ODES

What god will choose me from this labouring nation

To worship him afar, with inward gladness,

At sunset and at sunrise, in some Persian

Garden of roses;

Or under the full moon, in rapturous silence,

Charmed by the trickling fountain, and the moaning

Of the death-hallowed cypress, and the myrtle

Hallowed by Venus?

O for a chamber in an eastern tower,

Spacious and empty, roofed in odorous cedar,

A silken soft divan, a woven carpet

Rich, many-coloured;

A jug that, poised on her firm head, a negress

Fetched from the well; a window to the ocean,

Lest of the stormy world too deep seclusion

Make me forgetful!

Thence I might watch the vessel-bearing waters

Beat the slow pulses of the life eternal,

Bringing of nature's universal travail

Infinite echoes;

And there at even I might stand and listen

To thrum of distant lutes and dying voices

Chanting the ditty an Arabian captive

Sang to Darius.

So would I dream awhile, and ease a little

The soul long stifled and the straitened spirit,

Tasting new pleasures in a far-off country

Sacred to beauty.