IMMORTAL KEATS.

Matchless bard of all the ages —

Lyric sounder of the lyre —

Wake among your golden echoes —

Rise amid your latent fire —

Tell us, Master of the Muses —

Sweetest singer ever sung —

By what law of Earth or Heaven

Ye were called away so young?

By what law of God or Mammon —

By what creed of land or sea —

Was a weary World forsaken

Of the mind that harbored thee?

Ere that wondrous mind's fruition

Scarce had grown to the tree.

If the half-fledged sapling gave us

Melodies past human praise —

If such virgin buddings crowded

Those few sad and glorious days;

If such flowers, barely opened,

Swept us in a wild amaze —

What, Oh Lord and Prince of Poesy,

Would your soul have given to men —

What the marvelous meed and measure

Of your pulsing, choral pen —

Had your numbered days been lengthened

To a three score years and ten?

As through mystic lands ye led us

O'er the paths your feet had gone:

Pipes of Pan — and fain we followed —

Glad and willing slave and pawn,

Till we reached the fields Elysian —

Till we faced the gorgeous dawn:

Till the lanes seemed filled with roses —

Roses lipped with opal dew:

Till the vales seemed filled with incense —

Incense slowly drifting through:

Till the seas seemed filled with grottoes —

Grottoes amber, gold and blue:

Till the songs of birds rang clearer

And the sunshine shone more rare,

And the moon above the meadows

Gathered love, and left it there;

And the swaying stars rose whiter —

And the World was very fair:

As your thoughts’ eternal fountains,

Shot with iridescent gleams,

Floating down through glades enchanted,

On the breast of faery streams,

To a pearl-strewn bay of beryl —

Reached the haven of our dreams.