Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,

Begetters of our deep eternal theme!
When through the old oak Forest I am gone,

Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But, when I am consumed in the fire,

Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

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SONNET

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,

Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain ;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love;-then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

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SHARING EVE'S APPLE

I.

O BLUSH not so! O blush not so!
Or I shall think you knowing;
And if you smile the blushing while,
Then maidenheads are going.

II.

There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't,

And a blush for having done it:

There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught, And a blush for just begun it.

King Lear] 11 When I am through the old oak forest gone

Letter to G. and T. Keats.

III.

O sigh not so! O sigh not so!

For it sounds of Eve's sweet pippin;
By these loosen'd lips you have tasted the pips
And fought in an amorous nipping.

IV.

Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,
For it only will last our youth out,
And we have the prime of the kissing time,
We have not one sweet tooth out.

V.

There's a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,
And a sigh for I can't bear it!

O what can be done, shall we stay or run?
O cut the sweet apple and share it!

A DRAUGHT OF SUNSHINE

HENCE Burgundy, Claret, and Port,
Away with old Hock and Madeira,
Too earthly ye are for my sport;

There's a beverage brighter and clearer.
Instead of a pitiful rummer,

My wine overbrims a whole summer;

My bowl is the sky,

And I drink at my eye,

Till I feel in the brain

A Delphian pain—

Then follow, my Caius! then follow:

On the green of the hill

We will drink our fill

Of golden sunshine,

Till our brains intertwine

With the glory and grace of Apollo!

God of the Meridian,

And of the East and West,

To thee my soul is flown,

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And my body is earthward press'd.

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It is an awful mission,

A terrible division;

And leaves a gulph austere
To be fill'd with worldly fear.
Aye, when the soul is fled
To high above our head,
Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze,

As doth a mother wild,

When her young infant child

Is in an eagle's claws

And is not this the cause

Of madness?-God of Song,
Thou bearest me along

Through sights I scarce can bear:
O let me, let me share

With the hot lyre and thee,

The staid Philosophy.

Temper my lonely hours,

And let me see thy bowers

More unalarm'd!

SONNET

TO THE NILE

SON of the old moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and, that very while,

A desert fills our seeing's inward span;
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,

Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! they surely do;

"Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste

Of all beyond itself, thou dost bedew

Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste The pleasant sun-rise, green isles hast thou too, And to the sea as happily dost haste.

6-8 Art thou so beautiful, or a wan smile

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40

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Pleasant but to those men who, sick with toil, Rest them a space 'twixt Cairo and Dekan? Woodhouse. 10 And ignorance doth make a barren waste... Woodhouse.

SONNET

TO A LADY SEEN FOR A FEW MOMENTS AT VAUXHALL

TIME's sea hath been five years at its slow ebb, Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand, Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web,

And snared by the ungloving of thine hand. And yet I never look on midnight sky,

But I behold thine eyes' well memory'd light; I cannot look upon the rose's dye,

But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight. I cannot look on any budding flower,

But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips

And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour

Its sweets in the wrong sense :-Thou dost eclipse

Every delight with sweet remembering,

And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.

SONNET

WRITTEN IN ANSWER TO A SONNET ENDING THUS :

Dark eyes are dearer far

Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell—

By J. H. REYNOLDS.

BLUE! "Tis the life of heaven,-the domain
Of Cynthia, the wide palace of the sun,-
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,-
The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun.
Blue! 'Tis the life of waters:-Ocean

And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness.

1 Life's sea hath been five times at its slow ebb, Hood's Magazine.

13-14 Other delights with thy remembering

And sorrow to my darling joys doth bring.

Hood's Magazine.

6 With all its tributary streams, pools numberless,

Athenæum.

8 Subside but to a dark blue Nativeness. Draft.

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Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,

Married to green in all the sweetest flowers,- 10 Forget-me-not,-the Blue bell,-and, that Queen Of secrecy, the Violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art, alive with fate!

SONNET

TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS

O THAT a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,

So a day's journey in oblivious haze

To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate. O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!

To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant! 10

In little time a host of joys to bind,

And keep our souls in one eternal pant!

This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught Me how to harbour such a happy thought.

WHAT THE THRUSH SAID

LINES FROM A LETTER TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS

O THOU whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phoebus was away,
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.

O fret not after knowledge-I have none,

And yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge-I have none,

And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens

At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

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