BOOK I A THING of beauty is a joy for ever: The music of the name has gone very Into my being, and each pleasant scene Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet And run in mazes of the youngest hue About old forests; while the willow trails Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly Full in the middle of this pleasantness There stood a marble altar, with a tress 90 Of flowers budded newly; and the dew Had taken fairy phantasies to strew Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve, And so the dawned light in pomp receive. For 't was the morn: Apollo's upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; 100 Now while the silent workings of the dawn 110 Were busiest, into that self-same lawn With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then Fill'd out its voice, and died away again. Through copse - clad valleys, ere their death, o'ertaking The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea. 120 The lark was lost in him; cold springs had Bearing the burden of a shepherd song; Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air; 210 And all ye gentle girls who foster up Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains "Speckled with countless fleeces ? Have not rains Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had Great bounty from Endymion our lord. The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour'd His early song against yon breezy sky, That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity.' 220 An element filling the space between; screen With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending, trembling knee And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, And giving out a shout most heaven-rend- Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip, ing, Conjure thee to receive our humble Pæan, And very, very deadliness did nip 340 Her motherly cheeks. Aroused from this sad mood |