Page:The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats, 1899.djvu/159

Rh Hollow organs all the day;

Here, by turns, his dolphins all,

Finny palmers, great and small,

Come to pay devotion due,—

Each a mouth of pearls must strew!

Many a mortal of these days

Dares to pass our sacred ways;

Dares to touch, audaciously,

This cathedral of the sea!

I have been the pontiff-priest,

Where the waters never rest,

Where a fledgy sea-bird choir

Soars for ever! Holy fire

I have hid from mortal man;

Proteus is my Sacristan!

But the dulled eye of mortal

Hath pass'd beyond the rocky portal;

So for ever will I leave

Such a taint, and soon unweave

All the magic of the place.'

So saying, with a Spirit's glance

He dived!

me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud

Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!

I look into the chasms, and a shroud

Vaporous doth hide them,—just so much I wist

Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead,

And there is sullen mist,—even so much

Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread

Before the earth, beneath me,—even such,

Even so vague is man's sight of himself!

Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,—

Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,

I tread on them,—that all my eye doth meet

Is mist and crag, not only on this height,

But in the world of thought and mental might!

withheld Cassandra in the skies,

For more adornment, a full thousand years;

She took their cream of Beauty's fairest dyes,

And shaped and tinted her above all Peers:

Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings,

And underneath their shadow fill'd her eyes

With such a richness that the cloudy Kings

Of high Olympus utter'd slavish sighs.

When from the Heavens I saw her first descend,

My heart took fire, and only burning pains,

They were my pleasures—they my Life's sad end;

Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins.