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 swingàd censer teeming:
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of
pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.
Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchàd
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-ridgàd mountains steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams,
and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d 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!
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring
with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples
the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the
hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they
think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee
sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind,
Or on a half-reap’d furrow
sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinàd
flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a
cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music
too,—
While barràd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a
wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives
or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The
redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor
suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-
berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in
your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the
soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters
the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning
rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globàd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some
rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding
adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of
Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can
burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her
cloudy trophies hung.
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