Keats
On a Dream
As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away,
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe, where Jove griev'd that day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw 10
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows - pale where the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.
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Written the middle of April 1819.
l. 2. - "lulled Argus" - 'As he had 100 eyes, of which only two were asleep at one time, Juno set him to watch Io, whom Jupiter had changed into a heifer: but Mercury, by order of Jupiter, slew him, by lulling all his eyes asleep with the sound of his lyre.
J. Lempriere, A Classical Dictionary, which Keats used at school.
l. 10. - "the flaw" - Sudden gust.
l. 11. - "lovers need not tell" - Paolo and Francesca (the correct spellings) tell their sorrows to Dante in Inferno, V, 127 - 138.
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