<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420947" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Endymion: Book I</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">ENDYMION.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A Poetic Romance.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;THE STRETCHED METRE OF AN AN ANTIQUE SONG.&quot;<br>INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS CHATTERTON.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Book I</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:<br>Its loveliness increases; it will never<br>Pass into nothingness; but still will keep<br>A bower quiet for us, and a sleep<br>Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.<br>Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing<br>A flowery band to bind us to the earth,<br>Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth<br>Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,<br>Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways<br>Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,<br>Some shape of beauty moves away the pall<br>From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,<br>Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon<br>For simple sheep; and such are daffodils<br>With the green world they live in; and clear rills<br>That for themselves a cooling covert make<br>'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,<br>Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:<br>And such too is the grandeur of the dooms<br>We have imagined for the mighty dead;<br>All lovely tales that we have heard or read:<br>An endless fountain of immortal drink,<br>Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Nor do we merely feel these essences<br>For one short hour; no, even as the trees<br>That whisper round a temple become soon<br>Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,<br>The passion poesy, glories infinite,<br>Haunt us till they become a cheering light<br>Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,<br>That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast,<br>They alway must be with us, or we die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I<br>Will trace the story of Endymion.<br>The very music of the name has gone<br>Into my being, and each pleasant scene<br>Is growing fresh before me as the green<br>Of our own vallies: so I will begin<br>Now while I cannot hear the city's din;<br>Now while the early budders are just new,<br>And run in mazes of the youngest hue<br>About old forests; while the willow trails<br>Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails<br>Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year<br>Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer<br>My little boat, for many quiet hours,<br>With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.<br>Many and many a verse I hope to write,<br>Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,<br>Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees<br>Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,<br>I must be near the middle of my story.<br>O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,<br>See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,<br>With universal tinge of sober gold,<br>Be all about me when I make an end.<br>And now at once, adventuresome, I send<br>My herald thought into a wilderness:<br>There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress<br>My uncertain path with green, that I may speed<br>Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread<br>A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed<br>So plenteously all weed-hidden roots<br>Into o'er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits.<br>And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,<br>Where no man went; and if from shepherd's keep<br>A lamb strayed far a-down those inmost glens,<br>Never again saw he the happy pens<br>Whither his brethren, bleating with content,<br>Over the hills at every nightfall went.<br>Among the shepherds, 'twas believed ever,<br>That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever<br>From the white flock, but pass'd unworried<br>By angry wolf, or pard with prying head,<br>Until it came to some unfooted plains<br>Where fed the herds of Pan: ay great his gains<br>Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many,<br>Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,<br>And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly<br>To a wide lawn, whence one could only see<br>Stems thronging all around between the swell<br>Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell<br>The freshness of the space of heaven above,<br>Edg'd round with dark tree tops? through which a dove<br>Would often beat its wings, and often too<br>A little cloud would move across the blue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Full in the middle of this pleasantness<br>There stood a marble altar, with a tress<br>Of flowers budded newly; and the dew<br>Had taken fairy phantasies to strew<br>Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,<br>And so the dawned light in pomp receive.<br>For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire<br>Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre<br>Of brightness so unsullied, that therein<br>A melancholy spirit well might win<br>Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine<br>Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine<br>Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;<br>The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run<br>To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;<br>Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass<br>Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,<br>To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Now while the silent workings of the dawn<br>Were busiest, into that self-same lawn<br>All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped<br>A troop of little children garlanded;<br>Who gathering round the altar, seemed to pry<br>Earnestly round as wishing to espy<br>Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited<br>For many moments, ere their ears were sated<br>With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then<br>Fill'd out its voice, and died away again.<br>Within a little space again it gave<br>Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,<br>To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking<br>Through copse-clad vallies,--ere their death, oer-taking<br>The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> And now, as deep into the wood as we<br>Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmered light<br>Fair faces and a rush of garments white,<br>Plainer and plainer shewing, till at last<br>Into the widest alley they all past,<br>Making directly for the woodland altar.<br>O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter<br>In telling of this goodly company,<br>Of their old piety, and of their glee:<br>But let a portion of ethereal dew<br>Fall on my head, and presently unmew<br>My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring,<br>To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Leading the way, young damsels danced along,<br>Bearing the burden of a shepherd song;<br>Each having a white wicker over brimm'd<br>With April's tender younglings: next, well trimm'd,<br>A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks<br>As may be read of in Arcadian books;<br>Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe,<br>When the great deity, for earth too ripe,<br>Let his divinity o'er-flowing die<br>In music, through the vales of Thessaly:<br>Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground,<br>And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound<br>With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,<br>Now coming from beneath the forest trees,<br>A venerable priest full soberly,<br>Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye<br>Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept,<br>And after him his sacred vestments swept.<br>From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white,<br>Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light;<br>And in his left he held a basket full<br>Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull:<br>Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still<br>Than Leda's love, and cresses from the rill.<br>His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath,<br>Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth<br>Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd<br>Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud<br>Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd,<br>Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd<br>Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car,<br>Easily rolling so as scarce to mar<br>The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown:<br>Who stood therein did seem of great renown<br>Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,<br>Shewing like Ganymede to manhood grown;<br>And, for those simple times, his garments were<br>A chieftain king's: beneath his breast, half bare,<br>Was hung a silver bugle, and between<br>His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen.<br>A smile was on his countenance; he seem'd,<br>To common lookers on, like one who dream'd<br>Of idleness in groves Elysian:<br>But there were some who feelingly could scan<br>A lurking trouble in his nether lip,<br>And see that oftentimes the reins would slip<br>Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,<br>And think of yellow leaves, of owlets cry,<br>Of logs piled solemnly.--Ah, well-a-day,<br>Why should our young Endymion pine away!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Soon the assembly, in a circle rang'd,<br>Stood silent round the shrine: each look was chang'd<br>To sudden veneration: women meek<br>Beckon'd their sons to silence; while each cheek<br>Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear.<br>Endymion too, without a forest peer,<br>Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face,<br>Among his brothers of the mountain chase.<br>In midst of all, the venerable priest<br>Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least,<br>And, after lifting up his aged hands,<br>Thus spake he: &quot;Men of Latmos! shepherd bands!<br>Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks:<br>Whether descended from beneath the rocks<br>That overtop your mountains; whether come<br>From vallies where the pipe is never dumb;<br>Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs<br>Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze<br>Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge<br>Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge,<br>Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn<br>By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn:<br>Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare<br>The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air;<br>And all ye gentle girls who foster up<br>Udderless lambs, and in a little cup<br>Will put choice honey for a favoured youth:<br>Yea, every one attend! for in good truth<br>Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan.<br>Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than<br>Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains<br>Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains<br>Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad<br>Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had<br>Great bounty from Endymion our lord.<br>The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour'd<br>His early song against yon breezy sky,<br>That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire<br>Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;<br>Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod<br>With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god.<br>Now while the earth was drinking it, and while<br>Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,<br>And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright<br>'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light<br>Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang:</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang<br>From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth<br>Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death<br>Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;<br>Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress<br>Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;<br>And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken<br>The dreary melody of bedded reeds--<br>In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds<br>The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;<br>Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth<br>Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx--do thou now,<br>By thy love's milky brow!<br>By all the trembling mazes that she ran,<br>Hear us, great Pan!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles<br>Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles,<br>What time thou wanderest at eventide<br>Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side<br>Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom<br>Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom<br>Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees<br>Their golden honeycombs; our village leas<br>Their fairest-blossom'd beans and poppied corn;<br>The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,<br>To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries<br>Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies<br>Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year<br>All its completions--be quickly near,<br>By every wind that nods the mountain pine,<br>O forester divine!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies<br>For willing service; whether to surprise<br>The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;<br>Or upward ragged precipices flit<br>To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;<br>Or by mysterious enticement draw<br>Bewildered shepherds to their path again;<br>Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,<br>And gather up all fancifullest shells<br>For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells,<br>And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;<br>Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,<br>The while they pelt each other on the crown<br>With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown--<br>By all the echoes that about thee ring,<br>Hear us, O satyr king!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears,<br>While ever and anon to his shorn peers<br>A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,<br>When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn<br>Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms,<br>To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:<br>Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,<br>That come a swooning over hollow grounds,<br>And wither drearily on barren moors:<br>Dread opener of the mysterious doors<br>Leading to universal knowledge--see,<br>Great son of Dryope,<br>The many that are come to pay their vows<br>With leaves about their brows!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Be still the unimaginable lodge<br>For solitary thinkings; such as dodge<br>Conception to the very bourne of heaven,<br>Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,<br>That spreading in this dull and clodded earth<br>Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth:<br>Be still a symbol of immensity;<br>A firmament reflected in a sea;<br>An element filling the space between;<br>An unknown--but no more: we humbly screen<br>With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,<br>And giving out a shout most heaven rending,<br>Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean,<br>Upon thy Mount Lycean!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Even while they brought the burden to a close,<br>A shout from the whole multitude arose,<br>That lingered in the air like dying rolls<br>Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals<br>Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine.<br>Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine,<br>Young companies nimbly began dancing<br>To the swift treble pipe, and humming string.<br>Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly<br>To tunes forgotten--out of memory:<br>Fair creatures! whose young children's children bred<br>Thermopyl&aelig; its heroes--not yet dead,<br>But in old marbles ever beautiful.<br>High genitors, unconscious did they cull<br>Time's sweet first-fruits--they danc'd to weariness,<br>And then in quiet circles did they press<br>The hillock turf, and caught the latter end<br>Of some strange history, potent to send<br>A young mind from its bodily tenement.<br>Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent<br>On either side; pitying the sad death<br>Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath<br>Of Zephyr slew him,--Zephyr penitent,<br>Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,<br>Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.<br>The archers too, upon a wider plain,<br>Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft,<br>And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft<br>Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top,<br>Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope<br>Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee<br>And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,<br>Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young<br>Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue<br>Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,<br>And very, very deadliness did nip<br>Her motherly cheeks. Arous'd from this sad mood<br>By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd,<br>Uplifting his strong bow into the air,<br>Many might after brighter visions stare:<br>After the Argonauts, in blind amaze<br>Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways,<br>Until, from the horizon's vaulted side,<br>There shot a golden splendour far and wide,<br>Spangling those million poutings of the brine<br>With quivering ore: 'twas even an awful shine<br>From the exaltation of Apollo's bow;<br>A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe.<br>Who thus were ripe for high contemplating,<br>Might turn their steps towards the sober ring<br>Where sat Endymion and the aged priest<br>'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas'd<br>The silvery setting of their mortal star.<br>There they discours'd upon the fragile bar<br>That keeps us from our homes ethereal;<br>And what our duties there: to nightly call<br>Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;<br>To summon all the downiest clouds together<br>For the sun's purple couch; to emulate<br>In ministring the potent rule of fate<br>With speed of fire-tailed exhalations;<br>To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons<br>Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,<br>A world of other unguess'd offices.<br>Anon they wander'd, by divine converse,<br>Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse<br>Each one his own anticipated bliss.<br>One felt heart-certain that he could not miss<br>His quick gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs,<br>Where every zephyr-sigh pouts and endows<br>Her lips with music for the welcoming.<br>Another wish'd, mid that eternal spring,<br>To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,<br>Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales:<br>Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,<br>And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;<br>And, ever after, through those regions be<br>His messenger, his little Mercury.<br>Some were athirst in soul to see again<br>Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign<br>In times long past; to sit with them, and talk<br>Of all the chances in their earthly walk;<br>Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores<br>Of happiness, to when upon the moors,<br>Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,<br>And shar'd their famish'd scrips. Thus all out-told<br>Their fond imaginations,--saving him<br>Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim,<br>Endymion: yet hourly had he striven<br>To hide the cankering venom, that had riven<br>His fainting recollections. Now indeed<br>His senses had swoon'd off: he did not heed<br>The sudden silence, or the whispers low,<br>Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe,<br>Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,<br>Or maiden's sigh, that grief itself embalms:<br>But in the self-same fixed trance he kept,<br>Like one who on the earth had never stept.<br>Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man,<br>Frozen in that old tale Arabian.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Who whispers him so pantingly and close?<br>Peona, his sweet sister: of all those,<br>His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made,<br>And breath'd a sister's sorrow to persuade<br>A yielding up, a cradling on her care.<br>Her eloquence did breathe away the curse:<br>She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse<br>Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,<br>Along a path between two little streams,--<br>Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,<br>From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow<br>From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;<br>Until they came to where these streamlets fall,<br>With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,<br>Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush<br>With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.<br>A little shallop, floating there hard by,<br>Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;<br>And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,<br>And dipt again, with the young couple's weight,--<br>Peona guiding, through the water straight,<br>Towards a bowery island opposite;<br>Which gaining presently, she steered light<br>Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,<br>Where nested was an arbour, overwove<br>By many a summer's silent fingering;<br>To whose cool bosom she was used to bring<br>Her playmates, with their needle broidery,<br>And minstrel memories of times gone by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> So she was gently glad to see him laid<br>Under her favourite bower's quiet shade,<br>On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,<br>Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves<br>When last the sun his autumn tresses shook,<br>And the tann'd harvesters rich armfuls took.<br>Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest:<br>But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest<br>Peona's busy hand against his lips,<br>And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips<br>In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps<br>A patient watch over the stream that creeps<br>Windingly by it, so the quiet maid<br>Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade<br>Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling<br>Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling<br>Among seer leaves and twigs, might all be heard.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,<br>That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind<br>Till it is hush'd and smooth! O unconfin'd<br>Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key<br>To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,<br>Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,<br>Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves<br>And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world<br>Of silvery enchantment!--who, upfurl'd<br>Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour,<br>But renovates and lives?--Thus, in the bower,<br>Endymion was calm'd to life again.<br>Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain,<br>He said: &quot;I feel this thine endearing love<br>All through my bosom: thou art as a dove<br>Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings<br>About me; and the pearliest dew not brings<br>Such morning incense from the fields of May,<br>As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray<br>From those kind eyes,--the very home and haunt<br>Of sisterly affection. Can I want<br>Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears?<br>Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears<br>That, any longer, I will pass my days<br>Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise<br>My voice upon the mountain-heights; once more<br>Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar:<br>Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll<br>Around the breathed boar: again I'll poll<br>The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow:<br>And, when the pleasant sun is getting low,<br>Again I'll linger in a sloping mead<br>To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed<br>Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered sweet,<br>And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat<br>My soul to keep in its resolved course.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Hereat Peona, in their silver source,<br>Shut her pure sorrow drops with glad exclaim,<br>And took a lute, from which there pulsing came<br>A lively prelude, fashioning the way<br>In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay<br>More subtle cadenced, more forest wild<br>Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child;<br>And nothing since has floated in the air<br>So mournful strange. Surely some influence rare<br>Went, spiritual, through the damsel's hand;<br>For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd<br>The quick invisible strings, even though she saw<br>Endymion's spirit melt away and thaw<br>Before the deep intoxication.<br>But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon<br>Her self-possession--swung the lute aside,<br>And earnestly said: &quot;Brother, 'tis vain to hide<br>That thou dost know of things mysterious,<br>Immortal, starry; such alone could thus<br>Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn'd in aught<br>Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught<br>A Paphian dove upon a message sent?<br>Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent,<br>Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen<br>Her naked limbs among the alders green;<br>And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace<br>Something more high perplexing in thy face!&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Endymion look'd at her, and press'd her hand,<br>And said, &quot;Art thou so pale, who wast so bland<br>And merry in our meadows? How is this?<br>Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!--<br>Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change<br>Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange?<br>Or more complete to overwhelm surmise?<br>Ambition is no sluggard: 'tis no prize,<br>That toiling years would put within my grasp,<br>That I have sigh'd for: with so deadly gasp<br>No man e'er panted for a mortal love.<br>So all have set my heavier grief above<br>These things which happen. Rightly have they done:<br>I, who still saw the horizontal sun<br>Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the world,<br>Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl'd<br>My spear aloft, as signal for the chace--<br>I, who, for very sport of heart, would race<br>With my own steed from Araby; pluck down<br>A vulture from his towery perching; frown<br>A lion into growling, loth retire--<br>To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire,<br>And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast<br>Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;This river does not see the naked sky,<br>Till it begins to progress silverly<br>Around the western border of the wood,<br>Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood<br>Seems at the distance like a crescent moon:<br>And in that nook, the very pride of June,<br>Had I been used to pass my weary eves;<br>The rather for the sun unwilling leaves<br>So dear a picture of his sovereign power,<br>And I could witness his most kingly hour,<br>When he doth lighten up the golden reins,<br>And paces leisurely down amber plains<br>His snorting four. Now when his chariot last<br>Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast,<br>There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed<br>Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red:<br>At which I wondered greatly, knowing well<br>That but one night had wrought this flowery spell;<br>And, sitting down close by, began to muse<br>What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus,<br>In passing here, his owlet pinions shook;<br>Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook<br>Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth,<br>Had dipt his rod in it: such garland wealth<br>Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought,<br>Until my head was dizzy and distraught.<br>Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole<br>A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul;<br>And shaping visions all about my sight<br>Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light;<br>The which became more strange, and strange, and dim,<br>And then were gulph'd in a tumultuous swim:<br>And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell<br>The enchantment that afterwards befel?<br>Yet it was but a dream: yet such a dream<br>That never tongue, although it overteem<br>With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring,<br>Could figure out and to conception bring<br>All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay<br>Watching the zenith, where the milky way<br>Among the stars in virgin splendour pours;<br>And travelling my eye, until the doors<br>Of heaven appear'd to open for my flight,<br>I became loth and fearful to alight<br>From such high soaring by a downward glance:<br>So kept me stedfast in that airy trance,<br>Spreading imaginary pinions wide.<br>When, presently, the stars began to glide,<br>And faint away, before my eager view:<br>At which I sigh'd that I could not pursue,<br>And dropt my vision to the horizon's verge;<br>And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge<br>The loveliest moon, that ever silver'd o'er<br>A shell for Neptune's goblet: she did soar<br>So passionately bright, my dazzled soul<br>Commingling with her argent spheres did roll<br>Through clear and cloudy, even when she went<br>At last into a dark and vapoury tent--<br>Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train<br>Of planets all were in the blue again.<br>To commune with those orbs, once more I rais'd<br>My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed<br>By a bright something, sailing down apace,<br>Making me quickly veil my eyes and face:<br>Again I look'd, and, O ye deities,<br>Who from Olympus watch our destinies!<br>Whence that completed form of all completeness?<br>Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness?<br>Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O Where<br>Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair?<br>Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun;<br>Not--thy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun<br>Such follying before thee--yet she had,<br>Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad;<br>And they were simply gordian'd up and braided,<br>Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded,<br>Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow;<br>The which were blended in, I know not how,<br>With such a paradise of lips and eyes,<br>Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs,<br>That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings<br>And plays about its fancy, till the stings<br>Of human neighbourhood envenom all.<br>Unto what awful power shall I call?<br>To what high fane?--Ah! see her hovering feet,<br>More bluely vein'd, more soft, more whitely sweet<br>Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose<br>From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows<br>Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion;<br>'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million<br>Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed,<br>Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed,<br>Handfuls of daisies.&quot;--&quot;Endymion, how strange!<br>Dream within dream!&quot;--&quot;She took an airy range,<br>And then, towards me, like a very maid,<br>Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid,<br>And press'd me by the hand: Ah! 'twas too much;<br>Methought I fainted at the charmed touch,<br>Yet held my recollection, even as one<br>Who dives three fathoms where the waters run<br>Gurgling in beds of coral: for anon,<br>I felt upmounted in that region<br>Where falling stars dart their artillery forth,<br>And eagles struggle with the buffeting north<br>That balances the heavy meteor-stone;--<br>Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone,<br>But lapp'd and lull'd along the dangerous sky.<br>Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high,<br>And straightway into frightful eddies swoop'd;<br>Such as ay muster where grey time has scoop'd<br>Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side:<br>There hollow sounds arous'd me, and I sigh'd<br>To faint once more by looking on my bliss--<br>I was distracted; madly did I kiss<br>The wooing arms which held me, and did give<br>My eyes at once to death: but 'twas to live,<br>To take in draughts of life from the gold fount<br>Of kind and passionate looks; to count, and count<br>The moments, by some greedy help that seem'd<br>A second self, that each might be redeem'd<br>And plunder'd of its load of blessedness.<br>Ah, desperate mortal! I ev'n dar'd to press<br>Her very cheek against my crowned lip,<br>And, at that moment, felt my body dip<br>Into a warmer air: a moment more,<br>Our feet were soft in flowers. There was store<br>Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes<br>A scent of violets, and blossoming limes,<br>Loiter'd around us; then of honey cells,<br>Made delicate from all white-flower bells;<br>And once, above the edges of our nest,<br>An arch face peep'd,--an Oread as I guess'd.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;Why did I dream that sleep o'er-power'd me<br>In midst of all this heaven? Why not see,<br>Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark,<br>And stare them from me? But no, like a spark<br>That needs must die, although its little beam<br>Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream<br>Fell into nothing--into stupid sleep.<br>And so it was, until a gentle creep,<br>A careful moving caught my waking ears,<br>And up I started: Ah! my sighs, my tears,<br>My clenched hands;--for lo! the poppies hung<br>Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung<br>A heavy ditty, and the sullen day<br>Had chidden herald Hesperus away,<br>With leaden looks: the solitary breeze<br>Bluster'd, and slept, and its wild self did teaze<br>With wayward melancholy; and r thought,<br>Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought<br>Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus!--<br>Away I wander'd--all the pleasant hues<br>Of heaven and earth had faded: deepest shades<br>Were deepest dungeons; heaths and sunny glades<br>Were full of pestilent light; our taintless rills<br>Seem'd sooty, and o'er-spread with upturn'd gills<br>Of dying fish; the vermeil rose had blown<br>In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown<br>Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird<br>Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd<br>In little journeys, I beheld in it<br>A disguis'd demon, missioned to knit<br>My soul with under darkness; to entice<br>My stumblings down some monstrous precipice:<br>Therefore I eager followed, and did curse<br>The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse,<br>Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven!<br>These things, with all their comfortings, are given<br>To my down-sunken hours, and with thee,<br>Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea<br>Of weary life.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Thus ended he, and both<br>Sat silent: for the maid was very loth<br>To answer; feeling well that breathed words<br>Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords<br>Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps<br>Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps,<br>And wonders; struggles to devise some blame;<br>To put on such a look as would say, Shame<br>On this poor weakness! but, for all her strife,<br>She could as soon have crush'd away the life<br>From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause,<br>She said with trembling chance: &quot;Is this the cause?<br>This all? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas!<br>That one who through this middle earth should pass<br>Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave<br>His name upon the harp-string, should achieve<br>No higher bard than simple maidenhood,<br>Singing alone, and fearfully,--how the blood<br>Left his young cheek; and how he used to stray<br>He knew not where; and how he would say, nay,<br>If any said 'twas love: and yet 'twas love;<br>What could it be but love? How a ring-dove<br>Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path;<br>And how he died: and then, that love doth scathe,<br>The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses;<br>And then the ballad of his sad life closes<br>With sighs, and an alas!--Endymion!<br>Be rather in the trumpet's mouth,--anon<br>Among the winds at large--that all may hearken!<br>Although, before the crystal heavens darken,<br>I watch and dote upon the silver lakes<br>Pictur'd in western cloudiness, that takes<br>The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands,<br>Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands<br>With horses prancing o'er them, palaces<br>And towers of amethyst,--would I so tease<br>My pleasant days, because I could not mount<br>Into those regions? The Morphean fount<br>Of that fine element that visions, dreams,<br>And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams<br>Into its airy channels with so subtle,<br>So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle,<br>Circled a million times within the space<br>Of a swallow's nest-door, could delay a trace,<br>A tinting of its quality: how light<br>Must dreams themselves be; seeing they're more slight<br>Than the mere nothing that engenders them!<br>Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem<br>Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?<br>Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick<br>For nothing but a dream?&quot; Hereat the youth<br>Look'd up: a conflicting of shame and ruth<br>Was in his plaited brow: yet his eyelids<br>Widened a little, as when Zephyr bids<br>A little breeze to creep between the fans<br>Of careless butterflies: amid his pains<br>He seem'd to taste a drop of manna-dew,<br>Full palatable; and a colour grew<br>Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;Peona! ever have I long'd to slake<br>My thirst for the world's praises: nothing base,<br>No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace<br>The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar'd--<br>Though now 'tis tatter'd; leaving my bark bar'd<br>And sullenly drifting: yet my higher hope<br>Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope,<br>To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks.<br>Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks<br>Our ready minds to fellowship divine,<br>A fellowship with essence; till we shine,<br>Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold<br>The clear religion of heaven! Fold<br>A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness,<br>And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress<br>Of music's kiss impregnates the free winds,<br>And with a sympathetic touch unbinds<br>Eolian magic from their lucid wombs:<br>Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;<br>Old ditties sigh above their father's grave;<br>Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave<br>Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot;<br>Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,<br>Where long ago a giant battle was;<br>And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass<br>In every place where infant Orpheus slept.<br>Feel we these things?--that moment have we stept<br>Into a sort of oneness, and our state<br>Is like a floating spirit's. But there are<br>Richer entanglements, enthralments far<br>More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,<br>To the chief intensity: the crown of these<br>Is made of love and friendship, and sits high<br>Upon the forehead of humanity.<br>All its more ponderous and bulky worth<br>Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth<br>A steady splendour; but at the tip-top,<br>There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop<br>Of light, and that is love: its influence,<br>Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense,<br>At which we start and fret; till in the end,<br>Melting into its radiance, we blend,<br>Mingle, and so become a part of it,--<br>Nor with aught else can our souls interknit<br>So wingedly: when we combine therewith,<br>Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith,<br>And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.<br>Aye, so delicious is the unsating food,<br>That men, who might have tower'd in the van<br>Of all the congregated world, to fan<br>And winnow from the coming step of time<br>All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime<br>Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,<br>Have been content to let occasion die,<br>Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium.<br>And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb,<br>Than speak against this ardent listlessness:<br>For I have ever thought that it might bless<br>The world with benefits unknowingly;<br>As does the nightingale, upperched high,<br>And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves--<br>She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives<br>How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood.<br>Just so may love, although 'tis understood<br>The mere commingling of passionate breath,<br>Produce more than our searching witnesseth:<br>What I know not: but who, of men, can tell<br>That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell<br>To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,<br>The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,<br>The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,<br>The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,<br>Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,<br>If human souls did never kiss and greet?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> &quot;Now, if this earthly love has power to make<br>Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake<br>Ambition from their memories, and brim<br>Their measure of content; what merest whim,<br>Seems all this poor endeavour after fame,<br>To one, who keeps within his stedfast aim<br>A love immortal, an immortal too.<br>Look not so wilder'd; for these things are true,<br>And never can be born of atomies<br>That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies,<br>Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I'm sure,<br>My restless spirit never could endure<br>To brood so long upon one luxury,<br>Unless it did, though fearfully, espy<br>A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.<br>My sayings will the less obscured seem,<br>When I have told thee how my waking sight<br>Has made me scruple whether that same night<br>Was pass'd in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona!<br>Beyond the matron-temple of Latona,<br>Which we should see but for these darkening boughs,<br>Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows<br>Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart,<br>And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught,<br>And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide<br>Past them, but he must brush on every side.<br>Some moulder'd steps lead into this cool cell,<br>Far as the slabbed margin of a well,<br>Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye<br>Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky.<br>Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set<br>Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet<br>Edges them round, and they have golden pits:<br>'Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits<br>In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat,<br>When all above was faint with mid-day heat.<br>And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed,<br>I'd bubble up the water through a reed;<br>So reaching back to boy-hood: make me ships<br>Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips,<br>With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be<br>Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily,<br>When love-lorn hours had left me less a child,<br>I sat contemplating the figures wild<br>Of o'er-head clouds melting the mirror through.<br>Upon a day, while thus I watch'd, by flew<br>A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver;<br>So plainly character'd, no breeze would shiver<br>The happy chance: so happy, I was fain<br>To follow it upon the open plain,<br>And, therefore, was just going; when, behold!<br>A wonder, fair as any I have told--<br>The same bright face I tasted in my sleep,<br>Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap<br>Through the cool depth.--It moved as if to flee--<br>I started up, when lo! refreshfully,<br>There came upon my face, in plenteous showers,<br>Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,<br>Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,<br>Bathing my spirit in a new delight.<br>Aye, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss<br>Alone preserved me from the drear abyss<br>Of death, for the fair form had gone again.<br>Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain<br>Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth<br>On the deer's tender haunches: late, and loth,<br>'Tis scar'd away by slow returning pleasure.<br>How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure<br>Of weary days, made deeper exquisite,<br>By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night!<br>Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still,<br>Than when I wander'd from the poppy hill:<br>And a whole age of lingering moments crept<br>Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept<br>Away at once the deadly yellow spleen.<br>Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen;<br>Once more been tortured with renewed life.<br>When last the wintry gusts gave over strife<br>With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies<br>Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes<br>In pity of the shatter'd infant buds,--<br>That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs,<br>My hunting cap, because I laugh'd and smil'd,<br>Chatted with thee, and many days exil'd<br>All torment from my breast;--'twas even then,<br>Straying about, yet, coop'd up in the den<br>Of helpless discontent,--hurling my lance<br>From place to place, and following at chance,<br>At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck,<br>And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck<br>In the middle of a brook,--whose silver ramble<br>Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble,<br>Tracing along, it brought me to a cave,<br>Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave<br>The nether sides of mossy stones and rock,--<br>'Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock<br>Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead,<br>Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread<br>Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph's home.<br>&quot;Ah! impious mortal, whither do I roam?&quot;<br>Said I, low voic'd: &quot;Ah whither! 'Tis the grot<br>Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot,<br>Doth her resign; and where her tender hands<br>She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands:<br>Or 'tis the cell of Echo, where she sits,<br>And babbles thorough silence, till her wits<br>Are gone in tender madness, and anon,<br>Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone<br>Of sadness. O that she would take my vows,<br>And breathe them sighingly among the boughs,<br>To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head,<br>Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed,<br>And weave them dyingly--send honey-whispers<br>Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers<br>May sigh my love unto her pitying!<br>O charitable echo! hear, and sing<br>This ditty to her!--tell her&quot;--so I stay'd<br>My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid,<br>Stood stupefied with my own empty folly,<br>And blushing for the freaks of melancholy.<br>Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name<br>Most fondly lipp'd, and then these accents came:<br>‘Endymion! the cave is secreter<br>Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir<br>No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise<br>Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys<br>And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.&quot;<br>At that oppress'd I hurried in.--Ah! where<br>Are those swift moments? Whither are they fled?<br>I'll smile no more, Peona; nor will wed<br>Sorrow the way to death, but patiently<br>Bear up against it: so farewel, sad sigh;<br>And come instead demurest meditation,<br>To occupy me wholly, and to fashion<br>My pilgrimage for the world's dusky brink.<br>No more will I count over, link by link,<br>My chain of grief: no longer strive to find<br>A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind<br>Blustering about my ears: aye, thou shalt see,<br>Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be;<br>What a calm round of hours shall make my days.<br>There is a paly flame of hope that plays<br>Where'er I look: but yet, I'll say 'tis naught--<br>And here I bid it die. Have not I caught,<br>Already, a more healthy countenance?<br>By this the sun is setting; we may chance<br>Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star<br>Through autumn mists, and took Peona's hand:<br>They stept into the boat, and launch'd from land.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Keats">John Keats</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420947" data-title="Endymion: Book I de John Keats" data-description="ENDYMION. A Poetic Romance. &quot;THE STRETCHED METRE OF AN AN ANTIQUE SONG.&quot; INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS CHATTERTON. Book I A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but s..."></div> </div> </div>

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