Now, in the passing beetle’s hum
The Elfin army’s goblin drum
  To pigmy battle sound;
And now, where dripping dew-drops plash
On waving grass, their bucklers clash,
And now their quivering lances flash,
  Wide-dealing death around: 

Or if the moon’s effulgent form
The passing clouds of sudden storm
  In quick succession veil;
Vast serpents now, their shadows glide,
And, coursing now the mountain’s side,
A band of giants huge, they stride
  O’er hill, and wood, and dale.

And still on many a service rare
Could I descant, if need there were,
  My firmer claim to bind. 
But rest I most my high pretence
On that my genial influence,
Which made the body’s indolence
  The vigour of the mind.

And now, in accents deep and low,
Like voice of fondly-cherish’d woe,
  The Sylph of Autumn sad: 
Though I may not of raptures sing,
That grac’d the gentle song of Spring,
Like Summer, playful pleasures bring,
  Thy youthful heart to glad;

Yet still may I in hope aspire
Thy heart to touch with chaster fire,
  And purifying love: 
For I with vision high and holy,
And spell of quick’ning melancholy,
Thy soul from sublunary folly
  First rais’d to worlds above.

What though be mine the treasures fair
Of purple grape and yellow pear,
  And fruits of various hue,
And harvests rich of golden grain,
That dance in waves along the plain
To merry song of reaping swain,
  Beneath the welkin blue;

With these I may not urge my suit,
Of Summer’s patient toil the fruit,
  For mortal purpose given: 
Nor may it fit my sober mood
To sing of sweetly murmuring flood,
Or dies of many-colour’d wood,
  That mock the bow of heaven.

But, know, ’twas mine the secret power
That wak’d thee at the midnight hour,
  In bleak November’s reign: 
’Twas I the spell around thee cast,
When thou didst hear the hollow blast
In murmurs tell of pleasures past,
  That ne’er would come again: 

And led thee, when the storm was o’er,
To hear the sullen ocean roar,
  By dreadful calm opprest;
Which still, though not a breeze was there,
Its mountain-billows heav’d in air,
As if a living thing it were,
  That strove in vain for rest.

’Twas I, when thou, subdued by woe,
Didst watch the leaves descending slow,
  To each a moral gave;
And as they mov’d in mournful train,
With rustling sound, along the plain,
Taught them to sing a seraph’s strain
  Of peace within the grave.

And then uprais’d thy streaming eye,
I met thee in the western sky
  In pomp of evening cloud;
That, while with varying form it roll’d;
Some wizard’s castle seem’d of gold,
And now a crimson’d knight of old,
  Or king in purple proud.

And last, as sunk the setting sun,
And Evening with her shadows dun,
  The gorgeous pageant past,
’Twas then of life a mimic shew,
Of human grandeur here below,
Which thus beneath the fatal blow
  Of Death must fall at last.