Ode to a Nightingale

11O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

12Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,

13Tasting of Flora and the country green,

14Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

15O for a beaker full of the warm South,

16Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

17With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

18And purple-stained mouth;

19That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

20And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

21Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

22What thou among the leaves hast never known,

23The weariness, the fever, and the fret

24Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

25Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

26Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

27Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

28And leaden-eyed despairs,

29Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

30Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

31Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

32Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

33But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

34Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

35Already with thee! tender is the night,

36And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

37Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;

38But here there is no light,

39Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

40Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

41I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

42Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

43But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

44Wherewith the seasonable month endows

45The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

46White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

47Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

48And mid-May's eldest child,

49The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

50The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

51Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

52I have been half in love with easeful Death,

53Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

54To take into the air my quiet breath;

55Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

56To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

57While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

58In such an ecstasy!

59Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

60To thy high requiem become a sod.

61Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

62No hungry generations tread thee down;

63The voice I hear this passing night was heard

64In ancient days by emperor and clown:

65Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

66Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

67She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

68The same that oft-times hath

69Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

70Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

71Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

72To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

73Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

74As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

75Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

76Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

77Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

78In the next valley-glades:

79Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

80Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?