John Keats (1795-1821). As Hermes Once Took to His Feathers Light. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1909. The Book of Georgian Verse

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.

As Hermes Once Took to His Feathers Light

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 its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove grieved that day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where in 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.