ODE ON GRECIAN URN

By Patricia Lockwood Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express And all her silken flanks with garlands
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: drest?
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy What little town by river or sea shore,
shape Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Of deities or mortals, or of both, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? And, little town, thy streets for evermore
What men or gods are these? What Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
maidens loth? Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
What mad pursuit? What struggle to
escape? Attic shape! Fair attitude! With brede
What pipes and timbrels? What wild Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
ecstasy? With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of
Heard melodies are sweet, but those thought
unheard As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play When old age shall this generation waste,
on; Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: say’st,
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
leave Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, ODE ON MELANCHOLY
Though winning near the goal yet, do not By John Keats
grieve; No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its
bliss, poisonous wine;
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of
Ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed Proserpine;
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; Make not your rosary of
And, happy melodist, unwearied, yew-berries,
For ever piping songs for ever new; Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth
More happy love! More happy, happy love! be
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, Your mournful Psyche, nor the
For ever panting, and for ever young; downy owl
All breathing human passion far above, A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and For shade to shade will come too
cloy’d, drowsily,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
 And drown the wakeful anguish of Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England
the soul. stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Sudden from heaven like a weeping Only, from the long line of spray
cloud, Where the sea meets the moon-blanched
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, land,
And hides the green hill in an April Listen! You hear the grating roar
shroud; Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, fling,
Or on the rainbow of the salt At their return, up the high strand,
sand-wave, Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
Or on the wealth of globed With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
peonies; The eternal note of sadness in.
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her Sophocles long ago
rave, Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
And feed deep, deep upon her Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
peerless eyes. Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips The Sea of Faith
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth shore
sips: Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
Ay, in the very temple of Delight But now I only hear
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
shrine, Retreating, to the breath
Though seen of none save him Of the night-wind, down the vast edges
whose strenuous tongue drear
Can burst Joy’s grape against his And naked shingles of the world.
palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her Ah, love, let us be true
might, To one another! For the world, which seems
And be among her cloudy trophies To lie before us like a land of dreams,
hung. So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
DOVER BEACH Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
By Matthew Arnold And we are here as on a darkling plain
The sea is calm tonight. Swept with confused alarms of struggle and
The tide is full, the moon lies fair flight,
Upon the straits; on the French coast the Where ignorant armies clash by night.
light
Lines Written in Kensington Gardens The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,
By Matthew Arnold The night comes down upon the grass,
In this lone, open glade I lie, The child sleeps warmly in his bed.
Screen’d by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye, Calm soul of all things! Make it mine
Those black-crown’d, red-boled pine-trees To feel, amid the city’s jar,
stand! That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.
Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city’s hum. The will to neither strive nor cry,
How green under the boughs it is! The power to feel with others give!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come! Calm, calm me more! Nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.
Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead The Rose Tree
Deep in her unknown day’s employ. By William Butler Yeats
‘O words are lightly spoken,’
Here at my feet what wonders pass, Said Pearse to Connolly,
What endless, active life is here! ‘Maybe a breath of politic words
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass! Has withered our Rose Tree;
An air-stirr’d forest, fresh and clear. Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea.’
Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretch’d out, ‘It needs to be but watered,’
And, eased of basket and of rod, James Connolly replied,
Counts his day’s spoil, the spotted trout. ‘To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
In the huge world, which roars hard by, And shake the blossom from the bud
Be others happy if they can! To be the garden’s pride.’
But in my helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan. ‘But where can we draw water,’
Said Pearse to Connolly,
I, on men’s impious uproar hurl’d, ‘When all the wells are parched away?
Think often, as I hear them rave, O plain as plain can be
That peace has left the upper world There’s nothing but our own red blood
And now keeps only in the grave. Can make a right Rose Tree.’

Yet here is peace for ever new! The Second Coming

When I who watch them am away, By William Butler Yeats
Still all things in this glade go through Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The changes of their quiet day. The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Then to their happy rest they pass! Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those
words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of
the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a
man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking
cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round
at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?