The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats/Chorus of Fairies
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?
O for a fiery gloom and thee,
Dusketha, so enchantingly
Freckle-wing'd and lizard-sided!
Dusketha
By thee, Spright, will I be guided!
I care not for cold or heat;
Frost and flame, or sparks, or sleet,
To my essence are the same;—
But I honour more the flame.
Spright of fire, I follow thee80
Wheresoever it may be;
To the torrid spouts and fountains,
Underneath earth-quaked mountains;
Or, at thy supreme desire,
Touch the very pulse of fire
With my bare unlidded eyes.
Salamander
Sweet Dusketha! paradise!
Off, ye icy Spirits, fly!
Frosty creatures of the sky!
Dusketha
Breathe upon them, fiery Spright!90
Zephyr, Breama (to each other)
Away! away to our delight!
Salamander
Go, feed on icicles, while we
Bedded in tongued flames will be.
Dusketha
Lead me to these fev'rous glooms,
Spright of Fire!
Breama
Me to the blooms,
Blue eyed Zephyr of those flowers
Far in the west where the May-cloud lowers:
And the beams of still Vesper, where winds are all whist,
Are shed thro' the rain and the milder mist,
And twilight your floating bowers.100