5.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long; For sideways would she lean, and sing A faery's song.

6.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look'd at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

7.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.

8.

She took me to her elfin grot,1

And there she gazed and sighed deep, And there I shut her wild sad eyes

So kiss'd to sleep.

9.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd

On the cold hillside.

'Lord Houghton's version reads:

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,

And there I shut her wild, wild eyes

With kisses four.

10.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd-" La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

11.

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloom
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here,

On the cold hillside.

12.

And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

SONNET,1

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,.
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors

Written on a page facing "A Lover's Complaint," in a copy of Shakspere given by John Hamilton Reynolds to Keats, and by him to Severn. Composed in Dorsetshire, where Keats and Severn had landed on their way to Italy. They are the last lines known to have been written by Keats.

No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.

September (?), 1820.]