October 29 The Harvard Classics, fifteen minutes a day
Genius Rises from a Stable
Though the son of a stable man, John Keats wrote the most exquisite and sublime poetry in our language. He was the friend of Shelley, Lord Byron, and the other literary leaders of the time—his genius recognized by all.
- John Keats born Oct. 29, 1795.
From the 1930 Reading Guide
Poems
John Keats
Page 874 opens with the end of another poem; the reading starts at “527 The Mermaid Tavern”.
527 The Mermaid Tavern
SOULS of Poets dead and gone,What Elysium have ye known,Happy field or mossy cavern,Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?Have ye tippled drink more fineThan mine host’s Canary wine?Or are fruits of ParadiseSweeter than those dainty piesOf Venison? O generous food!Drest as though bold Robin HoodWould, with his Maid Marian,Sup and bowse from horn and can.
I have heard that on a dayMine host’s sign-board flew awayNobody knew whither, tillAn astrologer’s old quillTo a sheepskin gave the story—Said he saw you in your gloryUnderneath a new-old SignSipping beverage divine,And pledging with contented smackThe Mermaid in the Zodiac!
Souls of Poets dead and gone,What Elysium have ye known—Happy field or mossy cavern—Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
528 Happy Insensibility
IN a drear-nighted December,Too happy, happy Tree,Thy branches ne’er rememberTheir green felicity:The north cannot undo themWith a sleety whistle through them,Nor frozen thawings glue themFrom budding at the prime.
In a drear-nighted December,Too happy, happy Brook,Thy bubblings ne’er rememberApollo’s summer look;But with a sweet forgettingThey stay their crystal fretting,Never, never pettingAbout the frozen time.
Ah would ’twere so with manyA gentle girl and boy!But were there ever anyWrithed not at passéd joy?To know the change and feel it,When there is none to heal itNor numbéd sense to steal it—Was never said in rhyme.
529 Ode to a Nightingale
MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness painsMy sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,Or emptied some dull opiate to the drainsOne minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,But being too happy in thy happiness,—That thou, light-wingéd Dryad of the trees,In some melodious plotOf beechen green, and shadows numberless,Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage, that hath beenCool’d a long age in the deep-delvéd earth,Tasting of Flora and the country green,Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt 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-stainéd mouth;That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forgetWhat thou among the leaves hast never known,The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, 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 sorrowAnd leaden-eyed despairs;Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,But on the viewless wings of Poesy,Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:Already with thee! tender is the night,And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;But here there is no lightSave what from heaven is with the breezes blownThrough verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways,
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,But, in embalméd darkness, guess each sweetWherewith the seasonable month endowsThe grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;And mid-May’s eldest child,The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and for many a timeI have been half in love with easeful Death,Call’d him soft names in many a muséd rhyme,To take into the air my quiet breath;Now more than ever seems it rich to die,To cease upon the midnight with no pain,While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroadIn such an ecstasy!Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!No hungry generations tread thee down;The voice I hear this passing night was heardIn ancient days by emperor and clown:Perhaps the self-same song that found a pathThrough the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,She stood in tears amid the alien corn;The same that oft-times hathCharm’d magic casements, opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bellTo toll me back from thee to my sole self!Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so wellAs she is famed to do, deceiving elf.Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fadesPast the near meadows, over the still stream,Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deepIn the next valley-glades:Was it a vision, or a waking dream?Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?
530 Ode on a Grecian Urn
THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,Sylvan historian, who canst thus expressA flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shapeOf deities or mortals, or of both,In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheardAre sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leaveThy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shedYour leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;And, happy melodist, unwearièd,For ever piping songs for ever new;More happy love! more happy, happy love!For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,For ever panting and for ever young;All breathing human passion far above,That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?To what green altar, O mysterious priest,Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?What little town by river or sea-shore,Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?And, little town, thy streets for evermoreWill silent be; and not a soul, to tellWhy thou art desolate, can e’er return.
O Attic shape! fair attitude! with bredeOf marble men and maidens overwrought,With forest branches and the trodden weed;Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thoughtAs doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!When old age shall this generation waste,Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woeThan ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
531 Ode to Autumn
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease;For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen Thee oft amid thy store?Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may findThee sitting careless on a granary floor,Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hookSpares the next swath and all its twinéd flowers:And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keepSteady thy laden head across a brook;Or by a cider-press, with patient look,Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,While barréd clouds bloom the soft-dying dayAnd touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mournAmong the river-sallows, borne aloftOr sinking as the light wind lives or dies;And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble softThe redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
532 Ode to Psyche
O GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrungBy sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,And pardon that thy secrets should be sungEven into thine own soft-conchèd ear:Surely I dream’d to-day, or did I seeThe wingèd Psyche with awaken’d eyes?I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,Saw two fair creatures, couchèd side by sideIn deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roofOf leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ranA brooklet, scarce espied:’Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers fragrant-eyed,Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;Their arms embracèd, and their pinions too;Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,As if disjoinèd by soft-handed slumber,And ready still past kisses to outnumberAt tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:The wingèd boy I knew;But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?His Psyche true!
O latest-born and loveliest vision farOf all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!Fairer than Phoebe’s sapphire-region’d star,Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,Nor altar heap’d with flowers;Nor Virgin-choir to make delicious moanUpon the midnight hours;No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweetFrom chain-swung censer teeming;No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heatOf pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.
O brightest! though too late for antique vows,Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,When holy were the haunted forest boughs,Holy the air, the water, and the fire;Yet even in these days so far retiredFrom happy pieties, thy lucent fans,Fluttering among the faint Olympians,I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.So let me be thy choir, and make a moanUpon the midnight hours;Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweetFrom swingèd censer teeming:Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heatOf pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.
Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a faneIn some untrodden region of my mind,Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d treesFledge the wild-ridgèd mountains steep by steep;And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep;And in the midst of this wide quietnessA rosy sanctuary will I dressWith the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,Who, breeding flowers, will never breed the same;And there shall be for thee all soft delightThat shadowy thought can win,A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,To let the warm Love in!
533 Ode on Melancholy
NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twistWolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kistBy nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;Make not your rosary of yew-berries,Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth beYour mournful Psyche, nor the downy owlA partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;For shade to shade will come too drowsily,And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fallSudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,And hides the green hill in an April shroud;Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lipsBidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:Ay, in the very temple of DelightVeil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongueCan burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
The Ode on Melancholy begins low on page 882 (the last assigned page) and ends on page 883; the reading includes the whole ode, so that it is not skipped.
Volume 41, pages 874–882 · See the scanned page on archive.org
This is the reading for October 29 in Fifteen Minutes a Day: The Reading Guide (1930 edition), page 83. There the assignment reads “Vol. 41, pp. 874–882.” Read it in the guide.