JOHN KEATS. CXVII. ON THE ELGIN MARBLES. My spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep. And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep, That I have not the cloudy winds to keep Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. Such dim-conceivèd glories of the brain Bring round the heart an indescribable feud; So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude Wasting of old Time-with a billowy main, A sun, a shadow of a magnitude. CXVIII. TO HOMER. STANDING aloof in giant ignorance, Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, As one who sits ashore and longs perchance To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. So thou wast blind!-but then the veil was rent, Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light, Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel, JOHN KEATS. CXIX. THE DAY IS GONE. THE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone, Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang’rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Faded the shape of beauty from my arms, Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave CXX. BRIGHT STAR! BRIGHT STAR! would I were steadfast as thou art— Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. CXXI. ART thou already weary of the way, Thou who hast yet but half the way gone o'er? Love, youth, and hope, under the rosy bloom Look yonder, how the heavens stoop and gloom! There cease the trees to shade, the flowers to spring, And the angels leave thee. What wilt thou become Through yon drear stretch of dismal wandering, Lonely and dark?—I shall take courage, friend, |