CHAMELEONS feed on light and air-
Poets' food is love and fame;
If in this wide world of care

Poets could but find the same

With as little toil as they,

Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a-day?

Poets are on this cold earth

As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea:
Where light is, chameleons change—
Where love is not, poets do.
Fame is love disguised; if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power

A poet's free and heavenly mind;
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are:
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
O, refuse the boon!

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

THOU still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time!
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our
rhyme!

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? what maidens loath?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play

on

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone!
Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not
leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal; yet do not grieve

She cannot fade, though thou hast not

thy bliss;

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,

For ever panting and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloyed,

A burning forehead and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands

drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed!
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of
thought,

As doth eternity. Cold pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

JOHN KEATS.

THE MEANS TO ATTAIN HAPPY LIFE.

MARTIAL, the things that do attain The happy life be these, I findThe riches left, not got with pain; The fruitful ground, the quiet mind,

The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;

No charge of rule, nor governance; Without disease, the healthful life; The household of continuance;

The mean diet, no delicate fare;

True wisdom joined with simpleness; The night discharged of all care,

Where wine the wit may not oppress;

The faithful wife, without debate;

Such sleeps as may beguile the night; Contented with thine own estate,

Ne wish for death, ne fear his might. LORD SURREY.

L'ALLEGRO.

HENCE, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born!

In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,

Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-raven sings;

There, under ebon shades, and lowbrowed rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou goddess fair and free, In heav'n y-cleped Euphrosyne, And, by men, heart-easing Mirth! Whom lovely Venus, at a birth With two sister Graces more, To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore; Or whether (as some sages sing) The frolic wind that breathes the spring, Zephyr, with Aurora playingAs he met her once a-MayingThere, on beds of violets blue And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity

Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek—
Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come! and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free-
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night

From his watch-tow'r in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the sweet-brier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering Morn,
From the side of some hoar hill
Through the high wood echoing shrill;
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,

Whilst the landscape round it measures
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray-
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest—
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neigboring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savory dinner set

Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,

To the tanned haycock in the mead.

647

Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequered shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the live-long daylight fail;
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale
With stories told of many a feat:
How fairy Mab the junkets eat—
She was pinched and pulled, she said,
And he by friar's lantern led;
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And, crop-full, out of doors he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.

Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold-
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear

In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp and feast and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry-
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream;
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs,

Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting soul may pierce,