Ode to Psyche

Elsa Sir Frank Dicksee

 

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
 Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
 Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retired
 From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
 Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
   Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
 From swingèd censer teeming:
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
 Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
 In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
 Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees
 Fledge the wild-ridgèd mountains steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
 The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,
 With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,
 Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same;
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
   That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
   To let the warm Love in!

Poem: John Keats (excerpt) Ode to Psyche
Music: Chopin Piano Concerto #2 Larghetto Istvan Szekely Naxos DDD 8.550123
Painting: Sir Frank Dicksee Portrait of Elsa