35 Already with thee! tender is the night,

40

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

V

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
45 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

50

Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

VI

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
55 Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

60

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain
To thy high requiem become a sod.

VII

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:

65 Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

70

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

VIII

Forlorn the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

75 Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

80

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music: Do I wake or sleep?

(1-80) The death of Thomas Keats occasioned this poem. Explain (6). Cf. (11-12) to a prose parallel in a letter to his sister: “and, please heaven, a little claret wine cool out of a cellar a mile deep." Keats purposely departs from the regular metre of the ode with an Alexandrine in (20). (26) Cf. Keats' letter to Brown from Rome, 30th Nov. 1820: "it runs in my head we shall all die young." (Referring to his family.) Keats, while listening to the nightingale's song, bewails the fact that the mighty abstract idea of beauty takes away all peace from the mind of man. (41) Notice the sensuous art of Keats in guessing at Nature's sweetness in the dark. Analyse "embalmed darkness." Observe that the sensuous last two lines of stanza five suggest the thoughts of the sixth stanza. (52) Where was Keats buried? Shelley in his preface to "Adonais " says: "It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." (55) A rich and easeful death did not come to Keats. (59) Shelley in "The Sensitive Plant" writes:

Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,

And snatches of its Elysian chaunt

Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant."

(60) Here, in a sybaritic manner, Keats expresses the ecstasy of dying to the notes of a nightingale. Compare:

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter."- Ode On A Grecian Urn.

Also, compare Poe's "For Annie," where this sensuousness of death is morbidly painted:

Wherein (41-60) are nature pictures similar to those of Milton's? (62) Explain in reference to Keats' life. Analyse (67), and how does this line suggest a fine lyric of Wordsworth's with which you are familiar? Compare (72) with these lines from "Endymion":

5

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

I

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

IO

III

I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

IV

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful-a faery's child, 15 Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

20

25

V

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.

VI

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery's song.

VII

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said-
"I love thee true."

30

VIII

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.

IX

And there she lulled me asleep,

And there I dream'd

Ah! woe betide!

35 The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill's side.

40

X

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried "La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

XI

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,

On the cold hill's side.

45

XII

And this is why I sojourn here,

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

(1-48) This production is a triumph of medieval romanticism. This poem is a bit of impressionism; i. e., a single object presented from a single point of view, or a piece of nature tinged with the colour of a fleeting mood. What episode in Spenser's "Faërie Queene," Book