Written in star-light on the dark above :
Dearest Endymion! my entire love!

How have I dwelt in fear of fate: 'tis done-
Immortal bliss for me too hast thou won.
Arise then! for the hen-dove shall not hatch
Her ready eggs, before I'll kissing snatch
Thee into endless heaven. Awake! awake!

The youth at once arose: a placid lake Came quiet to his eyes; and forest green, Cooler than all the wonders he had seen,

1025

1030

Lull'd with its simple song his fluttering breast.

How happy once again in grassy nest!

(1022) The draft reads my own entire love!

(1026) The draft reads madly for kissing.

(1032) At the end of this Book Keats wrote in the draft, “Oxf: Sept. 26".

ENDY MION.

BOOK IV.

ENDYMION.

BOOK IV.

MUSE of my native land! loftiest Muse!
O first-born on the mountains! by the hues
Of heaven on the spiritual air begot :
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
While yet our England was a wolfish den;
Before our forests heard the talk of men;
Before the first of Druids was a child ;-
Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild

Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude.

There came an eastern voice of solemn mood :

5

10

Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine,
Apollo's garland :-yet didst thou divine

(2) This line originally began with O Mountain-born in the draft, where also while stands cancelled in favour of by.

(6) The draft reads voice for talk, and in line 7 babe for child. (10) Cancelled reading of the manuscript, an hebrew voice. (11) The draft reads those nine. The references to the Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Italian literatures are scarcely as clear and pointed as might have been expected from Keats.