1.
Hush, hush! tread softly! hush, hush my dear!
All the house is asleep, but we know very
That the jealous, the jealous old bald-pate may hear.
Tho' you've padded his night-cap -- O sweet Isabel!
Tho' your feet are more light than a Fairy's feet,
Who dances on bubbles where brooklets meet,--Hush, hush! soft tiptoe! hush, hush my dear!
For less than a nothing the jealous can hear.2.
No leaf doth tremble, no ripple is
On the river, -- all's still, and the night's sleepy
Closes up, and forgets all its Lethean care,
Charm'd to death by the drone of the humming May-fly;
And the Moon, whether prudish or complaisant,
Hath fled to her bower, well knowing I
No light in the dusk, no torch in the gloom,
But my Isabel's eyes, and her lips pulp'd with bloom.3.
Lift the latch! ah gently! ah tenderly -- sweet!
We are dead if that latchet gives one little chink!
Well done -- now those lips, and a flowery seat --The old man may sleep, and the planets may wink;
The shut rose shall dream of our loves, and
Full blown, and such warmth for the morning's take;
The stock-dove shall hatch her soft brace and shall coo,
While I kiss to the melody, aching all through!'As far as I have been able to trace this poem, it appeared for the first time in the Life,
Letters, and Literary Remains (1848), where it is dated 1818.
The statement in the Aldine Edition of 1876 that it was first printed in The Literary Pocket-book or Companion for the Lover of Nature and Art, for 1818, must derive from some misapprehension, as there is no such book.
The Pocket-book was started, by Hunt in 1819; and in a copy of the book for that year now in Sir Charles Dilke's possession Keats wrote the Song; but it is not printed in that or in either of the four later Pocket-books which complete the series.'~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed.
H.
Buxton Forman,
Crowell publ. 1895.
