Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
John Keats. 17951821630. Bards of Passion and of Mirth Written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletcher’s Tragi-Comedy ‘The Fair Maid of the Inn’
BARDS of Passion and of Mirth, | |
Ye have left your souls on earth! | |
Have ye souls in heaven too, | |
Doubled-lived in regions new? | |
Yes, and those of heaven commune | 5 |
With the spheres of sun and moon; | |
With the noise of fountains wondrous, | |
And the parle of voices thund’rous; | |
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, trancèd 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 |