Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/792

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��JOHN KEATS

643 To Sleep

SOFT embalmer of the still midnight! Shutting with careful fingers and benign Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower 'd from the light,

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine; O soothest Sleep' if so it please thee, close,

In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes, Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws

Around my bed its lulling charities;

Then save me, or the^ passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes; Save me from curious conscience, that still lords

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,

And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

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��644 Last Sonnet

BRIGHT Star, would I were steadfast as thou, art-

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priest-like task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors No yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever or else swoon to death.

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