O Sorrow!

Why dost borrow

Heart’s lightness from the merriment of May?—

A lover would not tread

A cowslip on the head,

Though he should dance from eve till peep of day—

Nor any drooping flower

Held sacred for thy bower,

Wherever he may sport himself and play.

To Sorrow

I bade good morrow,

And thought to leave her far away behind;

But cheerly, cheerly,

She loves me dearly;

She is so constant to me, and so kind:

I would deceive her

And so leave her,

But ah! she is so constant and so kind.

Beneath my palm-trees, by the river side,

I sat a-weeping: in the whole world wide

There was no one to ask me why I wept,—

And so I kept

Brimming the water-lily cups with tears

Cold as my fears.

from Keats’ “Song of the Indian Maid”