1.
No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owlA partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.2.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.3.
She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips;
Ay, in the very temple of delight Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.'Lord Houghton gives the following stanza as the intended opening of the Ode, from the original manuscript:
Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones,
And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,
Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with
To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast;
Although your rudder be a dragon's
Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony,
Your cordage large uprootings from the
Of bald Medusa, certes you would
To find the Melancholy -- whether
Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull.
His Lordship adds -- "But no sooner was this written, than the poet became conscious that the coarseness of the contrast would destroy the general effect of luxurious tenderness which it was the object of the poem to produce, and he confined the gross notion of Melancholy to less violent images,..."'~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed.
H.
Buxton Forman,
Crowell publ. 1895.
