John Keats

1795 - 1821

Ode to Psyche

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung 
  By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, 
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung 
  Even into thine own soft-conched ear: 
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see   
  The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes? 
I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly, 
  And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, 
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side 
  In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof  
  Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran 
        A brooklet, scarce espied: 
’Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, 
  Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, 
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;  
  Their arms embraced, and their pinions too; 
  Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu, 
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, 
And ready still past kisses to outnumber 
  At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:  
        The winged boy I knew; 
  But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? 
        His Psyche true! 
  
O latest born and loveliest vision far 
  Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!  
Fairer than Phoebe’s sapphire-region’d star, 
  Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; 
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, 
        Nor altar heap’d with flowers; 
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan  
        Upon the midnight hours; 
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet 
  From chain-swung censer teeming; 
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat 
  Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.  
  
O brightest! though too late for antique vows, 
  Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, 
When holy were the haunted forest boughs, 
  Holy the air, the water, and the fire; 
Yet even in these days so far retir’d  
  From happy pieties, thy lucent fans, 
  Fluttering among the faint Olympians, 
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired. 
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan 
        Upon the midnight hours;  
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet 
  From swinged censer teeming; 
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat 
  Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming. 
  
Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane  
  In some untrodden region of my mind, 
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, 
  Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: 
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees 
  Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;  
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, 
  The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep; 
And in the midst of this wide quietness 
A rosy sanctuary will I dress 
With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,  
  With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, 
With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign, 
  Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same: 
And there shall be for thee all soft delight 
  That shadowy thought can win,  
A bright torch, and a casement open at night, 
  To let the warm Love in!