III.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,25 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

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 30 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.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

(1820)

I.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;

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

II.

5 Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

10

III.

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

IV.

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful, a faery's child; 15 Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

20

V.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean and sing
A faery's song.

VI.

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.

VII.

25 She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna dew; And sure in language strange she said, I love thee true.

30

VIII.

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she gaz'd and sighed deep; And there I shut her wild sad eyesSo kissed to sleep.

IX.

And there we slumber'd on the moss, And there I dream'd, ah woe betide, 35 The latest dream I ever dream'd, On the cold hill side.

40

X.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd "La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

XI.

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloom,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here

On the cold hill side.

XII.

45 And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,

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

SONNETS

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

(Written 1816)

XI.

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
5 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer rul'd as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

10

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific-and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

SONNET

(June, 1816)

To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
5 Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear

10

Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlets' bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.

XV.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET

(Written December 30th, 1816)

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; 5 That is the Grasshopper's-he takes the lead In summer luxury, he has never done

With his delights; for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

10

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there
shrills

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

LAST SONNET

(Written on a Blank Page in Shakespeare's Poems, Facing "A Lover's Complaint")

(Written 1820)

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

5 The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

10

Of snow upon the mountains and the moorsNo-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.

James Henry Leigh hunt

1784-1859

TO THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET

(1816)

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon,
When even the bees lag at the summoning brass;