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

      You know the Enchanted Castle, – it doth stand

      Upon a rock, on the border of a lake,

      Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake

      From some old magic-like Urganda’s Sword.”

      O Phoebus! that I had thy sacred word

      To show this castle, in fair dreaming wise,

      Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies!

      You know it well enough, where it doth seem

      A mossy place, a Merlin’s Hall, a dream;

      You know the clear lake, and the little isles,

      The mountains blue, and cold near neighbour rills.

      All which elsewhere are but half animate;

      There do they look alive to love and hate,

      To smiles and frowns; they seem a lifted mound

      Above some giant, pulsing underground.

      Part of the Building was a chosen See,

      Built by a banish’d Santon of Chaldee;

      The other part, two thousand years from him.

      Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim;

      Then there’s a little wing, far from the sun,

      Built by a Lapland witch tum’d maudlin nun:

      And many other juts of aged stone

      Founded with many a mason-devil’s groan.

      The doors all look as if they op’d themselves,

      The windows as if latch’d by fays and elves,

      And from them comes a silver flash of light,

      As from the westward of a summer’s night;

      Or like a beauteous woman’s large blue eyes

      Gone mad thro’ olden songs and poesies.

      See! what is coming from the distance dim!

      A golden galley all in silken trim!

      Three rows of oars are lightening, moment whiles,

      Into the verd’rous bosoms of those isles;

      Towards the shade, under the castle wall.

      It comes in silence, – now ’tis hidden all.

      The clarion sounds, and from a postem-gate

      An echo of sweet music doth create

      A fear in the poor herdsman, who doth bring

      His beast to trouble the enchanted spring. -

      He tells of the sweet music, and the spot,

      To all his friends, and they believe him not.

      O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,

      Would all their colours from the sunset take:

      From something of material sublime,

      Rather than shadow our own soul’s daytime

      In the dark void of night. For in the world

      We jostle, – but my flag is not unfurl’d

      On the Admiral-staff, – and so philosophise

      I dare not yet! Oh, never will the prize,

      High reason, and the love of good and ill,

      Be my award! Things cannot to the will

      Be settled, but they tease us out of thought;

      Or is it that imagination brought

      Beyond its proper bound, yet still conftn’d.

      Lost in a sort of purgatory blind,

      Cannot refer to any standard law

      Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw

      In happiness, to see beyond our bourn, -

      It forces us in summer skies to mourn,

      It spoils the singing of the nightingale.

      Dear Reynolds! I have a mysterious tale,

      And cannot speak it: the first page I read

      Upon a lampit rock of green seaweed

      Among the breakers; ’twas a quiet eve,

      The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave

      An untumultuous fringe of silver foam

      Along the flat brown sand; I was at home

      And should have been most happy, – but I saw

      Too far into the sea, where every maw

      The greater on the less feeds evermore. -

      But I saw too distinct into the core

      Of an eternal fierce destruction,

      And so from happiness I far was gone.

      Still am I sick of it, and tho’, today,

      I’ve gather’d young spring-leaves, and flowers gay

      Of periwinkle and wild strawberry,

      Still do I that most fierce destruction see, -

      The shark at savage prey, – the hawk at pounce, -

      The gentle robin, like a pard or ounce,

      Ravening a worm, – Away, ye horrid moods!

      Moods of one’s mind! You know I hate them well.

      You know I’d sooner be a clapping bell

      To some Kamtschatcan missionary church,

      Than with these horrid moods be left i’ the lurch.