Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (225 page)
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Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
John Keats (1795–1821)
‘O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
‘O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
5
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
‘I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
10
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
‘I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful — a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
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And her eyes were wild.
‘I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
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‘I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy’s song.
‘She found me roots of relish sweet,
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And honey wild and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said
“I love thee true.”
‘She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh’d full sore,
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And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.
‘And there she lulle´d me asleep,
And there I dream’d — Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
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On the cold hill’s side.
‘I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all,
They cried— “La belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”
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‘I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gape´d wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill’s side.
‘And this is why I sojourn here
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Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.’
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
On the Grasshopper and Cricket
John Keats (1795–1821)
THE POETRY of earth is never dead;
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the grasshopper’s — he takes the lead
5
In summer luxury, — he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
10
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
John Keats (1795–1821)
MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
5
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne:
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;
10
Or like stout Cortez — when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Keats (1795–1821)
O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
5
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
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Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Keats (1795–1821)
FOUR Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of Man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
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Spring’s honey’d cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
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On mists in idleness — to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook: —
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Great Spirits Now on Earth Are Sojourning
John Keats (1795–1821)
GREAT spirits now on earth are sojourning;
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn’s summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel’s wing;
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
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The social smile, the chain for Freedom’s sake:
And lo! — whose steadfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael’s whispering.
And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
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These, these will give the world another heart
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings in the human mart?
Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Keats (1795–1821)
WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-pile´d books, in charact’ry
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
5
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,
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Never have relish in the fairy 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.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play’d deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say
That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
What can I do to drive away
Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen,
Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free
In my old liberty?
When every fair one that I saw was fair,
Enough to catch me in but half a snare,
Not keep me there:
When, howe’er poor or particolour’d things,
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My muse had wings,
And ever ready was to take her course
Whither I bent her force,
Unintellectual, yet divine to me; -
Divine, I say! - What sea-bird o’er the sea
Is a philosopher the while he goes
Winging along where the great water throes?
How shall I do
To get anew
Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more
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Above, above
The reach of fluttering Love,
And make him cower lowly while I soar?
Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism,
A heresy and schism,
Foisted into the canon law’ of love; -
No, - wine is only sweet to happy men:
More dismal cares
Seize on me unawares, -
Where shall I learn to get my peace again?
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To banish thoughts of that most hateful land
Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand
Where they were wreck’d and live a wrecked life;
That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour,
Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore,
Unown’d of any weedy-haired gods;
Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods,
Iced in the great lakes, to afflict mankind;
Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind,
Would fright a Dryad; whose harsh herbag’d meads
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Make lean and lank the starv’d ox while he feeds;
There bad flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song,
And great unerring Nature once seems wrong.
O, for some sunny spell
To dissipate the shadows of this hell!
Say they are gone, - with the new dawning light
Steps forth my lady bright!
O, let me once more rest
My soul upon that dazzling breast!
Let once again these aching arms be plac’d,
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The tender gaolers of thy waist!
And let me feel that warm breath here and there
To spread a rapture in my very hair, -
O, the sweetness of the pain!
Give me those lips again!
Enough! Enough! it is enough for me
To dream of thee!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order