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Duncan Campbell Scott - Ode For The Keats Centenary
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February 23, 1921. 
Read at Hart House Theatre before the University of Toronto.

   The Muse is stern unto her favoured sons,
   Giving to some the keys of all the joy
   Of the green earth, but holding even that joy
   Back from their life;
   Bidding them feed on hope,
   A plant of bitter growth,
   Deep-rooted in the past;
   Truth, `tis a doubtful art
   To make Hope sweeten
  Time as it flows;
  For no man knows
  Until the very last,
  Whether it be a sovereign herb that he has eaten,
  Or his own heart.

  O stern, implacable Muse,
  Giving to Keats so richly dowered,
  Only the thought that he should be
  Among the English poets after death;
  Letting him fade with that expectancy,
  All powerless to unfold the future!
  What boots it that our age has snatched him free
  From thy too harsh embrace,
  Has given his fame the certainty
  Of comradeship with Shakespeare`s?
  He lies alone
  Beneath the frown of the old Roman stone
  And the cold Roman violets;
  And not our wildest incantation
  Of his most sacred lines,
  Nor all the praise that sets
  Towards his pale grave,
  Like oceans towards the moon,
  Will move the Shadow with the pensive brow
  To break his dream,
  And give unto him now
  One word! —

  When the young master reasoned
  That our puissant England
  Reared her great poets by neglect,
  Trampling them down in the by-paths of Life
  And fostering them with glory after death,
  Did any flame of triumph from his own fame
  Fall swift upon his mind; the glow
  Cast back upon the bleak and aching air
  Blown around his days — ?
  Happily so!
  But he, whose soul was mighty as the soul
  Of Milton, who held the vision of the world
  As an irradiant orb self-filled with light,
  Who schooled his heart with passionate control
  To compass knowledge, to unravel the dense
  Web of this tangled life, he would weigh slight
  As thistledown blown from his most fairy fancy
  That pale self-glory, against the mystery,
  The wonder of the various world, the power
  Of "seeing great things in loneliness."
  Where bloodroot in the clearing dwells
  Along the edge of snow;
  Where, trembling all their trailing bells,
  The sensitive twinflowers blow;

  Where, searching through the ferny breaks,
  The moose-fawns find the springs;
  Where the loon laughs and diving takes
  Her young beneath her wings;

  Where flash the fields of arctic moss
  With myriad golden light;
  Where no dream-shadows ever cross
  The lidless eyes of night;

  Where, cleaving a mountain storm, the proud
  Eagles, the clear sky won,
  Mount the thin air between the loud
  Slow thunder and the sun;

  Where, to the high tarn tranced and still
  No eye has ever seen,
  Comes the first star its flame to chill
  In the cool deeps of green; —
  Spirit of Keats, unfurl thy wings,
  Far from the toil and press,
  Teach us by these pure-hearted things,
  Beauty in loneliness.

  Where, in the realm of thought, dwell those
  Who oft in pain and penury
  Work in the void,
  Searching the infinite dark between the stars,
  The infinite little of the atom,
  Gathering the tears and terrors of this life,
  Distilling them to a medicine for the soul;
  (And hated for their thought
  Die for it calmly;
  For not their fears,
  Nor the cold scorn of men,
  Fright them who hold to truth: )
  They brood alone in the intense serene
  Air of their passion,
  Until on some chill dawn
  Breaks the immortal form foreshadowed in their dream,
  And the distracted world and men
  Are no more what they were.
  Spirit of Keats, unfurl thy deathless wings,
  Far from the wayward toil, the vain excess,
  Teach us by such soul-haunting things
  Beauty in loneliness.


  The minds of men grow numb, their vision narrows,
  The clogs of Empire and the dust of ages,
  The lust of power that fogs the fairest pages,
  Of the romance that eager life would write,
  These war on Beauty with their spears and arrows.
  But still is Beauty and of constant power;
  Even in the whirl of Time`s most sordid hour,
  Banished from the great highways,
  Afflighted by the tramp of insolent feet,
  She hangs her garlands in the by-ways;
  Lissome and sweet
  Bending her head to hearken and learn
  Melody shadowed with melody,
  Softer than shadow of sea-fern,
  In the green-shadowed sea:
  Then, nourished by quietude,
  And if the world`s mood
  Change, she may return
  Even lovelier than before. —


  The white reflection in the mountain lake
  Falls from the white stream
  Silent in the high distance;
  The mirrored mountains guard
  The profile of the goddess of the height,
  Floating in water with a curve of crystal light;
  When the air, envious of the loveliness,
  Rushes downward to surprise,
  Confusion plays in the contact,
  The picture is overdrawn
  With ardent ripples,
  But when the breeze, warned of intrusion,
  Draws breathless upward in flight,
  The vision reassembles in tranquillity,
  Reforming with a gesture of delight,
  Reborn with the rebirth of calm.


  Spirit of Keats, lend us thy voice,
  Breaking like surge in some enchanted cave
  On a dream-sea-coast,
  To summon Beauty to her desolate world.
  For Beauty has taken refuge from our life
  That grew too loud and wounding;
  Beauty withdraws beyond the bitter strife,
  Beauty is gone, (Oh where?)
  To dwell within a precinct of pure air
  Where moments turn to months of solitude;
  To live on roots of fern and tips of fern,
  On tender berries flushed with the earth`s blood.
  Beauty shall stain her feet with moss
  And dye her cheek with deep nut-juices,
  Laving her hands in the pure sluices
  Where rainbows are dissolved.
  Beauty shall view herself in pools of amber sheen
  Dappled with peacock-tints from the green screen
  That mingles liquid light with liquid shadow.
  Beauty shall breathe the fairy hush
  With the chill orchids in their cells of shade,
  And hear the invocation of the thrush
  That calls the stars into their heaven,
  And after even
  Beauty shall take the night into her soul.
  When the thrill voice goes crying through the wood,
  (Oh, Beauty, Beauty!)
  Troubling the solitude
  With echoes from the lonely world,
  Beauty will tremble like a cloistered thing
  That hears temptation in the outlands singing,
  Will steel her dedicated heart and breathe
  Into her inner ear to firm her vow: —
  "Let me restore the soul that ye have marred.
  O mortals, cry no more on Beauty,
  Leave me alone, lone mortals,
  Until my shaken soul comes to its own,
  Lone mortals, leave me alone!"
  (Oh Beauty, Beauty, Beauty!)
  All the dim wood is silent as a dream
  That dreams of silence.
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