Beyond my bounds, your bourne

O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,
Would all their colours from the sunset take,
From something of material sublime,
Rathern than shadow our own soul’s daytime
In the dark void of night. For in the world
We jostle -- but my flat is not unfurled
On the admiral staff -- and to philosophize
I dare not yet! O, never will the prize,
High reason, and the lore of good and ill,
Be my award! Things cannot to the will
Be settled, but they tease us out of thought.
Or is it that imagination brought
Beyond its proper bound, yet still confined,
Lost in a sort of purgatory blind,
Cannot refer to any standard law
Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourne --
It forces us in summer skies to mourn,
It spoils the singing of the nightingale ...

-- John Keats, “To J.H. Reynolds, Esq.” 76-95