Poem by Alexander Anderson

John Keats

    "He is made one with Nature; there is heard
    His voice in all her music." — Shelley.

THERE be more things within that far-off breast,
    Whereon the flowers grow,
Of the boy poet, in his Roman rest,
    Than hearts like ours can know.

He slumbers, but his sleep hath not our fears,
    For all aside is thrown;
And from the gateway of his tombèd years
    A power is moving on.

And in that power is hid a voice that speaks
    To hearts that throb and rise
From common earth, and worship that which seeks
    The wider sympathies.

For he is silent not; and from the bounds
    Wherein his footsteps move
Come, like the wind at morn, all summer sounds
    Of boyhood thought and love.

So he to us is as an oracle
    Whose words bedrip with youth;
The latest spirit, bathing in the well
    Of Pagan shape and truth.

A passionate existence which we scan;
    But first must lay aside
The rougher thinking that belongs to man,
    And take the unsettled pride

Of eager youth and fancy, and a strength
    Misled by the fond zeal
For Grecian look and light, yet found at length
    The power to touch and feel.

So, taking this into thy thought, ye trace
    His wealth of opening lore;
He bursts upon you with his freshest grace,
    And moves a man no more—

But a bright shadow in the heart's expanse
    Crown'd with the tenderest rays
Of love, and thought of as the far-off glance
    Of early summer days.

So bring him from beneath the sky of Rome,
    From all her youngest flowers.
I weep that there his dust should find a home,
    And all his spirit ours!

But no! ye cannot; for a bond he keeps
    Whose ties are firmly strung—
The lone yet passionate heart of Shelley sleeps
    Beside the dust he sung.

And it were vain to leave him there and foil
    His rest—so let them sleep
Within the silence of that glorious soil,
    Whose inspirations steep

Their songs in colours like the summer boughs,
    Whose freshness ever strives,
And blooms, like asphodels, upon the brows
    Of two immortal lives.

And there they sleep, as if their fates had said
    They shall not sleep alone;
The singer and the sung must fill one bed,
    And make their ashes one.

And so it is; and through the years that roll,
    That sepulchre of theirs
Is as a passionate and wish'd-for goal
    To which all thought repairs—

While in our hearts, as is their dust at Rome,
    Their spirits feel no wrong;
But shine to us like gods serenely from
    The Pantheon of Song.

1. The Open Secret
2. In Rome
3. Look to the East
4. Agnes Died
5. The Worship of Sorrow

Adelaide Crapsey John Keats ("Meet thou the event")

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