A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.
He ne'er is crown'd
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead.
To sorrow
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind.
So many, and so many, and such glee.
Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is--Love, forgive us!--cinders, ashes, dust.
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
Music's golden tongue
Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.
The silver snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.
Asleep in lap of legends old.
Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
Flushing his brow.
A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing.
As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon.
He play'd an ancient ditty long since mute,
In Provence call'd "La belle dame sans mercy."
That large utterance of the early gods!
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir.
The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.
Dance and Provençal song and sunburnt mirth!
Oh for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene!
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth.
The self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on,--
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
Thou, silent form, doth tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity.
Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings?