Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
John Keats. 17951821626. Ode to Psyche
O GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung | |
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, | |
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung | |
Even into thine own soft-conchèd ear: | |
Surely I dream’d to-day, or did I see | 5 |
The wingèd Psyche with awaken’d eyes? | |
I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly, | |
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, | |
Saw two fair creatures, couchèd side by side | |
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof | 10 |
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran | |
A brooklet, scarce espied: | |
‘Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, | |
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian | |
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass; | 15 |
Their arms embracèd, and their pinions too; | |
Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu, | |
As if disjoinèd by soft-handed slumber, | |
And ready still past kisses to outnumber | |
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love: | 20 |
The wingèd boy I knew; | |
But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? | |
His Psyche true! | |
O latest-born and loveliest vision far | |
Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy! | 25 |
Fairer than Phoebe’s sapphire-region’d star, | |
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; | |
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, | |
Nor altar heap’d with flowers; | |
Nor Virgin-choir to make delicious moan | 30 |
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. | 35 |
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 | 40 |
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; | 45 |
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet | |
From swingèd 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 | 50 |
In some untrodden region of my mind, | |
Where branchèd 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-ridgèd mountains steep by steep; | 55 |
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, | 60 |
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, | 65 |
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, | |
To let the warm Love in! |