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

      As when upon a tranced summer night

      Forests, branch charmed by the earnest stars,

      Dream, and so dream all night without a noise,

      Save from one gradual solitary gust,

      Swelling upon the silence; dying off;

      As if the ebbing air had but one wave;

      So came these words, and went; the while in tears

      She press’d her fair large forehead to the earth,

      Just where her fallen hair might spread in curls

      A soft and silken mat for Saturn’s feet.

      Long, long those two were postured motionless,

      Like sculpture builded up upon the grave

      Of their own power. A long awful time

      I look’d upon them: still they were the same;

      The frozen God still bending to the earth,

      And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet,

      Moneta silent. Without stay or prop

      But my own weak mortality, I bore

      The load of this eternal quietude,

      The unchanging gloom, and the three fixed shapes

      Ponderous upon my senses, a whole moon.

      For by my burning brain I measured sure

      Her silver seasons shedded on the night,

      And ever day by day methought I grew

      More gaunt and ghostly. Oftentimes I pray’d

      Intense, that Death would take me from the vale

      And all its burthens gasping with despair

      Of change, hour after hour I curs’d myself;

      Until old Saturn rais’d his faded eyes,

      And look’d around and saw his kingdom gone,

      And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,

      And that fair kneeling Goddess at his feet.

      As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves

      Fills forest dells with a pervading air,

      Known to the woodland nostril, so the words

      Of Saturn fill’d the mossy glooms around,

      Even to the hollows of time eaten oaks

      And to the windings of the foxes’ hole,

      With sad low tones, while thus he spake, and sent

      Strange musings to the solitary Pan.

      ‘Moan, brethren, moan; for we are swallow’d up

      ‘And buried from all Godlike exercise

      ‘Of influence benign on planets pale,

      ‘And peaceful sway above man’s harvesting,

      ‘And all those acts which Deity supreme

      ‘Doth ease its heart of love in. Moan and wail,

      ‘Moan, brethren, moan; for lo, the rebel spheres

      ‘Spin round, the stars their ancient courses keep,

      ‘Clouds still with shadowy moisture haunt the earth,

      ‘Still suck their fill of light from sun and moon,

      ‘Still buds the tree, and still the sea shores murmur;

      ‘There is no death in all the Universe,

      ‘No smell of death there shall be death Moan, moan,

      ‘Moan, Cybele, moan; for thy pernicious babes

      ‘Have changed a God into a shaking Palsy.

      ‘Moan, brethren, moan, for I have no strength left,

      ‘Weak as the reed weak feeble as my voice

      ‘O, O, the pain, the pain of feebleness.

      ‘Moan, moan, for still I thaw or give me help;

      ‘Throw down those imps, and give me victory.

      ‘Let me hear other groans, and trumpets blown

      ‘Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival

      ‘From the gold peaks of Heaven’s high piled clouds;

      ‘Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir

      ‘Of strings in hollow shells; and let there be

      ‘Beautiful things made new, for the surprise

      ‘Of the sky children.’ So he feebly ceas’d,

      With such a poor and sickly sounding pause,

      Methought I heard some old man of the earth

      Bewailing earthly loss; nor could my eyes

      And ears act with that pleasant unison of sense

      Which marries sweet sound with the grace of form,

      And dolorous accent from a tragic harp

      With large limb’d visions. More I scrutinized:

      Still fix’d he sat beneath the sable trees,

      Whose arms spread straggling in wild serpent forms,

      With leaves all hush’d; his awful presence there

      (Now all was silent) gave a deadly lie

      To what I erewhile heard only his lips

      Trembled amid the white curls of his beard.

      They told the truth, though, round, the snowy locks

      Hung nobly, as upon the face of heaven

      A mid day fleece of clouds. Thea arose,

      And stretched her white arm through the hollow dark,

      Pointing some whither: whereat he too rose

      Like a vast giant, seen by men at sea

      To grow pale from the waves at dull midnight.

      They melted from my sight into the woods;

      Ere I could turn, Moneta cried, ‘These twain

      ‘Are speeding to the families of grief,

      ‘Where roof’d in by black rocks they waste, in pain

      ‘And darkness, for no hope.’ And she spake on,

      As ye may read who can unwearied pass

      Onward from the antechamber of this dream,

      Where even at the open doors awhile

      I must delay, and glean my memory

      Of her high phrase: perhaps no further dare.