Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, Like to bubbles when rain pelteth; 5 Then let winged Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her:

Open wide the mind's cage-door,

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
10 Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
15 Cloys with tasting. What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle,' when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;
When the soundless earth is muffled,
20 And the caked snow is shuffled

From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;2
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.
25 Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overaw'd,
Fancy, high-commission 'd:-send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
30 Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
35 All the heaped autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it:-thou shalt hear 40 Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reaped corn;3

Sweet birds antheming the morn:
And, in the same moment-hark!
"Tis the early April lark,

45 Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plum'd lilies, and the first

50 Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst; Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf, and every flower
Pearled with the self-same shower.

55 Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its celled sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
60 Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,
When the hen-bird's wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
65 Acorns ripe down-pattering,
While the autumn breezes sing.

Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Every thing is spoilt by use:
Where's the cheek that doth not fade,
70 Too much gaz'd at? Where's the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
75 Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, winged Fancy find
80 Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter,1
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
85 White as Hebe's, when her zone2
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
While she held the goblet sweet,
And Jove grew languid.-Break the mesh

90 Of the Fancy's silken leash;

Quickly break her prison-string

And such joys as these she'll bring.-
Let the winged Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home.

10

Brows'd by none but Dian's fawns;1 Underneath large blue-bells tented, Where the daisies are rose-scented, 15 And the rose herself has got

Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
20 Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then On the earth ye live again; 25 And the souls ye left behind you

Teach us, here, the way to find you, Where your other souls are joying, Never slumber'd, never cloying. Here, your earth-born souls still speak 30 To mortals, of their little week; Of their sorrows and delights; Of their passions and their spites; Of their glory and their shame; What doth strengthen and what maim. 35 Thus ye teach us, every day, Wisdom, though fled far away.

5 Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth5 be

Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

1 The fawn was Diana's favorite animal. A kind of poisonous plant.

3 The yew is an emblem of mourning.

The sacred beetle of Egypt was regarded as a symbol of the resurrection of the soul, and was placed in coffins.

A moth with markings which resembled the human skull.

Psyche, the soul, was symbolized by the butterfly.

weed;

Then faded, and to follow them I burn'd And ach'd for wings because I knew the three;

thought

45 As doth eternity. Cold pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,