JOHN KEATS.

-1795-1821.

TO SLEEP.

O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!

Shutting with careful fingers and benign,

Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine :

O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,

In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,

Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;

Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;

Save me from curious conscience, that still lords

Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole ;

Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,

And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.

JOHN KEATS.

1795-1821.

KEATS'S LAST SONNET.

BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art,

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestly task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:
No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever-or else swoon to death.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

1796-1849.

TO A FRIEND.

WHEN We were idlers with the loitering rills,

The need of human love we little noted:

Our love was nature; and the peace that floated

On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills,
To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills:
One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted
That wisely doating asked not why it doated,
And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills.
But now I find how dear thou wert to me;

That man is more than half of nature's treasure,
Of that fair Beauty which no eye can see,

Of that sweet music which no ear can measure ;

And now the streams may sing for others' pleasure,
The hills sleep on in their eternity.

THE FIRST MAN.

HARTLEY WHAT was't awakened first the untried ear
COLERIDGE.

1796-1849. Of that sole man who was all human kind?

Was it the gladsome welcome of the wind,

Stirring the leaves that never yet were sere

The four mellifluous streams which flowed so near,

Their lulling murmurs all in one combined?

The note of bird unnamed? The startled hind

Bursting the brake-in wonder, not in fear,

Of her new lord? Or did the holy ground
Send forth mysterious melody to greet

The gracious pressure of immaculate feet?

Did viewless seraphs rustle all around,

Making sweet music out of air as sweet?

Or his own voice awake him with its sound?

HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 1796-1849.

A CONFESSION.

LONG time a child, and still a child, when years

Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I;

For yet I lived like one not born to die :

A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,

No hope I needed, and I knew no fears,

But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep; and waking,

I waked to sleep no more; at once o'ertaking

The vanguard of my age, with all arrears

Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,

Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey,
For I have lost the race I never ran-

A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, though I be old :

Time is my debtor for my years untold.