Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming ;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

IV

O brightest ! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retired
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

V

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind : Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep ; And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,

The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,

Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same: And there shall be for thee all soft delight

That shadowy thought can win,

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in !

SONNET

IF by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet

Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of poesy;

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be

Jealous of dead leaves in the bay-wreath crown:

So, if we may not let the Muse be free,

She will be bound with garlands of her own.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

I

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.

II

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 :

III

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.

IV

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.

V

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.

VI

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 ecstacy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain To thy high requiem become a sod.

VII

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.

VIII

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 famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 't is buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:- do I wake or sleep?

LAMIA

PART I

UPON a time, before the faery broods

Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,

Before King Oberon's bright diadem,

Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem,

Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns

From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslipp'd

lawns,

The ever-smitten Hermes empty left

His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft;

From high Olympus had he stolen light,

On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight
Of his great summer, and made retreat

Into a forest on the shores of Crete.

For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt
A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt;
At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured
Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored.
Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont,
And in those meads where sometimes she might
haunt,

Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse,