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

      Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes,

      Nibble their toast and cool their tea with sighs ;

      Or else forget the purpose of the night,

      Forget their tea, forget their appetite.

      See, with cross’d arms they sit – Ah! happy crew,

      The fire is going out and no one rings

      For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings.

      A fly is in the milk-pot. Must he die

      Circled by a humane society?

      No, no; there, Mr Werter takes his spoon,

      Inserts it, dips the handle, and lo! soon

      The little straggler, sav’d from perils dark,

      Across the teaboard draws a long wet mark.

      Romeo! Arise, take snuffers by the handle,

      There is a large cauliflower in each candle.

      A winding sheet – ah, me! I must away

      To No. 7, just beyond the circus gay.’

      Alas, my friend, your coat sits very well ;

      Where may your tailor live? I may not tell.

      O O pardon me. I’m absent now and then.

      Where might my tailor live? I say again

      I I cannot tell, let me no more be teased ;

      He lives in Wapping, might live where he pleased.

      How many bards gild the lapses of time!

      A few of them have ever been the food

      Of my delighted fancy, – I could brood

      Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:

      And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,

      These will in throngs before my mind intrude:

      But no confusion, no disturbance rude

      Do they occasion; ’tis a pleasing chime.

      So the unnumber’d sounds that evening store;

      The songs of birds – the whisp’ring of the leaves —

      The voice of waters – the great bell that heaves

      With solemn sound, – and thousand others more,

      That distance of recognizance bereaves,

      Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.

      APOLLO Which of the fairest three

      Today will ride with me?

      My steeds are all pawing at the threshold of the morn:

      Which of the fairest three

      Today will ride with me

      Across the gold Autumn’s whole Kingdom of corn?

      THE GRACES all answer I will, I – I – I -

      O O young Apollo let me fly

      Along with thee,

      I I will – I, I, I,

      The many wonders see

      I – I – I – I – And thy lyre shall never have a slackened string

      I, I, I, I,

      Thro the golden day will sing.

      The sun, with his great eye,

      Sees not so much as I;

      And the moon, all silver-proud,

      Might as well be in a cloud.

      And O the spring – the spring!

      I lead the life of a king!

      Couch’d in the teeming grass,

      I spy each pretty lass.

      I look where no one dares,

      And I stare where no one stares,

      And when the night is nigh,

      Lambs bleat my lullaby.

      O blush not so! O blush not so!

      Or I shall think you knowing;

      And if you smile the blushing while,

      Then maidenheads are going.

      There’s a blush for won’t, and a blush for shan’t,

      And a blush for having done it:

      There’s a blush for thought and a blush for naught,

      And a blush for just begun it.

      O sigh not so! O sigh not so!

      For it sounds of Eve’s sweet pippin;

      By these loosen’d lips you have tasted the pips

      And fought in an amorous nipping.

      Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,

      For it only will last our youth out,

      And we have the prime of the kissing time,

      We have not one sweet tooth out.

      There’s a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,

      And a sigh for I can’t bear it!

      O what can be done, shall we stay or run?

      O cut the sweet apple and share it!

      “Among the rest a shepheard (though but young

      Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill

      His few yeeres could, began to fit his quill.”

      The poetry of earth is never dead:

      When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

      And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

      From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

      That is the Grasshopper’s – he takes the lead

      In summer luxury, – he has never done

      With his delights; for when tired out with fun

      He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

      The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

      On a lone winter evening,

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