Chapter 1
section one of endymion this livery box recording is in the public domain endymion by john keats book one lines one to two hundred and twenty two a thing of beauty is a joy for ever its loveliness increases it will never pass into nothingness but still will keep a bower quiet for us and a sleep full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing therefore on every morrow are we wreathing a flowery band to bind us to the earth spite of despondence of the inhuman dearth of noble natures of the gloomy days of all the unhealthy and o'erdarkened ways made for our searching yes in spite of all some shape of beauty moves away the pall from our dark spirits such the sun the moon trees old and young sprouting a shady boon for simple sheep
and such are daffodils with the green world they live in and clear rills that for themselves a cooling covert make gainst the hot season the mid forest break rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms and such too is the grandeur of the dooms we have imagined for the mighty dead all lovely tales that we have heard or read an endless fountain of immortal drink pouring unto us from the heaven's brink nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no even as the trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temple's self so does the moon the passions posy glories infinite haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast that whether there be shine or gloom or cast they always must be with us or we die therefore tis with full happiness that i will trace the story of endymion
the very music of the name has gone into my being and each pleasant scene is growing fresh before me as the green of our own valleys so i will begin now while i cannot hear the city's din now while the early budders are just new and run in mazes of the youngest hue about old forests while the willow trails its delicate amber and the dairy pails bring home increase of milk and as the year grows lush in juicy stalks i'll smoothly steer my little boat for many quiet hours with streams that deepen freshly into bowers many and many a verse i hope to write before the daisies vermil rimmed and white hide in deep herbage and ere yet the bees hum about globes of clover and sweet peas i must be near the middle of my story oh may no wintry season bare and hoary see it half finished but let autumn bold with universal tinge of sober gold
be all about me when i make an end and now at once adventuresome i send my herald thought into a wilderness there let its trumpet blow and quickly dress my uncertain path with green that i may speed easily onward thorough flowers and weed upon the sides of lap-moth was outspread a mighty forest for the moist earth fed so plenteously all weed hidden roots into o'erhanging boughs and precious fruits and it had gloomy shades sequestered deep where no man went and if from shepherd's keep a lamb strayed far adown those inmost glens never again saw he the happy pens whither his brethren bleating with content over the hills that every nightfall went among the shepherds twas believed ever
that not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever from the white flock but passed unworried by angry wolf or parred with prying head until it came to some unfooted plains where fed the herds of pan aye great his gains who thus one lamb did lose paths there were many winding through palmy fern and rushes fenny and ivy banks all leading pleasantly to a wide lawn whence one could only see stems thronging all around between the swell of turf and slanting branches who could tell the freshness of the space of heaven above edge round with dark tree tops through which a dove would often beat its wings and often too a little cloud would move across the blue full in the middle of this pleasantness there stood a marble altar with a tress of flowers budded newly and the dew had taken fairy fantasies to strew
daisies upon the sacred sward last eve and so the dawned light in pomp receive for twas the morn apollo's upward fire made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre of brightness so unsullied that therein a melancholy spirit well might win oblivion and melt out his essence fine into the winds rain-scented eglantine gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun the lark was lost in him cold springs had run to warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass man's voice was on the mountains and the mass of nature's lives and wonders pulsed tenfold to feel this sunrise and its glories old now while the silent workings of the dawn were busiest into this self-same lawn all suddenly with joyful cries
there sped a troop of little children garlanded who gathering round the altar seemed to pry earnestly round as wishing to espy some folk of holiday nor had they waited for many moments ere their ears were sated with a faint breath of music which e'en then filled out its voice and died away again within a little space again it gave its airy swellings with a gentle wave to light-hung leaves in smoothest echoes breaking through copse-clad valleys ere their death or taking the surgy murmurs of the lonely sea and now as deep into the wood as we might mark a lynx's eye their glimmered light fair faces and a rush of garments white plainer and plainer showing till at last into the widest alley they all passed making directly for the woodland altar
o kindly muse let not my weak tongue falter in telling of this goodly company of their old piety and of their glee but let a portion of ethereal dew fall on my head and presently unmue my soul that i may dare in wayfaring to stammer where old chaucer used to sing leading the way young damsels danced along bearing the burden of a shepherd's song each having a white wicker overbrimmed with april's tenderest younglings next well trimmed a crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks as may be read of in arcadian books such as sat listening round apollo's pipe when the great deity for earth too ripe let his divinity o'erflowing die in music through the vales of thessaly
some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground and some kept up a shrilly mellow sound with ebon tipped flutes close after these now coming from beneath the forest trees a venerable priest full soberly begirt with ministering looks alway his eye steadfast upon the matted turf he kept and after him his sacred vestments swept from his right hand there swung a vase milk-white of mingled wine out sparkling generous light and in his left he held a basket full of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull wild thyme and valley lilies whiter still than leda's love and cresses from the rill his aged head crowned with beechen wreath seemed like a pole of ivy in the teeth of winter then came another crowd of shepherds lifting in due time aloud their share of the ditty after them appeared up followed by a multitude that reared their voices to the clouds a fair-rock car
easily rolling so as scarce to mar the freedom of three steeds of dapple brown who stood therein did seem of great renown among the throng his youth was fully blown showing like ganymede to manhood grown and for those simple times his garments were a chieftain king's beneath his breast half bare were hung a silver bugle and between his nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen a smile was on his countenance he seemed to common lookers-on like one who dreamed of idleness in grove's elysian but there were some who feelingly could scan a lurking trouble in his nether lip and see that oftentimes the reins would slip through his forgotten hands then would they sigh and think of yellow leaves of owlet's cry of locks piled solemnly ah well-a-day why should our young endymion pine away
soon the assembly in a circle ranged stood silent round the shrine each look was changed to sudden veneration women meek beckoned their sons to silence while each cheek of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear endymion too without a forest pier stood wan and pale and with an awed face among his brothers of the mountain chase in midst of all the venerable priest eyed them with joy from greatest to the least and after lifting up his aged hands thus spake he men of latmos shepherd bands whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks whether descended from beneath the rocks that overtop your mountains whether come from valleys where the pipe is never dumb or from your swelling downs where sweet air stirs blue hair-bells lightly and where prickly furs buds lavish gold
or ye whose precious charge nibble their fill at ocean's very marge whose mellow reeds are touched with sounds forlorn by the dim echoes of old triton's horn mothers and wives who day by day prepare the scrip with needments for the mountain air and all ye gentle girls who foster up udderless lambs and in a little cup will put choice honey for a favoured youth yea every one attend for in good truth our vows are wanting to our great god pan are not our lowing heifers sleeker than night-swollen mushrooms are not our wide plains speckled with countless fleeces have not rains greened over april's lap no howling sad sickens our fearful ewes and we have had great bounty from endymion our lord the earth is glad
the merry lark has poured his early song against yon breezy sky that spreads so clear o'er our solemnity chapter one read by all
