KEATS
by: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1807-1882)
- HE young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
- The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
- The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
- To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
- The nightingale is singing from the steep;
- It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
- Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold
- A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
- Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,
- On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name
- Was writ in water." And was this the meed
- Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write:
- "The smoking flax before it burst to flame
- Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."
MORE POEMS BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW |
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