Selected Poems by John Keats

Author:John Keats [John Keats]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

Endymion

BOOK IV.

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse!

O first-born on the mountains! by the hues

Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:

Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,

While yet our England was a wolfish den;

Before our forests heard the talk of men;

Before the first of Druids was a child; –

Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild

Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude.

There came an eastern voice of solemn mood: –

Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine,

Apollo’s garland: – yet didst thou divine

Such home-bred glory, that they cry’d in vain,

“Come hither, Sister of the Island!” Plain

Spake fair Ausonia; and once more she spake

A higher summons: – still didst thou betake

Thee to thy native hopes. O thou hast won

A full accomplishment! The thing is done,

Which undone, these our latter days had risen

On barren souls. Great Muse, thou know’st what prison,

Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets

Our spirit’s wings: despondency besets

Our pillows; and the fresh to-morrow morn

Seems to give forth its light in very scorn

Of our dull, uninspired, snail-paced lives.

Long have I said, how happy he who shrives

To thee! But then I thought on poets gone,

And could not pray: – nor can I now – so on

I move to the end in lowliness of heart. –

“Ah, woe is me! that I should fondly part

From my dear native land! Ah, foolish maid!

Glad was the hour, when, with thee, myriads bade

Adieu to Ganges and their pleasant fields!

To one so friendless the clear freshet yields

A bitter coolness; the ripe grape is sour:

Yet I would have, great gods! but one short hour

Of native air – let me but die at home.”

Endymion to heaven’s airy dome

Was offering up a hecatomb of vows,

When these words reach’d him. Whereupon he bows

His head through thorny-green entanglement

Of underwood, and to the sound is bent,

Anxious as hind towards her hidden fawn.

“Is no one near to help me? No fair dawn

Of life from charitable voice? No sweet saying

To set my dull and sadden’d spirit playing?

No hand to toy with mine? No lips so sweet

That I may worship them? No eyelids meet

To twinkle on my bosom? No one dies

Before me, till from these enslaving eyes

Redemption sparkles! – I am sad and lost.”

Thou, Carian lord, hadst better have been tost

Into a whirlpool. Vanish into air,

Warm mountaineer! for canst thou only bear

A woman’s sigh alone and in distress?

See not her charms! Is Phœbe passionless?

Phœbe is fairer far – O gaze no more: –

Yet if thou wilt behold all beauty’s store,

Behold her panting in the forest grass!

Do not those curls of glossy jet surpass

For tenderness the arms so idly lain

Amongst them? Feelest not a kindred pain,

To see such lovely eyes in swimming search

After some warm delight, that seems to perch

Dovelike in the dim cell lying beyond

Their upper lids? – Hist!

“O for Hermes’ wand,

To touch this flower into human shape!

That woodland Hyacinthus could escape

From his green prison, and here kneeling down

Call me his queen, his second life’s fair crown!

Ah me, how I could love! – My soul doth melt

For the unhappy youth – Love! I

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