Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (222 page)
Read Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Online
Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
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.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Keats (1795–1821)
EVER let the Fancy roam!
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth,
Then let winge´d Fancy wander
5
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind’s cage-door,
She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer’s joys are spoilt by use,
10
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming:
Autumn’s red-lipp’d fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
15
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter’s night;
When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the cake´d snow is shuffled
20
From the ploughboy’s heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy
To banish Even from her sky.
— Sit thee there, and send abroad,
25
With a mind self-overaw’d
Fancy, high-commission’d: — send her!
She has vassals to attend her;
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
30
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heape´d Autumn’s wealth,
35
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shalt quaff it: — thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear;
40
Rustle of the reape´d corn;
Sweet birds antheming the morn:
And, in the same moment — hark!
’Tis the early April lark,
Or the rooks, with busy caw,
45
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plumed lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
50
Shaded hyacinth, alway
Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf, and every flower
Pearle´d with the self-same shower.
Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
55
Meagre from its celle´d sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,
60
When the hen-bird’s wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
Acorns ripe down-pattering,
65
While the autumn breezes sing
Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Everything is spoilt by use:
Where’s the cheek that doth not fade,
Too much gazed at? Where’s the maid
70
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where’s the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where’s the face
One would meet in every place?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
75
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let then winge´d Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres’ daughter,
Ere the God of Torment taught her
80
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe’s, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
85
And Jove grew languid. — Break the mesh
Of the Fancy’s silken leash;
Quickly break her prison-string,
And such joys as these she’ll bring:
— Let the winge´d Fancy roam!
90
Pleasure never is at home.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Keats (1795–1821)
BARDS of Passion and of Mirth
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
— Yes, and those of heaven commune
5
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wonderous
And the parle of voices thunderous;
With the whisper of heaven’s trees
And one another, in soft ease
10
Seated on Elysian lawns
Browsed by none but Dian’s fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
15
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, trance´d thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
20
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.
Thus ye live on high, and then
On the earth ye live again;
And the souls ye left behind you
25
Teach us, here, the way to find you,
Where your other souls are joying,
Never slumber’d, never cloying.
Here, your earth-born souls still speak
To mortals, of their little week;
30
Of their sorrows and delights;
Of their passions and their spites;
Of their glory and their shame;
What doth strengthen and what maim: —
Thus ye teach us, every day,
35
Wisdom, though fled far away.
Bards of Passion and of Mirth
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Ye have souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new!
40
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Keats (1795–1821)
SOULS of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
5
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of Venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
10
Would, with his Maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
I have heard that on a day
Mine host’s sign-board flew away
Nobody knew whither, till
15
An astrologer’s old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story —
Said he saw you in your glory
Underneath a new-old Sign
Sipping beverage divine,
20
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac!
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known —
Happy field or mossy cavern —
25
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Keats (1795–1821)
IN a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy Tree,
Thy branches ne’er remember
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them,
5
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.
In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy Brook,
Thy bubblings ne’er remember
10
Apollo’s summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.
15
Ah would ‘twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passe´d joy?
To know the change and feel it,
20
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbe´d sense to steal it —
Was never said in rhyme.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Keats (1795–1821)
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,
5
But being too happy in thy happiness, —
That thou, light-winge´d Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
10
O, far a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delve´d earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Proven¸al song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
15
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-staine´d mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
20
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,
25
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.
30
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,
35
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,
40
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalme´d darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
45
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.
50
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 muse´d rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
55
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.
60
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
65
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.
70
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
75
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?
80
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order