a midnight charm
• Impossible to melt as iced stream:
• The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam;
• Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies:
• It seem’d he never, never could redeem
• From such a stedfast spell his lady’s eyes;
• So mus’d awhile, entoil’d in woofed phantasies.

33

• Awakening up, he took her hollow lute,—
• Tumultuous,—and, in chords that tenderest be,
• He play’d an ancient ditty, long since mute,
• In Provence call’d, “La belle dame sans mercy”:
• Close to her ear touching the melody;—
• Wherewith disturb’d, she utter’d a soft moan:
• He ceas’d—she panted quick—and suddenly
• Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone:
• Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone.

34

• Her eyes were open, but she still beheld,
• Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep:
• There was a painful change, that nigh expell’d
• The blisses of her dream so pure and deep
• At which fair Madeline began to weep,
• And moan forth witless words with many a sigh;
• While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep;
• Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye,
• Fearing to move or speak, she look’d so dreamingly.

35

• “Ah, Porphyro!” said she, “but even now
• Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear,
• Made tuneable with every sweetest vow;
• And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear:
• How chang’d thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear!
• Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,
• Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!
• Oh leave me not in this eternal woe,
• For if thy diest, my Love, I know not where to go.”

36

• Beyond a mortal man impassion’d far
• At these voluptuous accents, he arose
• Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing star
• Seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose;
• Into her dream he melted, as the rose
• Blendeth its odour with the violet,—
• Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows
• Like Love’s alarum pattering the sharp sleet
• Against the window-panes; St. Agnes’ moon hath set.

37

• ‘Tis dark: quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet:
• “This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline!”
• ‘Tis dark: the iced gusts still rave and beat:
• “No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine!
• Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine.—
• Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring?
• I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine,
• Though thou forsakest a deceived thing;—
• A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing.”

38

• “My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride!
• Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest?
• Thy beauty’s shield, heart-shap’d and vermeil dyed?
• Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest
• After so many hours of toil and quest,
• A famish’d pilgrim,—sav’d by miracle.
• Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest
• Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think’st well
• To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel.

39

• “Hark! ‘tis an elfin-storm from faery land,
• Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:
• Arise—arise! the morning is at hand;—
• The bloated wassaillers will never heed:—
• Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
• There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,—
• Drown’d all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:
• Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,
• For o’er the southern moors I have a home for thee.”

40

• She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
• For there were sleeping dragons all around,
• At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears—
• Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.—
• In all the house was heard no human sound.
• A chain-droop’d lamp was flickering by each door;
• The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
• Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;
• And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

41

• They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;
• Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide;
• Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,
• With a huge empty flaggon by his side:
• The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,
• But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:
• By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:—
• The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;—
• The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

42

• And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
• These lovers fled away into the storm.
• That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
• And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
• Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
• Were long be-nightmar’d. Angela the old
• Died palsy-twitch’d, with meagre face deform;
• The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
• For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.

I

• One morn before me were three figures seen,
• With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced;
• And one behind the other stepped serene,
• In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
• They passed, like figures on a marble urn,
• When shifted round to see the other side;
• They came again; as when the urn once more
• Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
• And they were strange to me, as may betide
• With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.

II

• How is it, shadows, that I knew ye not?
• How came ye muffled in so hush a masque?
• Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
• To steal away, and leave without a task
• My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
• The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
• Benumbed my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
• Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower,
• O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
• Unhaunted quite of all but—nothingness?

III

• A third time passed they by, and, passing, turned
• Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
• Then faded, and to follow them I burned
• And ached for wings, because I knew the three;
• The first was a fair maid, and Love her name;
• The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
• And ever watchful with fatigued eye;
• The last, whom I love more, the more of blame
• Is heaped upon her, maiden most unmeek,—
• I knew to be my demon Poesy.

IV

• They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
• O folly! What is Love? and where is it?
• And for that poor Ambition! it springs
• From a man’s little heart’s short fever-fit;
• For Poesy!—no,—she has not a joy,—
• At least for me,—so sweet as drowsy noons,
• And evenings steeped in honeyed indolence;
• O, for an age so sheltered from annoy,
• That I may never know how change the moons,
• Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!

V

• And once more came they by. Alas, wherefore?
• My sleep had been embroidered with dim dreams;
• My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er
• With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:
• The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
• Though in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;
• The open casement pressed a new-leaved vine,
• Let in the budding warmth and throstle’s lay;
• O Shadows! ’twas a time to bid farewell!
• Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.

VI

• So, ye three Ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
• My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
• For I would not be dieted with praise,
• A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
• Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more
• In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;
• Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,
• And for the day faint visions there is store;
• Vanish, ye Phantoms! from my idle sprite,
• Into the clouds, and never more return!

I

• Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
• Alone and palely loitering?
• The sedge has withered from the Lake,
• And no birds sing!

II

• Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
• So haggard and so woe-begone?
• The squirrel’s granary is full,
• And the harvest’s done.

III

• I see a lily on thy brow,
• With anguish moist and fever-dew,
• And on thy cheeks a fading rose
• Fast withereth too.

IV

• I met a Lady in the Meads,
• Full beautiful, a faery’s child,
• Her hair was long, her foot was light,
• And her eyes were wild.

V

• 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.

VI

• I set her on my pacing steed,
• And nothing else saw all day long;
• For sidelong would she bend, and sing
• A faery’s song—

VII

• She found me roots of relish sweet,
• And honey wild and manna dew,
• And sure in language strange she said—
• I love thee true.

VIII

• She took me to her elfin grot,
• And there she wept and sigh’d full sore,
• And there I shut her wild wild eyes
• With kisses four.

IX

• And there she lullèd me asleep,
• And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!—
• The latest dream I ever dream’d
• On the cold hill side.

X

• I saw pale kings, and princes too,
• Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
• They cried—‘La belle dame sans merci
• Thee hath in thrall!’

XI

• I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam
• With horrid warning gapèd wide,
• And I awoke, and found me here
• On the cold hill’s side.

XII

• And this is why I sojourn here,
• Alone and palely loitering,
• Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
• And no birds sing.

1.

• Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, 
• Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
• Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 
• A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: 
• What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape 
• Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
• In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 
• What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? 
• What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? 
• What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

2.

• Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
• Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; 
• Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, 
• 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, 
• For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

3.

• Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed 
• Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; 
• And, happy melodist, unwearied, 
• For ever piping songs for ever new; 
• More happy love! more happy, happy love! 
• For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, 
• For ever panting, and for ever young;
• All breathing human passion far above, 
• That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
• A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 

4.

• 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.

5.

• 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.

1

• No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
• Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
• Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
• By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
• Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
• Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
• Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
• A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
• For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
• And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

2

• But when the melancholy fit shall fall
• Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
• That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
• And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
• Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
• Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
• Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
• Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
• Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
• And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

3

• She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
• And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
• Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
• Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
• Ay, in the very temple of Delight
• Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
• Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
• Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
• His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
• And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

1

• 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 through envy of thy happy lot,
• But being too happy in thine happiness,
• That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
• In some melodious plot
• Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
• Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2

• O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
• Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
• Tasting of Flora and the country green,
• Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
• O 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:

3

• 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.

4

• 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,
• Cluster’d 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.

5

• I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
• Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
• But, in embalmed 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 cover’d 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.

6

• Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
• I have been half in love with easeful Death,
• Call’d him soft names in many a mused 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 vain—
• To thy high requiem become a sod.

7

• 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 oft-times hath
• Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
• Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

8

• 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 fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
• Adieu! 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?