Of mountains, hollow with sweet-echo cells;
But, as they murmured on, the mortal chill
Passed from me, like a mist before the morn,
And, to that glorious intercourse upborne
By slow degrees, a calm, divinely still,
Possessed my frame: I sought that lighted eye?
From its intense and searching purity I drank in soul!?I questioned of the dead?
Of the hushed, starry shores their footsteps tread,
And I was answered:?if remembrance there,
With dreamy whispers fill the immortal air;
If thought, here piled from many a jewel-heap,
Be treasure in that pensive land to keep;
If love, o'ersweeping change, and blight, and blast
Find there the music of his home at last;
I asked, and I was answered:?Full and high
Was that communion with eternity,
Too rich for aught so fleeting!?Like a knell
Swept o'er my sense its closing words, 'Farewell,
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A SPIRIT'S RETURN / 87 7
On earth we meet no more!'3?and all was gone? The pale bright settled brow?the thrilling tone, The still and shining eye! and never more
220 May twilight gloom or midnight hush restore That radiant guest! One full-fraught hour of heaven, To earthly passion's wild implorings given, Was made my own?the ethereal fire hath shivered The fragile censer4 in whose mould it quivered
225 Brightly, consumingly! What now is left? A faded world, of glory's hues bereft? A void, a chain!?I dwell 'midst throngs, apart, In the cold silence of the stranger's heart; A fixed, immortal shadow stands between
230 My spirit and life's fast receding scene; A gift hath severed me from human ties, A power is gone from all earth's melodies, Which never may return: their chords are broken, The music of another land hath spoken?
235 No after-sound is sweet!?this weary thirst! And I have heard celestial fountains burst!? What here shall quench it?
Dost thou not rejoice, When the spring sends forth an awakening voice Through the young woods??Thou dost!?And in the birth
240 Of early leaves, and flowers, and songs of mirth, Thousands, like thee, find gladness!?Couldst thou know How every breeze then summons me to go! How all the light of love and beauty shed By those rich hours, but woos me to the dead!
245 The only beautiful that change no more? The only loved!?the dwellers on the shore Of spring fulfilled!?The dead!?whom call we so? They that breathe purer air, that feel, that know Things wrapt from us! ?Away!?within me pent,
250 That which is barred from its own element Still droops or struggles!?But the day will come? Over the deep the free bird finds its home, And the stream lingers 'midst the rocks, yet greets The sea at last; and the winged flower-seed meets 255 A soil to rest in:?shall not I, too, be, My spirit-love! upborne to dwell with thee? Yes! by the power whose conquering anguish stirred The tomb, whose cry beyond the stars was heard, Whose agony of triumph won thee back 260 Through the dim pass no mortal step may track, Yet shall we meet!?that glimpse of joy divine Proved thee for ever and for ever mine!
1830
3. This is the answer to Manfred's question to the dess at a crucial moment in Keats's Endymion Phantom of Astarte (2.4.154): 'Say, shall we meet (4.657?59): 'The hour may come / When we shall again?' Astarte vanishes, and Nemesis says, 'She's meet in pure elysium. / On earth I may not love gone, and will not be recall'd.' Hemans's lines also thee.' echo Endymion's renunciation of his dream god-4. Container in which incense is burned.
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JOHN KEATS 1795-1821
John Keats's father was head stableman at a London livery stable; he married his employer's daughter and inherited the business. The poet's mother, by all reports, was an affectionate but negligent parent to her children; remarrying almost immediately after a fall from a horse killed her first husband, she left the eight-year-old John (her firstborn), his brothers, and a sister with their grandmother and did not reenter their lives for four years. The year before his father's death, Keats had been sent to the Reverend John Clarke's private school at Enfield, famous for its progressive curriculum, where he was a noisy, high-spirited boy; despite his small stature (when full-grown, he was barely over five feet in height), he distinguished himself in sports and fistfights. Here he had the good fortune to have as a mentor Charles Cowden Clarke, son of the headmaster, who later became a writer and an editor; he encouraged Keats's passion for reading and, both at school and in the course of their later friendship, introduced him to Spenser and other poets, to music, and to the theater.
