ON READING CERTAIN POEMS OF KEATS.

THOU Saxon-Greek, whose fancy-teeming soul

Unfolds before our eyes the glowing roll

Of antique lore, and shows us how to read

Of godlike love, the terror and the meed;

And how, descending, came from heavenly birth

The beauty and the loveliness of earth;

Or, dearer still, to dream our life away,

Hearing the nightingale's low throbbing lay.

Spirit divine! How did I feel thy might,

As once I sat enwrapped in shady night,

While all was hushed, save where on leathern wing

The bat flits by, or waters murmuring

Invite the soul to sleep and dewy ease,

With all the senses hushed, unskilled to please

The raptured soul, as, lingering on thy lay,

I turned the sad night to a radiant day.

How did I rest untouched by earthly care,

Remembering not things which had been or were,

But while the stars were sinking to their bed

And darkness came, nodding his dreamy head,

A lovely vision passed before my eye,

Bright radiant figures on a gloomy sky.

First Dian and Endymion appear,

No longer wrapped in modesty and fear,

But clothed with love as with a garment bright,

Slow gliding did they pass and fade from sight.

Ray-crowned Hyperion like a glittering star

Up heaven's ascent compels his shining car;

Then Lamia's deceit, and Isabel

Mourning the Basil-pot she loved so well.

And lo! as all these fancies fade away,

Enwrapped in misty clouds of pearly gray,

Bright in their midst the parting shades disclose

A lovely form, fresh as the budding rose,

In dawning womanhood. My love I knew,

Though all her charms of earth's most lovely hue

Irradiate were with heaven's celestial light.

Breathless I gazed upon the heavenly sight;

But, ah, dissolved in dew before my eyes,

It vanished, and the dawn was in the skies.

B. W. W