KEATS

To sing, as thou didst in full throated ease,

Sweeter than thine oft-envied nightingale,

And with thy singing waken hill and dale

Until the many harpstrings of the trees

Murmured in strange and old antiphonies;

To wander at thy will into the vale

Where sleeps Endymion, and tell the tale

Of Dian's nymphs or Pan's dear dryades:

Was it, in sooth, too great a price to pay —

The heart-ache and the passion and the tears

With which God mixed for thee life's cup of gold?

Against the sadness of thy lot I hold

The joy of him who sees and feels and hears

Earth's splendour, fulness, music, night and day.