The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birth-day,

The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember

The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from Heav'n

Than when I was a boy.

1862-3 Edition.

38.

BEN JONSON.

To Celia.

DRINK to me, only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst, that from the soul doth rise,
Doth ask a drink divine:

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope, that there

It could not wither'd be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent'st it back to me:

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

Not of itself, but thee.

Cunningham's Text.

JOHN KEATS.

39. On first looking into Chapman's Homer.

MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Hamer rul'd as his de-

mesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and

bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific-and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien.

40.

Ode to a Nightingale.

I.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt
mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world

unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest

dim:

3.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other

groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin,

and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-ey'd despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to

morrow.