Page:Keats - Poetical Works, DeWolfe, 1884.djvu/305

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They held me back with a benignant light, Soft, mitigated by divinest lids Half-closed, and visionless entire they seem'd Of all external things; they saw me not, But in blank splendor beam'd, like the mild moon, Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not What eyes are upward cast. As I had found A grain of gold upon a mountain's side, And, twinged with avarice, strain'd out my eyes To search its sullen entrails rich with ore, So, at the view of sad Moneta's brow, I asked to see what things the hollow brow Behind environed; what high tragedy In the dark secret chambers of her skull Was acting, that could give so dread a stress To her cold lips, and fill with such a light Her planetary eyes, and touch her voice With such a sorrow?" Shade of Memory Cried I, with act adorant at her feet, "By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house, By this last temple, by the golden age, By great Apollo, thy dear foster-child, And by thyself, forlorn divinity, The pale Omega of a wither'd race, Let me behold, according as thou saidst, What in thy brain so ferments to and fro!" No sooner had this conjuration past My devout lips, than side by side we stood (Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine) [Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,