Showing posts with label John Keats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Keats. Show all posts
Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats Summary and Analysis
Ode on a
Grecian Urn
In the first
stanza, the speaker stands before an ancient Grecian urn and addresses it. He
is preoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. It is the “still
unravish’d bride of quietness,” the “foster-child of silence and slow time.” He
also describes the urn as a “historian” that can tell a story. He wonders about
the figures on the side of the urn and asks what legend they depict and from
where they come. He looks at a picture that seems to depict a group of men
pursuing a group of women and wonders what their story could be: “What mad
pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels? What wild
ecstasy?”
In the
second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on the urn, this time of a
young man playing a pipe, lying with his lover beneath a glade of trees. The
speaker says that the piper’s “unheard” melodies are sweeter than mortal
melodies because they are unaffected by time. He tells the youth that, though
he can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should not grieve,
because her beauty will never fade. In the third stanza, he looks at the trees
surrounding the lovers and feels happy that they will never shed their leaves.
He is happy for the piper because his songs will be “for ever new,” and happy
that the love of the boy and the girl will last forever, unlike mortal love,
which lapses into “breathing human passion” and eventually vanishes, leaving
behind only a “burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”
In the
fourth stanza, the speaker examines another picture on the urn, this one of a
group of villagers leading a heifer to be sacrificed. He wonders where they are
going (“To what green altar, O mysterious priest...”) and from where they have
come. He imagines their little town, empty of all its citizens, and tells it
that its streets will “for evermore” be silent, for those who have left it,
frozen on the urn, will never return. In the final stanza, the speaker again
addresses the urn itself, saying that it, like Eternity, “doth tease us out of
thought.” He thinks that when his generation is long dead, the urn will remain,
telling future generations its enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is truth, truth
beauty.” The speaker says that that is the only thing the urn knows and the
only thing it needs to know.
Title:
On a Grecian
Urn means to or about a Greek urn. The urn is addressed (= talked to). Talking
to a thing is a thing that poets do in odes. (You will see that In this ode,
the poet also addresses the things he sees on the urn.)
Line 1:
THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,
The urn is
the virgin (“unravished” means she has not been touched) bride of quietness.
A bride is a woman who gets married. In this case the vase is the bride
of quiet.
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Line 2:
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
The urn is
also the foster-child (= not a biological child but one that is taken
care of by someone else than its parent) of Silence and Time. Usually time is
fast, but here not, because we are talking about an urn which is not alive,
so time passes slowly for it.
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Line 3
& 4: Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
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A flowery
tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
Sylvan (or
sylvian) means of the woods. The word has a pleasant, peaceful connotation.
So sylvan historian means the maker of the urn who presents a pleasant scene
in the woods. Maybe one such as this:
Nymphs and
Satyrs by Peter Paul Rubens
Canst is
an old-fashioned form of can.
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Line 5:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
What
legend (= old story) framed with leaves can be found around your shape (= the
urn).
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Line
6: Of deities or mortals, or of both,
Deities
are gods, and mortals are humans (mortal comes from the French mort = dead.)
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Line 7: In
Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
Tempe is a
valley in Greece. A dale is also a valley. Arcady is a region in Greece that
is associated with a peaceful and simple country life.
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Line
8: What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
A maiden
is an old word for girl. Loth means not willing (the girls don’t want to).
What don’t the girls want? Well, probably to be kissed or more than that.
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Line 9:
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
Mad
pursuit may refer to a classic scene where fauns who are always horny pursue
(pursuit is the noun, and pursue means chase) the girls or nymphs. The
nymphs/girls then struggle (fight) to escape the men’s grabbing arms.
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Line 10:
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Pipes are
flutes. A timbrel is an ancient tambourine.
The music
is played and the people or gods in the picture are going wild. They’re
ecstatic. They’re probably dancing wildly. You get the idea.
Stanza 2:
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Line 11:
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
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Line 12:
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
This
stanza speaks of things that are not in the scene on the urn. When we look at
the urn, we might hear music in our imagination, but that music isn’t really
there. The speaker of the poem draws our attention to this, and he says
the music that you can’t actually hear, that imaginary music, is
actually better than real music. Quite an interesting statement to make. Do
you agree with the poet?
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Line 13:
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
The pipes
(= flutes) in the picture on the urn play not to our physical (“sensual”)
ears, but to the ears of our imagination. And these are better loved (“more
endear’d), or at least the speaker of the poem thinks so, than our real
ears.
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Line 14:
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
A ditty is
a simple song. The flutes are asked to play with the songs, but they are
spirit songs = sung by ghosts. The songs don’t exist either; they have no
tone, as they exist only in the imagination of the person who is looking at
the urn. But hey, wait, even the urn itself doesn’t actually exist, as it
exists only in the mind of the poet. After all, the poet didn’t refer us to
an existing urn. He never said: “Please go to the British Museum and have a
look at the famous Apollo urn.” Or whatever other famous pot. In fact, we
have no idea which urn Keats is talking about. Even the urn is in the
imagination.
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Line 15:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
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Line 16:
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
These
lines and the ones until the end of the stanza teach us another aspect of
art. Visual art captures only one moment, and makes it eternal. The youth are
always under the trees. Fair means beautiful. The people are in the scene are
always hearing the same song. The trees will never lose their leaves.
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Line 17:
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
The lover
will never get the kiss he is waiting for.
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Line 18:
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
But the
lover still has won a few points. He doesn’t need to be sad.
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Line 19:
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
The woman
he wants will not fade = she will not grow ugly and old. On the other hand,
he will never be happy,
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Line 20:
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
His love
will be forever, and she will forever be beautiful.
Stanza 3:
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Line 21:
Ah, happy happy boughs! that cannot shed
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Line 22:
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
Boughs are
branches of a tree. The branches will never lose (“shed”) their leaves. We
knew that already. They never bid the Spring adieu = they never say goodbye
to spring. It’s always spring.
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Line 23:
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
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Line
24: For ever piping songs for ever new;
The happy
musician, unwearied (= not tired), is forever playing his flute songs that
are also forever new.
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Line 25:
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
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Line 26:
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
The word
“happy” is overused a little bit in these lines, don’t you think? Does the
poet really think that the creatures on the urn are happy? What do you think?
I’m beginning to doubt it.
Anyway,
everything looks good. The love is forever warm and fresh, on the point of
being enjoyed.
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Line 27:
For ever panting, and for ever young;
The lovers
are forever young and out of breath with excitement.
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Line 28:
All breathing human passion far above,
The lovers
are “above” human passion, which means they are at a distance from it;
they’re at a better place.
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Line 29:
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
Human
passion makes you worried and tired (cloy means wear out because something is
too sticky, too heavy, or too sweet).
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Line 30: A
burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Passion can
make you feel ill, as if you have a fever, with your forehead burning, and
your tongue sticking in your mouth (“parching” means dried out/very thirsty).
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So what have
we been reading so far?
Let’s stop
to try to understand Stanza 3.
This stanza
develops the thought from stanza 2 that nothing can change in the world of the
picture on the urn. It gives some more examples of that.
Then it
stresses the idea that as little as human passion is not a part of the scene on
the urn, neither is human suffering “all breathing human passion far above.”
Passion and suffering go together, is the idea here, and art is clean of that.
Or at least the conventional art in Keats’ time was.
Suffering
and/in Art
As I’ve
remarked above, before we started reading the poem, today we have plenty of
paintings and poems full with suffering. But probably that wasn’t what Keats
was looking for in his own art. He was looking for a way to say something
meaningful about how art could talk about life and how art can help us tolerate
suffering.
Stanza
4: Time for a change of scene.
We’re now
looking at another picture on the urn.
Line 31:
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
Some
people are coming to a sacrifice = event of animal burning as offer to the
gods.
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Line 32:
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Altar =
the high place where offerings are made to the gods.
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Line 33:
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
The priest
is leading a young cow (“heifer) to be sacrificed. The cow is lowing =
mooing.
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Line 34:
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
Drest =
dressed. The cow’s legs (“flanks”) are decorated with flower chains.
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Line 35:
What little town by river or sea-shore,
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Line 36:
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
A citadel
is a fort. The people in the scene on the urn are imagined to be from a
little town.
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Line
37: Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
Is empty
of people, on this morning of worship. Morn = morning. Pious means believing,
worshipping.
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Line 38:
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
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Line 39:
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
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Line 40:
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
The people
in the scene are on their way to the sacrifice, so their town will forever be
empty and silent. No one (“not a soul”) will ever come back to explain what
the reason is the town is empty.
The “you”
(thou) is the town here.
Again it’s
an example of how the scene on the urn is frozen in time, and is devoid (=
empty) of humanity and life.
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Stanza 5:
Line 41: O
Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
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Line 42:
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
Attic
means from Athens, the capital of Greece. “Brede” is an interwoven
pattern, like a braid but here it’s in marble. The urn is decorated with
marble men and women
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Line 43:
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Amongst
green trees and plants under their feet.
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Line
44: Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
Thou =
you. The poet is talking to the urn again. The quiet urn which doesn’t speak
challenges our thoughts
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Line 45:
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
As much as
eternity = endless time. Pastoral = the sweet, peaceful country life.
The
speaker calls the scene on the urn cold and not sweet, so cold pastoral is a
paradox.
We’ve
already discussed why the scene is cold. No real passion is going on; the
scenes on the urn are frozen. But they may look sweet and attractive.
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Line 46:
When old age shall this generation waste,
When
people who live now will grow old and die,
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Line
47: Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
You (the
urn) will stay, in the middle of all kinds of trouble
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Line
48: Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
That is
not ours. You’ll be a friend to man, to whom you will say:
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Line 49:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
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Line 50:
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
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Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Ode to a Nightingale Stanza by Stanza Explanation and Paraphrase
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
The speaker opens with a declaration of his own heartache. He
feels numb, as though he had taken a drug only a moment ago. He is addressing a
nightingale he hears singing somewhere in the forest and says that his “drowsy
numbness” is not from envy of the nightingale’s happiness, but rather from
sharing it too completely; he is “too happy” that the nightingale sings the
music of summer from amid some unseen plot of green trees and shadows.
In the second stanza, the speaker longs for the oblivion of
alcohol, expressing his wish for wine, “a draught of vintage,” that would taste
like the country and like peasant dances, and let him “leave the world unseen”
and disappear into the dim forest with the nightingale. In the third stanza, he
explains his desire to fade away, saying he would like to forget the troubles
the nightingale has never known: “the weariness, the fever, and the fret” of
human life, with its consciousness that everything is mortal and nothing lasts.
Youth “grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies,” and “beauty cannot keep her
lustrous eyes.”
In the fourth stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale to fly
away, and he will follow, not through alcohol (“Not charioted by Bacchus and
his pards”), but through poetry, which will give him “viewless wings.” He says
he is already with the nightingale and describes the forest glade, where even
the moonlight is hidden by the trees, except the light that breaks through when
the breezes blow the branches. In the fifth stanza, the speaker says that he
cannot see the flowers in the glade, but can guess them “in embalmed darkness”:
white hawthorne, eglantine, violets, and the musk-rose, “the murmurous haunt of
flies on summer eves.” In the sixth stanza, the speaker listens in the dark to
the nightingale, saying that he has often been “half in love” with the idea of
dying and called Death soft names in many rhymes. Surrounded by the
nightingale’s song, the speaker thinks that the idea of death seems richer than
ever, and he longs to “cease upon the midnight with no pain” while the
nightingale pours its soul ecstatically forth. If he were to die, the
nightingale would continue to sing, he says, but he would “have ears in vain”
and be no longer able to hear.
In the seventh stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale that it
is immortal, that it was not “born for death.” He says that the voice he hears
singing has always been heard, by ancient emperors and clowns, by homesick
Ruth; he even says the song has often charmed open magic windows looking out
over “the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.” In the eighth
stanza, the word forlorn tolls like a bell to restore the speaker from his
preoccupation with the nightingale and back into himself. As the nightingale flies
farther away from him, he laments that his imagination has failed him and says
that he can no longer recall whether the nightingale’s music was “a vision, or
a waking dream.” Now that the music is gone, the speaker cannot recall whether
he himself is awake or asleep.
Stanza
by stanza explanation of "Ode to a Nightingale
This ode by John
Keats is based upon
the single conceit that the little nightingale that the poet addresses is
immortal:
1.
It assumes that the
bird is the only one that has ever existed because it looks and acts the same
as birds of this species have for centuries.
2.
It assumes that the
nightingale is immortal since, unlike humans who fear death, it cannot conceive
of death.
3.
It assumes that the
bird is immortal because the nightingale stands for the ravished princess
Philomela's metamorphized soul.
· Stanza I
As a Romantic poet, Keats validated emotional
expression as an aesthetic source of experience. In this stanza, then, he
expresses his unhappiness, saying it is not envy of the bird's lighthearted
song of "summer in full-throated ease."
· Stanza II
In his melancholy, the poet wishes that he
could drink "a beaker full from the fountain of the Muses on Mt.
Helicon," where waters of inspiration flowed. With the nightingale, he
could disappear into the forest away from his trials in life. Here, the poet
revels in the idea of the glorified past, both classical and medieval.
· Stanza III
In the continuation of his wish to "fade
away," the poet wishes to leave the cares and anxieties of his life:
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
and leaden-eyed despairs
and leaden-eyed despairs
for the beauty and wonder to the next, where
Beauty and new Love know nothing of this sorrow.
· Stanza IV
The poet tells the nightingale to fly away
because he will come on the "wings of Poesy"; that is, with his
imagination, the poet will connect both to this world and that of poetic fancy.
In line 35, the poet is suddenly transported,
Already with thee! tender is the night....
But here there is no light
But here there is no light
but the nightingale lives in darkness. Because
the imagery here is connotative of night, the poet may be sleeping.
· Stanza V
Hovering between the real world and the world
of the spirit, the poet touches what he cannot see and describes all with
colorful imagery:
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves:
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy white,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy white,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
· Stanza VI
In this stanza, Keats expresses his obsession
with death and envisions his soul with that of the nightingale, but if he dies
they will part.
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art ouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
While thou art ouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
· Stanza VII
The poet realizes that the nightingale is not
meant for death; his voice is immortal as the voice of the bird has been the
same for ages and is ubiquitous:
This voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown...
In ancient days by emperor and clown...
· Stanza VIII
This musing of the poet is but transitory, and
he must return to the real world,
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
While the little nightingale's song has
elevated his spirit, the poet wonders if he is awake or dreaming,
...the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do....
As she is famed to do....
The poet has had a transcendent experience,
connecting with Nature in the creation of his art, but he is left disappointed
as he feels a certain disillusionment in the limits of the imagination. "Ode
to a Nightingale" is a beautifully personal lyric by the
Romantic poet, John Keats, who loved the classical world, and all that is an
expression of the aesthetic.
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
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