Page:Keats - Poetical Works, DeWolfe, 1884.djvu/189

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"I am a shadow now, alas! alas!
 * Upon the skirts of human nature dwelling

Alone: I chant alone the holy mass,
 * While little sounds of life are round me kneeling,

And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,
 * And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,

Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me, And thou art distant in Humanity.

"I know what was, I feel full well what is,
 * And I should rage, if spirits could go mad;

Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss,
 * That paleness warms my grave, as though I had

A seraph chosen from the bright abyss
 * To be my spouse: thy paleness makes me glad:

Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel A greater love through all my essence steal."

The Spirit mourn'd "Adieu!"—dissolved, and left
 * The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;

As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,
 * Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,

We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,
 * And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:

It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache, And in the dawn she started up awake;