Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/758
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JOHN KEATS
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;