To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

5

IO

15

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinéd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

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Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft

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Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

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

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

“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.

"I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever-dew,

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too."

"I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful-a faery's child,

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IO

Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

15

"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.

"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.

"She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild and manna-dew,

And sure in language strange she said 'I love thee true.'

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And there I dream'd-Ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dream'd

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On the cold hill's side.

"I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:
They cried-'La Belle Dame sans Merci

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Hath thee in thrall!'

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

On the cold hill's side.

"And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing."

BRIGHT STAR! WOULD I WERE STEADFAST

BRIGHT Star! would I were steadfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite.
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:

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No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever, or else swoon to death.

IO