CHORUS OF FAIRIES
Inclosed in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, April 28, 1819, and printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.
Fire, Air, Earth, and Water
Salamander, Zephyr, Dusketha, and Breama
Salamander
Happy, happy glowing fire!
Zephyr
Fragrant air! delicious light!
Dusketha
Let me to my glooms retire!
Breama
I to green-weed rivers bright!
Salamander
Happy, happy glowing fire!
Dazzling bowers of soft retire,
Ever let my nourish'd wing,
Like a bat's, still wandering,
Faintly fan your fiery spaces,
Spirit sole in deadly places.10
In unhaunted roar and blaze,
Open eyes that never daze,
Let me see the myriad shapes
Of men, and beasts, and fish, and apes,
Portray'd in many a fiery den,
And wrought by spumy bitumen.
On the deep intenser roof,
Arched every way, aloof,
Let me breathe upon my skies,
And anger their live tapestries;20
Free from cold, and every care,
Of chilly rain, and shivering air.
Zephyr
Spright of Fire! away! away!
Or your very roundelay
Will sear my plumage newly budded
From its quilled sheath, and studded
With the self-same dews that fell
On the May-grown Asphodel.
Spright of Fire—away! away!
Breama
Spright of Fire—away! away!30
Zephyr, blue-eyed Faery, turn,
And see my cool sedge-shaded urn,
Where it rests its mossy brim
'Mid water-mint and cresses dim;
And the flowers, in sweet troubles,
Lift their eyes above the bubbles,
Like our Queen, when she would please
To sleep, and Oberon will tease.
Love me, blue-eyed Faery! true,
Soothly I am sick for you.40
Zephyr
Gentle Breama! by the first
Violet young nature nurst,
I will bathe myself with thee,
So you sometime follow me
To my home, far, far, in west,
Far beyond the search and quest
Of the golden-browed sun.
Come with me, o'er tops of trees,
To my fragrant palaces,
Where they ever floating are50
Beneath the cherish of a star
Call'd Vesper, who with silver veil
Ever hides his brilliance pale,
Ever gently-drowsed doth keep
Twilight for the Fays to sleep.
Fear not that your watery hair
Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there;
Clouds of stored summer rains
Thou shalt taste, before the stains
Of the mountain soil they take,60
And too unlucent for thee make.
I love thee, crystal Faery, true!
Sooth I am as sick for you!
Salamander
Out, ye aguish Faeries, out!
Chilly lovers, what a rout
Keep ye with your frozen breath,
Colder than the mortal death.
Adder-eyed Dusketha, speak,
Shall we leave them, and go seek
In the earth's wide entrails old70
Couches warm as theirs is cold?
