No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Silent, mysterious, on wings of down, 
A swift, deceptive presence in the cover, 
Vaguely irresolute, soft-breasted, brown. 
Bird of Minerva, tawny-eyed moon-lover. 
You faced the sunshine mid the fir-trees gaunt, 
Roused by the beaters' distant sticks a-tapping. 
From some sequestered, hidden, noontide haunt. 
Where doubtless you'd been napping. 

Now all that's mortal of you, limp and dead. 
Lies where a few pale, floating plumes still fly light; 
Your little ghost, I like to think, has sped 
To the dim nether world of endless twilight, 
(Fit paradise for one who loved full well 
The empty dark, those shores forlorn, abhorrent,) 
To sail for ever o'er the asphodel. 
By Styx's gloomy torrent! 

Meanwhile with hasty hands the mould I'll heap 
Over your warm, uncaring, earthly habit, 
Over the pinions that no more may sweep 
Upon the unsophisticated rabbit; 
Lost to the daylight (which you couldn't brook, 
You loathed that sunrise bore, the dull but good cock), 
None of the guns shall guess that I mistook 
You for the sweepstakes woodcock.