Page:The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats, 1899.djvu/73

Rh And think that I would not be over meek,

In rolling out upfollow'd thunderings,

Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,

Were I of ample strength for such a freak—

Think too, that all those numbers should be thine;

Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture's hem?

For when men star'd at what was most divine

With browless idiotism—o'erwise phlegm—

Thou hadst beheld the Hesperean shine

Of their star in the East, and gone to worship them.

and loveliness have pass'd away;

For if we wander out in early morn,

No wreathèd incense do we see upborne

Into the east, to meet the smiling day:

No crowd of nymphs soft-voic'd and young, and gay,

In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,

Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn

The shrine of Flora in her early May.

But there are left delights as high as these,

And I shall ever bless my destiny,

That in a time, when under pleasant trees

Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free,

A leafy luxury, seeing I could please

With these poor offerings, a man like thee.

keeps eternal whisperings around

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell

Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell

Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.

Often 't is in such gentle temper found,

That scarcely will the very smallest shell

Be mov'd for days from where it sometime fell,

When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.

O ye! who have your eyeballs vex'd and tir'd,

Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;

O ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude,

Or fed too much with cloying melody,—

Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood

Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!

First published, with the date 1817, in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. It is barely possible that this is the 'song' to which Keats refers in a letter to Benjamin Bailey, dated November 22, 1817, when he says: 'I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth