Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Fancy: I. The Imagination

Fancy

John Keats (1795–1821)

EVER let the Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;

Then let wingèd Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her:

Open wide the mind’s cage-door,

She ’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;

Summer’s joys are spoilt by use,

And the enjoying of the Spring

Fades as does its blossoming:

Autumn’s red-lipped fruitage too,

Blushing through the mist and dew,

Cloys with tasting. What do then?

Sit thee by the ingle, when

The sear fagot blazes bright,

Spirit of a winter’s night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,

And the cakèd snow is shuffled

From the ploughboy’s heavy shoon;

When the Night doth meet the Noon

In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.

—Sit thee there, and send abroad

With a mind self-overawed

Fancy, high-commissioned:—send her!

She has vassals to attend her;

She will bring, in spite of frost,

Beauties that the earth hath lost;

She will bring thee, all together,

All delights of summer weather;

All the buds and bells of May

From dewy sward or thorny spray;

All the heapèd Autumn’s wealth,

With a still, mysterious stealth;

She will mix these pleasures up

Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it;—thou shalt hear

Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reapèd corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn;

And in the same moment—hark!

’T is the early April lark,

Or the rooks, with busy caw,

Foraging for sticks and straw.

Thou shalt, at one glance, behold

The daisy and the marigold;

White-plumed lilies, and the first

Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;

Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;

And every leaf, and every flower

Pearlèd with the self-same shower.

Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep

Meagre from its cellèd sleep;

And the snake all winter-thin

Cast on sunny bank its skin;

Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see

Hatching in the hawthorn tree,

When the hen-bird’s wing doth rest

Quiet on her mossy nest;

Then the hurry and alarm

When the beehive casts its swarm;

Acorns ripe down-pattering

While the autumn breezes sing.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;

Everything is spoilt by use:

Where ’s the cheek that doth not fade,

Too much gazed at? Where ’s the maid

Whose lip mature is ever new?

Where ’s the eye, however blue,

Doth not weary? Where ’s the face

One would meet in every place?

Where ’s the voice, however soft,

One would hear so very oft?

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.

Let then wingèd Fancy find

Thee a mistress to thy mind:

Dulcet-eyed as Ceres’ daughter,

Ere the god of torment taught her

How to frown and how to chide;

With a waist and with a side

White as Hebe’s, when her zone

Split its golden clasp, and down

Fell her kirtle to her feet

While she held the goblet sweet,

And Jove grew languid.—Break the mesh

Of the Fancy’s silken leash;

Quickly break her prison-string,

And such joys as these she ’ll bring:

—Let the wingèd Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home.