John Keats - Selected Poems and Letters

To-morrow will I ask my lady’s boon.” –

“O may I never see another night,

Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love’s tune.” –

So spake they to their pillows; but, alas,

Honeyless days and days did he let pass;

V.

Until sweet Isabella’s untouch’d cheek

Fell sick within the rose’s just domain,

Fell thin as a young mother’s, who doth seek

By every lull to cool her infant’s pain:

“How ill she is,” said he, “I may not speak,

And yet I will, and tell my love all plain:

If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears,

And at the least ’twill startle off her cares.”

VI.

So said he one fair morning, and all day

His heart beat awfully against his side;

And to his heart he inwardly did pray

For power to speak; but still the ruddy tide

Stifled his voice, and puls’d resolve away –

Fever’d his high conceit of such a bride,

Yet brought him to the meekness of a child:

Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!

VII.

So once more he had wak’d and anguished

A dreary night of love and misery,

If Isabel’s quick eye had not been wed

To every symbol on his forehead high;

She saw it waxing very pale and dead,

And straight all flush’d; so, lisped tenderly,

“Lorenzo!” – here she ceas’d her timid quest,

But in her tone and look he read the rest.

VIII.

“O Isabella, I can half perceive

That I may speak my grief into thine ear;

If thou didst ever any thing believe,

Believe how I love thee, believe how near

My soul is to its doom: I would not grieve

Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear

Thine eyes by gazing; but I cannot live

Another night, and not my passion shrive.

IX.

“Love! thou art leading me from wintry cold,

Lady! thou leadest me to summer clime,

And I must taste the blossoms that unfold

In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time.”

So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,

And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme:

Great bliss was with them, and great happiness

Grew, like a lusty flower in June’s caress.

X.

Parting they seem’d to tread upon the air,

Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart

Only to meet again more close, and share

The inward fragrance of each other’s heart.

She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair

Sang, of delicious love and honey’d dart;

He with light steps went up a western hill,

And bade the sun farewell, and joy’d his fill.

XI.

All close they met again, before the dusk

Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

All close they met, all eyes, before the dusk

Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk,

Unknown of any, free from whispering tale.

Ah! better had it been for ever so,

Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe.

XII.

Were they unhappy then? – It cannot be –

Too many tears for lovers have been shed,

Too many sighs give we to them in fee,

Too much of pity after they are dead,

Too many doleful stories do we see,

Whose matter in bright gold were best be read;

Except in such a page where Theseus’ spouse

Over the pathless waves towards him bows.

XIII.

But, for the general award of love,

The little sweet doth kill much bitterness;

Though Dido silent is in under-grove,

And Isabella’s was a great distress,

Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove

Was not embalm’d, this truth is not the less –

Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers,

Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.

XIV.

With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,

Enriched from ancestral merchandize,

And for them many a weary hand did swelt

In torched mines and noisy factories,

And many once proud-quiver’d loins did melt

In blood from stinging whip; – with hollow eyes

Many all day in dazzling river stood,

To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

XV.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,

And went all naked to the hungry shark;

For them his ears gush’d blood; for them in death

The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark

Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe

A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:

Half-ignorant, they turn’d an easy wheel,

That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

XVI.

Why were they proud? Because their marble founts

Gush’d with more pride than do a wretch’s tears? –

Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts

Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs? –

Why were they proud? Because red-lin’d accounts

Were richer than the songs of Grecian years? –

Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,

Why in the name of Glory were they proud?

XVII.

Yet were these Florentines as self-retired

In hungry pride and gainful cowardice,

As two close Hebrews in that land inspired,

Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies;

The hawks of ship-mast forests – the untired

And pannier’d mules for ducats and old lies –

Quick cat’s-paws on the generous stray-away, –

Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay.

XVIII.

How was it these same ledger-men could spy

Fair Isabella in her downy nest?

How could they find out in Lorenzo’s eye

A straying from his toil? Hot Egypt’s pest

Into their vision covetous and sly!

How could these money-bags see east and west? –

Yet so they did – and every dealer fair

Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare.

XIX.

O eloquent and famed Boccaccio!

Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon;

And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow,

And of thy roses amorous of the moon,

And of thy lilies, that do paler grow

Now they can no more hear thy ghittern’s tune,

For venturing syllables that ill beseem

The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme.

XX.

Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale

Shall move on soberly, as it is meet;

There is no other crime, no mad assail

To make old prose in modern rhyme more sweet:

But it is done – succeed the verse or fail –

To honour thee, and thy gone spirit greet;

To stead thee as a verse in English tongue,

An echo of thee in the north-wind sung.

XXI.

These brethren having found by many signs

What love Lorenzo for their sister had,

And how she lov’d him too, each unconfines

His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad

That he, the servant of their trade designs,

Should in their sister’s love be blithe and glad,

When ’twas their plan to coax her by degrees

To some high noble and his olive-trees.

XXII.

And many a jealous conference had they,

And many times they bit their lips alone,

Before they fix’d upon a surest way

To make the youngster for his crime atone;

And at the last, these men of cruel clay

Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone;

For they resolved in some forest dim

To kill Lorenzo, and there bury him.

XXIII.

So on a pleasant morning, as he leant

Into the sun-rise, o’er the balustrade

Of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent

Their footing through the dews; and to him said,

“You seem there in the quiet of content,

Lorenzo, and we are most loth to invade

Calm speculation; but if you are wise,

Bestride your steed while cold is in the skies.

XXIV.

“To-day we purpose, ay, this hour we mount

To spur three leagues towards the Apennine;