Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

Photograph by the gentle author [Spitalfields Life]

John Keats

                                         Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

                                         What thou among the leaves hast never known,

                                         The weariness, the fever, and the fret

                                         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

                                         Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

                                         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

                                         Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

                                         And leaden-eyed despairs,

                                         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

                                         Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Third stanza from Ode to a Nightingale | The Poetry Foundation