5. I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long; For sideways would she lean, and sing A faery's song. 6. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan. 7. She found me roots of relish sweet, 8. She took me to her elfin grot,1 And there she gazed and sighed deep, And there I shut her wild sad eyes So kiss'd to sleep. 9. And there we slumber'd on the moss, On the cold hillside. 'Lord Houghton's version reads: She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four. 10. I saw pale kings, and princes too, 11. I saw their starv'd lips in the gloom On the cold hillside. 12. And this is why I sojourn here Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, SONNET,1 Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art— Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,. Of snow upon the mountains and the moors Written on a page facing "A Lover's Complaint," in a copy of Shakspere given by John Hamilton Reynolds to Keats, and by him to Severn. Composed in Dorsetshire, where Keats and Severn had landed on their way to Italy. They are the last lines known to have been written by Keats. No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, September (?), 1820.] |