Page:Keats - Poetical Works, DeWolfe, 1884.djvu/142

130

Say, is not bliss within our perfect seizure? O that I could not doubt!"
 * The mountaineer

Thus strove by fancies vain and crude to clear His brier'd path to some tranquillity. It gave bright gladness to his lady's eye, And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow; Answering thus, just as the golden morrow Beam'd upward from the valleys of the east: "O that the flutter of his heart had ceased, Or the sweet name of love had pass'd away! Young feather'd tyrant! by a swift decay Wilt thou devote this body to the earth: And I do think that at my very birth I lisp'd thy blooming titles inwardly; For at the first, first dawn and thought of thee, With uplift hands I bless'd the stars of heaven. Art thou not cruel? ever have I striven To think thee kind, but ah, it will not do! When yet a child, I heard that kisses drew Favor from thee, and so I kisses gave To the void air, bidding them find out love: But when I came to feel how far above All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood, All earthly pleasure, all imagined good, Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss— Even then that moment, at the thought of this, Fainting I fell into a bed of flowers, And languish'd there three days. Ye milder powers, Am I not cruelly wrong'd? Believe, believe Me, dear Endymion, were I to weave