"The god left my heart, at its surly reflections, But came back on pretext of some sweet recollections, And he made me forget what I ought to remember, That the rose-bud of June cannot bloom in November. Ah! Tom, 'tis all o'er with thy gay days-- Write psalms, and not songs for the ladies. But time's been so far from my wisdom enriching, That the longer I live, beauty seems more bewitching; And the only new lore my experience traces, Is to find fresh enchantment in magical faces. How weary is wisdom, how weary! When one sits by a smiling young dearie!" Keats's erotic verse is, as was to be expected, burning, breathless, sensual; it revels in fragrance and sweet sounds. Read this masterly verse:-- "Lift the latch! ah gently! ah tenderly--sweet! We are dead if that latchet gives one little clink! Well done--now those lips, and a flowery seat-- The old man may sleep, and the planets may wink; The shut rose shall dream of our loves, and awake Full blown, and such warmth for the morning's take; The stock-dove shall hatch her soft brace and shall coo, While I kiss to the melody, aching all through." Shelley's love-poetry is at one and the same time hyper-spiritual and meltingly sensuous. We are reminded by it of Correggio. In the productions of both these artists the expression of the most utter self-surrender is blent with the expression of the most violent sensual excitement; what Shelley describes is the erotic death-struggle. Take the concluding verse of the _The Indian Serenade_:-- "Oh lift me from the grass! I die, I faint, I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast; Oh! press it to thine own again Where it will break at last." And along with it the transport with which _Epipsychidion_ concludes:-- "Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, And our veins beat together; and our lips With other eloquence than words, eclipse The soul that burns between them, and the wells Which boil under our being's inmost cells, The fountains of our deepest life, shall be Confused in passion's golden purity, As mountain-springs under the morning Sun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, And one annihilation. Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of love's rare universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!"