Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/780

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

JOHN KEATS

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 swinged 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 branched 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-ridged mountains steep by bteep, And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,

The mobs-lain Dryads shall be lulPd to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness A rosy sanctuary will 1 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!

�� �