| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXVI. Melancholy
Paolo and Francesca | | By John Keats (1795–1821) |
| | | AS Hermes once took to his feathers light, | |
| When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept, | |
| So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright | |
| So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft | |
| The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes; | 5 |
| And, seeing it asleep, so fled away— | |
| Not to pure Ida with the snow-cold skies, | |
| Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d a day; | |
| But to that second circle of sad hell, | |
| Where ’mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw | 10 |
| Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell | |
| Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw, | |
| Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form | |
| I floated with, about that melancholy storm. | | | | |
|
|
