Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/775

 JOHN KEATS

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs; Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away 1 for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thce' tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster J d around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs. But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

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