Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921/Keats

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KEATS
(1821—1921)
When sometimes, on a moony night, I've passed A street-lamp, seen my doubled shadow flee,I've noticed how much darker, clearer cast, The full moon poured her silhouette of me.
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Just so of spirits, Beauty's silver light Limns with a purer ray, and tenderer too:Men's clumsy gestures, to unearthly sight, Surpass the shapes they show by human view.
On this brave world, where few such meteors fell, Her youngest son, to save us, Beauty flung. -He suffered and descended into hell— And comforts still the ardent and the young.
Drunken of moonlight, dazed by draughts of sky, Dizzy with stars, his mortal fever ran:His utterance a moon-enchanted cry Not free from folly—for he too was man.
And now and here, a hundred years away, Where topless towers shadow golden streets,The young men sit, nooked in a cheap café, Perfectly happy. . . talking about Keats.
The BookmanChristopher Morley

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