Has track'd your steps and served your will.
Now in humbler, happier lot,

This is all remember'd not;

And now, alas! the poor Sprite is
Imprison'd for some fault of his
In a body like a grave—
From you he only dares to crave,
For his service and his sorrow
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.

The artist who this idol wrought
To echo all harmonious thought,
Fell'd a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rock'd in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
And some of Spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love: And so this tree,—
Oh that such our death may be!-

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The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,

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The murmuring of summer seas,

And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way:

—All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The Spirit that inhabits it;

It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more

Is heard than has been felt before
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day.
But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest holiest tone
For our beloved Friend alone.

THE POET'S DREAM

ON a Poet's lips I slept

Dreaming like a love-adept

In the sound his breathing kept;

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Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,

But feeds on the aërial kisses

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Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom

The lake-reflected sun illume

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,

Nor heed nor see what things they be

But from these create he can

Forms more real than living Man,

Nurslings of Immortality!

A DIRGE

ROUGH wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;

Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods whose branches stain,
Deep caves and dreary main,—

Wail for the world's wrong!

IO

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JOHN KEATS