The lilacs where the robin built, The laburnum on his birth-day, The tree is living yet! I remember, I remember Where I was used to swing, And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then, That is so heavy now, And summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow! I remember, I remember The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from Heav'n Than when I was a boy. 1862-3 Edition. 38. BEN JONSON. To Celia. DRINK to me, only with thine eyes, And I'll not look for wine. The thirst, that from the soul doth rise, But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I sent thee late a rosy wreath, It could not wither'd be. But thou thereon didst only breathe, And sent'st it back to me: Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, Not of itself, but thee. Cunningham's Text. JOHN KEATS. 39. On first looking into Chapman's Homer. MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold, mesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific-and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien. 40. Ode to a Nightingale. I. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 2. O for a draught of vintage! that hath been 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-ey'd despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to morrow. |