Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
John Keats. 17951821624. Ode to a Nightingale
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 thine happiness, | |
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees, | |
In some melodious plot | |
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, | |
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. | 10 |
O for a draught of vintage! that hath been | |
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvèd earth, | |
Tasting of Flora and the country-green, | |
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt 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-stainèd 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 grey 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 embalmèd 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 musèd 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 ofttimes 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 |