The Complete Works: Poetry, Plays, Letters and Extensive Biographies. John Keats

      “Ah, beauteous mortal!” “Hush!” quoth Coralline,

      “Really you must not talk of him, indeed.”

      “You hush!” reply’d the mistress, with a shinee

      Of anger in her eyes, enough to breed

      In stouter hearts than nurse’s fear and dread:

      ’Twas not the glance itself made nursey flinch,

      But of its threat she took the utmost heed;

      Not liking in her heart an hour-long pinch,

      Or a sharp needle run into her back an inch.

      So she was silenc’d, and fair Bellanaine,

      Writhing her little body with ennui,

      Continued to lament and to complain,

      That Fate, cross-purposing, should let her be

      Ravish’d away far from her dear countree;

      That all her feelings should be set at nought,

      In trumping up this match so hastily,

      With lowland blood; and lowland blood she thought

      Poison, as every staunch true-born Imaian ought.

      Sorely she griev’d, and wetted three or four

      White Provence rose-leaves with her faery tears,

      But not for this cause; alas! she had more

      Bad reasons for her sorrow, as appears

      In the fam’d memoirs of a thousand years,

      Written by Crafticant, and published

      By Parpaglion and Co., (those sly compeers

      Who rak’d up ev’ry fact against the dead,)

      In Scarab Street, Panthea, at the Jubal’s Head.

      Where, after a long hypercritic howl

      Against the vicious manners of the age,

      He goes on to expose, with heart and soul,

      What vice in this or that year was the rage,

      Backbiting all the world in every page;

      With special strictures on the horrid crime,

      (Section’d and subsection’d with learning sage,)

      Of faeries stooping on their wings sublime

      To kiss a mortal’s lips, when such were in their prime.

      Turn to the copious index, you will find

      Somewhere in the column, headed letter B,

      The name of Bellanaine, if you’re not blind;

      Then pray refer to the text, and you will see

      An article made up of calumny

      Against this highland princess, rating her

      For giving way, so over fashionably,

      To this new-fangled vice, which seems a burr

      Stuck in his moral throat, no coughing e’er could stir.

      There he says plainly that she lov’d a man!

      That she around him flutter’d, flirted, toy’d,

      Before her marriage with great Elfinan;

      That after marriage too, she never joy’d

      In husband’s company, but still employ’d

      Her wits to ‘scape away to Angle-land;

      Where liv’d the youth, who worried and annoy’d

      Her tender heart, and its warm ardours fann’d

      To such a dreadful blaze, her side would scorch her hand.

      But let us leave this idle tittle-tattle

      To waiting-maids, and bedroom coteries,

      Nor till fit time against her fame wage battle.

      Poor Elfinan is very ill at ease,

      Let us resume his subject if you please:

      For it may comfort and console him much,

      To rhyme and syllable his miseries;

      Poor Elfinan! whose cruel fate was such,

      He sat and curs’d a bride he knew he could not touch.

      Soon as (according to his promises)

      The bridal embassy had taken wing,

      And vanish’d, bird-like, o’er the suburb trees,

      The Emperor, empierc’d with the sharp sting

      Of love, retired, vex’d and murmuring

      Like any drone shut from the fair bee-queen,

      Into his cabinet, and there did fling

      His limbs upon a sofa, full of spleen,

      And damn’d his House of Commons, in complete chagrin.

      “I’ll trounce some of the members,” cry’d the Prince,

      “I’ll put a mark against some rebel names,

      I’ll make the Opposition-benches wince,

      I’ll show them very soon, to all their shames,

      What ’tis to smother up a Prince’s flames;

      That ministers should join in it, I own,

      Surprises me! they too at these high games!

      Am I an Emperor? Do I wear a crown?

      Imperial Elfinan, go hang thyself or drown!

      “I’ll trounce ‘em! there’s the square-cut chancellor,

      His son shall never touch that bishopric;

      And for the nephew of old Palfior,

      I’ll show him that his speeches made me sick,

      And give the colonelcy to Phalaric;

      The tiptoe marquis, mortal and gallant,

      Shall lodge in shabby taverns upon tick;

      And for the Speaker’s second cousin’s aunt,

      She sha’n’t be maid of honour, by heaven that she sha’n’t!

      “I’ll shirk the Duke of A.; I’ll cut his brother;

      I’ll give no garter to his eldest son;

      I won’t speak to his sister or his mother!

      The Viscount B. shall live at cut-and-run;

      But how in the world can I contrive to stun

      That fellow’s voice, which plagues me worse than any,

      That stubborn fool, that impudent state-dun,

      Who sets down ev’ry sovereign as a zany,

      That vulgar commoner, Esquire Biancopany?

      “Monstrous affair! Pshaw! pah! what ugly minx

      Will they fetch from Imaus for my bride?

      Alas! my wearied heart within me sinks,

      To think

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