Page:The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats, 1899.djvu/176

140

happy glowing fire!

Fragrant air! delicious light!

Let me to my glooms retire!

I to green-weed rivers bright!

Happy, happy glowing fire!

Dazzling bowers of soft retire,

Ever let my nourish'd wing,

Like a bat's, still wandering,

Faintly fan your fiery spaces,

Spirit sole in deadly places.

In unhaunted roar and blaze,

Open eyes that never daze,

Let me see the myriad shapes

Of men, and beasts, and fish, and apes,

Portray'd in many a fiery den,

And wrought by spumy bitumen.

On the deep intenser roof,

Arched every way, aloof,

Let me breathe upon my skies,

And anger their live tapestries;

Free from cold, and every care,

Of chilly rain, and shivering air.

Spright of Fire! away! away!

Or your very roundelay

Will sear my plumage newly budded

From its quilled sheath, and studded

With the self-same dews that fell

On the May-grown Asphodel.

Spright of Fire—away! away!

Spright of Fire—away! away!

Zephyr, blue-eyed Faery, turn,

And see my cool sedge-shaded urn,

Where it rests its mossy brim

'Mid water-mint and cresses dim;

And the flowers, in sweet troubles,

Lift their eyes above the bubbles,

Like our Queen, when she would please

To sleep, and Oberon will tease.

Love me, blue-eyed Faery! true,

Soothly I am sick for you.

Gentle Breama! by the first

Violet young nature nurst,

I will bathe myself with thee,

So you sometime follow me

To my home, far, far, in west,

Far beyond the search and quest

Of the golden-browed sun.

Come with me, o'er tops of trees,

To my fragrant palaces,

Where they ever floating are

Beneath the cherish of a star

Call'd Vesper, who with silver veil

Ever hides his brilliance pale,

Ever gently-drowsed doth keep

Twilight for the Fays to sleep.

Fear not that your watery hair

Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there;

Clouds of stored summer rains

Thou shalt taste, before the stains

Of the mountain soil they take,

And too unlucent for thee make.

I love thee, crystal Faery, true!

Sooth I am as sick for you!

Out, ye aguish Faeries, out!

Chilly lovers, what a rout

Keep ye with your frozen breath,

Colder than the mortal death.

Adder-eyed Dusketha, speak,

Shall we leave them, and go seek

In the earth's wide entrails old

Couches warm as theirs is cold?

O for a fiery gloom and thee,