i
 
 THE POEMS OF 
 
 JOHN KEATS
 
 ■'f'uzt}^ c^^yiect^ y^&^e^>z^ a^^u^^n^ ^-.^^^.
 
 THE POEMS 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 EDITED 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 AND NOTES BY 
 
 E. DE SELINCOURT 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE 
 IN PHOTOGRAVURE 
 
 ^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 
 1905
 
 THIS EDITION OK A 
 
 FAVOURITE POET 
 
 THE FIRST THAT WE ENJOYED TOGETHER 
 
 I SHOULD LIKE TO DEDICATE 
 
 TO 
 
 MY WIFE
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE present edition of the Poems of Keats aims at repro- 
 ducing, except for obvious eiToi*s, the exact text of the 
 three volumes published in the poet's lifetime, and at giving for 
 the rest of his work what seems to be the most approved text. 
 I have left the in-egularities of orthography as I found them in the 
 first editions, and have neither consistently modernised them, 
 nor followed Mr. Forman in altering the spelling of certain words 
 so as to make them fit in with what appeal's to be Keats's usual 
 form. Keats's predilection for Elizabethan spelling does not seem 
 to me to justify its introduction in passages where he did not 
 actually employ it, and it is at least no more characteristic of 
 him than his fluctuations between the modern and archaic 
 spelling of the same word, which are noticeable both in his 
 MSS. and in his printed poems. Similarly, 1 have not attempted 
 to revise the piinting of the -d or -ed of the past participles. 
 It is clear, as Mr. Forman shows, that Keats's "intention, 
 speaking broadly, was to print -ed when that syllable was to 
 be pronounced, and to replace the e by an apostrophe in the 
 opposite case " ; it is clear also that such a rule was not con- 
 sistently carried out. But it is often impossible to decide 
 whether Keats wished the syllable to be di'opped entirely, or 
 whether he desired a slightly dissyllabic effect as a variation of 
 his metre, or even whether, as is quite possible, by the retention 
 of the e he wished to indicate that the previous syllable should 
 be slightly lingered over in reading. It is probable also that 
 Keats would consult the eye as well as the ear in deciding which 
 form to employ, and he would naturally shrink from printing 
 such words as d^d or eyd. Moreover it must be remembered 
 
 /■
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 that he had eveiy opportunity for con-ecting his proofs, and 
 such proof copies of his poems as are now extant show that he 
 not only coiTected them with some care, but also obtained the 
 help of friends in their coiTection. It is hardly likely therefore 
 that he would have left as many as sixty incoiTectly printed in 
 Endymion, and yet Mr. Forman, in reducing the form of Keats's 
 past participles to rule, has found it necessary to alter this 
 number. 
 
 A word must be said in explanation, and if need be in 
 defence, of the an-angement of the Posthumous and Fugitive 
 Poems. It is a practice widely followed by modem scholarship 
 to collect under this head every scrap of verse that can be dis- 
 covered, and to produce the whole under the title of " Poems," 
 and there is much to be said for the an-angement. On the 
 other hand, I cannot help agreeing with Mr. Colvin that to 
 print snatches of doggerel and nonsense-verses, such as are to be 
 found in the Letters of Keats, "gravely, among the poetical 
 works, is to punish the levities of genius too hard," and I am 
 convinced that when the Ode to Maia shares a page with Daxvlish 
 Fair, and La Belle Dame sans Merci is immediately preceded 
 by Two or Three Posies, as the dates of composition demand, the 
 mind is not attuned to their proper appreciation, and chrono- 
 logical accui'acy is bought at a heavy price. 
 
 Accordingly I have relegated to an Appendix those verses 
 which do not seem to me to be worthy of the name of poetry, 
 and would not, we may be sure, have been published by Keats 
 as such ; the remainder I have ananged as far as possible on the 
 principles which actuated the poet in the aiTangement of his 
 volumes of 1817 and 1820. The Fall of Hyperion is placed first, 
 for pure convenience, that it may stand next to Hyperion ,• it is 
 followed by the other naiTative poems, then by the Odes, by the 
 Songs and Lyrics, by the Epistle to Reynolds, then by the 
 Sonnets and the Dramas. The chronological table on pp. 564-8 
 will, perhaps, atone for this in the eyes of those who prefer the other 
 plan. The Appendix is strictly chronological. It contains much 
 verse which could well, I think, be spared, and it is only added 
 to satisfy those readers who like to possess not merely what their
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 author wished to be preserved, but that which he would willingly 
 have let die. Even so, it is not quite complete, for certain of 
 the poems are still copyright ; but Mr. Forman, with character- 
 istic generosity, has allowed me to print one or two of these 
 which possess a literary as distinct from a purely pei-sonal 
 interest, and they contain enough to show how badly Keats could 
 write when he was not inspired. 
 
 The same feeling as prompted the aiTangement of the text 
 has induced me to place the notes at the end of the volume, 
 rather than, as would perhaps have been more convenient, at 
 the bottom of the page. " Here are the poems," wrote Keats, 
 in despatching to his brother in America some of his latest com- 
 positions, "they will explain themselves — as all poetry should 
 do, without any comment;" and though notes may sometimes 
 add to our knowledge in such a way that we return to the text 
 with a fuller appreciation and a wider power of sympathy, for 
 once that they are consulted the poems will be read many times, 
 and in moods — those moods, indeed, in which poetry makes its 
 surest appeal — when all explanatory comments are a source of 
 weariness and imtation. The notes are both textual and illus- 
 trative. The record of textual variations makes no pretence at 
 being exhaustive ; for a complete account of the different 
 forms through which the poems passed before Keats left them 
 Mr. Forman's edition will always remain the exact and unim- 
 peachable authority, and it would have been wholly unnecessary, 
 even if the material at my disposal had made it possible, for 
 me to attempt again what has already been so admirably done. 
 I have been content, therefore, with recording those valiants 
 which are especially interesting in the light they throw upon 
 the poet's powei*s of self-criticism, and upon the gradual gi'owth, 
 as it were, of a work of art to the form in which the ai'tist 
 thought fit to give it to the world. However, the first version 
 of the Ode to a Nightingale^ which has come to light since the 
 publication of Mr. Forman's edition, is given in every detail. 
 The eai'lier drafts of the poems of Keats are of particular value 
 in that he had no opportunities, as, e.g.^ had Wordsworth or 
 Tennyson, to revise his work after its fti'st publication.
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 But the main object of the notes, introduction, and ap- 
 pendices is to discuss and illustrate the relation of Keats with his 
 predecessors, and to establish the sources of his inspiration. The 
 subject is one of special interest and special importance to a 
 study of Keats, and much has from time to time been written 
 incidentally upon it; but it has never, I think, been treated 
 systematically in all its bearings upon the spirit of his work and 
 upon its subject matter, style, and vocabulary. Yet such a 
 study, as it seems to me, affords one of the surest methods by 
 which we may come to undei"stand that essential element of 
 original genius by virtue of which Keats is among the very 
 gi'eatest of our poets. 
 
 The last and one of the most agi-eeable duties of an editor is 
 to place on record his obligations to those scholars, both dead 
 and living, who have aided him in his task. The editors and 
 critics of Keats, judged as a whole, have amply atoned for 
 the delinquencies of their earliest predecessors, and a poet who 
 has formed the study, to mention no others, of Charles Cowden 
 Clarke, Leigh Hunt, Lord Houghton, Mrs. Owen, Matthew 
 Arnold, the late Mr. W. T. Ai-nold, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. 
 Buxton Eorman, and Mr. Sidney Colvin has been fortunate 
 indeed. To all of these my debt is necessarily great, and has 
 been acknowledged whenever I have been conscious of it. But 
 to the last two I am under a special obligation ; to Mi*. Forman 
 for his permission, already refen-ed to, to print cei-tain of the 
 poems of which he possesses the copyright, in particular the 
 beautiful fragment to be found on p. 254, to adopt any of 
 his corrections and emendations in the text of Keats (notably in 
 Endymion and Otho) and also to incorporate in my notes cei-tain 
 characteristic rejected passages fi"om Eiulymion and Lamia which 
 are given in his edition, and either are based upon MSS. in his 
 possession or were otherwise inaccessible to me ; to Mr. Colvin 
 not only for placing at my disposal all the valuable manuscript 
 material in his keeping,^ but also for his active interest in my 
 
 1 Particularly the Woodhouse Commonplace Book and Keats's Journal Letters to 
 America, which contain manuscript copies of many of the poems and supply many 
 variant readings.
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 book, which has been the gi-eatest encouragement to me in its 
 preparation. I have always found him ready to discuss with me 
 any problems connected with the life and work of Keats which I 
 have ventured to submit to him, and I am conscious how greatly 
 I have profited by his ripe judgment and his unrivalled 
 knowledge of the subject. 
 
 I should like also to express my thanks to Mr. Bourdillon for 
 allowing me to make use of his copy of the Poems of 1817, with 
 its interesting annotations in the handwriting of Woodhouse, to 
 Professor A. C. Bradley and Mr. Gilbert Munay for their 
 kindness in reading my MS, and making several valuable 
 suggestions, and to the editors of the New English Dictionary for 
 allowing me to consult their unpublished material upon one or 
 two difficult words. Finally my thanks are due to several 
 pei-sonal fi-iends, particularly to my old pupil Miss Helen 
 Darbishire, of Somerville College, who has called my attention to 
 many interesting parallels between Keats and his predecessors, of 
 which I have availed myself in the notes, and has otherwise given 
 me much valued assistance, and to Mr, H, S. Milford, who has 
 read my proofs and allowed me to benefit by his special know- 
 ledge and experience. Without their help my book would be 
 faultier than it is ; for its faults I alone am responsible, 
 
 Oxford, 
 August, 1904 
 
 P.S. — This volume was on point of publication when two 
 impoi-tant MSS. came to light — the autogi-aph MS. of Hyperion 
 and the Woodhouse transcript of The Fall of Hyperion and 
 other poems. The first has preserved for us many earlier readings 
 of Hyperion of intense interest in a study of Keats's art, the 
 second enables us to coiTect the printed text of The Fall of 
 Hyperion in several important places, and adds twenty-one new 
 lines, whilst among the minor poems at the end of the MS. are 
 two which have not been published before. This edition was 
 therefore held back in order that I might avail myself of the new 
 material. As much of the volume had already been printed off 
 it was found impossible to alter the text, but the new matter has
 
 xii PREFACE 
 
 been incorporated in the notes, and one or two minor poems 
 added as Addenda to Posthumou.s and Fugitive Poems (IF). My 
 deepest thanks are due to Lord Crewe for his kindness in placing 
 the Woodhouse transcript, which is in his possession, at my 
 disposal. I must also express my gratitude to Mr. G. Locker- 
 Lampson for allowing me to examine the valuable Keats MSS. 
 in his collection. 
 
 Oxford, 
 December, 1904
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction xix 
 
 Achievements of Keats's genius in contrast with the limitations of his life (xix) — 
 Educative importance of his study of the English poets (xx) — Special value 
 of an investigation of their influence upon him (xx) — Early life (xx) — 
 Influence upon him of Charles Cowden Clarke (xxi) — His introduction to 
 Spenser (xxi) — Influence of eighteenth-century Spenserians on his early poetry 
 (xxii) — First reading of Chapman's Homer, of Milton, Fletcher, and Browne 
 (xxiii) — Introduction to Leigh Hunt (xxiii)— Hunt's conception of poetic style 
 and versification embodied in The Story of Rimini and its preface (xxiv)— 
 Affinity between Hunt and Keats (xxvi) — Expansion of Keats's genius, and 
 exaggeration of its worst tendencies under Hunt's influence (xxvii) — The 1817 
 volume, its failures and its promise (xxix). 
 
 Emancipation from Hunt's influence (xxx) — Poetic regeneration under the in- 
 fluence of Shakespeare and Wordsworth (xxxii) — Nature of Shakespeare's 
 influence upon his mind and art (xxxii) — Influence of William Wordsworth 
 upon his thought and upon the development of his poetic ideals (xxxv) — 
 Growth of these ideals traced through Sleep and Poetry (xxxix) — Endymion, 
 Hyperion, and Lamia (xl). 
 
 Attitude to Greek art suggested by his choice and treatment of Greek themes in 
 these poems (xliii) — Fruit of his study of the Elgin Marbles in his mastery 
 over statuesque effect (xliii) — Elizabethan poetry not Lempriere's Dictionary 
 the source of his classical knowledge and inspiration (xlv) — His attitude 
 towards Greek literature essentially romantic not classic (xlvi) — Characteristic 
 style of his three great poems upon Greek themes determined by influence 
 of different English poets (xlvi) — Endymion : influence of Spenser and 
 eighteenth-century Spenserians on style and structure (xlvii) — Hyperion : 
 influence of Milton on style and structure (xlix) — Assertion of Keats's in- 
 dependent genius and rejection of Miltonic model in Fall of Hyperion (li) — 
 Lamia : influence of Dryden on style and construction : its highest poetic 
 merits to be found in romantic elements (lii). 
 
 Full expression of the romantic qualities of Keats's genius in the poems of mediaeval 
 inspiration (liv) — Isabella, or The Pot of Basil (liv) — Eve of St. Agnes: 
 the influence of Chatterton and Spenser (Iv) — La Belle Dame sans Merci : 
 highwater mark of romantic poetry reached (Ivii). 
 
 xiii
 
 XIV 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Interpretation of human life the goal of Keats's poetic ambition : his qualifications 
 as a dramatist (lix) — Full and independent expression of his genius in the 
 Odes (lix) — Close kinship of the Odes in style and thought (Ix) — Ode to a 
 Nightingale (Ix) — Ode on a Orecian Urn (Ixi) — Ode on Melancholy (Ixi) — Ode 
 on Indolence (Ixi) — To Autumn (Ixi). 
 
 Keats's poetic treatment of Nature (Ixii) — Artistic presentation : fidelity to actual 
 observation and impression : Nature viewed under terms of human emotion 
 (Ixiii) — Keats's affinity to Greek attitude towards Nature (Ixv) — Essentially 
 romantic element in his view of Nature (Ixvi) — His conception of Nature'* 
 ultimate meaning for man (Ixvii). 
 
 POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817 
 
 Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq. 
 
 " I stood tip-toe upon a little hill " 
 
 Specimen of an Induction to a Poem . 
 
 Calidore. A Fragment 
 
 To Some Ladies ..... 
 
 On i-eceiving a curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the 
 
 same Ladies 
 
 To * * * * (" Hadst thou liv'd in days of old ") . 
 
 To Hope 
 
 Imitation of Spenser ...... 
 
 " Woman ! when I behold thee flippant, vain " . 
 Epistles 
 
 To George Pel ton Mathew .... 
 
 To my Brother George .... 
 
 To Charles Cowden Clarke .... 
 Sonnets 
 
 I. To my Brother George .... 
 II. To ***** * (" Had I a man's fair form ") 
 
 III. Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison 
 
 IV. " How many bards gild the lapses of time ! " . 
 V. To a Friend who sent me some Roses 
 
 VI. To G. A. W. (Georgiana Augusta Wylie) 
 VII. " O Solitude ! if I must with thee dwell " 
 
 VIII. To my Brothers 
 
 IX. " Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there ' 
 X. " To one who has been long in city pent " 
 XI. On first looking into Chapman's Homer . 
 XII. On leaving some Friends at an early Hour 
 
 XIII. Addressed to Haydon 
 
 XIV. Addressed to the Same 
 XV, On the Grasshopper and Cricket 
 
 XVI. To Kosciusko .... 
 XVII. " Happy is England ! " . 
 Sleep and Poetry .... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2 
 3 
 8 
 
 10 
 14 
 
 15 
 16 
 18 
 19 
 20 
 
 22 
 24 
 27 
 
 31 
 31 
 32 
 32 
 33 
 33 
 34 
 34 
 35 
 35 
 36 
 36 
 37 
 37 
 38 
 38 
 39 
 40
 
 CONTENTS XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ENDYMION. A Poetic Romance 
 
 Preface 52 
 
 Book I 53 
 
 Book II 76 
 
 Book III 98 
 
 Book IV 122 
 
 LAMIA, ISABELLA, THE EVE OF ST. AGNES, AND OTHER 
 
 POEMS 145 
 
 Lamia. Part I 147 
 
 Lamia. Part II . . 156 
 
 Isabella or the Pot of Basil. A Story from Boccaccio . . . 164 
 
 The Eve of St. Agnes 180 
 
 Ode to a Nightingale 191 
 
 Ode on a Grecian Urn 194 
 
 Ode to Psyche 196 
 
 Fancy 198 
 
 Ode ("Bards of Passion and of Mirth") 201 
 
 Lines on the Mermaid Tavern 202 
 
 Robin Hood. To a Friend 203 
 
 To Autumn 205 
 
 Ode on Melancholy 206 
 
 Hyperion. A Fragment 
 
 Book I 207 
 
 Book II 215 
 
 Book III 224 
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS 
 
 The Fall of Hyperion. A Vision. Canto I .... 229 
 
 Canto II 239 
 
 The Eve of Saint Mark 241 
 
 La Belle Dame sans Merci 244 
 
 Odes 
 
 Fragment of an Ode to Maia, May, 1818 .... 248 
 
 On Indolence 249 
 
 To Fanny 261 
 
 To (" What can I do to drive away ") . . . 253 
 
 Lines supposed to have been addressed to Fanny Brawne . 254 
 
 Songs and Lyrics 
 
 On . . . ("Think not of it, sweet one, so") . . . 255 
 
 Lines (" Unfelt, unheard, unseen ") 255 
 
 " Where's the Poet .>" 266 
 
 " Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow " 266 
 
 On a Lock of Milton's Hair 257
 
 xvi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POFMS— Continued 
 
 What the Thrush said 258 
 
 Faery Songs. I. " Shed no tear ! " 259 
 
 Faery Songs. II. " Ah ! woe is me ! " . . . . 259 
 
 Daisy's Song 260 
 
 Song ("The stranger lighted from his steed") . . . 260 
 
 " Asleep ! O sleep a little while " 261 
 
 " Where be ye going, you Devon maid .'' " . . . . 261 
 
 Meg Merrilies 261 
 
 StaflFa 262 
 
 A Prophecy. To his brother George in America . . 264 
 
 Song (" In a drear-nighted December ").... 265 
 
 Song (" Hush, hush ! tread softly ! ") 266 
 
 Song (" I had a dove ") 266 
 
 Song of Four Fairies . 267 
 
 Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds 270 
 
 Sonnets 
 
 I. " Oh ! how I love " 273 
 
 II. " After dark vapours " 273 
 
 III. Written on the blank space of a leaf at the end of 
 
 Chaucer's tale of Tlie Flowre and the Lefe . . 274 
 
 IV. To Haydon 274 
 
 V. On seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time . . 275 
 
 VI. On a Picture of Leander ...... 275 
 
 VII. On the Sea 276 
 
 VIII. On Leigh Hunt's Poem, Tlie Story of Rimini . . 276 
 
 IX. On sitting down to read King Lear once again . . 277 
 
 X. " When I have fears " 277 
 
 XI. To the Nile 278 
 
 XII. To Spenser 278 
 
 Xm. To ("Time's sea") 279 
 
 XIV. Answer to a Sonnet by J. H. Reynolds . . . 279 
 
 XV. " O that a week could be an age " . . . . 280 
 
 XVI. The Human Seasons 280 
 
 XVII. To Homer 281 
 
 XVIII. On Visiting the Tomb of Burns 281 
 
 XIX. To Ailsa Rock 282 
 
 XX. Written upon Ben Nevis 282 
 
 XXI. Written in the Cottage where Burns was born . . 283 
 
 XXII. Fragment of a sonnet (translated from Ronsard) . . 283 
 
 XXIII. To Sleep 284 
 
 XXIV. " Why did I laugh to-night ? " 284 
 
 XXV. On a Dream 286
 
 CONTENTS xvii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMU— Continued 
 Sonnets 
 
 XXVI. On Fame (I) 285 
 
 XXVII. On Fame (II) 280 
 
 XXVIII. " If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd " . 28(; 
 
 XXIX. " The day is gone " 287 
 
 XXX. " I cry your mercy — pity — love ! " . . . . 287 
 XXXI. Written on a Blank Page in Skakespeare's Poems, 
 
 facing A Lover's Complaint 288 
 
 Otho the Great. A Tragedy in five Acts 
 
 Act I 291 
 
 Act II 303 
 
 Act III 312 
 
 Act IV 321 
 
 Act V 330 
 
 King Stephen. A Dramatic Fragment 
 
 Act I . .341 
 
 APPENDIX. POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS (II) 
 
 On Death 347 
 
 Sonnet : To Byron 347 
 
 Sonnet : To Chatterton ........ 348 
 
 Ode to Apollo 348 
 
 Sonnet : To a Young Lady who sent me a Laurel Crown . . 349 
 
 Hymn to Apollo . .350 
 
 Sonnet ("As from the darkening gloom") 351 
 
 Sonnet: Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition . . . 351 
 
 On Oxford. A Parody 351 
 
 Modern Love 352 
 
 Fragment of " The Castle Builder " 352 
 
 Sonnet : To a C^at 353 
 
 A Draught of Sunshine (" Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port ") 353 
 
 Extracts from an Opera 354 
 
 Song ("Spirit here that reignest!") 355 
 
 " Here all the Summer " 350 
 
 " Over the Hill and over the Dale " 357 
 
 Acrostic 357 
 
 Lines written in the Highlands 358 
 
 Spenserian Stanza 359 
 
 An Extempore 359 
 
 Spenserian Stanzas on Charles Armitage Brown .... 3G1 
 
 A Party of Lovers 362 
 
 The Cap and Bells; 01, The Jealousies. A Faery Tale . . 363 
 b
 
 
 xvi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE VOYM^— Continued 
 
 What the Thrush said 258 
 
 Faery Songs. I. " Shed no tear ! " 259 
 
 Faery Songs. II. " Ah ! woe is me ! " . . . . 259 
 
 Daisy's Song 260 
 
 Song ("The stranger lighted from his steed") . . . 260 
 
 ' Asleep ! O sleep a little while " ..... 261 
 
 Where be ye going, you Devon maid .'' " . . . . 261 
 
 Meg Merrilies 261 
 
 Staffa 262 
 
 A Prophecy. To his brother George in America . . 264 
 
 Song (" In a drear-nighted December ").... 265 
 
 Song (" Hush, hush ! tread softly ! ") 266 
 
 Song (" I had a dove ") 266 
 
 Song of Four Fairies 267 
 
 Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds 270 
 
 Sonnets 
 
 I. " Oh ! how I love " 273 
 
 II. " After dark vapoui*s " 273 
 
 III. AVritten on the blank space of a leaf at tlie end of 
 Chaucer's tale of The Flowre and the Lefe . . 274 
 
 IV. To Haydon 274 
 
 V. On seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time . . 275 
 
 VI. On a Picture of Leander 275 
 
 VII. On the Sea 276 
 
 VIII. On Leigh Hunt's Poem, The Story of Rimini . . 276 
 
 IX. On sitting down to read King Lear once again . . 277 
 
 X. " When l have fears " 277 
 
 XI. To the Nile 278 
 
 XII. To Spenser 278 
 
 XIII. To ("Time's sea") 279 
 
 XIV. Answer to a Sonnet by J. H. Reynolds . . . 279 
 XV. " O that a week could be an age " .... 280 
 
 XVI. The Human Seasons 280 
 
 XVII. To Homer 281 
 
 XVIII. On Visiting the Tomb of Burns 281 
 
 XIX. To Ailsa Rock 282 
 
 XX. Written upon Ben Nevis 282 
 
 XXI. AVritteu in the Cottage where Burns was bom . . 283 
 
 XXII. P'ragment of a sonnet (translated from Ronsard) . . 283 
 
 XXIII. To Sleep 284 
 
 XXIV. " Why did I laugh to-night .? " 284 
 
 XXV. On a Dream 285
 
 CONTENTS xvii 
 
 PACE 
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS— Continued 
 Sonnets 
 
 XXVI. On Fame (I) 285 
 
 XXVII. On Fame (II) 286 
 
 XXVIII. " If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd " . 280 
 XXIX. "The day is gone" . . . . . . .287 
 
 XXX. " I cry your mercy — pity — love ! " . . . . 287 
 
 XXXI. Written on a Blank Page in Skakespeare's Poems, 
 
 facing A Lover's Complaint 288 
 
 Otho the Great. A Tragedy in five Acts 
 
 Act I 291 
 
 Act II 303 
 
 Act III 312 
 
 Act IV 321 
 
 Act V 330 
 
 King Stephen. A Dramatic Fragment 
 
 Act I 341 
 
 APPENDIX. POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS (II) 
 
 On Death 347 
 
 Sonnet : To Byron 347 
 
 Sonnet : To Chatterton , . 348 
 
 Ode to Apollo 348 
 
 Sonnet : To a Young Lady who sent me a Laurel Crown . . 349 
 
 Hymn to Apollo 350 
 
 Sonnet (" As from the darkening gloom ") 351 
 
 Sonnet: Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition . . . 351 
 
 On Oxford. A Parody 351 
 
 Modern Love 352 
 
 Fragment of " The Castle Builder " 352 
 
 Sonnet : To a Cat 353 
 
 A Draught of Sunshine (" Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port") 353 
 
 Extracts from an Opera ........ 354 
 
 Song (" Spirit here that reiguest ! ") 355 
 
 " Here all the Summer " 356 
 
 " Over the Hill and over the Dale " 357 
 
 Acrostic 357 
 
 Lines written in the Highlands ....... 358 
 
 Spenserian Stanza 359 
 
 An Extempore 359 
 
 Spenserian Stanzas on Charles Armitage Brown .... 361 
 
 A Party of Lovers 362 
 
 The Cap and Bells ; or, The Jealousies. A Faerv Tale . . 363 
 b
 
 xviu CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ADDP:NDA : POEMS FOUND IN THE WOODHOUSE TRAN- 
 SCRIPT OF THE FALL OF HYPERION AND OTHER 
 POEMS 
 
 " Fill for me a brimming bowl " ...... 383 
 
 Song ("Stay, ruby-breasted Warbler, stay") .... 384 
 
 On Peace 384 
 
 To Emma 385 
 
 NOTES, Etc. 
 
 The Poems of 1817 387 
 
 Endymion. Introduction 410 
 
 Endymion. Notes to Book I 420 
 
 Endymion. Notes to Book II 429 
 
 Endymion. Notes to Book III 436 
 
 Endymion. Notes to Book IV 443 
 
 Lamia, Isabella, etc. 
 
 Lamia. Part I 453 
 
 Lamia. Part II 457 
 
 Isabella 460 
 
 The Eve of St. Agnes . . 464 
 
 Poems published with Lamia, etc. ..... 472 
 
 Hyperion. Introduction 484 
 
 Hyperion. Notes to Book I 495 
 
 Hyperion. Notes to Book II 504 
 
 Hyperion. Notes to Book III 512 
 
 Posthumous and Fugitive Poems 
 
 The Fall of Hyperion ........ 515 
 
 The Eve of St. Mark 525 
 
 La Belle Dame sans Merci 526 
 
 Odes, etc 529 
 
 Songs and Lyrics 532 
 
 Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds ..... 537 
 
 Sonnets 540 
 
 Otho the Great 551 
 
 King Stephen 555 
 
 Appendix. Posthumous and Fugitive Poems (II) . . . 556 
 
 Addenda. Poems found in Woodhouse Transcript . . . 562 
 
 Appendix B. Chronological Table of the Life of John Keats . 564 
 
 Note on Date of Hunt's First Acquaintance with Keats . 568 
 
 Appendix C. On the Sources of Keats's Poetic Vocabulary . 570 
 
 Glossary 585 
 
 Index op Titlks and First Lines of Poems 601 
 
 General Index 607
 
 w 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 HEN Shelley, in a metaphor of exquisite appropriateness, 
 laments the dead Adonais as 
 
 The bloom whose petals, nipt before they blew. 
 Died on the promise of the fruit, 
 
 he suggests two thoughts which are never long dissociated in the 
 minds of those who love the poetry of Keats, the supreme beauty 
 of what his genius actually achieved and the pathos of his " un- 
 fulfilled renown ". No poet at the age of twenty-four has pro- 
 duced work comparable in maturity of thought, in richness of 
 imagery, in easy masteiy of execution, with the contents of the 
 1820 volume; and empty but irresistible conjecture can only 
 wonder to what heights of song he might have attained if, with 
 no advance of artistic power, but merely with that wider ex- 
 perience and greater independence which are the gift of time 
 rather than of genius, he had reached the years at which Shake- 
 speare had written Hamlet or Milton Paradise Lost. And yet in 
 Keats there was no taint of youthful precocity. He did not lisp 
 in numbei"s. He wrote nothing in his teens which could be com- 
 pared with the earliest works of Pope, or Chatterton, or Blake. 
 He had indeed but three years of serious literary apprenticeship, 
 yeai-s beset by difficulties as great as ever hampered the path of 
 poet ; but not his vulgar origin and his banal surroundings, nor 
 the hostility of responsible criticism, nor the thraldom of unsatis- 
 fying love, nor the haunting presence of hereditary disease could 
 check the ripening of his poetic powei^s until, a year before his 
 actual death, mortality had set her cold finger upon him, and 
 except for one sonnet, a cry for release, his poetic life had reached 
 its tragic close.
 
 XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 There is no need to tell anew the beautiful story already 
 familiar in the Life and Letters and in the biography written 
 with fuller knowledge and riper literary judgment by Mr. Colvin ; 
 it is rather my object to attempt some further contribution to 
 the study of Keats's poetic development and to direct attention 
 to the principal forces which moulded his mind and art. In the 
 case of Keats this study is of special interest, and, I think, of 
 special importance. "The fair paradise of Nature''s light" is, 
 doubtless, the inspiration of all great poetry, but the mind 
 which nature inspires may acquire its individuality by widely 
 different processes. Whilst each of his gi'eat contemporaries 
 owed no little debt to the influence of a culture either inherited 
 or acquired naturally from early suiToundings, and to a wide and 
 generous training which stimulated the mind from many sources, 
 Keats was educated almost exclusively by the English poets. 
 His studies, and he was a deep and earnest student, were con- 
 centrated upon their works, and the friendships which encouraged 
 his ffenius were sealed in a common enthusiasm for them. The 
 ideas which influenced his mind most vitally, the themes which 
 most keenly affected his imagination, the language with which 
 he widened the limited vocabulary of his ordinary life came to 
 him from the same channel. To his English predecessoi-s he 
 served a willing apprenticeship, detecting the deficiencies of each 
 through his appreciation of the peculiar excellences of the rest, 
 till he gained at last that complete unfettered independence 
 which had always been the goal of his ambition. 
 
 John Keats was bom a member of that section of the com- 
 munity in which, perhaps, we are least accustomed to suspect the 
 presence of poetic thought and feeling. His father, a native of the 
 west country, went to London as a youth and became ostler to Mr. 
 Jennings, a livery-stableman who carried on a prosperous business 
 at the Swan and Hoop, Finsbury Pavement, married his master's 
 daughter, and in coui-se of time succeeded to the management of 
 the business. Here it was that, on the 29th or 31st of October, 
 1795, the poet was born. He was the eldest of a family of five, 
 with three brothers, one of whom died in infancy, and a sister. 
 His pai-ents are represented as possessed of a talent and distinction
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 unusual in their class ; and ambitious for the future, they intended 
 at one time to send their boys to Harrow ; finding, however, the 
 expense beyond their means, they decided upon a private school 
 kept at Enfield by the Rev. John Clarke. Here John was sent 
 in his eighth year, and was soon joined by his brother George. 
 The choice was in many respects fortunate. Charles Cowden 
 Clarke, who helped his father in the school and in all probability 
 taught young Keats from the very fii-st, took a keen interest in 
 his pupil, and from being his master soon became his warmest 
 friend, and exercised the greatest influence upon his development. 
 He was a sound scholar and an accomplished musician ; above all, 
 he was an enthusiastic student of English poetry. To him we 
 owe most of our knowledge of Keats's school-days. " In the 
 early part of his school life," says Clarke, " John gave no extra- 
 ordinary indications of intellectual character : it was in the last 
 eighteen months or so that he became an omnivorous reader. 
 History, voyages and travels formed the bulk of the school 
 library and these he soon exhausted, but the books that he read 
 with most assiduity were Tooke's Pantheon, Lempriere's Classical 
 Dictionary, which he seemed to learn, and Spence's Polymetis" 
 But before he reached the age of fifteen, he was removed from 
 school, and apprenticed to a surgeon in practice at Edmonton. 
 Hence his education, in the strictest sense of the word, must 
 have been very scanty. Of Greek he had learned nothing ; and 
 though he had some knowledge of Latin, for he had already 
 begun, as a pastime, a translation of Vergil's Aeneid, he could 
 hardly have reached that stage of scholarship in which the 
 influence of classical literature begins to make itself felt. But 
 if he had not laid the foundation of a sound literary education 
 he had at least acquired the habit of reading. After he had left 
 school he continued to pay frequent visits to Enfield and " he 
 rarely came empty-handed : either he had a book to read, or 
 brought! one to be exchanged "} It was on one of these occasions, 
 probably in 1812 or 1813, that Clarke read to him the Epttha- 
 lamium of Spenser, and the artistic side of his nature received its 
 
 ^Recollections of Writers by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, 1878.
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 fii-st definite stimulus. " As he listened," we are told " his features 
 and exclamations were ecstatic." It was in truth the revelation 
 of a new world, but one which w£is his natural home though he 
 had been bom an exile fi'om it. And now for the first time he 
 became conscious of his inheritance. " That night," says Clarke, 
 " he took away with him a volume of the Faerie Qtieene, and he 
 went through it as a young hoi-se through a spring meadow ramp- 
 ing ! Like a true poet, too, he especially singled out epithets, 
 for that felicity and power in which Spenser is so eminent. He 
 hoisted himself up, and looked burly and dominant, as he said, 
 ' What an image that is — " sea-shouldering whales ' " '" " It was 
 the Faerie Queeiie" says Brown, a friend of Keats's later yeare, 
 " that first awakened his genius. In Spenser's fairy land he was 
 enchanted, breathed in a new world and became a new being ; 
 till enamoured of the stanza, he attempted to imitate it and 
 succeeded." 
 
 It is significant that Keats's earliest known composition is the 
 Imitation of Spenser, written probably in 1813, and Spenser 
 never lost hold upon his imagination. There was indeed an 
 essential kinship between the two poets, and that brooding 
 love of sensuous beauty, that frank response to the charm of 
 nature and romance, that luxuriance of fancy and felicity of 
 expression to which the Faerie Queene owes its iiTesistible 
 fascination were soon to be re-echoed in the poems of Keats. 
 But Keats was not the first poet to acknowledge that Spenser 
 was his original. Apart from those who may justly claim so 
 honourable a lineage, in every succeeding epoch there are to 
 be found poetastere who have attempted to catch, though from 
 afar, faint echoes of his melody, and to inform their own lifeless 
 puppets with something of the spirit and the gesture of his 
 magic world. Keats's literaiy education did not enable him 
 to distinguish the essential qualities of Spenser from those of 
 his latest imitatoi-s. Naturally, therefore, the influence of the 
 eighteenth-century allegorists is paramount in his earliest writ- 
 ings. They were far easier to reproduce, and he could hardly 
 be expected to realise when allegory devoid of imagination had 
 become mere idle pei*sonification, and when a rich exuberance
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 and easy gi'ace of language had given way, in "writers of a less 
 intense and less continuous inspiration, to mere licentious fluency 
 or empty verbiage. In this he was, doubtless, affected bv the 
 poetic taste of his time, which, as yet unconverted to the revolu- 
 tionai-y doctrines of Wordsworth and Coleridge, still clung to 
 the milder and more conventional romanticism countenanced 
 by the age of reason. Of this period in his development he 
 wi'ote later " Beattie and Mi's. Tighe once delighted me," and at 
 the same time he showed himself to be momentarily affected 
 bv the Juvenilia of Byron and the drawing-room melodies of 
 Moore. A weak sonnet shows that already he had come under 
 the spell of Chatterton, but it was not till later that Chatterton 
 influenced his literai-y methods. For the present he was an 
 eighteenth-century Spenserian, and traces of the diction and 
 style of the eighteenth-century poets still linger even in that 
 poem in which he most fiercely denounces them. 
 
 But this phase of his development, which has little relation 
 with his later work, was soon followed by one of more lasting 
 significance. Early in 1815 he came under the spell of Chap- 
 man's translation of Homer, of the early work of Milton, and 
 of the poems of Fletcher and of William Browne, whilst his de- 
 light in the seventeenth-centuiy Spenserians became inextricably 
 blended with his admiration for the most prominent of Spenser's 
 living disciples, the charming and vei-satile Leigh Hunt. 
 
 It was in the summer of 1816 that Keats paid his first visit 
 to the Hampstead cottage, where Hunt presided over a lively 
 circle of literaiy and artistic spirits, many of whom were soon 
 to be numbered among Keats's own friends ; but it is certain 
 that some time before this Hunt had indirectly exercised no 
 small influence on his mind. The Clarkes were enthusiastic 
 admirei*s of Hunt, and in their home Keats had been a regular 
 reader of Hunt's weekly paper. The Examiner, from which he 
 had imbibed much of Hunt's radicalism and love of civil and 
 religious liberty. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that to 
 the eyes of young Clarke Hunt fulfilled the double role of poet- 
 patriot, so that in eveiy wav he would prepare his pupil for the 
 greater master. And when in February, 1815, Hunt was released
 
 xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 from prison where he had been confined for two yeare " for dif- 
 fering from the Morning Post, on the merits of the Prince 
 Regent, and pointing out that this Adonis in loveliness was 
 in reality 'a coi'pulent man of fifty, without a single claim on 
 the gi-atitude of his country," " Keats expressed his delight in a 
 sonnet in which he contrasted the eternity of the patriot's fame 
 with the ti'ansient power of the " wretched crew," the Toiy 
 ministry of the crown. The same sonnet gives proof that Keats 
 knew Hunt not merely as a politician, but, as indeed he pre- 
 feiTed to be regarded, as a lover of our literature who "in 
 Spenser's halls strayed culling enchanted flowei-s," and in 
 pai'ticulai' as a poet whose "genius true to regions of his own 
 took happy flights". In 1814 Hunt had reprinted a trifle in 
 verse called the Feast of the Poets, a light satiric criticism on 
 the claims of his poetic contemporai'ies to fame, adding a com- 
 mentary more impoi"tant than the text, and an introduction, 
 in which he expressed his intention of reducing to practice his 
 own conceptions as to the proper style of poetry. He was in 
 fact already at work upon the Story of Rimini, which he had 
 only temporai"ilv laid aside. Evidently many of Hunt's " lux- 
 urious gossipings " in the notes to the Feast of the Poets were 
 already known to Keats, and if he had not seen Rimini in manu- 
 script it is more than probable that he had heard through Clarke 
 something of the general principles which it involved. 
 
 In the spring of 1816 Hunt's poem made its appearance 
 with a preface in which he set forth at length his conception 
 of poetic style and verification. The heroic couplet, he said, 
 had been spoiled as a measure for naiTative poetry by Pope and 
 the French school of vei-sification, who had mistaken smoothness 
 for harmony, because their eare were only sensible of a marked 
 and uniform harmony. He desired to return to its freer use, 
 as it is to be found in the fables of Dryden, in Spenser, and in 
 particular in Chaucer, its original master. " With the endeavour," 
 he adds, " to recm* to a freer spirit of verification, I have proved 
 one of still gi'eater importance — that of having a fi"ee and idio- 
 matic cast of language. There is a cant of art as well as of 
 nature. But the proper language of poetry is in fact nothing
 
 INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 different from that of real life, and depends for dignity upon 
 the strength and sentiments of what it speaks. It is only adding 
 musical modulation to what a fine understanding might actually 
 utter in the midst of its griefs and enjoyments. The poet 
 should do as Shakespeare and Chaucer did, not copy what is 
 obsolete or peculiar, but use as much as possible an actual 
 existing language, omitting mere vulgarisms and fugitive phrases 
 which ai'e cant of ordinary discourse." 
 
 In upholding the restitution to the couplet of the Alexan- 
 drine, the double or feminine rhyme, the triplet and the run-on 
 line or enjambement, Hunt set an example which was to be 
 widely and on the whole satisfactorily followed, though he exag- 
 gerated into far too general a practice what was after all only an 
 exceptional variation from the rule. But in his use of language 
 his own interpretation of his theory led to most disastrous 
 results. He had attacked Wordsworth, to whom he was obvi- 
 ously indebted for all that is really valuable in the preface, for 
 the meanness of much of his poetry ; but whereas Wordsworth 
 was the most correct writer of his day, and was never led by his 
 theories to treat of a great subject in other than a great manner, 
 Hunt confused naturalness with triviality, and construed a free- 
 dom from the use of a specific poetic diction into the right to 
 be slipshod in language and vague in thought. His addiction 
 to abstract terms in his description of the concrete, his coinage 
 of adverbs from present participles, or adjectives from nouns, 
 and his reckless use of one part of speech for another can only be 
 regarded as expedients by which to save himself the trouble 
 of thinking clearly and definitely on any subject, whilst he forgot 
 entirely his own proviso that the poet's vocabulary must be 
 freed from all "mere vulgarisms, fugitive phrases and the cant 
 of ordinary discourse ". 
 
 But the language used by a poet cannot be considered to 
 any pui-pose apart from the use to which he puts it, and it is 
 here that Hunt reveals his own limitations with most fatal 
 results. Absolutely sincere in his affections, and genuine in his 
 convictions both in life and literature, he was lacking in real 
 depth : he was content with a purely superficial delight and was
 
 xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 never able to comprehend the high seriousness of passion from 
 which all great art must spring. Consequently the nobler the 
 subject he was considering the less capable he was of communi- 
 cating its true spirit. The fate of Paolo and Francesca, recounted 
 by Dante with a severe restraint pulsating with intense tragic 
 passion, merely offered him an opportunity for exposing his 
 worst faults. The Story of Rimini reads as though it were 
 intentionally written in that Bernesque style which was intro- 
 duced only a little later by Hookham Frere in his Monks and 
 the Giants, and became the model on which Byron executed his 
 most brilliant satires ; but a manner of writing which was a fit 
 vehicle to convey their typical attitude of humorous scepticism 
 was employed by Hunt in sober earnest and perfect good faith, 
 as though it were suited to the sympathetic expression of a tragic 
 theme. In an easy conversational manner we are told of Paolo's 
 charms " that all he did was done divinely," and that Francesca 
 " has strict notions on the manying score " ; her supreme emotion 
 concentrated by Dante into the pregnant " tutto tremente " is, 
 to Hunt's mind, adequately represented in the essentially vulgar 
 phrase " all of a tremble ". 
 
 Incomprehensible as it may seem to the reader of the Eve of 
 St. A^mes or the Ode to a Nightingale there was a natural 
 sympathy already existing between Hunt and the youthful 
 Keats. Neither of them had looked on art as more than a 
 delightful pastime, and their tastes in literature were similar. 
 Both had feasted in youth on the same stories of classic mytho- 
 logy and had read them originally in the same source. Both 
 had the same favourite poet, Spenser, and both delighted in him 
 for his melody, his colour, his voluptuousness, without compre- 
 hending the spirit which informed them. That this was the 
 case with Hunt is proved by his almost equal passion for Ariosto 
 — an impossibility for one who had truly entered into the spirit 
 of Spenser ; and though Keats had, even at this time, intenser 
 feelings he had not yet comprehended their significance or their 
 necessary influence upon his art. " He admired more the 
 external decorations than felt the deeper emotions of the Muse. 
 He delighted in leading you through the mazes of elaborate
 
 INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 description, but was less conscious of the sublime and the 
 pathetic," ^ and Hunt's pei*sonal charm and the generous en- 
 couragement which he was always ready to extend to budding 
 genius, cemented the relationship. " We became intimate," 
 says Hunt, "on the spot, and I found the young poet's heart 
 as warm as his imagination. We read and walked together 
 and used to write verses of an evening upon a given subject. 
 No imaginative pleasure was left untouched by us, or unenjoyed ; 
 from the recollection of the bards and patriots of old, to the 
 luxury of a summer rain at our window, or the clicking of the 
 coal in wintertime." As for Keats, he expanded under the genial 
 influence of his friend, and for the time looked to him with the 
 reverence and admiration of a disciple for his master. 
 
 It is uncritical to father upon Hunt all the vices of Keats's 
 early work. For Hunt could never have gained the same sway 
 over his mind had there not been a natural affinity between them. 
 Keats said of the cancelled preface to Endymion, " I was 
 not aware that there was anything like Hunt in it, and if there 
 is it is my natural way and I have something in common with 
 Hunt" and the remark expressed a truth of wider application 
 than to the immediate case which evoked it. But it is certain 
 that the theory and practice of his friend led him to accentuate 
 all the worst features of his genius and encouraged him in those 
 very failings which a sounder master might have taught him 
 to overcome. And the supei-ficial similarity between them made 
 this influence all the more dangerous. Keats from the fii*st went 
 deeper than Hunt, but, reading into Hunt's light-hearted en- 
 thusiasm some of his own intenser feeling, came naturally enough 
 to regard the language and style of Rimini as suited to the ex- 
 pression of that higher emotion of which its author had never 
 dreamed. 
 
 Nowhere did the young poet need more guidance than in his 
 treatment of romantic passion. His emotional temperament 
 made it inevitable that he should be a love poet, and from his 
 boyhood he had so idealised woman that he constantly found 
 
 1 Stephens's Reminiscences of Keats, Houghton MSS, (quoted E.M.L. p. 20).
 
 xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 himself ill-at-ease in the presence of the reality. To this ideali- 
 sation his reading of Spenser had given an impetus. It was as 
 a poet of chivalrous love that Spenser had first appealed to him. 
 " He hotly burns to be a Calidore, a very Red Cross Knight," and 
 reminiscences and verbal echoes of Spenser in his first love poems 
 make it evident that his great poetic ambition was to be for his 
 own age what Spenser had been for the Elizabethans. 
 
 But it was here that the taint of vulgarity in his own origin 
 and the ill-bred tone of the society in which he moved were 
 calculated to have the most dangerous effect upon his work ; 
 and the literature of his own day could give him no help in 
 emancipating himself from it. The Delia Cruscan School had, 
 perhaps, been destroyed, but a vapid sentimentalism was still 
 accepted instead of genuine passion, and permeated not only the 
 romantic novel, the ballads of Moore, and the early poetry of 
 Byron, but had even touched the broad and healthy mind of 
 Scott. Wordsworth alone might have guided him, but the 
 sublime Luiy poems were invested with a spirituality which was 
 too far aloof from his present world for him to recognise in it 
 the consummation of his own more obviously sensuous passion. 
 A deeper and more independent study of Spenser would un- 
 doubtedly have served the same end ; and it was nothing short 
 of disa>itrous that his enthusiasm for Hunt led him to believe that 
 the mantle of Spenser had fallen upon the shoulders of the poet 
 of Rhnim. For woman in Hunt's poetry was merely a lay figure 
 over which to luxuriate a keen but often vulgar sense of the 
 beautiful in art and nature, and chivalry was always more of an 
 ecstasy than an activity. There is no wonder that Keats under 
 his influence failed to realise that the intense sensuousness of 
 Spenser's descriptions is only artistically justified by their 
 spirituality, and instead of comprehending the full significance 
 of Sir Calidore or the Red Cross Knight was satisfied to re- 
 present them as though they were lovesick tradesmen mas- 
 querading in a picturesque costume. Later Keats came to 
 recognise this. " One cause," he writes, " of the unpopularity of 
 my book is the tendency to class women in my books with roses 
 and sweatmeats, they never see themselves dominant." Under
 
 INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 other guidance, perhaps with no guidance at all, he might have 
 discovered it earlier. 
 
 The first poem of the 1817 volume strikes at once the 
 dominant note of the whole. Headed with a characteristic 
 quotation from the Story of Rimhii, " Places of nestling green 
 for Poets made," it shows the influence of Hunt in its most 
 pronounced form. It is inspired by a genuine love of nature, 
 blended, as always in Keats, with an intensely real feeling for 
 literature and for ancient legend, but after an opening of happy 
 delicacy it degenerates into an indiscriminate catalogue of natural 
 delights associated with the vulgar and mawkish sentiment and 
 expressed with all the indefiniteness of the abstract style of Hunt. 
 The poet 
 
 straightway began to pluck a posey 
 Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy. 
 
 He tells how Apollo " kisses the dewiness " of the flowers, and 
 "kisses" as in Hunt rhymes with "blisses". The goldfinches 
 " pause upon their yellow flutterings," and the rural spot is not 
 felt to be complete until a lovely woman of the peculiar Huntian 
 type has been introduced into it ; the whole poem is replete 
 with adjectives of the delicious order by which he seeks to give 
 utterance to his keen but vague delight, while its versification 
 exhibits that negligence of form which had some precedent 
 in Chapman and Browne, but received its special sanction from 
 the theory and practice of Hunt. And yet notwithstanding 
 such palpable faults of style and temper there are few poems in 
 the volume which do not give some promise of future achieve- 
 ment ; either in their imaginative suggestion, or in their strangely 
 felicitous language, betokening the poet who had already " looked 
 upon fine phrases like a lover ". Lines such as 
 
 That distance of recognizance bereaves {Sonnet, iv. 13) 
 
 or 
 
 Full in the speculation of the stars (/ stood tip-toe, 189) 
 
 have a ring about them which recalls the harmony of some old 
 Elizabethan ; the pictures of
 
 XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 the moon lifting her silver rim 
 Above a cloudy and with a gradual swim 
 Coming into the blue with all her light 
 
 {I stood tip-toe, 113-15) 
 
 and of the sea that 
 
 Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothness o'er 
 Its rocky marge, and balances once more 
 The patient weeds ; that now unshent by foam 
 Feel all about their undulating home 
 
 {Sleep and Poetry, 377-80) 
 
 though missing the perfection of his later studies of moon 
 and ocean are touched with the same tenderness, and lit up 
 by the same magic, whilst the sonnet On first looking into 
 ChapmariS Homer proclaims him capable already of reaching, 
 in supreme moments, the heights of song. 
 
 For the poet who could write like this the influence of Hunt 
 could only be short-lived. He was soon to realise that the way 
 in which Hunt " flaunted his beauties " contrasted unfavourably 
 with the grand unobtrusiveness of nature, and when he had 
 learned by deep and reverent study in very truth "to hold 
 high convei-se with the mighty dead," he found less inspiration 
 in the society of the loved Libertas, who " elegantly chats and 
 talks ". But though Hunt's influence was in certain ways to be 
 deplored, Keats owed him an inestimable debt. He had recog- 
 nised his genius from the fii-st and encouraged him at a time 
 when encouragement was of greatest value. And if Hunt's 
 supei*ficial view of things failed to satisfy the poet's intellect 
 and heart, it was through his genial hospitality that he first 
 met those friends who were more capable of quickening the 
 intenser side of his nature. 
 
 For already side by side with the tendency to luxuriate in 
 agreeable sensations, to " lose the soul in pleasant smotherings," 
 had arisen within him the consciousness that if poetry was to 
 absorb his whole life, to become a vocation rather than a pastime, 
 it must correspond with his whole being and not merely with the 
 least essential part of it. There were elements in his nature 
 which had as yet found but paiiial or unsatisfactory expression.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 simply because they lay far deeper and were the harder to ex- 
 press. His was doubtless a supremely sensuous nature ; such is 
 the essential basis on which all poetry builds, and it was no more 
 prominent in his early work than it was in the early work of 
 Shakespeare ; but the strong common-sense, the sound cntical 
 insight into the faults of himself and others, the habitual 
 thoughtfulness of mind, the tender devotion to his family and 
 fiiends, revealed in his letters and amply attested by all who 
 knew him, are quite incompatible with a complete absoi-ption in 
 the luxury of his own sensations. There was indeed a vein of 
 melancholy within him which made it impossible for him to 
 remain — 
 
 A laughing school-boy, without grief or care, 
 
 Riding the springy branches of an elm. {Sleep and Poetry, 94, 96.) 
 
 However much he might delight in the impressions of the 
 senses as an escape from the broodings of his mind they could 
 never satisfy his whole nature ; and his force of character, to which 
 his most intimate friends bear striking witness, not only helped 
 him to realise his own peculiar dangers but supplied the determi- 
 nation to conquer them. He had a high conception not only of 
 the pleasures but also of the duties of the poetic life and reso- 
 lutely set himself to bring his own art into accord with his ideals. 
 And though to the mind which craves for beauty there is an 
 inherent shrinking from all that seems to combat it, yet, as his 
 feeling for beauty deepened from sensation to emotion, and from 
 emotion to a passion which embraced his whole moral and intel- 
 lectual being, the conviction grew upon him that the artist, if 
 only for the sake of his art, must be ready to open his heart and 
 mind to receive all impressions that the world has to offer, even 
 those that are in themselves unlovely. 
 
 And so we find him writing, " I know nothing, I have read 
 nothing — and I mean to follow Solomon's directions, ' Get know- 
 ledge, get undei-standing \ I find earlier days have gone by; 
 I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the con- 
 tinual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit 
 but the idea of doing some good in the world. . . . There is but
 
 xxxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 one way for me. The road lies through appHcation, study and 
 thought. I will pursue it. ... I have been hovering for some 
 time between an exquisite sense of the luxurious, and a love for 
 philosophy, — were I calculated for the former I should be glad. 
 But as I am not, I shall turn my soul to the latter."^ This 
 utterance is characteiistic, not merely of a vague and fitful 
 desire on his part, but of his steady frame of mind, and of 
 a position which he had definitely assumed for some time past ; 
 and even those passages which seem to combat it, as for example 
 his praise of indolence, and of the poetic impulse to be obtained 
 from " the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of idle- 
 ness," ^ are by no means incompatible with it, but have their 
 obvious parallel in the works of the most strenuous votaries of 
 song. Keats, completely absorbed in the attainment of perfec- 
 tion in his art, realised the necessity of study, not merely the 
 technical study of artistic models, but of life and its problems, 
 and of human character in which those problems are illustrated. 
 
 Criticism, with its eye fixed on the development of style, has 
 often failed to realise the deeper influences at work upon his 
 mind of which, after all, his style is only the expression. Yet 
 it is no insignificant fact that his intellect developed in the 
 closest relation with two masters who in different ways could 
 teach him what he needed most to learn. These were Shake- 
 speare and Wordsworth. 
 
 Of the influence of Shakespeare, though it is the most import- 
 ant, it is difficult to speak definitely as one can speak of the 
 influence of Spenser or of Leigh Hunt, for it is not primarily a 
 literary influence at all. Shakespeare's style, where it is not itself 
 imitative of othei-s, is so completely at one with its subject that 
 it defies imitation, and no one has ever been able to catch more 
 than an occasional ring of it. Even more elusory is his mental 
 attitude. His uni-ivalled breadth and sanity are the wonder of 
 all who read him, but they make no disciple, and none has ever 
 been sealed of his tribe. Until the end of 1816 Shakespeare 
 
 1 Letter to John Taylor, 24th April, 1818. 
 
 2 Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, 19th February, 1818.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 counted for little with Keats. Though he had doubtless read 
 most of the plays, they had made no impression on his mind, 
 and it is in keeping with the general character of his early work 
 that apart from two superficial references to Lcm\ and a remini- 
 scence of a famous passage in As You Like It, which he spoilt in 
 the boiTowing, all the allusions are to A Mulsmmner-Ni^hi'ii 
 Dream. Shakespeare is to him the poet of Titania and fairy- 
 land. But the first use that he made of the retirement which 
 followed on his dedication of his life to poetry, was to begin a 
 real study of Shakespeare. The vocabulary and phraseology of 
 Endymion differ chiefly from that of the 1817 volume in the 
 influx of Shakespearian words, allusions and reminiscences, drawn 
 from a large number of plays, whilst the influence of Shakespeare's 
 poems is shown in the fact that though the larger number of 
 Keats's sonnets are in Italian form, all the best, with the exception 
 of the Chapman sonnet, which belongs to an earlier date, are 
 written upon the model of Shakespeare.^ 
 
 But to say this is only to refer to the superficial signs of an 
 influence which goes far deeper. For no one can rise from the 
 reading of Shakespeare the same man as he sat down, and least of 
 all a poet, to whom the language canies a special charm and the 
 vivid realisation of truth makes a special appeal. During all the 
 early part of 1817 we find Keats steeped in Shakespeare. His letters 
 shew that his passion for poetry was closely associated with his 
 study, that it is Shakespeare who is educating him, inspiring him, 
 comforting him. The line in Lear, " Do you not hear the sea," 
 haunts him till he can give poetic utterance to his emotion. ^ 
 "Whenever you write," he tells Reynolds, of all his friends, 
 perhaps, that one who had most intellectual sympathy with 
 him, " say a word or two on some passage of Shakespeai'e that 
 
 1 The two apparent exceptions, the Sonnet To Sleep and On the Sonnet are ex- 
 periments in form, and though beautiful in themselves are failures if regarded as sonnets. 
 Keats in his use of the different forms of sonnet offers an intensely interesting and 
 significant contrast with Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote more Shakespearian than 
 Petrarchan sonnets, but never succeeded except in the strict Italian form or the 
 Miltonic development of it. 
 
 '^Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, 17th April, 1817.— On Reynolds, vide p. 
 
 537- 
 
 C
 
 xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 may have come rather new to you, which must constantly be 
 happening, notwithstanding that we read the same play forty 
 times ; e.g.^ the following never struck me so forcibly as at 
 present : — 
 
 urchins 
 
 Shall for the vast of night, that they may work, 
 
 All exercise on thee. 
 
 How can I help bringing to your mind the line — 
 
 In the dark backward and abysm of time " 
 
 Shakespeare at once gives him an unapproachable standard, 
 which prevents his thinking overmuch of his own productions, 
 and at the same time keeps him from despondency. " I never 
 quite despair and I read Shakespeare — indeed, I think I shall 
 never read any other book much."^ It is in reference to 
 Shakespeare that he realises a truth fully applicable to his own 
 poetry that the " excellence of every art is its intensity, capable 
 of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close 
 relationship with Beauty and Truth ".^ All through the year his 
 study continues, and early in 1818 he is found turning again to 
 Lear. And as once more he burns through the fierce dispute 
 
 Betwixt damnation and impassioned clay 
 
 the world of Spenser seems shadowy and dim.^ Later 
 he writes, in words truer of himself than of the most learned 
 commentator, " I have reason to be content, for, thank God, I 
 can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his very 
 depths ".* The influence of other poets in turn grew and waned, 
 but the genius of Shakespeare opened out a new world before 
 
 1 Letter to Haydon, loth May, 1817. The passage goes on : "I am very near 
 agreeing with Hazlitt that Shakespeare is enough for us". Earlier in the letter is 
 another significant passage : "I remember your saying that you had notions of a 
 good genius presiding over you. I have of late had the same thought, for things 
 which I do are afterwards confirmed in a dozen features of propriety. Is it too daring 
 to fancy Shakespeare this Presider ? " 
 
 2 Letter to George and Thomas Keats, 28th Dec. 1817. 
 
 ^Sonnet On sitting down to read King Lear once again, vide p. 277. 
 ^ Letter to John Taylor, 27th Feb. 18 18.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxv 
 
 his eyes, and the life which he saw in the paj^es of Shakespeare 
 became as it were a part of his inner experience. And as his 
 own life's tragedy drew to its close he turned, naturally, in 
 his agony of mind to the majestic tranquillity of Shakespeare. 
 His last poem, Bright star! zvould I zaere steadfast as tJum 
 art^ was written, with a touching suggestiveness, on a blank 
 page in a copy of Shakespeare's poems facing The Lover\'i 
 Complaint. 
 
 At the same time that he was finding in Shakespeare the 
 greatest examples of the imaginative presentation of life, he was 
 turning to Wordsworth not only as the one living poet who was 
 fully conscious of the dignity of his vocation, but even more 
 than this as the inspired commentator on the poetic faculty, 
 who traced its growth in the mind of the poet, and interpreted 
 its significance to the world. Wordsworth's influence was never 
 a pei-sonal one. It began to be exerted fully a year before the 
 two poets had met, and even after their acquaintance it remained 
 unchanged in character ; it was never cemented by the ties of 
 friendship. Still less was it a literary influence. Keats gives 
 expression more than once to his antipathy to the artistic 
 method by which Wordsworth chose to present his faith. " We 
 hate poetry," he writes, "that has a palpable design upon us. 
 Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters 
 into one's soul." To his eyes "the egotistical sublime " of Words- 
 worth contrasted unfavourably with " Shakespeare's great negative 
 capability, his power of presenting uncertainties, mysteries and 
 doubts without an irritable reaching after fact and reason ". But 
 just because much of Wordsworth's poetry seemed to be the 
 studied expression of a definite philosophy of life and art rather 
 than the cry of spontaneous emotion, it had all the more effect 
 upon him. He stood in no need of further poetic inspiration ; 
 what he desired was the direction of his intellect, and there is 
 continual evidence of the deep hold which the teaching of Words- 
 worth had gained over his mind. The Hymn to Pan might 
 perhaps seem to Wordsworth " a pretty piece of paganism," yet 
 it was Wordsworth's interpretation of Greek mythology which 
 X-evealed to Keats the spirit which informed it. And Wordsworth
 
 xxxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 affected him, too, in his attitude to subjects with which he is 
 supposed to have been generally unconcerned. It is rarely, for 
 example, that he touches on the politics of the hour. Yet his 
 criticism sent to his brother George, to whom he communicated 
 all his thoughts, could only have come from the student of 
 Wordsworth's greatest political utterances. " The motives of 
 our worst men," he writes, " are Interest and of our best Vanity. 
 We have no Milton, no Algernon Sidney. Governors in these 
 days lose the title of man in exchange for that of Diplomat and 
 Minister. . . . All these departments of Government have strayed 
 far from Simplicity, which is the greatest of strength "... and 
 he goes on to disjoin himself from the Liberal party in a denuncia- 
 tion of Napoleon as "one who has done more harm to the life 
 of Liberty than any one else could have done ". It is evident 
 from this passage how the cheery Radicalism of Hunt has been 
 tempered by the spirit of the Sonnets dedicated to National 
 Independence and Liberty} 
 
 Even more suggestive of the deep hold which the Words- 
 worthian creed had gained over his mind are the words in which 
 he interprets to his brother, who is grieving with him over a 
 common loss, the meaning of man's life in its relation with what 
 is beyond. 
 
 "The common cognomen of this world among the misguided 
 and superstitious is 'a vale of tears,' from which we are 
 redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken 
 to Heaven. What a little circumscribed notion ! Call the 
 world, if you please, the vale of Soul-making. Then you will 
 find out the use of the world. ... I will call the world a school 
 instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read — I 
 will call the human heart the horn-book used in that school — 
 and I will call the child able to read, the Soul made from that 
 school and its horn-book. Do you not see how necessary a 
 world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make 
 
 ^Journal Letter, Oct. 1818. Keats's political sympathies are with the Words- 
 worth of 1801-S and not, of course, with the Wordsworth of the time at which he 
 writes. Cf. the Sonnets dedicated to National Independence and Liberty, passim, but 
 especially Nos. iv., xiii. , xiv., xv.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxvii 
 
 it a Soul ? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a 
 thousand diverse ways."^ This passage might well be taken as a 
 commentary on Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Im- 
 mortality, which, as Bailey tells us, "he was never weary of 
 repeating". In Wordsworth, indeed, he saw a poet who, like 
 himself, had drawn his first inspiration from the beauty of 
 nature, but had only become conscious of 
 
 how exquisitely 
 The external world is Htted to the mind 
 
 after a deep and sympathetic study of humanity. Through a 
 profound contemplation on the mysteries of being Wordsworth 
 had at last attained to a resolution of the conflicting elements in 
 his nature, in an impassioned philosophy in which " thought and 
 feeling are one ". This resolution was never attained by Keats, 
 but he realised that the greatest poetry sprang from the desire 
 for it, if not from its attainment ; and both in his letters and 
 in his poems there are continual signs that he was turning to 
 Wordsworth for help and guidance. Even that famous ejacula- 
 tion, " O for a life of sensations rather than of Thoughts," which 
 has so often been made the text for a denunciation of his 
 unbridled sensuousness, bears a totally different construction 
 when it is viewed in its context, in its true place in the de- 
 velopment of his thought. 
 
 " I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's 
 affections, and the truth of imagination. What the Imagination 
 seizes as Beauty, must be Truth — whether it existed before or not 
 — for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love : they 
 are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty. . . . The 
 Imagination may be compared with Adam's dream, — he awoke 
 and found it truth. I am more zealous in this affair because I 
 have never been able to perceive how anything can be known for 
 truth by consecutive reasoning— and yet it must be. Can it be 
 that even the gi-eatest philosopher ever an-ived at truth without 
 setting aside numerous objections ? However it may be, O for a 
 
 ^Journal Letter, April, 1819.
 
 xxxnii INTRODUCTION 
 
 life of sensations rather than of Thoughts ! It is a vision in the 
 form of youth, ' a shadow of reality to come \" ^ 
 
 It must be reraembei-ed that this letter is addressed to Bailev, 
 an ardent Wordsworthian with whom but a few months before 
 Keats had been studying in the Excursion the poet's superb 
 vindication before an unbelieving age of the value of the emo- 
 tions in the attainment of the highest truth. The passage is 
 thus a passionate exaltation of that part of Wordsworth's creed 
 with which Keats had, doubtless, most natural sympathy, the 
 belief that we 
 
 do well to trust 
 Imagination's light when reason's fails. 
 
 In writing to a friend whose orthodoxy might lead him, 
 perhaps, to accept Wordsworth's theory of imagination with 
 some reserve, he tends in the natural spirit of controvei'sy to 
 ovei"state his case, and to throw too much weight upon the 
 emotions as opposed to the reason. But this does not express, 
 even for Keats, moi-e than one side of the truth (and the very 
 form in which his desire is couched is itself a recognition that 
 the life of sensation apart from thought is impossible for any 
 true poet) ; it can therefore only l)e j udged aright side by side 
 with those of his utterances which show him to be fully conscious 
 of those other qualities of mind and heart which give to imagina- 
 tion its body — an insight into human life and a sympathy with 
 its sufferings, together with an extensive knowledge by widening 
 speculation to ease the " burden of the mysteiy "} " Words- 
 worth," he writes, in a letter whose whole spirit is that of a 
 
 1 Letter to Bailey, 22nd Nov. 1817. It should be remembered that Keats had no 
 exact logical training and cannot therefore be expected to be accurate in his use of 
 philosophical terminology. The word intuition would express his meaning far more 
 truly than sensation. He is, obviously, contrasting what Milton calls the discursive 
 and intuitive reason — or the manner of attaining the truth characteristic of the philo- 
 sopher — by consecutive reasoning, and the poet's immediate apprehension of it. 
 
 '■Letter to Reynolds, May, 1818. Mr. Robert Bridges (Introduction to Keats's 
 Poems : Muses' Library) has pointed out the analogy of thought between this letter and 
 Wordsworth's Lines on Tintern Abbey : cf. also notes to Sleep and Poetry. The 
 Excursion, the last poem which the casual reader of Keats would expect him to admire, 
 was to him one of "the three things to rejoice at in this age". Letter to Haydon, 
 January, 1818.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxix 
 
 disciple, " is explorative of the dark passages in the mansion of 
 human life. He is a genius superior to us in so far as he can, 
 more than we, make discoveries and shed a light in them. Now 
 if we live and go on thinking, we too shall explore them." ^ 
 
 The influence of Wordsworth appears in the poems of Keats 
 before there are any traces of it in his correspondence. Several 
 Wordsworthian echoes,^ which seem strangely incongruous with 
 their surroundings, startle the reader of the 1817 volume into 
 the conviction that even whilst the young poet was revelling 
 in the luxuries of art and nature under the guidance of Leigh 
 Hunt, he was gradually absorbing much of the poetry of Words- 
 worth. It is significant that he associates the two men together, 
 apparently unconscious of their essential antagonism, as the 
 champions who have arisen to free English literature from the 
 formalism and artificiality of the eighteenth century. Sleep and 
 Poetry^ with which the volume closes, is at the same time a 
 glowing tribute to the sympathetic friendship which he had 
 enjoyed at the Hampstead cottage and an attempt to express 
 in the style of the Story of Rimini something of the spirit which 
 had informed the Lines xvi'itten above Tintern Abbey. Under 
 the inspiration of this higher seriousness he becomes conscious 
 that he too is " disturbed with the sense of elevated thoughts ". 
 " The realm of Flora and old Pan " in which he spent so many 
 pleasant hours of comradeship " choosing each pleasure that the 
 fancy sees " must now be renounced 
 
 for a nobler life 
 Where 1 may see the agonies, the strife 
 Of human hearts ; 
 
 and the ideal of which he has been vouchsafed a vision is only 
 
 ^ Cf. Specitnen of a?t Indue/ion, 51, with / wandered lonely as a cloud, 11. Sonnet 
 to Solitude, 11, with Nuns fret not. The Sonnet to my Brothers (1816) seems a reminis- 
 cence of Wordsworth's / am not one who much or oft delights, etc. Sleep and Poetry, 
 190, ' ' The blue bared its eternal bosom " is both in thought and language a reproduction of 
 Wordsworth's, The world is too much with us. It is worth noticing that all these poems 
 of Wordsworth's are to be found in his 1807 volume. Lines like "A sense of real things 
 comes doubly strong " and " Wings to find out an immortality " {Sleep and Poetry, 157, 84) 
 suggest the Ode on Intimations, etc. Vide notes to the poems, fassim.
 
 xl INTRODUCTION 
 
 to be attained by a deeper human sympathy and a more eager 
 scrutiny of the mysteries of nature and of Hfe. 
 
 In Endymion he strives to treat in a more highly poetic form 
 the problem continually before his mind, and to present in a story 
 whose beauty had long haunted him an allegory of the develop- 
 ment of the poet's soul towards a complete realisation of itself. 
 The hero is first presented in ordinary human relations ; he is 
 the beneficent chieftain of his people, the beloved brother of 
 Peona ; but from these he is estranged by his aspiration after the 
 ideal, as typified in Cynthia, who has found a secret entrance 
 into his heart through his emotional worship of the loveliness 
 of nature. In pursuit of Cynthia he leaves the world of action 
 to wander through the realms of space. But his whole-hearted 
 devotion to the quest is only rewarded by fitful visions of his 
 love, and his failure is really due to his absorption in his own 
 fate, and to his delusion that the ideal can be gained in complete 
 isolation from the fates of others ; it is not till he has sympa- 
 thised with Alpheus and Arethusa and has aided Glaucus to 
 regain his lost love that he makes any progress towards his 
 end. But even now the immediate result seems disastrous. 
 For his reawakened sympathy with humanity is followed by an 
 absorbing passion for an Indian maiden whom he meets in the 
 forest, so that in his devotion to her the ideal loses its hold 
 upon him and he is tortured by the sense of his infidelity to the 
 highest within him. Under such conditions nothing seems left 
 for him but death, and he prepares to depart, leaving the maiden 
 to the care of Peona ; but the exclamation which he had uttered 
 before, half ignorant of its import, " I have a triple soul," is now 
 found to be the truth. Cynthia and the Indian maid are the 
 same being in different form, his worship for nature and his 
 passion for the ideal are unified in his love for humanity. 
 
 It is hardly safe to give a more detailed interpretation of the 
 allegory, for as a whole Endymion is vague and obscure. But 
 the vagueness and the obscurity do not prove that the poet's 
 interest lay merely in the story and its decoration, they rather 
 point to that inabihty to portray his conceptions in clear 
 outhne, which accompanies an immaturity of artistic power.
 
 INTRODUCTION xli 
 
 His mind at that time was, as he said later, Hke a pack of 
 scattered cards. Thus much at least is certain, that in the 
 dark wanderings of Endymion we may trace the gropings of the 
 spiiit after the ideal, and the episodes of Arethusa and of 
 Glaucus could have no possible justification in the scheme of 
 the poem had they not been introduced to emphasise the con- 
 ception, already presented in Sleep and Poetry^ that only by 
 human sympathy can the poet reach the summit of his power. 
 
 In Hyperion the same strain of thought is present. The 
 fruitless struggle of the Titans, types of the elemental energies 
 of the world, against that dynasty whose rule was based on 
 higher principle than mere brute force, is to Keats essentially 
 concentrated in the fall of Hyperion, the flaming sun-god, 
 before Apollo the god of light and song. And its fundamental 
 conception that 
 
 'tis the eternal law 
 That first in beauty should be first in might 
 
 can only have one interpretation. For it is by " knowledge 
 enormous " that Apollo has become a god, and if his knowledge 
 has given him divinity, his perfect beauty and his power over 
 song have come to him from the humanising influence of sym- 
 pathy and suffering. When Keats came to recast the poem in 
 the form of a vision, in order to give himself a freer scope for the 
 development of his conception, he made this clearer still. ^ The 
 ideal, says the goddess interpreter, is only to be attained by 
 those 
 
 to whom the miseries of the world 
 Are miseries and will not let them rest. 
 
 In Lamia he lays aside for the time the question of the place of 
 human sympathy in art and concentrates his power upon a 
 dramatic presentation of the antagonism between reason and 
 emotion. Here we have no longer the calm reserve and self 
 control of Hyperion, in its expression of a creed from which, 
 in reality, Keats never wavered ; but a passionate, almost mor- 
 bid, expression of a conflict between those antagonistic forces 
 
 ^ Cf. Introduction to Fall of Hyperion, pp. 515 et seq.
 
 xlii INTRODUCTION 
 
 which fought out their battle continually within his breast ; and 
 though with a true poetic feeling he keeps his own personality 
 out of the poem, it lends additional passion to his treatment of 
 the subject. The signiticance of Lamia in its relation to Keats's 
 whole tone of thought is by no means summed up, as often 
 repi-esented even bv his most sympathetic critics, in the well- 
 known lines 
 
 Do not all oUanns fly 
 At the mere touch of cold philosophy ? 
 
 for the poem is the utterance of a mood rather than of a settled 
 conviction. True it is that the poet wishes to enlist our sym- 
 patliies on the side of Lycius ; that is essential, if the interest 
 of tlie storv is to be maintained ; but it is possible for the 
 emotional side of a nature to upbraid with bitterness the 
 intellectual even while it recoo-nises the rioht of the intellectual 
 to supremacy. The subject in this respect presents itself in 
 some measure as it might have done to Shakespeare. As we 
 read the early acts of TroihiJi and Cressida and feel the 
 impending tragedy, we cannot remain untouched by the vain 
 hope that Troilus may live on to the end believing in an 
 illusion which seems to make for his happiness. Yet at the 
 same time we bow before the renioi"seless supremacy of truth 
 and recognise that only through bitter experience can Ti'oilus 
 reach a higher pUuie of feeling. Keats, with a prophetic con- 
 sciousness that he will not live to attain his fuller purpose, 
 necessarily lacks the serenity of Shakespeare, and ends liis poem 
 on a note of ti-agic despair. And as he follows the fate of his 
 hero he represents the agony of the struggle in the soul of a 
 man who clini>s to the false at the same time that he desires the 
 true, who aspires after the ideal even whilst he is unable to 
 relax his hold of those very shadows, not realities, which he 
 knows well enough to despise. Keats realised the nature of the 
 strug-ole from the verv tii'st and set himself to unify the con- 
 flicting emotions of his nature. He had no time to reach the 
 perfect consummation of his genius : the widest sympathy with 
 the world about him, the firmest grasp of the realities of human
 
 INTRODrCTION xliii 
 
 life aiid (iiaracter were not yet his ; but hih whole work presents 
 UH with the struggle for it, and presents it with a paj$sion and 
 hinceritv which is itself a constituent of the highest genius. For 
 art itself i-epresents a struggle after an infinite f>erfection, and 
 in no one of our fx>ets do we find this more \'ita]ly portraved 
 tlian in the work of Keats. 
 
 It is significant that in these three poems, which are the most 
 ambitious of his works and reflect most fully his inner experience 
 and hi^ poetic ideals, he should turn for his source and much of 
 his framework to the world of Greece, whose legends had fascin- 
 ated his childhood, and hind never l<»t their hold uf)on his 
 imagination. There was much indeed in the Greek attitude to 
 life, an he understood it, that made an inesistible appeal to him. 
 'llie expression of tioith in fonns essentially beautiful, the spon- 
 taneous unqua>tioning delight in the life of nature and its 
 incarnation in forms human but of more than human loveliness, 
 made the pagan creed, outworn to Wordsworth, retain for Keats 
 all its freshness and its vitality. And when he came to study 
 the P^lgin marbles he learnt something of the jjrinciples of Greek 
 ait where they are most superbly embodied and most clearly 
 if^ari. Here Keats owed a great debt to his friend Haydon. 
 llaydon was the untiring exponent of the Elgin marbles as the 
 supreme example of classic ait, and devoted his energies to im- 
 pressing upon all young artists the importance of sei'ving their 
 apprenticeship in the school of Phidias rather than of Michael 
 Angelo. Keats learnt under hk direction that the most ideal 
 representation of life was not incompatible with the minutest 
 accuracy of detail and that the vagueness characteiistic of his 
 earliest work must give place to clearer outline and more definite 
 conception. It is hardly fanciful to associate with this rapturous 
 study of those 
 
 heroes — not yet dead. 
 But in old marbles ever teautiful, (Bud. i. 318, 319) 
 
 the development of that masteiy over statuesque effect in which 
 Keats has no nval but Landor among his contemporaries. 'Vhe 
 figures of
 
 xliv INTRODUCTION 
 
 old Deucalion raountain'd o'er the flood. 
 Or blind Orion hungry for the morn, {End. ii. 197, 198) ; 
 
 of the Naiad who 
 
 'mid her reeds 
 Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips {Hyp. i. 13, 14) ; 
 
 still more, perhaps, the wonderful picture of Saturn, 
 
 Upon the sodden ground 
 His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
 Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed ; 
 While his bow'd head seem'd list'ning to the Earth, 
 His ancient mother, for some comfort yet {HyP. i. 17-21), 
 
 ai-e examples of his power of concentrating an emotion into a 
 supreme moment and presenting it in pure outline against the 
 skv, with the calm dignity and the sublime grace which is the 
 supreme triumph of the sculptors art. 
 
 But if at times he showed in his handling: of classical legends 
 a naivete of feeling and a simple lucidity of expression sufficient 
 to win the enthusiastic praise of Shelley, " He was a Greek ! ", his 
 attitude to his subject and his presentation of it ai"e as a rule 
 fai- difFei-ent ft'om this. Nor can it be wondered at. Keats was 
 no scholai", and of the literature in which the Greek spirit found 
 true expression he could know nothing. But just as it was 
 through his devotion to Spenser that he became a poet, so was it 
 through his kinship, both in spirit and taste, with the Eliza- 
 bethans, that he became the poet of ancient Greece. In his own 
 day he was accused of vereifying Lempriere, and the Dictionary 
 is still regarded as the main source of his classical inspiration. 
 Yet it is highly probable that if he had found the legends of 
 ancient mythology in Lempriere alone he would have left them 
 there,^ and it is certain that if he had never seen a dictionan' his 
 debt to the world of Greece would have been the same. Homer 
 
 1 He had read Lempriere at school, but was never, as far as we know, inspired to 
 write poetry till he read Spenser, and if Spenser was his inspiration, why should it be 
 supposed that he drew from Lempriere what can be found in Spenser and kindred 
 sources? It is noticeable moreover that his earliest verses have very little classical 
 allusion in them, though at that period Lempriere would naturally be fresh in his mind. 
 It is only after he has become soaked in the Elizabethans that classical story and 
 allusion gain a real hold over him. Cf. notes to the poems, passim.
 
 INTRODUCTION xlv 
 
 had been known to him in the vei-sion of Pope, at least, one 
 would have thought, as inspinng as Lempriere, but had left him 
 cold ; the Homer that he came to love appeared to him in the 
 gorgeous but exuberant phraseology of Chapman. It seems 
 indeed as if a story of the ancient world had to assume an 
 Elizabethan dress before it could kindle his imagination. A 
 careful examination of the legends which he employs in his 
 poems will tend to show that though, doubtless, he became fii-st 
 acquainted with many of them in the dull pages of Lempriere 
 or Tooke or Spence, and continued to make occasional use of the 
 Dictionary as a work of reference, there is hardly an allusion that 
 cannot be traced to an Elizabethan source. The legend of 
 Endymion and Cynthia was well known to him in Lyly, in 
 Fletcher, in Drayton ; and of the main episodes and the wealth of 
 illustration to which the poem owes much of its beauty, all that 
 cannot be traced to Spenser or Chapman or Browne can be found 
 in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, that book especially dear to the 
 Renaissance and known to Keats in a late Elizabethan form. 
 Keats possessed a copy of Ovid in the original, but the Ovid that 
 he lead and re-read was the famous vei-sion of George Sandys 
 which delighted him as it had delighted the seventeenth century 
 by " the sumptuous bravery of that rich attire " in which the 
 translator had clothed it. Seeing then that Lempriere had no 
 material to give him that he could not have met elsewhere, and 
 often in the Sandys which we know him to have studied with 
 assiduity, whilst Sandys supplied him with details of incident and 
 phrase for which Lempriere may be searched in vain, we are 
 justified in the inference that in cases where both Lempriere and 
 Sandys are possible sources, Keats owed his inspu'ation to a living 
 work of art and not to a museum of dead antiquities. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that the case is different with 
 Hyperion or Lamia. References to the war between the Titans 
 and the Olympians are commonjjlaces in Elizabethan literature, 
 and Keats would be familiar with them in Spenser, in Shake- 
 speare, in Milton, as well as in Chapman and Sandys, Apart 
 from one or two names of fallen Titans, there is no detail which 
 cannot be traced to the influence of some passage within the
 
 xlvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 ceiiain limits of Keats's poetic reading. In the general conduct 
 of his story, where he does not accept hints from the structure of 
 Paradise Lost, he is entirely original, and it is surely a significant 
 fact that the only passages in the Iliad which allude to the 
 Titans are suggestive of the main situations of the first and 
 second books of Hyperion. The picture of the solitary dejection 
 of Saturn, buried deep from the light of the sun and the noise 
 of the breath of wind, must owe something to Chapman's beauti- 
 ful rendering of the angry words of Zeus 
 
 I weigh not thy displeased spleen^ tlio' to th' extremest bounds 
 Of earth and seas it carry thee, where endless night confounds i 
 Japhet, and my dejected sire, who sit so far beneath 
 They never see the flying sun, nor hear the winds that breathe. 
 Near to profoundest Tavtartis. (II. viii. 420-24) ; 
 
 and in the slight reference to " the gods of the infernal state, 
 which circled Saturn " (Chap. //. xiv, p. 230) we may have the 
 bare idea of the marvellous group of fallen Titans of the second 
 book with which, however, Keats has blended, bv an iiTesistible 
 romantic association, a reminiscence of a scene which had arrested 
 his imagination on his travels in the English lakes. In Lamia 
 his story, which had more affinity with mediaeval magic than 
 with Greek mythology, is di'awn fi'om Burton's Anatomy of 
 MelanchoUe, and its classical embellishments show similar traces 
 of Elizabethan origin. It is time, indeed, that the Lempriere 
 myth assumed its proper proportions and that it was fully re- 
 cognised that Keats's classical inspiration was the inspiration of 
 the Renaissance, as it appeal's in English literature from Spenser 
 to Milton. And what is true of the matter is even truer of the 
 spirit which informs it. He had, indeed, travelled around 
 
 the western islands . . . 
 VFhich bards in fealty to Apollo hold 
 
 ^ It is worth noting, as corroborative evidence of the impression made by this 
 passage upon the mind of Keats, that the phrase night confounds, though with a dif- 
 ferent application, reappears in Hyperion (ii. 80). It is thus that a great poet always 
 borrows, if such it can be called, from his predecessors. 
 
 Both the phrase " night confounds " and the epithet " dejected" so significant in its 
 relation to Hyperion, have no counterpart in the Greek, but are Chapman's additions. 
 Keats had been reading Chapman just before he started for the Lakes, for almost the 
 last letter he received before leaving London was from Haydon, asking him to return 
 bis copy of Chapman.
 
 INTRODUCTION xlvii 
 
 and when he came to view the land of Apollo, perfect in its 
 limitation, he gazed upon it with the eyes of* a romanticist — 
 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 
 Here is expressed the sense of awe, the feeling of wonder, some- 
 thing, too, of the spirit of adventure, which impelled the Eliza- 
 bethan to so even to meet his death as a traveller 
 
 Goes to discover countries yet unknown. 
 And for Keats, as for his predecessors, to see was to take pos- 
 session. The world of ancient mythology, which had just dawned 
 on their horizon, seemed but an extension of their own kingdom. 
 Their vivid imagination absorbed its beauty and found in it a 
 wealth of material by which to illustrate and to interpret their 
 own most deeply felt emotions, so that it became, for all its 
 apparent aloofness, only another means of passionate self-ex- 
 pression. For them the distinctions of classic and romantic, arid 
 distinctions of the schools, would appear at their best a meaningless 
 piece of pedantry, and at their woi-st a denial of what was to them 
 a vital truth — the essential unity of human feeling and human 
 experience wherever and whenever it is to be found. And so it is 
 for Keats. He has been blamed, for example, for the introduction 
 of the figure of Hope into Hyperion^ but the criticism by which 
 this can be condemned must logically include in its attack the 
 work of every writer, except perhaps Ben Jonson, from the 
 earliest Elizabethan who caught fire at the recital of a classic 
 theme down to Milton, who offended the piety of Dr. Johnson 
 by his blending of pagan mythology wdth Christianity ; most of 
 all must it denounce Keats's great master Spenser, ft-om whom in 
 all likelihood this very picture of Hope ^ was di-awn, who enriches 
 his poetry with stories taken at random from fairy lore, from 
 Greek legend, and from tales of mediaeval chivalry. 
 
 It is no surprise therefore to find that these three poems 
 of Greek inspiration exhibit no traces of the influence of classical 
 literature, but are determined in each case by the influence of 
 
 1 Cf. Faerie Qtieene, i. lo, 14 : — 
 
 Upon her arme a silver anchor lay, 
 ■^hereon sbe leaned ever, as befell.
 
 xlviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 different models of English poetry. Endyjuion, the fii"st fi'uits 
 of his whole-hearted devotion to his art, has no single definite 
 model, but shows the natural influence of Spenser and the seven- 
 teenth-century Spenserians upon an immature, exuberant genius, 
 which had already an intuitive sympathy with the laxer qualities 
 of their style and method. It may indeed be regarded as the 
 consummation of his early work, more ambitious in design than 
 anything he had hitherto accomplished, and inspired by a greater 
 purpose, but tainted with the same faults of style, execution 
 and sentiment. " A trial," he calls it, " of my powers of imagina- 
 tion, by which I must make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance 
 and fill them with poetry " ; and the statement inevitably suggests 
 that much of the poetry is independent of the real subject. For 
 " the one bare circumstance " is embellished by incidents which 
 retard the natural development of the action and by episodes 
 which have no organic relation with the main story, but are only 
 explicable after a full comprehension of their application and 
 inner meaning. The progress of che involved allegory, itself 
 sufficiently unclassical, finds ample precedent in seventeenth- 
 century poets, and bears more resemblance to the rambling 
 inconsequence of Britannia's Pastorals than to any work of more 
 definitely artistic construction ; and whilst the inner significance 
 of the poem gives clear evidence of the spirit in which Keats had 
 come to view his art, its general conduct shows him to be as yet 
 far from attaining to the ideal which he sets forth in it. When 
 he touches upon everyday life, as at the beginning of the third 
 book, he is vague or trivial, and the general characterisation of 
 Endymion in his relations with Peona, Cvnthia and the Indian 
 maiden, conceived with a delicate and imaginative insight into the 
 ideal beauty of the legend, is vitiated throughout by the insipid 
 sentimentality of expression, which the influence of Hunt, brought 
 to bear upon his own lack of training, had led him to mistake 
 for the universal language of the heart. 
 
 But there is nothing in this criticism which Keats did not 
 admit himself, at least after he had completed the poem. He 
 speaks of the mawkishness of his imagination, confessing that the 
 work shows "inexperience, immaturity and every eiTor denoting
 
 INTRODUCTION xlix 
 
 a feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished," and remarks 
 in a letter, " I have most likely but moved into the go cart from 
 the leading stiings. If it serves me as a pioneer I ought to be 
 content." Yet notwithstanding its failure as a whole, its ob- 
 scurity, its vicious lack of reticence, its banality, it is redeemed 
 by passages of glowing beauty which take their place with 
 anything of their kind in our literature. Nowhere have the 
 subtle influence of nature on the imaginative mind and a mystic 
 yearning after her illimitable beauty found more impassioned 
 expression, and however often the elaborate treatment of the 
 main characters may fail in truth to life as a whole and to the 
 Greek conceptions in particular, no poet has ever more fully 
 possessed that creative power by which in a few lines, at times 
 in a mere phi'ase, he can penetrate to the heart of a story long 
 since dead and with magic touch bring it back to life, so that 
 we see it in its essential and vital truth. That same spirit of 
 old piety which breathes in the allusion to Apollo's shrine 
 
 when upon the breeze 
 Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet 
 To cheer itself to Delphi (End. ii. 80-82), 
 
 the same tender fancy which pictures Ariadne as become a 
 vintager for love of Bacchus, and recalls the music of " Dryope's 
 lone lulling of her child," finds ample scope throughout the 
 poem for revealing the universal significance of ancient legend. 
 
 " I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful 
 mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness : for I wish to try 
 once more, before I bid it farewel." So wrote Keats in his 
 preface to Endymion in the April of 1818. A little later he tells 
 a friend that he is meditating on the characters of Saturn and 
 Ops and before the end of the year he was at work upon 
 Hyperion, The subject that he had chosen was well calculated 
 to express most cleai'ly his essential kinship with the thought of 
 Greece, But the wonderful advance in style and treatment was 
 due entirely to his subservience to a stricter model, and the 
 change from Endymion to Hyperion is not the change from a 
 romance to a classical epic, but the change from the influence 
 d
 
 I INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the Spenserians to the severer school of Milton. Milton's 
 eai'ly poems had long been known to him ; now for the fii"st 
 time he came under the potent spell of Paradise Lost. And 
 now he learned his first great lesson in artistic concentration, 
 and constructed his poem on a plan which bears obvious re- 
 semblance to Milton's Epic, His style, too, was deeply affected. 
 Many a Miltonic echo can be caught in Hyperion, and in his 
 vocabulary Keats replaces the limp and effeminate coinage and 
 the exuberant wordiness of his former work by a virility of 
 language and a stern compression of all superfluity. The ex- 
 ample of Milton gave just the necessary curb to the faults 
 natural to a poet of Keats's temperament, and he gained a 
 strength and a dignity, something, as Hunt remarked, 
 
 Of the large utterance of the early gods, 
 
 for which Endymion may be searched in vain. It is only by the 
 side of his great and unapproachable model that the blank verse 
 of Hyperion seems at times to be monotonous, that the debate 
 of the fallen Titans seems to lack something both in subtlety and 
 passion ; and if Keats cannot rival either the majesty or the stu- 
 pendous range both of thought and melody that is the wonder 
 of Paradise Lost, there is in Hyperion that glamour of romance, 
 that same exquisite reading of the magic of nature which gave 
 to Endymion its priceless charm. Not classical, certainly, nor 
 Miltonic either, are the lines that tell how the 
 
 Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars. 
 Dream, and so dream all night without a stir ; 
 
 or the picture of Hyperion gazing into the night — 
 
 And still they were the same bright, patient stars ; 
 
 or the picture of the fallen Titans — 
 
 like a dismal cirque 
 Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor. 
 When the chill rain begins at shut of eve, 
 In dull November, and their chancel vault, 
 The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night, 
 
 or the incomparable opening of the whole poem ; but for such as
 
 INTRODUCTION li 
 
 these, in some moods at least, we would gladly give all but the 
 noblest lines of Paradise Lost. 
 
 But as Keats proceeded with his work he became more and 
 more convinced that the model which he had chosen was not 
 suited to his genius. " I have given up Hyperion,'^ he writes ; 
 "there are too many Miltonic invereions in it — Miltonic vei"se 
 cannot be written but in an artful, or rather artist's humour. I 
 wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be 
 kept up." ^ Milton's classicism of style, though it was the natural 
 expression of a scholar to whom Greek and Latin were as familiar 
 as his mother tongue, could never be the language of a purely 
 native poet, and much as he admired the form in which Milton 
 had cast the work, it was too much aloof from his own sphere of 
 methods, and so he broke off his poem abruptly just as he 
 approached the central conception of the whole. 
 
 Later, when the hand of death was already laid upon him, 
 he took up Hyperion once more and attempted to remodel it 
 in the form of an allegorical vision expounded to him by one of 
 the fallen goddesses. Criticism is right in pointing out that the 
 attempt was not successful, that he spoilt many lines in the pro- 
 cess, and that the Fall of Hypei'ion, as it is called, shows a 
 distinct decline of artistic power. But it is at least a question 
 whether if his powers had remained at their height, he would 
 not have done the same thing and succeeded, whether he would 
 not have turned what is, after all, a magnificent literary tour de 
 force., into a poem fully expressive of the essential qualities of 
 his own peculiar genius. For an artist is never at his highest 
 when he is forcing his art into an uncongenial channel, and if he 
 
 1 Letter to Reynolds, 22nd September, 1819. In the same strain he wrote to his 
 brother : " The Paradise Lost, though so fine in itself, is a corruption of our language. 
 It should be kept as it is, unique, a curiosity, a beautiful and grand curiosity, the most 
 remarkable production of the world ; a northern dialect accommodating itself to Greek 
 and Latin inversions and intonations. The purest English, I think— or what ought to 
 be purest — is Chatterton's. The language had existed long enough to be entirely incor- 
 rupted of Chaucer's Gallicisms, and still the old words are used. Chatterton's language 
 is entirely northern. I prefer the native music of it to Milton's, cut by feet. I have but 
 lately stood on my guard against Milton. Life to him would be death to me. Miltonic 
 verse cannot be written, but is the verse of art. I wish to devote myself to another verse 
 alone." Letter to Geo. Keats, September, 1819.
 
 Hi INTRODUCTION 
 
 spoiled some of his earlier lines it must also be remembered 
 that some of those which he added in the Vision are among the 
 finest that he ever wrote. For Keats, romantic to the core, 
 could find no freedom in the restraint of a classical or even a 
 Miltonic Epic, 
 
 For his model in Lamia he turned to the Fables of Dryden, the 
 best modern example of the use of the heroic couplet in naiTative 
 vei-se. The versification and style of Lamia give clear evidence 
 that he had made a careful study of Dryden. In contrast with 
 the earlier couplets of the 1817 volume and of Endymion his 
 employment of the run-on line and the feminine and weak endings 
 is now carefully controlled, and he trusts to a careful use of the 
 triplet and the Alexandrine to give his verse the necessary variety. 
 Moreover, without direct imitation, such as would allow a com- 
 parison of special passages in the two poets, there are lines in 
 Lamia which have caught with great effect the ring and the 
 rapidity which are essential characteristics of Dry den's best work. 
 Descriptions such as that of the nymph — 
 
 At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured 
 Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored ; 
 
 or of the angiy god of love, who 
 
 jealous grown of so complete a pair, 
 Hover'd and buzz'd his wings, with fearful roar. 
 Above the lintel of their chamber door. 
 And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor ; 
 
 or still raoi-e, perhaps, of the 
 
 song of love, too sweet for earthly lyres. 
 While, like held breath, the stars drew in their panting fires, 
 
 suggest the rhythmical use of language peculiarly remarkable 
 in Dryden, whilst they are touched with a glowing imagination 
 which is far beyond his reach. 
 
 Equally evident is the influence of Dryden on the construc- 
 tion of the poem. The story instead of being turgid, involved, 
 incomprehensible, is related simply and effectively with emphasis 
 only upon the more important dramatic effects. We pass fi'om 
 the finding of the snake by Hermes, her metamorphosis (with
 
 INTRODUCTION Hii 
 
 the skilfully introduced digression to explain the antecedent 
 action) and her meeting with Lycius, to the anival at Coiinth, 
 the preparation for the fatal banquet and the tragic close. It is 
 a masterpiece of narrative, in construction not equalled elsewhere 
 by Keats, whilst the conflict of emotion between the worship of 
 beauty and the calls of higher reason gives a passionate force to 
 the whole. 
 
 But his close study of Dryden was perhaps responsible for 
 the recurrence of certain faults which mar the effect of an 
 otherwise perfect work of art. His desire to attain to the 
 masterly ease and fluency of Dryden's manner led him into 
 frequent false rhymes and to some return of the unhappy 
 characteristics of his early vocabulary. And the careless levity 
 expected of a Restoration poet in his treatment of love, and 
 rarely present in Dryden without the compensating charm of 
 urbanity and airy grace, appeal's in Keats in the form of 
 that vulgarity which he seemed elsewhere to have out-grown. 
 The execrable taste of the description of a woman's charms 
 (i. 329-339) and the feeble cynicism of the opening to the 
 second book, both, in all probability, traceable to this cause, 
 are alien to the whole spirit in which Lamia was conceived. 
 
 It is where Lamia is farthest removed from the Greek spirit, 
 farthest too from the spirit of Dryden, that it is most 
 characteristic of Keats, The brilliant picture of midnight 
 Corinth, the glowing magnificence of the phantasmal palace are 
 triumphs of romantic description ; nor is there wanting to the 
 poem that magical felicity of phrase, that singula!" power over 
 the deeply charged epithet, something, too, of the mood which 
 loves " to touch the strings into a mystery " and by its tender 
 imaginative insight go straight to the heart of the situation. 
 Such is the wistful thought of Hermes as he seeks for the 
 nymph : — 
 
 Ah^ what a world of love was at her feet ! 
 Or the poet's own reflection on the pathos of Lamia's beauty — 
 
 And for her eyes : what could such eyes do there 
 But weepj and weep, that they were born so fair? 
 As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.
 
 liv INTRODUCTION 
 
 These qualities find their fullest and most unfettered 
 expression where Keats is freest fi-om external restrictions of 
 style and method, in the treatment of romantic themes drawn 
 from mediaeval sources — in Isabella^ in the Eve of St. Aggies, in 
 the fragmentary Eve of St. Mark and in La Belle Dame san^ 
 Merci. 
 
 Of these Isabella, or the Pot of Basil was the first to be 
 written and was finished only a month after the final revision of 
 Endymion. Keats turned to Italy for his source, on the 
 suggestion of his fi'iend Reynolds, who was planning a volume 
 of the Tales of Boccaccio, retold in English verse ; and it is 
 significant of the bent of his mind at this time that Keats's only 
 contribution was this weird and fantastic story, in tone and 
 conception belonging to the age which Boccaccio had arisen to 
 supersede. But whereas to the novelist the interest lay wholly 
 in the incidents of the plot, Keats concentrated all his powers on 
 realising the passion which it implied. The 'poem is uneven in 
 execution, and it would be easy to point out faults both in the 
 taste and in the workmanship, which are all the more noticeable 
 in comparison with their surroundings. Moreover the studied 
 emphasis which he lays upon the avarice and pride of the wicked 
 brothers and upon the limp ecstasy of Lorenzo's passion, serves 
 in reality to weaken that very effect which he desired to 
 intensify. But these flaws are easily outweighed by the vivid 
 poetic feeling and essential truth with which he has grasped the 
 fundamental emotion of the story. The opening stanzas, in 
 their delineation of the delicate susceptibility of the lovers to 
 each other's presence, are in their way perfect, and form a fitting 
 prelude to the marvellous picture of the tragic climax. And 
 never, perhaps, has the complete absolution of grief found a more 
 impassioned and at the same time a more ideal utterance than in 
 the lines in which the poet presents Isabella weeping beside her 
 pot of basil, oblivious of that changeful loveliness in the world 
 about her, which is creative of all the pleasure and the health of 
 life, but canies now no meaning to her heart : — 
 
 And she forgot the stars, the moon, and suu, 
 And she forgot the blue above the trees,
 
 INTRODUCTION Iv 
 
 And she forgot the dells where waters run, 
 
 And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze ; 
 She had no knowledge when the day was done, 
 
 And the new morn she saw not. 
 
 With imagination still more penetrative, turning again to the 
 natural world as the only means of effectual expression, the poet 
 reveals the tragic loneliness of the murdered lover by dwelling on 
 his dim ghostlike perception of the sounds and sights of earth : — 
 
 " 1 am a shadow now, alas ! alas ! 
 
 Upon the skirts of human nature dwelling 
 Alone : I chant alone the holy mass, 
 
 While little sounds of life are round me knelling, 
 And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass, 
 
 And many a chapel bell the hour is telling. 
 Paining me through : those sounds grow strange to me, 
 And thou art distant in Humanity." 
 
 Poetry such as this, alike by its beauty of language and its 
 sympathy with the subject, raises the tale which in Boccaccio is 
 merely honible, into the i-egion of genuine tragedy. 
 
 But far more successful as a whole is the Eve of St. Agues, 
 which stands chronologically in the same relation to Hyperion as 
 did Isabella to Endymion, and is faultlessly executed in the spiiit 
 of the legend which inspired it. In his revulsion from the magnifi- 
 cence of Paradise Lost, Keats had turned his thoughts once more 
 to Chatterton, who had fascinated his youth ; and it was Chatter- 
 ton, doubtless, that guided him both here and in the companion 
 fragment the Eve of St. Mark, to seek a subject in mediaeval 
 legend and to invest it with an atmosphere of mystery and en- 
 chantment. To his admiration for the Rowley dialect may 
 probably be traced the unfortunate attempt, in the later poem, 
 to reproduce the actual language of the Middle Ages ; in the 
 Eve of St. Agnes he is content with catching an occasional 
 cadence from the Excellent Ballad of Charitie and leaving the 
 rest to his power over a diction chosen not for its antiquity but 
 for its intrinsic beauty. But if he owed something to Chatter- 
 ton he owed still more to Spenser, and there are clear indications 
 both in the wealth of imagery and vivid colouring of the diction 
 and in the use of the metre, never before seriously attempted
 
 Ivi INTRODUCTION 
 
 by him, that he was renewing the study of his earlier master. 
 The stanza is not merely formally Spenseiian, it is employed 
 with a truly Spenserian effect ; and the subtle modulation of 
 the melody, and in particular the lingering sweetness of the 
 Alexandrine, are nowhere else so effective outside the Faerie 
 Queene. With the form Keats has at last perhaps caught some- 
 thing of that spirit of chivalry inherent in Spenser which from 
 the fii-st he had desired to emulate. In his conception of 
 Madeline, whose dee])ly felt sensuous beauty is expressive of 
 a beauty of soul which breathes its pure influence over all that 
 meet it, and whilst it fires the blood sanctifies the heart, Keats 
 had realised the fifame of mind which conceived of Una or 
 Pastorella, and which inspired the Ep'dhalamium, and is free at 
 last from the mawkish sentimentality and misdirected sensuous- 
 ness of his early love-poetry. 
 
 To a full sympathy with the dominant emotion of the poem he 
 attunes us by his consummate mastery over the nicest methods 
 of romantic art, heightening the effect throughout by a series 
 of vivid contrasts, and enveloping the whole in a dreamlike 
 atmosphere of enchantment and wonder. Young Porphyro, 
 his heart on fire for Madeline, who braves in their castle the 
 whole bloodthirsty race of foemen, stands out in fine relief 
 against the figure of the ancient beadsman, and of the beldame 
 Angela : — 
 
 a feeble soul^ 
 A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing. 
 Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll. 
 
 With similar effect, the boisterous riot of the wassailei-s, fit 
 echo to the howling of the elfin storm without, breaks upon 
 our ears " though but in dying tone " to deepen our sense of 
 peace which reigns where Madeline sleeps "an azure-lidded 
 sleep ", But nowhere is this sense of contrast more exquisitely 
 developed than in the treatment of the shifting moonlight which 
 pervades the poem, at times adding the last supreme touch of 
 colour to a picture of carefully elaborated detail, at times, by 
 its weird suggestiveness, rendering all detail superfluous. No 
 description of the castle is given us, yet as Porphyro stands
 
 INTRODUCTION Ivii 
 
 " buttress'd from moonlight " we see it outlined in black massive- 
 ness against the sky ; languid shines the moon upon the little 
 room, " pale, lattic'd, chill," where he unfolds his plan to the 
 beldame, and awaits the moment of its fulfilment ; its full glory 
 is veiled until it gleams upon the lustrous salvers of the mysteri- 
 ous feast, or bui-sts in magic splendour through the casement of 
 the shrine of love : — 
 
 Full oil this casement shone the wintry moon. 
 And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
 As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon ; 
 Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest. 
 And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
 And on her hair a glory, like a saint. 
 
 Thus, over the whole, the moon sits ai'bitress, shedding sweet 
 influence upon Madeline, though cold to all but her, moving 
 the poet's heart as potently as in Endymion, and now receiving 
 from him his ripest tribute to her powei-s of inspiration. 
 
 The Eve of St. Agnes expresses, as perfectly as Keats could 
 express it, the romance and the delight of a love satisfying and 
 victorious. But side by side with it he gave the picture of a love 
 which is at once a fascination and a doom, delineated in the same 
 mediaeval atmosphere, with the same passionate conviction, and 
 with even deeper significance in its reflection upon actual life. 
 Whilst he was still at work on the Eve of St. Agnes the com- 
 panion picture was in his mind. For he tells how Poi-phyro 
 took Madeline's lute 
 
 Tumultuous, — and, in chords that tenderest be. 
 He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute. 
 In Provence call'd " La belle dame sans mercy ". 
 
 In La Belle Dame sans Merci the mediaeval revival reaches its 
 consummation. The depth of passion which it expresses, or rather 
 implies, for there is not the least suspicion of raving, the intense 
 lyrical feeling, though the poet's personality is absolutely merged 
 in the dramatic conception, the exquisite art by which every 
 detail of the weird landscape and every cadence of the wild but 
 subtle melody contribute to the general effect of mystery and 
 of desolation, produce together an effect elsewhere unequalled in 
 the poetry of romance.
 
 Iviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 After reading such a work one is tempted to ask whether art 
 can go further than this, or what room there is for development 
 in an artist who at the age of twenty-four can produce such a 
 masterpiece. And perhaps if art could be viewed in itself, apart 
 from all other considerations, an answer would be difficult. But 
 the greatest artists have always been in the fullest sense realists, 
 have lit up with their imagination the real world and not been 
 satisfied with reflecting, however beautifully, a world of dreams. 
 And Keats was not satisfied. However much he might turn 
 away from his own life to an ideal past, he knew, with Words- 
 worth, that " beauty was a living presence in the earth," and that 
 both the subject and the atmosphere for the greatest art was 
 
 this world 
 
 Which is the world of all of us, wherein 
 We find or happiness our not at all, 
 
 a happiness to the artist, and to all men if they only knew it, 
 only obtainable by recognising in it the presence of ideal beauty. 
 Whether he turned to the Elgin n^arbles or to the tragedies of 
 Shakespeare, he found himself face to face with the same great 
 truth, in the light of which he looked upon his mediaeval poems, 
 in spite of all their magic loveliness, as a stepping stone by which 
 he was to reach the summit of his ambition and become indeed 
 "the mighty poet of the human heart". The marvellous was 
 still " the most enticing and the surest guarantee of harmonious 
 numbers ". But the marvellous alone no longer satisfied him. 
 " Wonders," he writes, " are no wonders to me ; I am more at 
 home amongst men and women. I had rather read Chaucer than 
 Aiiosto. The little dramatic skill I may as yet have, however 
 badly it might show in a drama, would I think be sufficient for 
 a poem. I wish to diffuse the colouring of St. Agnes Eve 
 throughout a poem in which character and sentiment would be 
 the figures to such drapery. Two or three such poems, if God 
 should spare me, written in the course of the next six years would 
 be a famous gracilis ad Parnassum altissimum. I mean they 
 would nerve me up to the writing of a few fine plays — my greatest 
 ambition." ^ 
 
 ' To John Taylor, 17th November, 18 19.
 
 INTRODUCTION lix 
 
 How far he might have realised this ambition it is difficult to 
 conjecture. Genius for dramatic writing is never developed 
 early, and it must be admitted that in the narrative poems that 
 he had already written he had exhibited as subtle and sympathetic 
 an insight into certain phases of human emotion as is exemplified 
 in Venns and Adonis or the Rape of Lucrece, and a far keener 
 sense of dramatic propriety. Otlio the Great, the only drama he 
 lived to finish, was written in collaboration with Brown, under 
 circumstances which precluded the possibility of successful charac- 
 terisation ; but its versification, at least, shows him to have studied 
 with profit in the finest school of dramatic art, and he did not 
 share that contempt for the stage under which not a few of our 
 poets have veiled their chagrin at failure in dramatic composi- 
 tion. Lastly it must be admitted that of all his contem- 
 poraries he had the greatest objective power. "As to the 
 poetical character," he writes, "(I mean that sort of which, if 
 I am anything I am a member), it is not itself, it has no self, 
 it has no character, it enjoys light and shade ; it lives in 
 gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or 
 elevated. It has as much delight in conceiving an lago as an 
 Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the 
 chameleon poet ... a poet is the most unpoetical of anything 
 in existence, because he has no identity — he is continually in for 
 and filling some other body." ^ This Protean quality of mind, 
 an essential characteristic of the dramatic genius, he possessed 
 in an eminent degi-ee. 
 
 But whatever might have been his success in the drama, he 
 had already discovered, in the Ode, a form of lyrical utterance 
 well fitted to give expression to the essential qualities of his 
 genius. In simple outbursts of unpremeditated art he could 
 equal neither the spontaneity of the Elizabethan lyrist nor the 
 glowing intensity of Shelley, and despite his success in using an 
 occasional short line, he could never gain the lightness of touch 
 which gave an unfailing sweetness and grace to the four-accent verse 
 of Fletcher and Milton. But in his freedom from the faults that 
 
 ' To Woodho7/sc, 27th October, 1818.
 
 Ix INTRODUCTION 
 
 spring from too close a dependence on classic models — that stiff- 
 ness of phraseology and over-elaboration of form which mar the 
 verse of Dryden, of Gray, even at times of Collins — he stands 
 without a rival as the poet of the richly meditative Ode. It is 
 here that the lono- drawn out line which seems to brood over its 
 own sweetness is used with most effect, that his poetry surprises 
 with a fine excess, yet never cloys with exaggeration, that all 
 the different elements that moulded or inspired his genius are 
 completely harmonised in the imaginative expression of his present 
 mood. The independence for which from the first he had striven 
 is gloriously attained. In the Odes he has no master ; and their 
 indefinable beauty is so direct and so distinctive an effluence of 
 his soul that he can have no disciple. 
 
 His first poem of sustained perfect loveliness had been the 
 Ode to Sorrow^ to be found in the fourth book of Endymion, and 
 the exquisite fragment of an Ode to Maia had followed in the 
 next year. The rest belong to 1819, the maturest period of his 
 workmanship, and all but Atitumn to the early months of the 
 year. Bound together not only by a continual recuirence of 
 phrase and cadence but by a similar train of thought and a unity 
 of feeling they sum up his attitude to life. They are the ex- 
 pression in varying keys of emotion of a mind which has loved 
 the principle of beauty in all things, and seeks in a world of 
 change and decay, among the fleeting forms of loveliness, for 
 something permanent and eternal. 
 
 The Ode to a Nightingale^ the first of them to be given 
 
 to the world, is the most deeply charged with human feeling. 
 
 Bowed down beneath a crushing pei"sonal bereavement, the poet 
 
 is tortured by the mystery of human suffering and decay in a 
 
 world 
 
 VV^here youth grows pale, and spectre-tliiii, and dies, 
 
 and in the song of the bird he detects, for the time at least, a 
 symbol of the beauty for which there is no death nor change ; 
 which has power by reason of its subtle charm to draw the worlds 
 of nature and romance closer to that stem reality in which, wor- 
 shipper of beauty though he be, he has yet perforce to bear his 
 part.
 
 INTRODUCTION Ixi 
 
 In the Ode on a Grecian flrn, the mutability of life finds its 
 contrast with the immoi-tality of the principle of beauty as ex- 
 pressed in art 
 
 All breathing human passion far above. 
 
 Ai't is thus emotion recollected in tranquillity ; the eternal type, 
 true for all time, of that beauty which gives the key to the 
 intei-pretation of life. But though he does not falter in his 
 fidelity to the ideal, its contrast with the sadness of his experience 
 weighs heavy upon him, so that his prevailing temper at this 
 period is perhaps most clearly expressed in the Ode on Melancholy. 
 True Melancholy, he writes, is no vulgar passion exerted upon the 
 common objects of sonow. 
 
 She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die ; 
 
 And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
 Bidding adieu. 
 
 It is an emotion which none can experience save him who 
 Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine. 
 
 And yet, if this is profoundly true, it is true also that the heart 
 which feels it has its own compensations. Beauty as we see it 
 may be transient, but it can-ies with it the power to rise above 
 that very melancholy which the thought of its transience must 
 often bring. The contradiction is only apparent, not real. For 
 the poet who loves beauty enough to be troubled by the thought 
 that its different manifestations are visionary loves it enough to 
 lose himself in the vision. The immediate appeal of nature or 
 art or romance is irresistible; and the moment, enjoyed for its 
 own sake, gives comfort and sustaining strength to the mind for 
 its journey towards the goal. Such a mood as this is reflected 
 in the Ode on Indolence^ wherein not Love, nor Ambition, nor 
 even Poesy can draw him from his exquisite enjoyment of the 
 present ; they caimot raise his 
 
 head cool-bedded in the flowery grass. 
 And in the Ode to Autumn his serenity of mind, as truly 
 characteristic of him as the passionate sense of change, reaches its 
 perfect expression ; and all vain questioning laid aside, he is now 
 content to enjoy the beaucy and the peace of the season.
 
 Ixii INTRODUCTION 
 
 iWheie are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? 
 
 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too. 
 While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day. 
 
 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue. 
 
 Even the gathering swallows, sure harbingers of winter, suggest 
 no soiTow to his heart; he is intuitively conscious of the im- 
 mortality of beauty as the eternal possession of him who has 
 realised it. 
 
 How gladly would we sacrifice even the recast of Hyperion 
 and the superb last sonnet if this poem could have been indeed 
 his swan-song, as it is assuredly his last work of full and conscious 
 power, if he could have been spared the agony of mind which can 
 be read in the fevered attempts at self-expression and still more 
 ominously in the months of silence that followed, when he could 
 find no " heart-easing things " to allay the tortures of a pos- 
 thumous life ! It was otherwise decreed : yet the significance of 
 the Ode to Autumn in its place among his poems should not be 
 forgotten either in a consideration of what he might have become, 
 or in a final estimate of what he had actually achieved. For as 
 an interpreter of nature to the heart of man he was already, in 
 his way, unapproachable. 
 
 Of his treatment of nature so much has been said inci- 
 dentally that little need be added. Here, as in his relation with 
 literature and art, he owes his distinctive qualities to a delicate 
 sensitiveness to impression, rare even among poets. Several of 
 his friends testify to it. Brown bore witness to the ecstasy with 
 which he caught his first glimpse of the mountains, and Severn, 
 with an artist's instinct, loved to watch his face as they walked 
 together, and to notice reflected in his wonderful eyes his acute 
 perception of each detail around him. " Nothing seemed to 
 escape him, the song of a bird and the undemote of response 
 fi'om covert or hedge, the rustle of some animal, the changing 
 of the green and brown lights and furtive shadows, the motions 
 of the wind — just how it took certain tall flowers and plants 
 — the wayfaring of the clouds : even the features and gestures 
 of passing tramps, the colour of one woman's hair, the smile 
 on one child's face, the furtive animalism below the deceptive
 
 INTRODUCTION Ixiii 
 
 humanity in many of the vagrants, even the hat, clothes, shoes, 
 wherever these conveyed the remotest hint as to the real self 
 of the wearer. . . . Ceilain things affected him extremely, par- 
 ticularly when 'a wave was billowing through a tree,' as he 
 described the uplifting surge of air among swaying masses of 
 chestnut or oak foliage, or when, afar off, he heard the wind 
 coming across woodlands. ' The tide ! the tide ! ' he would cry 
 delightedly, and spring on to some stile, or upon the low bough 
 of a wayside tree, and watch the passage of the wind upon the 
 meadow-grasses or young corn, not stimng till the flow of air 
 was all around him, while an expression of rapture made his eyes 
 gleam and his face glow till he would look ' like a wild fawn 
 waiting for some cry from the forest depths,' or like ' a young- 
 eagle staring with proud joy,' before taking flight." ^ With 
 such vivid sensations he had no need to picture imaginary scenes ; 
 he had only to draw upon his actual experience. The epithet 
 "Cockney," justifiable in its application to certain qualities of 
 his early style, is wholly misleading when it conveys the impres- 
 sion of a town-bred poet. Keats had known the country fi'om 
 boyhood ; the woods, the meadows, the birds, " the simple 
 flowers of spring," had been his constant delight, and the 
 peculiar charm of an English stream had so deeply affected 
 his imagination that even of the river Nile he can only think 
 in terms of what he has himself seen and loved : — 
 
 ITiou dost bedew 
 Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste 
 The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too. 
 And to the sea as happily dost haste. 
 
 The richness of his poetry might have led us to expect him to 
 be aiTested by the colour and magnificence of Oriental scenery. 
 Yet in the Ode to Sorrow the gorgeous pageant of Bacchus and 
 
 ^Li/e and Letters of Joseph Severn, ed. William Sharp, 1892, pp. ao, 21. The 
 passage is not given by Mr. Sharp entirely in the words of Severn, but is put together by 
 him from Severn's diaries and reminiscences. Cf. , too, Haydon's well-known descrip- 
 tion of Keats : " He was in his glory in the fields. The humming of a bee, the sight of 
 a flower, the glitter of the sun, seemed to make his nature tremble ; then his eyes flashed, 
 his cheek glowed, his mouth quivered " {Life of Hay don, ed. T. Taylor, 1853, ii. 8).
 
 Ixiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 his crew is for him, as for the Indian maiden through whom 
 he speaks, onlv a passing splendour— it has no power to touch 
 his heart. It may induce forgetfulness 
 
 as the berried holly 
 By shepherds is forgott*!!, when, in June, 
 Tall chesnuts keep away the sun and moon ; 
 
 (End. iv. 206-8) 
 
 but the dominant emotion of the Ode, to which the mood of 
 Bacchus affords no more than a glowing contrast, is felt in the 
 allusions to the wild rose, the daisy and the cowslip, to the 
 glowworm and the nightingale. Phoebe has strayed far to seek 
 her poet — she has found him in an English wood. 
 
 Keats's sea pictures are in the same characteristic manner 
 transcripts of actual experience. When he tells how 
 
 Old Ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore, 
 
 Down whose green back the short-liv'd foam, all hoar, 
 
 Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence, (End. ii. 348-50) 
 
 or relates to Reynolds how he sate 
 
 Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed 
 
 Among the breakers ; 'twas a quiet eve, 
 
 The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave 
 
 An untumultous fringe of silver foam 
 
 Along the flat brown sand, (Ep. to Reynolds 88-92) 
 
 — in every case the impression owes its power not to its strange- 
 ness but to its essential truth and to its exquisite familiarity. 
 Yet these pictures argue no mere sensitiveness to literal fact, 
 they exhibit a special power of realising the emotion which the 
 bare fact expresses. The poet, Keats tells us, is one who " finds 
 his way to all the instincts " of wren or eagle, to whom the 
 
 tiger's yell 
 
 Comes articulate and presseth 
 On his ear like mother- tongue, 
 
 (Where's the Poet ? 14, 15) ; 
 
 who has no identity, but is often merely the irresponsible medium 
 between the natural world and universal human feeUns;. This 
 being so, his power of catching nature's mood must largely 
 depend, not only upon his sympathy with nature, but also upon
 
 INTRODUCTION Ixv 
 
 his wide and sympathetic understanding of humanity, and the 
 effectiveness of his expression will depend upon his sympathy 
 with both. And we may, in fact, trace in his poetry an evei* 
 gi'owing sense of their intimate relationship. At first there 
 is noticeable in his descriptions a definite and even awkward 
 transition from a fresh and charming landscape to the human 
 figure ill sorted with its environment ; then, as his undei"standing 
 of human life became more real and more intense, his insight 
 into the heart of nature grew deeper, and his pictures of nature 
 gathered emotional force, so that when he is at his gi'eatest 
 he can only speak of the one in terms of the other. Just as 
 his feeling for nature can only find voice in language applicable 
 to human emotion, so the beauty of nature is his unfailing 
 resource for the expression of the deepest and subtlest emotions 
 of the soul. Herein lay the secret of the spell which Greek 
 mythology exercised over him. He realised instinctively the 
 spirit in which the legends had taken their rise, and by that 
 same artistic sense which led the Greek to incarnate in human 
 form the spirit recognised by his religion in the beauty and the 
 power about him, Keats made it his own. When he tells how 
 the dead lovers lifted their heads at the passing of Endymion 
 As doth a flower at Apollo's touch 
 
 here is no idle personification ; he has embodied in an image of 
 perfect simplicity and truth his sense of the healing power of a 
 radiant presence. And the reality of these stories to his imag- 
 ination is strikingly corroborated by the fact that nowhere does 
 he more faithfully depict the actual appearance of moon and 
 sun than in his dramatic account of them under the names of 
 Cynthia and Hyperion, 
 
 'Tis She, but lo ! 
 How chang'd, how full of ache, how gone in woe ! 
 She dies at the thinnest cloud ; her loveliness 
 Is wan on Neptune's blue ; yet there's a stress 
 Of love-spangles, just off yon cape of trees, 
 Dancing upon the waves, as if to please 
 The curly foam with amorous influence. {End. iii. 79-85.) 
 
 This is not the less true to fact because it is painted to the 
 e
 
 Ixvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 imagination, because it associates the loveliness of the moon 
 with the yeanling of human passion. So too Hyperion's final 
 depai-tuie from his palace, of tragic import in the development 
 of the story, is only realised in a vivid conception of a gloomy 
 sunrise, the ominous prelude to a day of darkness and storm. 
 
 Those silver wings expanded sisterly. 
 
 Eager to sail their orb ; the porches wide 
 
 Open'd upon the dusk demesnes of night ; 
 
 And the bright Titan, phrenzied with new woes, 
 
 Unus'd to bend, by hard compulsion bent 
 
 His spirit to the sorrow of the time ; 
 
 And all along a dismal rack of clouds. 
 
 Upon the boundaries of day and night. 
 
 He stretch'd himself in grief and radiance faint. 
 
 {Hyp. i. 296-304.) 
 
 It is by but a slight extension of this same poetic instinct 
 that the whole spirit of Autumn seems to pass into the figures 
 of the reaper, the gleaner, the maiden at the cider-press, and 
 they are touched with a sublime grace which is not their own. 
 Keats did not labour after this effect, it was natural to his vision 
 
 Yet even in these days so far retir'd 
 
 From happy pieties. . . . 
 I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired. 
 
 {Ode to Psyche, 40-43.) 
 
 He has resumed, unconsciously, something of the naivete of the 
 ancient world. 
 
 But remarkable as is his affinity in certain respects with the 
 Greek attitude to nature, he is at the same time in the closest 
 sympathy with the temper of his own day. For in an age whose 
 ideals find fittest utterance in the " Renascence of Wonder," it 
 was given to him, perhaps, most of all, to intei-pret the wondere 
 of the natural world. Whether he leads us 
 
 Through the green evening quiet in the sun. 
 
 Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams 
 
 The summer time away {End. ii. 71-73) 
 
 or calls upon us to gaze with him 
 
 on the new soft fallen mask 
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors {Sonnet, p. 288)
 
 INTRODUCTION Ixvii 
 
 — whatever his imagination has touched thrills us with a sense of 
 the mystery and awe which underlie the common things of earth ; 
 in all nature we read with him, as on the face of night, the 
 symbols of a high romance, which finite language can never 
 utter, but which answers none the less to the infinite longings 
 of the human soul. 
 
 In all this there is no attempt at explanation. Even the 
 most philosophic of our poets delighted to picture himself as 
 
 Contented if he might enjoy 
 
 The things which others understand, 
 
 and in the poetry of Keats this mood is entirely dominant. " Un- 
 less poetry come like leaves to the tree it had better not come at 
 all," he writes, and there is something of defiance in his tone 
 when he claims as the inalienable prerogative of the poet identifi- 
 cation with his subject rather than criticism of it. 
 
 What sea-bird o'er the sea 
 
 Is a philosopher the while he goes 
 
 Winging his way where the great water throes .'' 
 
 Nature presents perforce analogies with human life, on which 
 others may speculate as they will, it may even suggest lessons of 
 direct bearing upon conduct ; but the supreme truth to the poet 
 is not to be found in the lessons of nature, but in her mysteiious 
 beauty, and in her never failing power, whencesoever it may 
 spring, to respond to every mood of the changing heart of man. 
 Nature does not call upon him to understand this, but simply to 
 recognise it. The message of the thrush, heard by Keats in the 
 glory of a Februaiy morning, was but the echo of Nature's 
 
 voice : — 
 
 O fret not after knowledge. I have none. 
 And yet my song comes native with the warmth. 
 O fret not after knowledge ! I have none. 
 And yet the evening listens. 
 
 Here lies the mystery : here, too, in a world of baiTen facts, of 
 arid controversies, of idle speculations, the irresistible appeal. In 
 moments of supreme enjoyment, when the heart seems to beat 
 in consonance with the mighty heart of the universe, it is difficult 
 to deny a belief in the conscious life and conscious sympathy
 
 Ixviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 of nature, but her sovereignty depends on no such faith. Even 
 if she beam upon us in blank splendour, 
 
 like the mild moon, 
 Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not 
 What eyes are upward cast, (Fall of Hyp, i. 245-47) 
 
 the truth remains immutable, unassailed, that the eyes are still 
 cast upwai'd, that the splendour is there, that the comfort is 
 never sought in vain. Keats knew, no less than Wordsworth, 
 that " Nature never did betray the heart that loved her," and 
 that the true worship of beauty, associated, as he had learnt to 
 associate it, with a passionate sense of the soitows of the world, 
 is its own justification, and its own reward.
 
 POEMS 
 
 PUBLISHED IN 1817 
 
 " What more felicity can fall to creature 
 Than to enjoy delight with liberty " 
 
 Fate of the ButierJlySPKNSKlt,
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ 
 
 GLORY and loveliness have passed away 
 For if we wander out in early morn, 
 
 No wreathed incense do we see upborne 
 Into the east, to meet the smiling day : 
 No crowd of nymphs soft voic'd and young, and gay. 
 
 In woven baskets bringing ears of corn, 
 
 Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn 
 The shrine of Floi*a in her early May. 
 But there are left delights as high as these. 
 
 And I shall ever bless my destiny. 
 That in a time, when under pleasant trees 
 
 Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free 
 A leafy luxury, seeing I could please 
 
 With these poor offerings, a man like thee. 
 
 [The Short Pieces in the middle of the Book, as well as some of the Sonnets, were 
 written at an earlier period than the rest of the Poems.]
 
 I 
 
 POEMS 
 
 " Places of nestling green for Poets made." 
 
 Story of Rimini. 
 
 STOOD tip-toe upon a little hill, 
 _ The air was cooling, and so very still. 
 That the sweet buds which with a modest pride 
 Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside. 
 Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, 
 Had not yet lost those starry diadems 
 Caught from the early sobbing of the morn. 
 The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn. 
 And fresh from the clear brook ; sweetly they slept 
 On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept lo 
 
 A little noiseless noise among the leaves. 
 Born of the very sigh that silence heaves : 
 For not the faintest motion could be seen 
 Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green. 
 There was wide wand'ring for the greediest eye. 
 To peer about upon variety ; 
 Far round the horizon's cx'ystal air to skim. 
 And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim ; 
 To picture out the quaint, and curious bending 
 Of a fresh woodland alley, never ending ; 20 
 
 Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves. 
 Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves. 
 I gazed awhile, and felt as light, and free 
 As though the fanning wings of Mercury 
 Had played upon my heels : I was light-hearted. 
 And many pleasures to my vision started ; 
 So I straightway began to pluck a posey 
 Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy. 
 
 A bush of May flowers with the bees about them ; 
 
 Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them ; 30
 
 4 JOHN KEATS 
 
 And let a lush laburnum oversweep them. 
 
 And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them 
 
 Moist, cool and green ; and shade the violets. 
 
 That they may bend the moss in leafy nets. 
 
 A filbert hedge with wild briar overtwined. 
 
 And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind 
 
 Upon their summer thrones ; there too should be 
 
 The frequent chequer of a youngling tree. 
 
 That with a score of light green brethren shoots 
 
 From the quaint mossiness of aged roots : 40 
 
 Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters 
 
 Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters 
 
 The spreading blue bells : it may haply mourn 
 
 That such fair clusters should be rudely torn 
 
 From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly 
 
 By infant hands, left on the path to die. 
 
 Open afresh your round of starry folds. 
 
 Ye ardent marigolds ! 
 
 Dry up the moisture from your golden lids. 
 
 For great Apollo bids 50 
 
 That in these days your praises should be sung 
 
 On many harps, which he has lately strung ; 
 
 And when again your dewiness he kisses. 
 
 Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses : 
 
 So haply when I rove in some far vale. 
 
 His mighty voice may come upon the gale. 
 
 Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight : 
 
 With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, 
 
 And taper fingers catching at all things. 
 
 To bind them all about with tiny rings. 60 
 
 Linger awhile upon some bending planks 
 
 That lean against a streamlet s rushy banks, 
 
 And watch intently Nature's gentle doings : 
 
 They will be found softer than ring-dove's cooings. 
 
 How silent comes the water round that bend ; 
 
 Not the minutest whisper does it send 
 
 To the o'erhanging sallows : blades of grass 
 
 Slowly across the chequer'd shadows pass. 
 
 Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach 
 
 To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach 70 
 
 A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds ; 
 
 Where swarms of minnows show their little heads. 
 
 Staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams,
 
 I STOOD TIP-TOE UPON A LITTLE HILL 5 
 
 To taste the luxury of sunny beams 
 
 Temper'd with coolness. How they ever wrestle 
 
 With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle 
 
 Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand. 
 
 If you but scantily hold out the hand. 
 
 That very instant not one will remain ; 
 
 But turn your eye, and they are there again. 80 
 
 The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses, 
 
 And cool themselves among the em'rald tresses ; 
 
 The while they cool themselves, they freshness give. 
 
 And moisture, that the bowery green may live : 
 
 So keeping up an interchange of favours. 
 
 Like good men in the truth of their behaviours. 
 
 Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop 
 
 From low hung branches ; little space they stop ; 
 
 But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek ; 
 
 Then off at once, as in a wanton freak : go 
 
 Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings. 
 
 Pausing upon their yellow flutterings. 
 
 Were I in such a place, I sure should pray 
 
 That nought less sweet, might call my thoughts away. 
 
 Than the soft rustle of a maiden's gown 
 
 Fanning away the dandelion's down ; 
 
 Than the light music of her nimble toes 
 
 Patting against the sorrel as she goes. 
 
 How she would start, and blush, thus to be caught 
 
 Playing in all her innocence of thought. 100 
 
 O let me lead her gently o'er the brook. 
 
 Watch her half-smiling lips, and downward look ; 
 
 O let me for one moment touch her wrist ; 
 
 Let me one moment to her breathing list ; 
 
 And as she leaves me may she often turn 
 
 Her fair eyes looking through her locks auburne. 
 
 What next .'' A tuft of evening primroses, 
 
 O'er which the mind may hover till it dozes ; 
 
 O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep, 
 
 But that 'tis ever startled by the leap no 
 
 Of buds into ripe flowers ; or by the flitting 
 
 Of diverse moths, that aye their rest are quitting ; 
 
 Or by the moon lifting her silver rim 
 
 Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim 
 
 Coming into the blue with all her light. 
 
 O Maker of sweet poets, dear delight 
 
 Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers ; 
 
 Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers, 
 
 Mingler with leaves, and dew and tumbling streams. 
 
 Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams, 120
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Lover of loneliness, and wandering. 
 
 Of upcast eye, and tender pondering ! 
 
 Thee must I praise above all other glories 
 
 That smile us on to tell delightful stories. 
 
 For what has made the sage or poet write 
 
 But the fair paradise of Nature's light ? 
 
 In the calm grandeur of a sober line. 
 
 We see the waving of the mountain pine ; 
 
 And when a tale is beautifully staid, 
 
 We feel the safety of a hawthorn glade : 130 
 
 When it is moving on luxurious wings. 
 
 The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings : 
 
 Fair dewy roses brush against our faces. 
 
 And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases ; 
 
 O'er head we see the jasmine and sweet briar. 
 
 And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire ; 
 
 While at our feet, the voice of crystal bubbles 
 
 Charms us at once away fi'om all our troubles : 
 
 So that we feel uplifted from the world, 
 
 Walking upon the white clouds wreath'd and curl'd. 140 
 
 So felt he, who fii-st told, how Psyche went 
 
 On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment ; 
 
 What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips 
 
 First touch'd ; what amorous, and fondling nips 
 
 They gave each other's cheeks ; with all their sighs. 
 
 And how they kist each other's ti'emulous eyes : 
 
 The silver lamp, — the ravishment, — the wonder — 
 
 The darkness, — loneliness, — the fearful thunder ; 
 
 Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown. 
 
 To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne. 150 
 
 So did he feel, who puU'd the boughs aside. 
 
 That we might look into a forest wide. 
 
 To catch a glimpse of Fawns, and Dryades 
 
 Coming with softest rustle through the trees ; 
 
 And garlands woven of flowers wild, and sweet. 
 
 Upheld on ivory wrists, or sporting feet : 
 
 Telling us how fair, trembling Syrinx fled 
 
 Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread. 
 
 Poor nymph, — poor Pan, — how he did weep to find, 
 
 Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind 160 
 
 Along the reedy stream ; a half heard strain. 
 
 Full of sweet desolation — balmy pain. 
 
 What first inspired a bard of old to sing 
 Narcissus pining o'er the untainted spring } 
 In some delicious ramble, he had found 
 A little space, with boughs all woven round ;
 
 I STOOD TIP-TOE UPON A LITTLE HILL 7 
 
 And in the midst of all, ;i clearer pool 
 
 Than e'er reflected in its pleasant cool, 
 
 The blue sky here, and there, serenely peeping 
 
 Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping. 170 
 
 And on the bank a lonely flower he spied, 
 
 A meek and forlorn flower, with naught of pride, 
 
 Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness. 
 
 To woo its own sad image into nearness : 
 
 Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move ; 
 
 But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love. 
 
 So while the poet stood in this sweet spot. 
 
 Some fainter gleamings o'er his fancy shot ; 
 
 Nor was it long ere he had told the tale 
 
 Of young Narcissus, and sad Echo's bale. 180 
 
 Where had he been, from whose warm head out-fl.ew 
 
 That sweetest of all songs, that ever new, 
 
 That aye refreshing, pure deliciousness. 
 
 Coming ever to bless 
 
 The wanderer by moonlight ? to him bringing 
 
 Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing 
 
 From out the middle air, from flowery nests, 
 
 And from the pillowy silkiness that rests 
 
 Full in the speculation of the stars. 
 
 Ah ! surely he had burst our moital bars ; igo 
 
 Into some wond'rous region he had gone. 
 
 To search for thee, divine Endymion ! 
 
 He was a Poet, sure a lover too. 
 
 Who stood on Latmus' top, what time there blew 
 
 Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below ; 
 
 And brought in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow 
 
 A hymn from Dian's temple ; while upswelling. 
 
 The incense went to her own starry dwelling. 
 
 But though her face was clear as infant's eyes. 
 
 Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice, 200 
 
 The Poet wept at her so piteous fate. 
 
 Wept that such beauty should be desolate : 
 
 So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won. 
 
 And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion. 
 
 Queen of the wide air ; thou most lovely queen 
 
 Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen ! 
 
 As thou exceedest all things in thy shine. 
 
 So every tale, does this sweet tale of thine. 
 
 O for three words of honey, that I might 
 
 Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night ! 210
 
 8 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Where distant ships do seem to show their keels, 
 
 Phcebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels. 
 
 And turned to smile upon thy bashful eyes. 
 
 Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize. 
 
 The evening weather was so bright, and clear. 
 
 That men of health were of unusual cheer ; 
 
 Stepping like Homer at the trumpet's call. 
 
 Or young Apollo on the pedestal : 
 
 And lovely women were as fair and warm, 
 
 As Venus looking sideways in alarm. 220 
 
 The breezes were ethereal, and pure. 
 
 And crept through half-closed lattices to cure 
 
 The languid sick ; it cool'd their fever'd sleep. 
 
 And soothed them into slumbers full and deep. 
 
 Soon they awoke clear eyed : nor burnt with thirsting. 
 
 Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting : 
 And springing up, they met the wond'ring sight 
 
 Of their dear friends, nigh foolish with delight ; 
 
 Who feel their arms, and breasts, and kiss and stare. 
 
 And on their placid foreheads part the hair. 230 
 
 Young men, and maidens at each other gaz'd 
 
 With hands held back, and motionless, amaz'd 
 
 To see the brightness in each other's eyes ; 
 
 And so they stood, fill'd with a sweet surprise. 
 
 Until their tongues were loos'd in poesy. 
 
 Therefore no lover did of anguish die : 
 
 But the soft numbers, in that moment spoken. 
 
 Made silken ties, that never may be broken. 
 
 Cynthia ! I cannot tell the greater blisses. 
 
 That follow'd thine, and thy dear shepherd's kisses : 240 
 
 Was there a poet born ? — but now no more, jj 
 
 My wand'ring spirit must no farther soar. — 
 
 SPECIMEN 
 
 OF AN 
 
 ilNDUCTION TO A POEM 
 
 LO ! I must tell a tale of chivalry ; 
 For large white plumes are dancing in mine eye. 
 Not like the formal crest of latter days : 
 But bending in a thousand graceful ways ; 
 So graceful, that it seems no mortal hand. 
 Or e'en the touch of Archimago's wand.
 
 SPECIMEN OF AN INDUCTION TO A POEM 9 
 
 Could charm them into such an attitude. 
 
 We must think rather, that in playful mood, 
 
 Some mountain breeze had turn'd its chief delight. 
 
 To show this wonder of its gentle might. lo 
 
 Lo ! I must tell a tale of chivalry ; 
 
 For while I muse, the lance points slantingly 
 
 Athwart the morning air : some lady sweet. 
 
 Who cannot feel for cold her tender feet. 
 
 From the worn top of some old battlement 
 
 Hails it with tears, her stout defender sent : 
 
 And from her own pure self no joy dissembling. 
 
 Wraps round her ample robe with happy trembling. 
 
 Sometimes, when the good Knight his rest would take. 
 
 It is reflected, clearly, in a lake, 20 
 
 With the young ashen boughs, 'gainst which it rests. 
 
 And th' half seen mossiness of linnets' nests. \ 
 
 Ah ! shall I ever tell its cruelty. 
 
 When the fire flashes from a warrior's eye. 
 
 And his tremendous hand is grasping it. 
 
 And his dark brow for very wrath is knit ? 
 
 Or when his spirit, with more calm intent. 
 
 Leaps to the honors of a tournament. 
 
 And makes the gazers round about the ring 
 
 Stare at the grandeur of the ballancing .'' 30 
 
 No, no ! this is far off: — then how shall I 
 
 Revive the dying tones of minstrelsy. 
 
 Which linger yet about long gothic arches. 
 
 In dark green ivy, and among wild larches .'' 
 
 How sing the splendour of the revelries. 
 
 When buts of wine are drunk off to the lees .'' 
 
 And that bright lance, against the fretted wall, 
 
 Beneath the shade of stately banneral, 
 
 Is slung with shining cuirass, sword, and shield .'' 
 
 Where ye may see a spur in bloody field. 40 
 
 Light-footed damsels move with gentle paces 
 
 Round the wide hall, and show their happy faces ; 
 
 Or stand in courtly talk by fives and sevens : 
 
 Like those fair stars that twinkle in the heavens. 
 
 Yet must I tell a tale of chivalry : 
 
 Or wherefore comes that steed so proudly by ? 
 
 Wherefore more proudly does the gentle knight. 
 
 Rein in the swelling of his ample might ? 
 
 Spenser ! thy brows are arched, open, kind. 
 
 And come like a clear sun-rise to my mind ; 50 
 
 And always does my heart with pleasure dance. 
 
 When I think on thy noble countenance ;
 
 10 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Where never yet was ought more earthly seen 
 
 Than the pure freshness of thy laurels green. 
 
 Therefore, great bard, I not so fearfully 
 
 Call on thy gentle spirit to hover nigh 
 
 My daring steps : or if thy tender care. 
 
 Thus startled unaware. 
 
 Be jealous that the foot of other wight 
 
 Should madly follow that bright path of light 60 
 
 Trac'd by thy lov'd Libertas ; he will speak. 
 
 And tell thee that my prayer is very meek ; 
 
 That I will follow with due reverence. 
 
 And start with awe at mine own strange pretence. 
 
 Him thou wilt hear ; so I will rest in hope 
 
 To see wide plains, fair trees and lawny slope : 
 
 The morn, the eve, the light, the shade, the flowers ; 
 
 Clear streams, smooth lakes, and overlooking towers. 
 
 CALIDORE 
 A Fragment 
 
 YOUNG Calidore is paddling o'er the lake ; 
 His healthful spirit eager and awake 
 To feel the beauty of a silent eve. 
 Which seem'd full loath this happy world to leave ; 
 The light dwelt o'er the scene so lingeringly. 
 He bares his forehead to the cool blue sky. 
 And smiles at the far clearness all around. 
 Until his heart is well nigh over wound. 
 And turns for calmness to the pleasant green 
 Of easy slopes, and shadowy trees that lean 10 
 
 So elegantly o'er the waters' brim 
 And show their blossoms trim. 
 Scarce can his clear and nimble eye-sight follow 
 The freaks, and dartings of the black-wing'd swallow. 
 Delighting much, to see it half at rest. 
 Dip so refreshingly its wings, and breast 
 'Gainst the smooth surface, and to mark anon. 
 The widening circles into nothing gone. 
 
 And now the sharp keel of his little boat 
 
 Comes up with ripple, and with easy float, 20 
 
 And glides into a bed of water lillies : 
 
 Broad leav'd ai'e they and their white canopies
 
 CALIDORE 11 
 
 Are upward turn'd to catch the heavens' dew. 
 
 Near to a little island's point they grew ; 
 
 Whence Calidore might have the goodliest view 
 
 Of this sweet spot of earth. The bowery shore 
 
 Went off in gentle windings to the hoar 
 
 And light blue mountains : but no breathing man 
 
 With a warm heart, and eye prepared to scan 
 
 Nature's clear beauty, could pass lightly by 30 
 
 Objects that look'd out so invitingly 
 
 On either side. These, gentle Calidore 
 
 Greeted, as he had known them long before. 
 
 The sidelong view of swelling leafiness. 
 Which the glad setting sun, in gold doth dress ; 
 Whence ever, and anon the jay outsprings, 
 And scales upon the beauty of its wings. 
 
 The lonely turret, shatter' d, and outworn. 
 
 Stands venerably proud ; too proud to mourn 
 
 Its long lost grandeur : fir trees grow around, 40 
 
 Aye dropping their hard fruit upon the ground. 
 
 The little chapel with the cross above 
 
 Upholding wreaths of ivy ; the white dove. 
 
 That on the window spreads his feathers light. 
 
 And seems from purple clouds to wing its flight. 
 
 Green tufted islands casting their soft shades 
 
 Across the lake ; sequester'd leafy glades. 
 
 That through the dimness of their twilight show 
 
 Large dock leaves, spiral foxgloves, or the glow 
 
 Of the wild cat's eyes, or the silvery stems 50 
 
 Of delicate birch ti-ees, or long grass which hems 
 
 A little brook. The youth had long been viewing 
 
 These pleasant things, and heaven was bedewing 
 
 The mountain flowers, when his glad senses caught 
 
 A trumpet's silver voice. Ah ! it was fi-aught 
 
 With many joys for him : the warder's ken 
 
 Had found white coursers prancing in the glen : 
 
 Friends very dear to him he soon will see ; 
 
 So pushes off" his boat most eagerly. 
 
 And soon upon the lake he skims along, 60 
 
 Deaf to the nightingale's first undei'-song ; 
 
 Nor minds he the white swans that dream so sweetly : 
 
 His spirit flies before him so completely. 
 
 And now he turns a jutting point of land. 
 
 Whence may be seen the castle gloomy, and grand :
 
 12 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Nor will a bee buzz round two swelling peaches. 
 
 Before the point of his light shfillop reaches 
 
 Those marble steps that through the water dip : 
 
 Now over them he goes with hasty trip. 
 
 And scarcely stays to ope the folding doors : 70 
 
 Anon he leaps along the oaken floors 
 
 Of halls and corridors. 
 
 Delicious sounds ! those little bright-eyed things 
 
 That float about the air on azure wings. 
 
 Had been less heartfelt by him than the clang 
 
 Of clattering hoofs ; into the court he sprang. 
 
 Just as two noble steeds, and palfreys twain. 
 
 Were slanting out their necks with loosened rein ; 
 
 While from beneath the threat'ning portcullis 
 
 They brought their happy burthens. What a kiss, 80 
 
 What gentle squeeze he gave each lady's hand ! 
 
 How tremblinglv their delicate ancles spann'd ! 
 
 Into how sweet a trance his soul was gone. 
 
 While whisperings of affection 
 
 Made him delay to let their tender feet 
 
 Come to the earth ; with an incline so sweet 
 
 From their low palfreys o'er his neck they bent : 
 
 And whether there were tears of languishment. 
 
 Or that the evening dew had pearl'd their tresses. 
 
 He feels a moisture on his cheek, and blesses 90 
 
 With lips that tremble, and with glistening eye. 
 
 All the soft luxury 
 
 That nestled in his arms. A dimpled hand. 
 
 Fair as some wonder out of fairy lanil. 
 
 Hung from his shoulder like the drooping flowers 
 
 Of whitest Cassia, fresh from summer showers : 
 
 And this he fondled with his happy cheek 
 
 As if for joy he would no further seek ; 
 
 When the kind voice of good Sir Clerimond 
 
 Came to his ear, like something from bevond 100 
 
 His present being : so he gently drew 
 
 His warm arms, thrilling now Avith pulses new. 
 
 From their sweet thrall, and forward gently bending, 
 
 Thank'd heaven that his joy was never ending ; 
 
 While gainst his forehead he devoutly press'd 
 
 A hand heaven made to succour the distress'd ; 
 
 A hand that from the world's bleak promontory 
 
 Had lifted Calidore for deeds of jjlorv. 
 
 Amid the pages, and the torches' glare. 
 
 There stood a knight, patting the flowing hair no 
 
 Of his proud horse's mane : he was withal
 
 CALIDORE 13 
 
 A man of elegance, and stature tall : 
 
 So that the waving of his plumes would be 
 
 High as the berries of a wild ash tree, 
 
 Or as the winged cap of Mercury. 
 
 His armour was so dexterously wrought 
 
 Fn shape, that sure no living man had thought 
 
 It hard, and heavy steel : but that indeed 
 
 It was some glorious form, some splendid weed, 
 
 In which a spirit new come from the skies 120 
 
 Might live, and show itself to human eyes. 
 
 'Tis the far-fam'd, the brave Sir Gondibert, 
 
 Said the good man to Calidore alert ; 
 
 While the young warrior with a step of grace 
 
 Came up, — a courtly smile upon his face. 
 
 And mailed hand held out, ready to greet 
 
 The large-eyed wonder, and ambitious heat 
 
 Of the aspiring boy ; who as he led 
 
 Those smiling ladies, often turned his head 
 
 To admire the visor arched so gracefully 130 
 
 Over a knightly brow ; while they went by 
 
 The lamps that from the high roof'd hall were pendent. 
 
 And gave the steel a shining quite transcendent. 
 
 Soon in a pleasant chamber they are seated ; 
 
 The sweet-lipp'd ladies have already greeted 
 
 All the green leaves that round the window clamber. 
 
 To show their purple sbirs, and bells of amber. 
 
 Sir Gondibert has doffd his shining steel. 
 
 Gladdening in the free, and airy feel 
 
 Of a light mantle ; and while Clerimond 140 
 
 Is looking round about him with a fond, 
 
 And placid eye, young Calidore is burning 
 
 To hear of knightly deeds, and gallant spurning 
 
 Of all unworthiness ; and how the strong of arm 
 
 Kept off dismay, and terror, and alarm 
 
 From lovely woman : while brimful of this. 
 
 He gave each damsel's hand so warm a kiss. 
 
 And had such manly ardour in his eye. 
 
 That each at other look'd half staringly ; 
 
 And then their features started into smiles 150 
 
 Sweet as blue heavens o'er enchanted isles. 
 
 Softly the breezes from the forest came, 
 Softly they blew aside the taper's flame ; 
 Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower ; 
 Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower ; 
 Mysterious, wild, the ft^r heard trumpet's tone ;
 
 14 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Lovely the moon in ether, all alone : 
 
 Sweet too the converse of these happy mortals. 
 
 As that of busy spirits when the portals 
 
 Are closing in the west ; or that soft humming i6o 
 
 We hear around when Hesperus is coming. 
 
 Sweet be their sleep. ********* 
 
 TO 
 
 SOME LADIES 
 
 WHAT though while the wonders of nature exploring, 
 I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend ; 
 Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring, 
 Bless Cynthia's face, the enthusiast's friend : 
 
 Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes. 
 
 With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove ; 
 Mark the clear tumbling ciystal, its passionate gushes, 
 
 Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews. 
 
 Why linger you so, the wild labyiunth strolling .'' 
 
 Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare .'' lo 
 
 Ah ! you list to the nightingale's tender condoling, 
 
 Responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air. 
 
 'Tis morn, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping, 
 
 I see you are treading the verge of the sea : 
 And now ! ah, I see it — you just now are stooping 
 
 To pick up the keep-sake intended for me. 
 
 If a cherub, on pinions of silver descending, 
 
 Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven ; 
 
 And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending, 
 
 The blessings of Tighe had melodiously given ; 20 
 
 It had not created a warmer emotion 
 
 Than the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you, 
 Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean 
 
 Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw. 
 
 For, indeed, 'tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure, 
 
 (And blissful is he who such happiness finds,) 
 To possess but a span of the hour of leisure, 
 
 In elegant, pure, and aerial minds.
 
 ON RECEIVING A CURIOUS SHELL 15 
 
 On receiving a curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the same 
 
 Ladies 
 
 HAST thou from the caves of Golconda, a gem 
 Pure as the ice-drop that fi-oze on the mountain ? 
 Bright as the humming-bird's green diadem. 
 
 When it flutters in sun-beams that shine through a fountain ? 
 
 Hast thou a goblet for dark sparkling wine ? 
 
 That goblet right heavy, and massy, and gold ? 
 And splendidly mark'd with the story divine 
 
 Of Armida the fair, and Rinaldo the bold ? 
 
 Hast thou a steed with a mane richly flowing ? 
 
 Hast thou a sword that thine enemy's smart is ? lo 
 
 Hast thou a trumpet rich melodies blowing ? 
 
 And wear'st thou the shield of the fam'd Britomartis ? 
 
 What is it that hangs from thy shoulder, so brave. 
 Embroidered with many a spring peering flower ? 
 
 Is it a scarf that thy fair lady gave ? 
 
 And hastest thou now to that fair lady's bower ? 
 
 Ah ! courteous Sir Knight, with large joy thou art crown'd ; 
 
 Full many the glories that brighten thy youth ! 
 I will tell thee my blisses, which richly abound 
 
 In magical powers to bless, and to sooth. 20 
 
 On this scroll thou seest written in characters fair 
 
 A sun-beamy tale of a wreath, and a chain ; 
 And, warrior, it nurtures the property rare 
 
 Of charming my mind from the trammels of pain. 
 
 This canopy mark : 'tis the work of a fay ; 
 
 Beneath its rich shade did King Oberon languish. 
 When lovely Titania was far, far away. 
 
 And cruelly left him to sorrow, and anguish. 
 
 There, oft would he bring from his soft sighing lute 
 
 Wild strains to which, spell-bound, the nightingales listened ; 3° 
 
 The wondering spirits of heaven were mute, 
 
 And tears 'mong the dewdrops of morning oft glistened,
 
 16 JOHN KEATS 
 
 In this little dome, all those melodies strange. 
 Soft, plaintive, and melting, for ever will sigh ; 
 
 Nor e'er will the notes from their tenderness change ; 
 Nor e'er will the music of Oberon die. 
 
 So, when I am in a voluptuous vein, 
 
 I pillow my head on the sweets of the rose. 
 And list to the tale of the wreath, and the chain, 
 
 Till its echoes depart ; then I sink to repose. 40 
 
 Adieu, valiant Eric ! with joy thou art crown'd ; 
 
 Full many the glories that brighten thy youth, 
 I too have my blisses, which richly abound 
 
 In magical powers, to bless and to sooth. 
 
 TO 
 
 # * * * 
 
 HADST thou liv'd in days of old, 
 O what wonders had been told 
 Of thy lively countenance. 
 And thy humid eyes that dance 
 In the midst of their own brightness ; 
 In the very fane of lightness. 
 Over which thine eyebrows, leaning. 
 Picture out each lovely meaning : 
 In a dainty bend they lie. 
 
 Like to streaks across the sky, 10 
 
 Or the feathers from a crow, 
 Fallen on a bed of snow. 
 Of thy dark hair that extends 
 Into many graceful bends : 
 As the leaves of Hellebore 
 Turn to whence they sprung before. 
 And behind each ample curl 
 Peeps the richness of a pearl 
 Downward too flows many a tress 
 
 With a glossy waviness ; ao 
 
 Full, and round like globes that rise 
 From the censer to the skies 
 Through sunny air. Add too, the sweetness 
 Of thy honied voice ; the neatness 
 Of thine ankle lightly turn'd : 
 With those beauties, scarce discern'd. 
 Kept with such sweet privacy. 
 That they seldom meet the eye
 
 r£r\ * # * * ^ly 
 
 Of the little loves that fly 
 
 Round about with eager pry. 30 
 
 Saving when, with freshening lave. 
 
 Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave ; 
 
 Like twin water lillies, bom 
 
 In the coolness of the morn. 
 
 O, if thou hadst breathed then. 
 
 Now the Muses had been ten, 
 
 Couldst thou wish for lineage higher 
 
 Than twin sister of Thalia ? 
 
 At least for ever, evermore, 
 
 Will I call the Graces four. 40 
 
 Hadst thou liv'd when chivalry 
 
 Lifted up her lance on high. 
 
 Tell me what thou wouldst have been ? 
 
 Ah ! I see the silver sheen 
 
 Of thy broidered, floating vest 
 
 Cov'ring half thine ivory breast ; 
 
 Which, O heavens ! I should see. 
 
 But that cruel destiny 
 
 Has placed a golden cuirass there ; 
 
 Keeping secret what is fair. 50 
 
 Like sunbeams in a cloudlet nested 
 
 Thy locks in knightly casque are rested : 
 
 O'er which bend four milky plumes 
 
 Like the gentle lilly's blooms 
 
 Spi'inging from a costly vase. 
 
 See with what a stately pace 
 
 Comes thine alabaster steed ; 
 
 Servant of heroic deed ! 
 
 O'er his loins, his trappings glow 
 
 Like the northern lights on snow. 60 
 
 Mount his back ! thy sword unsheath ! 
 
 Sign of the enchanter's death ; 
 
 Bane of every wicked spell ; 
 
 Silencer of dragon's yell. 
 
 Alas ! thou this wilt never do : 
 
 Thou art an enchantress too, 
 
 And wilt surely never spill 
 
 Blood of those whose eyes can kill.
 
 18 JOHN KEATS 
 
 TO 
 
 HOPE 
 
 WHEN by my solitary hearth I sit. 
 And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom ; 
 When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit. 
 And the bare heath of life presents no bloom ; 
 Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed. 
 And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head. 
 
 Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night. 
 
 Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray. 
 Should sad Despondency my musings fright. 
 
 And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away, lo 
 
 Peep with the moon-beams through the leafy roof, 
 And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof. 
 
 Should Disappointment, parent of Despair, 
 
 Strive for her son to seize my careless heart ; 
 When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air. 
 Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart : 
 
 Chace him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright. 
 And fright him as the morning frightens night ! 
 
 Whene'er the fate of those I hold most dear 
 
 Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow, 20 
 
 O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer ; 
 Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow : 
 Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed. 
 And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head ! 
 
 Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain. 
 
 From cruel parents, or relentless fair ; 
 O let me think it is not quite in vain 
 
 To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air ! 
 Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed. 
 And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head ! 30 
 
 In the long vista of the years to roll. 
 
 Let me not see our country's honour fade : 
 O let me see our land retain her soul. 
 
 Her pride, her freedom ; and not freedom's shade. 
 From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed — 
 Beneath thy pinions canopy my head !
 
 IMITATION OF SPENSER 19 
 
 Let me not see the patriot's high bequest. 
 
 Great liberty ! how great in plain attire ! 
 With the base pui-ple of a court oppress'd. 
 
 Bowing her head, and ready to expire : 40 
 
 But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings 
 That fill the skies with silver glitterings ! 
 
 And as, in sparkling majesty, a star 
 
 Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud ; 
 Brightening the half veil'd face of heaven afar : 
 So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud. 
 Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed. 
 Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head. 
 February, 1815. 
 
 IMITATION OF SPENSER 
 
 * ***** * 
 
 NOW Morning from her orient chamber came. 
 And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill ; 
 Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame, 
 Silv'i'ing the untainted gushes of its rill ; 
 Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill. 
 And after parting beds of simple flowers. 
 By many streams a little lake did fill. 
 Which round its marge reflected woven bowers. 
 And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers. 
 
 There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright 10 
 
 Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below ; 
 Whose silken fins, and golden scales' light 
 Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow : 
 There saw the swan his neck of arched snow. 
 And oar'd himself along with majesty ; 
 Sparkled his jetty eyes ; his feet did show 
 Beneath the waves like Afrie's ebony. 
 And on his back a fay reclined voluptuously. 
 
 Ah ! could I tell the wonders of an isle 
 
 That in that fairest lake had placed been, 20 
 
 I could e'en Dido of her grief beguile ; 
 Or rob fi'om aged Lear his bitter teen : 
 For sure so fair a place was never seen. 
 Of all that ever charm'd romantic eye : 
 It seem'd an emerald in the silver sheen 
 Of the bright waters ; or as when on high. 
 Through clouds of fleecy white, laughs the coerulean sky.
 
 20 JOHN KEATS 
 
 And all around it dipp'd luxuriously 
 Slopings of verdure through the glossy tide. 
 Which, as it were in gentle amity, 30 
 
 Rippled delighted up the flowery side ; 
 As if to glean the ruddy tears, it tried. 
 Which fell profusely from the rose-tree stem ! 
 Haply it was the workings of its pride. 
 In strife to throw upon the shore a gem 
 Outvieing all the buds in Flora's diadem. 
 
 ******* 
 
 WOMAN ! when I behold thee flippant, vain. 
 Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies ; 
 
 Without that modest softening that enhances 
 The downcast eye, repentant of the pain 
 That its mild light creates to heal again : 
 
 E'en then, elate, my spirit leaps, and prances. 
 
 E'en then my soul with exultation dances 
 For that to love, so long, I've dormant lain : 
 But when I see thee meek, and kind, and tender. 
 
 Heavens ! how desperately do I adore 10 
 
 Thy winning graces ; — to be thy defender 
 
 I hotly burn — to be a Calidore — 
 A very Red Cross Knight — a stout Leander — 
 
 Might I be loved by thee like these of yore. 
 
 Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair ; 
 
 Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast. 
 
 Are things on which the dazzled senses rest 
 Till the fond, fixed eyes, forget they stare. 
 From such fine pictures, heavens ! I cannot dare 
 
 To turn my admiration, though unpossess'd 20 
 
 They be of what is worthy, — though not drest 
 In lovely modesty, and virtues rare. 
 Yet these I leave as thoughtless as a lark ; 
 
 These lures I straight forget, — e'en ere I dine. 
 Or thrice my palate moisten : but when I mai'k 
 
 Such charms with mild intelligences shine, 
 My ear is open like a greedy shark. 
 
 To catch the tunings of a voice divine. 
 
 Ah ! who can e'er forget so fair a being ? 
 
 Who can forget her half retiring sweets ? 30 
 
 God ! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats
 
 WOMAN! WHEN I BEHOLD THEE 21 
 
 For man's protection. Surely the All-seeing, 
 Who joys to see us with his gifts agreeing. 
 
 Will never give him pinions, who intreats 
 
 Such innocence to ruin, — who vilely cheats 
 A dove-like bosom. In truth there is no freeing 
 One's thoughts from such a beauty ; when I hear 
 
 A lay that once I saw her hand awake. 
 Her form seems floating palpable, and near ; 
 
 Had I e'er seen her from an arbour take 40 
 
 A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear. 
 
 And o'er my eyes the trembling moisture shake.
 
 22 JOHN KEATS 
 
 EPISTLES 
 
 " Among the rest a shepheard (though but young 
 Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill 
 His few yeeres could, began to fit his quill." 
 
 Britannia s Pastora-ls. — Browne. 
 
 TO 
 
 GEORGE FELTON MATHEW 
 
 SWEET are the pleasures that to verse belong. 
 And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song ; 
 Nor can remembrance, Mathew ! bring to view 
 A fate more pleasing, a delight more true 
 Than that in which the brother Poets joy'd. 
 Who with combined powers, their wit employ'd 
 To raise a trophy to the drama's muses. 
 The thought of this great partnership diffuses 
 Over the genius loving heart, a feeling 
 Of all that's high, and great, and good, and healing. lo 
 
 Too partial friend ! fain would I follow thee 
 
 Past each horizon of fine poesy ; 
 
 Fain would I echo back each pleasant note 
 
 As o'er Sicilian seas, clear anthems float 
 
 'Mong the light skimming gondolas far parted. 
 
 Just when the sun his farewell beam has darted : 
 
 But 'tis impossible ; far different cares 
 
 Beckon me sternly from soft " Lydian airs," 
 
 And hold my faculties so long in thrall, 
 
 That I am oft in doubt whether at all 20 
 
 I shall again see Phoebus in the morning : 
 
 Or flush'd Aurora in the roseate dawning ! 
 
 Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream ; 
 
 Or a rapt sei-aph in a moonlight beam ; 
 
 Or again witness what with thee I've seen. 
 
 The dew by fairy feet swept from the green.
 
 EPISTLE TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW 23 
 
 After a night of some quaint jubilee 
 
 Which every elf and fay had come to see : 
 
 When bright processions took their airy march 
 
 Beneath the curved moon's triumphal arch. 30 
 
 But might I now each passing moment give 
 
 To the coy muse, with me she would not live 
 
 In this dark city, nor would condescend 
 
 'Mid contradictions her delights to lend. 
 
 Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind, 
 
 Ah ! surely it must be whene'er I find 
 
 Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic, 
 
 That often must have seen a poet frantic ; 
 
 Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing. 
 
 And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing ; 40 
 
 Where the dark-leav'd laburnum's drooping clusters 
 
 Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres, 
 
 And intertwin'd the cassia's arms unite. 
 
 With its own drooping buds, but very white. 
 
 Where on one side are covert branches hung, 
 
 'Mong which the nightingales have always sung 
 
 In leafy quiet : where to pry, aloof, 
 
 Atween the pillars of the sylvan I'oof, 
 
 Would be to find where violet beds were nestling. 
 
 And where the bee with cowslip bells was wrestling. 50 
 
 There must be too a ruin dark, and gloomy. 
 
 To say "joy not too much in all that's bloomy." 
 
 Yet this is vain — O Mathew lend thy aid 
 
 To find a place where I may greet the maid — 
 
 Where we may soft humanity put on. 
 
 And sit, and rhyme and think on Chatterton ; 
 
 And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him 
 
 Four laurell'd spirits, heaven-ward to intreat him. 
 
 With reverence would we speak of all the sages 
 
 Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages : 60 
 
 And thou shouldst moralize on Milton's blindness. 
 
 And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness 
 
 To those who strove with the bright golden wing 
 
 Of genius, to flap away each sting 
 
 Thrown by the pitiless world. We next could tell 
 
 Of those who in the cause of freedom fell ; 
 
 Of our own Alfred, of Helvetian Tell ; 
 
 Of him whose name to ev'ry heart's a solace. 
 
 High-minded and unbending William Wallace. 
 
 While to the rugged north our musing turns 70 
 
 We well might drop a tear for him, and Burns.
 
 24 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Felton ! without incitements such as these. 
 
 How vain lor me the niggard Muse to tease : 
 
 For thee, she will thy every dwelling grace. 
 
 And make "a sun-shine in a shady place : " 
 
 For thou wast once a flowret blooming wild, 
 
 Close to the source, bright, pure, and undefil'd, 
 
 Whence gush the streams of song : in happy hour 
 
 Came chaste Diana fi-om her shady bower. 
 
 Just as the sun was from the east uprising ; 80 
 
 And, as for him some gift she was devising, 
 
 Beheld thee, pluck'd thee, cast thee in the stream 
 
 To meet her glorious brother's greeting beam. 
 
 I marvel much that thou hast never told 
 
 How, from a flower, into a fish of gold 
 
 Apollo chang'd thee ; how thou next didst seem 
 
 A black-eyed swan upon the widening stream ; 
 
 And when thou first didst in that mirror trace 
 
 The placid features of a human face : 
 
 That thou hast never told thy travels strange, go 
 
 And all the wonders of the mazy range 
 
 O'er pebbly crystal, and o'er golden sands ; 
 
 Kissing thy daily food from Naiad's pearly hands. 
 
 November, 18 15. 
 
 TO 
 
 MY BROTHER GEORGE 
 
 FULL many a dreary hour have I past. 
 My brain bewilder'd, and my mind o'ercast 
 With heaviness ; in seasons when I've thought 
 No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught 
 From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze 
 On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays ; 
 Or, on the wavy grass outstretch'd supinely, 
 Piy 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely : 
 That I should never hear Apollo's song, 
 
 Though feathery clouds were floating all along 10 
 
 The purple west, and, two bright streaks between. 
 The golden lyre itself were dimly seen : 
 That the still murmur of the honey bee 
 Would never teach a rural song to me : 
 That the bright glance from beauty's eyelids slanting 
 W^ould never make a lay of mine enchanting.
 
 EPISTLE TO GEORGE KEATS 25 
 
 Or warm my breast with ardour to unfold 
 Some tale of love and arms in time of old. 
 
 But there are times, when those that love the bay. 
 
 Fly from all sorrowing far, far away ; 20 
 
 A sudden glow comes on them, nought they see 
 
 In water, earth, or air, but poesy. 
 
 It has been said, dear George, and true I hold it, 
 
 (For knightly Spenser to Libertas told it,) 
 
 That when a Poet is in such a trance, 
 
 In air he sees white coursers paw, and prance. 
 
 Bestridden of gay knights, in gay apparel. 
 
 Who at each other tilt in playful quarrel. 
 
 And what we, ignorantly, sheet-lightning call, 
 
 Is the swift opening of their wide portal, 30 
 
 When the bright warder blows his trumpet clear. 
 
 Whose tones reach nought on earth but Poet's ear. 
 
 When these enchanted portals open wide. 
 
 And through the light the horsemen swiftly glide, 
 
 The Poet's eye can reach those golden halls. 
 
 And view the glory of their festivals : 
 
 Their ladies fair, that in the distance seem 
 
 Fit for the silv'ring of a seraph's dream ; 
 
 Their rich brimm'd goblets, that incessant run 
 
 Like the bright spots that move about the sun ; 40 
 
 And, when upheld, the wine from each bright jar 
 
 Pours with the lustre of a falling star. 
 
 Yet further off, are dimly seen their bowers. 
 
 Of which, no mortal eye can reach the flowers ; 
 
 And 'tis right just, for well Apollo knows 
 
 'Twould make the Poet quarrel with the rose. 
 
 All that's reveal'd from that far seat of blisses. 
 
 Is, the clear fountains' interchanging kisses. 
 
 As gracefully descending, light and thin. 
 
 Like silver streaks across a dolphin's fin, 50 
 
 When he upswimmeth from the coral caves. 
 
 And sports with half his tail above the waves. 
 
 These wonders strange he sees, and many more. 
 
 Whose head is pregnant with poetic lore. 
 
 Should he upon an evening ramble fare 
 
 With forehead to the soothing breezes bare. 
 
 Would he naught see but the dark, silent blue 
 
 With all its dianaonds trembling through and through ? 
 
 Or the coy moon, when in the waviness 
 
 Of whitest clouds she does her beauty dress, 60 
 
 And staidly paces higher up, and higher,
 
 26 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Like a sweet nun in holy-day attire ? 
 
 Ah, yes ! much more would start into his sight — 
 
 The revelries, and mysteries of night : 
 
 And should I ever see them, I will tell you 
 
 Such tales as needs must with amazement spell you. 
 
 These are the living pleasures of the bard : 
 
 But richer far posterity's award. 
 
 What does he murmur with his latest breath. 
 
 While his proud eye looks through the film of death ? 70 
 
 "What though I leave this dull, and earthly mould. 
 
 Yet shall my spirit lofty converse hold 
 
 With after times. — The patriot shall feel 
 
 My stem alarum, and unsheath his steel ; 
 
 Or, in the senate thunder out my numbers 
 
 To startle princes from their easy slumbers. 
 
 The sage will mingle with each moral theme 
 
 My happy thoughts sententious ; he will teem 
 
 With lofty periods when my verses fire him, 
 
 And then I'll stoop from heaven to inspire him. 80 
 
 Lays have I left of such a dear delight 
 
 That maids will sing them on their bridal night. 
 
 Gay villagers, upon a morn of May, 
 
 When they have tir'd their gentle limbs with play, 
 
 And form'd a snowy circle on the grass, 
 
 And plac'd in midst of all that lovely lass 
 
 Who chosen is their queen, — with her fine head 
 
 Crowned with flowers purple, white, and red : 
 
 For there the lily, and the musk-rose, sighing. 
 
 Are emblems true of hapless lovers dying : 90 
 
 Between her breasts, that never yet felt trouble, 
 
 A bunch of violets full blown, and double. 
 
 Serenely sleep : — she from a casket takes 
 
 A little book, — and then a joy awakes 
 
 About each youthful heart, — with stifled cries. 
 
 And rubbing of white hands, and sparkling eyes : 
 
 For she's to read a tale of hopes, and fears ; 
 
 One that I foster'd in my youthful years : 
 
 The pearls, that on each glist'ning circlet sleep. 
 
 Gush ever and anon with silent creep, 100 
 
 Lur'd by the innocent dimples. To sweet rest 
 
 Shall the dear babe, upon its mother's breast. 
 
 Be luU'd with songs of mine. Fair world, adieu ! 
 
 Thy dales, and hills, are fading from my view : 
 
 Swiftly I mount, upon wide spreading pinions. 
 
 Far from the narrow bounds of thy dominions. 
 
 Full joy I feel, while thus I cleave the air.
 
 EPISTLE TO GEORGE KEATS 27 
 
 That my soft verse will charm thy daughters fair. 
 
 And warm thy sons ! " Ah, my dear friend and brother, 
 
 Could I, at once, my mad ambition smother, no 
 
 For tasting joys like these, sure I should be 
 
 Happier, and dearer to society. 
 
 At times, 'tis true, I've felt relief from pain 
 
 When some bright thought has darted through my brain : 
 
 Through all that day I've felt a greater pleasure 
 
 Than if I'd brought to light a hidden treasure. 
 
 As to my sonnets, though none else should heed them, 
 
 I feel delighted, still, that you should read them. 
 
 Of late, too, I have had much calm enjoyment, 
 
 Stretch'd on the grass at my best lov'd employment 120 
 
 Of scribbling lines for you. These things I thought 
 
 While, in my face, the freshest breeze I caught. 
 
 E'en now I'm pillow'd on a bed of flowers 
 
 That crowns a lofty clift, which proudly towers 
 
 Above the ocean-waves. The stalks, and blades, 
 
 Chequer my tablet with their quivering shades. 
 
 On one side is a field of drooping oats. 
 
 Through which the poppies show their scarlet coats ; 
 
 So pert and useless, that they bring to mind 
 
 The scarlet coats that pester human-kind. 130 
 
 And on the other side, outspread, is seen 
 
 Ocean's blue mantle streak'd with purple, and green. 
 
 Now 'tis I see a canvass'd ship, and now 
 
 Mark the bright silver curling round her prow. 
 
 I see the lark down-dropping to his nest. 
 
 And the broad winged sea-gull never at rest ; 
 
 For when no more he spreads his feathers free, 
 
 His breast is dancing on the restless sea. 
 
 Now I direct my eyes into the west. 
 
 Which at this moment is in sunbeams drest : 140 
 
 Why westward turn ? 'Twas but to say adieu ! 
 
 'Twas but to kiss my hand, dear George, to you ! 
 
 August, 1816. 
 
 TO 
 
 CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE 
 
 OFT have you seen a swan superbly frowning. 
 And with proud breast his own white shadow crowning ; 
 He slants his neck beneath the waters bright 
 So silently, it seems a beam of light
 
 28 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Come from the galaxy : anon he sports, — 
 
 With outspread wings the Naiad Zephyr courts, 
 
 Or ruffles all the surface of the lake 
 
 In striving from its crystal face to take 
 
 Some diamond water drops, and them to treasure 
 
 In milky nest, and sip them off at leisure. iq 
 
 But not a moment can he there insure them, 
 
 Nor to such downy rest can he allure them ; 
 
 For down they rush as though they would be free. 
 
 And drop like hours into eternity. 
 
 Just like that bird am I in loss of time. 
 
 Whene'er I venture on the stream of rhyme ; 
 
 With shatter'd boat, oar snapt, and canvass rent, 
 
 I slowly sail, scarce knowing my intent ; 
 
 Still scooping up the water with my fingers. 
 
 In which a trembling diamond never lingers. 20 
 
 By this, friend Charles, you may full plainly see 
 
 Why I have never penn'd a line to thee : 
 
 Because my thoughts were never free, and clear. 
 
 And little fit to please a classic ear ; 
 
 Because my wine was of too poor a savour 
 
 For one whose palate gladdens in the flavour 
 
 Of sparkling Helicon : — small good it were 
 
 To take him to a desert rude, and bare. 
 
 Who had on Baise's shore reclin'd at ease, 
 
 While Tasso's page was floating in a breeze 
 
 That gave soft music from Armida's bowers. 
 
 Mingled with fragrance from her rarest flowers : 
 
 Small good to one who had by Mulla's stream 
 
 Fondled the maidens with the breasts of cream ; 
 
 Who had beheld Belphoebe in a brook, 
 
 And lovely Una in a leafy nook. 
 
 And Archimago leaning o'er his book : 
 
 Who had of all that's sweet tasted, and seen. 
 
 From silv'ry ripple, up to beauty's queen ; 
 
 From the sequester'd haunts of gay Titania, 
 
 To the blue dwelling of divine Urania : 
 
 One, who, of late, had ta'en sweet forest walks 
 
 With him who elegantly chats, and talks — 
 
 The wrong'd Libertas, — who has told you stories 
 
 Of laurel chaplets, and Apollo's glories ; 
 
 Of troops chivalrous prancing through a city, 
 
 And tearful ladies made for love, and pity : 
 
 With many else which I have never known. 
 
 Thus have I thought ; and days on days have flown 
 
 Slowly, or rapidly— unwilling still 5^ 
 
 30 
 
 40
 
 EPISTLE TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE 29 
 
 For you to try my dull, unlearned quill. 
 
 Nor should I now, but that I've known you long ; 
 
 That you first taught me all the sweets of song : 
 
 The grand, the sweet, the terse, the free, the fine ; 
 
 What swell'd with pathos, and what right divine : 
 
 Spenserian vowels that elope with ease. 
 
 And float along like birds o'er summer seas ; 
 
 Miltonian storms, and more, Miltonian tenderness ; 
 
 Michael in arms, and more, meek Eve's fair slenderness. 
 
 Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly 60 
 
 Up to its climax and then dying proudly ? 
 
 Who found for me the grandeur of the ode. 
 
 Growing, like Atlas, stronger from its load ? 
 
 Who let me taste that more than cordial dram, 
 
 The sharp, tlie rapier-pointed epigram ? 
 
 Show'd me that epic was of all the king. 
 
 Round, vast, and spanning all like Saturn's ring ? 
 
 You too upheld the veil from Clio's beauty. 
 
 And pointed out the patriot's stem duty ; 
 
 The might of Alfred, and the shaft of Tell ; 70 
 
 The hand of Brutus, that so grandly fell 
 
 Upon a tyrant's head. Ah ! had I never seen 
 
 Or known your kindness, what might I have been .'' 
 What my enjoyments in my youthful years. 
 
 Bereft of all that now my life endears ? 
 
 And can I e'er these benefits forget ? 
 
 And can 1 e'er repay the friendly debt ? 
 
 No, doubly no ; — yet should these rhymings please, 
 
 I shall roll on the grass with two-fold ease : 
 
 For I have long time been my fancy feeding 80 
 
 With hopes that you would one day think the reading 
 
 Of my rough verses not an hour misspent ; 
 
 Should it e'er be so, what a rich content ! 
 
 Some weeks have pass'd since last I saw the spires 
 
 In lucent Thames reflected : — warm desires 
 
 To see the sun o'erpeep the eastern dimness. 
 
 And morning shadows streaking into slimness 
 
 Across the lawny fields, and pebbly water ; 
 
 To mark the time as they grow broad, and shorter ; 
 
 To feel the air that plays about the hills, 90 
 
 And sips its fi'eshness from the little rills ; 
 
 To see high, golden corn wave in the light 
 
 When Cynthia smiles upon a summer's night. 
 
 And peers among the cloudlets jet and white. 
 
 As though she were reclining in a bed 
 
 Of bean blossoms, in heaven freshly shed. 
 
 No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures
 
 30 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Than I began to think of rhymes and measures : 
 
 The air that floated by me seem'd to say 
 
 "Write ! thou wilt never have a better day." loo 
 
 And so I did. When many hnes I'd written, 
 
 Though with their grace I was not oversmitten. 
 
 Yet, as my hand was warm, I thought I'd better 
 
 Trust to my feeUngs, and write you a letter. 
 
 Such an attempt requir'd an inspiration 
 
 Of a peculiar sort, — a consummation ; — 
 
 Which, had I felt, these scribblings might have been 
 
 Verses from which the soul would never wean : 
 
 But many days have passed since last my heart 
 
 Was warm'd luxuriously by divine Mozart ; no 
 
 By Arne delighted, or by Handel madden'd ; 
 
 Or by the song of Erin pierc'd and sadden'd : 
 
 What time you were before the music sitting. 
 
 And the rich notes to each sensation fitting. 
 
 Since I have walk'd with you through shady lanes 
 
 That freshly terminate in open plains. 
 
 And revel 'd in a chat that ceased not 
 
 When at night-fall among your books we got : 
 
 No, nor when supper came, nor after that, — 
 
 Nor when reluctantly I took my hat ; 120 
 
 No, nor till cordially you shook my hand 
 
 Mid-way between our homes : — your accents bland 
 
 Still sounded in my ears, when I no more 
 
 Could hear your footsteps touch the grav'ly floor. 
 
 Sometimes I lost them, and then found again ; 
 
 You chang'd the footpath for the grassy plain. 
 
 In those still moments I have wish'd you joys 
 
 That well you know to honor : — " Life's very toys 
 
 With him," said I, "will take a pleasant charm ; 
 
 It cannot be that ought will work him harm." 130 
 
 These thoughts now come o'er me with all their might : — 
 
 Again I shake your hand, — friend Charles, good night. 
 
 September, 1816.
 
 SONNETS 
 
 TO MY BROTHER GEORGE 
 
 MANY the wonders I this day have seen : 
 The sun, when first he kist away the tears 
 
 That fiU'd the eyes of morn ; — the laurel'd peers 
 Who from the feathery gold of evening lean ; — 
 The ocean with its vastness, its blue green, 
 
 Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,— 
 
 Its voice mysterious, which whoso hears 
 Must think on what will be, and what has been. 
 E'en now, dear George, while this for you I write, 
 
 Cynthia is from her silken curtains peeping 
 So scantly, that it seems her bridal night. 
 
 And she her half-discover' d revels keeping. 
 But what, without the social thought of thee. 
 Would be the wonders of the sky and sea ? 
 
 II 
 
 HAD I a man's fair form, then might my sighs 
 Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell 
 Thine ear, and find thy gentle heart ; so well 
 Would passion arm me for the enterprize : 
 But ah ! I am no knight whose foeman dies ; 
 No cuirass glistens on my bosom's swell ; 
 I am no happy shepherd of the dell 
 Whose lips have trembled with a maiden's eyes. 
 Yet must I dote upon thee, — call thee sweet. 
 Sweeter by far than Hybla's honied roses 
 When steep'd in dew rich to intoxication. 
 Ah ! I will taste that dew, for me 'tis meet. 
 And when the moon her pallid face discloses, 
 I'll gather some by spells, and incantation.
 
 32 JOHN KEATS 
 
 III 
 
 Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Htmt left Prison 
 
 WHAT though, for showing truth to flatter' d state. 
 Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he. 
 
 In his immortal spirit, been as free 
 As the sky-searching lark, and as elate. 
 Minion of grandeur ! think you he did wait ? 
 
 Think you he nought but prison walls did see. 
 
 Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key ? 
 Ah, no ! far happier, nobler was his fate ! 
 In Spenser's halls he strayed, and bowers fair. 
 
 Culling enchanted flowers ; and he flew 
 With daring Milton through the fields of air : 
 
 To regions of his own his genius true 
 Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair 
 
 When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew ? 
 
 IV 
 
 HOW many bards gild the lapses of time ! 
 A few of them have ever been the food 
 Of my delighted fancy, — I could brood 
 
 Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime : 
 
 And often, when I sit me down to rhyme. 
 
 These will in throngs before my mind intrude : 
 But no confusion, no disturbance rude 
 
 Do they occasion ; 'tis a pleasing chime. 
 
 So the unnumber'd sounds that evening store : 
 The songs of birds — the whisp'ring of the leaves- 
 The voice of waters — the great bell that heaves 
 
 With solemn sound, — and thousand others more. 
 That distance of recognizance bereaves. 
 
 Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.
 
 SONNETS 33 
 
 To a Friend who sent me some Roses 
 
 AS late I rambled in the happy fields. 
 What time the sky-lark shakes the tremulous dew 
 
 From his lush clover covert ; — when anew 
 Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields : 
 I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields, 
 
 A fresh-blown musk-rose ; 'twas the first that threw 
 
 Its sweets upon the summer : graceful it grew 
 As is the wand that queen Titania wields. 
 And, as I feasted on its fragrancy, 
 
 I thought the garden-rose it far excell'd : 
 But when, O Wells ! thy roses came to me 
 
 My sense with their deliciousness was spell'd : 
 Soft voices had they, that with tender plea 
 
 Whisper'd of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquell'd. 
 
 VI 
 TO G. A. W. 
 
 N' YMPH of the downward smile, and sidelong glance. 
 In what diviner moments of the day 
 
 Art thou most lovely ? — when gone far astray 
 Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance. 
 Or when serenely wand' ring in a trance 
 
 Of sober thought ? — or when starting away 
 
 With careless robe, to meet the morning ray. 
 Thou spar'st the flowers in thy mazy dance ? 
 Haply 'tis when thy ruby lips part sweetly. 
 
 And so remain, because thou listenest : 
 But thou to please wert nurtured so completely 
 
 That I can never tell what mood is best. 
 I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly 
 
 Trips it before Apollo than the rest.
 
 34 JOHN KEATS 
 
 VII 
 
 O SOLITUDE ! if I must with thee dwell, 
 Let it not be among the jumbled heap 
 Of murky buildings ; climb with me the steep, — 
 
 Nature's observatory — whence the dell, 
 
 Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, 
 May seem a span ; let me thy vigils keep 
 'Mongst boughs pavillion'd, where the deer's swift leap 
 
 Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. 
 
 But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee. 
 Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind. 
 Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd, 
 
 Is my soul's pleasure ; and it sure must be 
 Almost the highest bliss of human-kind. 
 
 When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. 
 
 VIII 
 TO MY BROTHERS 
 
 SMALL, busy flames play through the fresh laid coals. 
 And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep 
 
 Like whispers of the household gods that keep 
 A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls. 
 And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles. 
 
 Your eyes are fix'd, as in poetic sleep. 
 
 Upon the lore so voluble and deep, 
 That aye at fall of night our care condoles. 
 This is your birth-day Tom, and I rejoice 
 
 That thus it passes smoothly, quietly. 
 Many such eves of gently whisp'ring noise 
 
 May we together pass, and calmly try 
 What are this world's true joys, — ere the great voice, 
 
 From its fair face, shall bid our spirits fly. 
 
 November i8, 1816,
 
 SONNETS So 
 
 IX 
 
 KEEN, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there 
 Among the bushes half leafless, and dry ; 
 
 The stars look very cold about the sky. 
 And I have many miles on foot to fare. 
 Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air. 
 
 Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily. 
 
 Or of those silver lamps that burn on high. 
 Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair : 
 For I am brimfull of the friendliness 
 
 That in a little cottage I have found ; 
 Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress. 
 
 And all his love for gentle Lycid drow^n'd ; 
 Of lovely Laura in her light green dress. 
 
 And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd. 
 
 TO one who has been long in city pent, 
 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair 
 
 And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer 
 Full in the smile of the blue firmament. 
 Who is more happy, when, with heart's content. 
 
 Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair 
 
 Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair 
 And gentle tale of love and languishment ? 
 Returning home at evening, with an ear 
 
 Catching the notes of Philomel, — an eye 
 Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career. 
 
 He mourns that day so soon has glided by : 
 E'en like the passage of an angel's tear 
 
 That falls through the clear ether silently.
 
 36 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XI 
 
 Oh Jirst looking into Chapman's Homer 
 
 MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen , 
 
 Round many western islands have I been 
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
 
 That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne ; 
 
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : 
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
 
 When a new planet swims into his ken ; 
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
 
 He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
 Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — 
 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 
 
 XII 
 
 On leavifig some Friends at an early Hour 
 
 GIVE me a golden pen, and let me lean 
 On heap'd up flowers, in regions clear, and far ; 
 Bring me a tablet whiter than a star. 
 Or hand of hymning angel, when 'tis seen 
 The silver strings of heavenly harp atween : 
 And let there glide by many a pearly car. 
 Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar. 
 And half discovered wings, and glances keen. 
 The while let music wander round my ears. 
 And as it reaches each delicious ending, 
 Let me write down a line of glorious tone. 
 And full of many wonders of the spheres : 
 For what a height my spirit is contending ! 
 'Tis not content so soon to be alone.
 
 SONNETS 37 
 
 XIII 
 
 ADDRESSED TO HAYDON 
 
 HIGHMINDEDNESS, a jealousy for good, 
 A loving-kindness for the great man's fame, 
 
 Dwells here and there with people of no name, 
 In noisome alley, and in pathless wood : 
 And where we think the truth least understood. 
 
 Oft may be found a " singleness of aim," 
 
 That ought to frighten into hooded shame 
 A money-mong'ring, pitiable brood. 
 How glorious this affection for the cause 
 
 Of stedfast genius, toiling gallantly ! 
 What when a stout unbending champion awes 
 
 Envy, and Malice to their native sty ? 
 Unnumber'd souls breathe out a still applause, 
 
 Proud to behold him in his country's eye. 
 
 XIV 
 ADDRESSED TO THE SAME 
 
 GREAT spirits now on earth are sojourning ; 
 He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake, 
 
 Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake. 
 Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing : 
 He of the rose, the violet, the spring, 
 
 The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake : 
 
 And lo ! — whose stedfastness would never take 
 A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering. 
 And other spirits there are standing apart 
 
 Upon the forehead of the age to come ; 
 These, these will give the world another heart. 
 
 And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum 
 Of mighty workings ? 
 
 Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.
 
 38 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XV 
 
 On the Grasshopper and Cricket 
 
 THE poetry of earth is never dead : 
 When all the birds are faint with the hot sun. 
 And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 
 From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead ; 
 That is the Grasshopper's — he takes the lead 
 In summer luxury, — he has never done 
 With his delights ; for when tired out with fun 
 He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. 
 The poetry of earth is ceasing never : 
 
 On a lone winter evening, when the frost 
 
 Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills 
 The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever. 
 And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, 
 The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. 
 December 30, 1816. 
 
 XVI 
 TO KOSCIUSKO 
 
 GOOD Kosciusko, thy great name alone 
 Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling ; 
 It comes upon us like the glorious pealing 
 Of the wide spheres — an everlasting tone. 
 And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown. 
 
 The names of heroes burst from clouds concealing. 
 And change to harmonies, for ever stealing 
 Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne. 
 It tells me too, that on a happy day. 
 
 When some good spirit walks upon the earth, 
 
 Thy naine with Alfred's, and the great of yore 
 Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth 
 To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away 
 
 To where the great God lives for evermore.
 
 SONNETS 39 
 
 XVII 
 
 HAPPY is England ! I could be content 
 To see no other verdure than its own ; 
 To feel no other breezes than are blown 
 Through its tall woods with high romances blent : 
 Yet do I sometimes feel a languishraent 
 For skies Italian, and an inward groan 
 To sit upon an Alp as on a throne. 
 And half forget what world or worldling meant. 
 Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters ; 
 Enough their simple loveliness for me. 
 
 Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging : 
 Yet do I often warmly burn to see 
 
 Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing. 
 And float with them about the summer waters.
 
 40 JOHN KEATS 
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY 
 
 " As I lay in my bed slepe full unmete 
 Was unto me, but why that I ne might 
 Rest I ne wist, for there n'as erthly wight 
 [As I suppose] had more of hertis ese 
 Than I, for I n'ad sicknesse nor disese." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 WHAT is more gentle than a wind in summer ? 
 What is more soothing than the pretty hummer 
 That stays one moment in an open flower. 
 And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower ? 
 What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing 
 In a gi'een island, far from all men's knowing ? 
 More healthful than the leafiness of dales ? 
 More secret than a nest of nightingales ? 
 More serene than Cordelia's countenance ? 
 More full of visions than a high romance ? lo 
 
 What, but thee Sleep ? Soft closer of our eyes ! 
 Low murmurer of tender lullabies ! 
 Light hoverer around our happy pillows ! 
 Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows ! 
 Silent entangler of a beauty's tresses ! 
 Most happy listener ! when the morning blesses 
 Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes 
 That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise. 
 
 But what is higher beyond thought than thee ? 
 
 Fresher than berries of a mountain tree ? 20 
 
 More strange, more beautiful, more smooth, more regal. 
 
 Than wings of swans, than doves, than dim-seen eagle ? 
 
 What is it ? And to what shall I compare it ? 
 
 It has a glory, and nought else can share it : 
 
 The thought thereof is awful, sweet, and holy, 
 
 Chacing away all worldlmess and foUy ; 
 
 Coming sometimes like fearful claps of thunder. 
 
 Or the low rumblings earth's regions under ; 
 
 And sometimes like a gentle whispering 
 
 Of all the secrets of some wond'rous thing 30
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY 41 
 
 That breathes about us in the vacant air ; 
 
 So that we look around with prying stare. 
 
 Perhaps to see shapes of light, aerial lymning. 
 
 And catch soft floatings from a faint-heard hymning ; 
 
 To see the laurel wreath, on high suspended, 
 
 That is to crown our name when life is ended. 
 
 Sometimes it gives a glory to the voice. 
 
 And from the heart up-springs, rejoice ! rejoice ! 
 
 Sounds which will reach the Framer of all things. 
 
 And die away in ardent mutterings. 40 
 
 No one who once the glorious sun has seen. 
 And all the clouds, and felt his bosom clean 
 For his great Maker's presence, but must know 
 What 'tis I mean, and feel his being glow : 
 Therefore no insult will I give his spirit, 
 By telling what he sees from native merit. 
 
 O Poesy ! for thee I hold my pen 
 
 That am not yet a glorious denizen 
 
 Of thy wide heaven — Should I rather kneel 
 
 Upon some mountain-top until I feel 50 
 
 A glowing splendour round about me hung. 
 
 And echo back the voice of thine own tongue .'' 
 
 O Poesy ! for thee I grasp my pen 
 
 That am not yet a glorious denizen 
 
 Of thy wide heaven ; yet, to my ardent prayer. 
 
 Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air. 
 
 Smoothed for intoxication by the breath 
 
 Of flowering bays, that I may die a death 
 
 Of luxury, and my young spirit follow 
 
 The morning sun-beams to the great Apollo 60 
 
 hike a fresh sacrifice ; or, if I can bear 
 
 The o'erwhelming sweets, 'twill bring to me the fair 
 
 Visions of all places : a bowery nook 
 
 Will be elysium — an eternal book 
 
 Whence I may copy many a lovely saying 
 
 About the leaves, and flowers — about the playing 
 
 Of nymphs in woods, and fountains ; and the shade 
 
 Keeping a silence round a sleeping maid ; 
 
 And many a verse from so strange influence 
 
 That we must ever wonder how, and whence 70 
 
 It came. Also imaginings will hover 
 
 Round my fire-side, and haply there discover 
 
 Vistas of solemn beauty, where Pd wander 
 
 in happy silence, like the clear Meander
 
 42 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Through its lone vales ; and where I found a spot 
 
 Of awfuller shade, or an enchanted grot. 
 
 Or a green hill o'erspread with chequered dress 
 
 Of flowei-s, and fearful from its lovehness, 
 
 Write on my tablets all that was permitted. 
 
 All that was for our human senses fitted. 80 
 
 Then the events of this wide world I'd seize 
 
 Like a strong giant, and my spirit teaze 
 
 Till at its shoulders it should proudly see 
 
 Wings to find out an immortality. 
 
 Stop and consider ! life is but a day ; 
 
 A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way 
 
 From a tree's summit ; a poor Indian's sleep 
 
 While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep 
 
 Of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan .'' 
 
 Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown ; 90 
 
 The reading of an evei'-changing tale ; 
 
 The light uplifting of a maiden's veil ; 
 
 A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air ; 
 
 A laughing school-boy, without grief or care. 
 
 Riding the springy branches of an elm. 
 
 O for ten years, that I may overwhelm 
 
 Myself in poesy ; so I may do the deed 
 
 That my own soul has to itself decreed. 
 
 Then will I pass the countries that I see 
 
 In long perspective, and continually 100 
 
 Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass 
 
 Of Flora, and old Pan : sleep in the grass, 
 
 Feed upon apples red, and strawberries. 
 
 And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees ; 
 
 Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places. 
 
 To woo sweet kisses from averted faces, — 
 
 Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white 
 
 Into a pretty shrinking with a bite 
 
 As hard as lips can make it : till agreed, 
 
 A lovely tale of human life we'll read. no 
 
 And one will teach a tame dove how it best 
 
 May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest ; 
 
 Another, bending o'er her nimble tread. 
 
 Will set a green robe floating round her head. 
 
 And still ^vill dance with ever varied ease. 
 
 Smiling upon the flowers and the trees : 
 
 Another will entice me on, and on 
 
 Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon ;
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY 43 
 
 Till in the bosom of a leafy world 
 
 We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd 120 
 
 In the recesses of a pearly shell. 
 
 And can I ever bid these joys farewell ? 
 
 Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life. 
 
 Where 1 may find the agonies, the strife 
 
 Of human hearts : for lo ! I see afar. 
 
 O'er sailing the blue cragginess, a car 
 
 And steeds with streamy manes — the charioteer 
 
 Looks out upon the winds with glorious fear : 
 
 And now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly 
 
 Along a huge cloud's ridge ; and now with sprightly 130 
 
 Wheel downward come they into fresher skies, 
 
 Tipt round with silver from the sun's bright eyes. 
 
 Still downward with capacious whirl they glide ; 
 
 And now I see them on a green-hill's side 
 
 In breezy rest among the nodding stalks. 
 
 The charioteer with wond'rous gesture talks 
 
 To the trees and mountains ; and there soon appear 
 
 Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear. 
 
 Passing along before a dusky space 
 
 Made by some mighty oaks : as they would chase 140 
 
 Some ever-fleeting music on they sweep. 
 
 Lo ! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep : 
 
 Some with upholden hand and mouth severe ; 
 
 Some with their faces muffled to the ear 
 
 Between their arms ; some, clear in youthful bloom. 
 
 Go glad and smilingly athwart the gloom ; 
 
 Some looking back, and some with upward gaze ; 
 
 Yes, thousands in a thousand different ways 
 
 Flit onward — now a lovely wreath of girls 
 
 Dancing their sleek hair into tangled curls ; 150 
 
 And now broad wings. Most awfully intent 
 
 The driver of those steeds is forward bent. 
 
 And seems to listen : O that I might know 
 
 All that he writes with such a hurrying glow. 
 
 The visions all are fled — the car is fled 
 
 Into the light of heaven, and in their stead 
 
 A sense of real things comes doubly strong. 
 
 And, like a muddy stream, would bear along 
 
 My soul to nothingness : but I will strive 
 
 Against all doubtings, and will keep alive 160 
 
 The thought of that same chariot, and the strange 
 
 Journey it went.
 
 44 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Is there so small a range 
 In the present strength of manhood, that the high 
 Imagination cannot freely fly 
 As she was wont of old ? prepare her steeds, 
 Paw up against the light, and do strange deeds 
 Upon the clouds ? Has she not shown us all ? 
 From the clear space of ether, to the small 
 Breath of new buds unfolding ? From the meaning 
 Of Jove's large eye-brow, to the tender greening 170 
 
 Of April meadows ? Here her altar shone, 
 E'en in this isle ; and who could paragon 
 The fervid choir that Ufted up a noise 
 Of harmony, to where it aye will poise 
 Its mighty self of convoluting sound, 
 Huge as a planet, and like that roll round, 
 Eternally around a dizzy void ? 
 Ay, in those days the Muses were nigh eloy'd 
 With honors ; nor had any other care 
 Than to sing out and sooth their wavy hair. 180 
 
 Could all this be forgotten ? Yes, a schism 
 
 Nurtured by foppery and barbarism. 
 
 Made great Apollo blush for this his land. 
 
 Men were thought wise who could not understand 
 
 His glories : with a puling infant's force 
 
 They sway'd about upon a rocking horse. 
 
 And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal soul'd ! 
 
 The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roU'd 
 
 Its gathering waves — ye felt it not. The blue 
 
 Bared its etei-nal bosom, and the dew 190 
 
 Of summer nights collected still to make 
 
 The morning precious : beauty was awake ! 
 
 Why were ye not awake ? But ye were dead 
 
 To things ye knew not of, — were closely wed 
 
 To musty laws lined out with wretched rule 
 
 And compass vile : so that ye taught a school 
 
 Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit. 
 
 Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit. 
 
 Their verses tallied. Easy was the task : 
 
 A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask 200 
 
 Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race ! 
 
 That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face. 
 
 And did not know it, — no, they went about. 
 
 Holding a poor, decrepid standard out 
 
 Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large 
 
 The name of one Boileau !
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY 45 
 
 Oh ye whose charge 
 It is to hover round our pleasant hills ! 
 Whose congregated majesty so fills 
 My boundly reverence, that I cannot trace 
 Your hallowed names, in this unholy place, 210 
 
 So near those common folk ; did not their shames 
 Affright you ? Did our old lamenting Thames 
 Delight you ? Did ye never cluster round 
 Delicious Avon, with a mournful sound, 
 And weep? Or did ye wholly bid adieu 
 To regions where no more the laurel grew ? 
 Or did ye stay to give a welcoming 
 To some lone spirits who could proudly sing 
 Their youth away, and die ? 'Twas even so : 
 But let me think away those times of woe : 220 
 
 Now 'tis a fairer season ; ye have breathed 
 Rich benedictions o'er us ; ye have wreathed 
 Fresh garlands : for sweet music has been heard 
 In many places ; — some has been upstirr'd 
 From out its crj'stal dwelling in a lake, 
 By a swan's ebon bill ; from a thick brake, 
 Nested and quiet in a valley mild. 
 Bubbles a pipe ; fine sounds are floating wild 
 About the earth : happy are ye and glad. 
 
 These things are doubtless : yet in truth we've had 230 
 
 Strange thunders from the potency of song ; 
 
 Mingled indeed with what is sweet and strong. 
 
 From majesty : but in clear truth the themes 
 
 Are ugly clubs, the Poets Polyphemes 
 
 Disturbing the grand sea. A drainless shower 
 
 Of light is poesy ; 'tis the supreme of power ; 
 
 'Tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm. 
 
 The very archings of her eye-lids charm 
 
 A thousand willing agents to obey. 
 
 And still she governs with the mildest sway : 240 
 
 But strength alone though of the Muses born 
 
 Is like a fallen angel : trees uptorn. 
 
 Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres 
 
 Delight it ; for it feeds upon the burrs. 
 
 And thorns of life ; forgetting the great end 
 
 Of poesy, that it should be a friend 
 
 To sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man. 
 
 Yet I rejoice : a myrtle fairer than 
 E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds 
 Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds 250
 
 46 JOHN KEATS 
 
 A silent space with ever sprouting green. 
 
 All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen. 
 
 Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering, 
 
 Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing. 
 
 Then let us clear away the choaking thorns 
 
 From round its gentle stem ; let the young fawns, 
 
 Yeaned in after times, when we are floAvn, 
 
 Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown 
 
 With simple flowers : let there nothing be 
 
 More boisterous than a lover's bended knee ; 260 
 
 Nought more ungentle than the placid look 
 
 Of one who leans upon a closed book ; 
 
 Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes 
 
 Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes ! 
 
 As she was wont, th' imagination 
 
 Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone. 
 
 And they shall be accounted poet kings 
 
 Who simply tell the most heart-easing things. 
 
 O may these joys be ripe before I die. 
 
 Will not some say that I presumptuously 270 
 
 Have spoken ? that from hastening disgrace 
 
 'Twere better far to hide my foolish face ? 
 
 That whining boyhood should with reverence bow 
 
 Ere the dread thunderbolt could reach ? How ! 
 
 If I do hide myself, it sure shall be 
 
 In the very fane, the light of Poesy : 
 
 If I do fall, at least I will be laid 
 
 Beneath the silence of a poplar shade ; 
 
 And over me the grass shall be smooth shaven ; 
 
 And there shall be a kind memorial graven. 280 
 
 But off Despondence ! miserable bane ! 
 
 They should not know thee, who athirst to gain 
 
 A noble end, are thirsty every hour. 
 
 What though I am not wealthy in the dower 
 
 Of spanning wisdom ; though I do not know 
 
 The shiftings of the mighty winds that blow 
 
 Hither and thither all the changing thoughts 
 
 Of man : though no great minist'ring reason sorts 
 
 Out the dark mysteries of human souls 
 
 To clear conceiving : yet there ever rolls 390 
 
 A vast idea before me, and I glean 
 
 Therefi'om my liberty ; thence too I've seen 
 
 The end and aim of Poesy. 'Tis clear 
 
 As anything most true ; as that the year 
 
 Is made of the four seasons — manifest 
 
 As a large cross, some old cathedral's crest.
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY 47 
 
 Lifted to the white clouds. Therefore should I 
 
 Be but the essence of deformity, 
 
 A coward, did my very eye-lids wink 
 
 At speaking out what I have dared to think. 300 
 
 Ah ! rather let me like a madman run 
 
 Over some precipice ; let the hot sun 
 
 Melt my Dedalian wings, and drive me down 
 
 Convuls'd and headlong ! Stay ! an inward frown 
 
 Of conscience bids me be more calm awhile. 
 
 An ocean dim, sprinkled with many an isle. 
 
 Spreads awfully before me. How much toil ! 
 
 How many days ! what desperate turmoil ! 
 
 Ere I can have exploi-ed its widenesses. 
 
 Ah, what a task ! upon my bended knees, 310 
 
 1 could unsay those — no, impossible ! 
 
 Impossible ! 
 
 For sweet relief I'll dwell 
 On humbler thoughts, and let this strange assay 
 Begun in gentleness die so away. 
 E'en now all tumult from my bosom fades : 
 I turn full hearted to the friendly aids 
 That smooth the path of honour ; brotherhood. 
 And friendliness the nurse of mutual good. 
 The hearty grasp that sends a pleasant sonnet 
 Into the brain ere one can think upon it ; 320 
 
 The silence when some rhymes are coming out ; 
 And when they're come, the very pleasant rout : 
 The message certain to be done to-morrow. 
 'Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow 
 Some precious book from out its snug retreat, 
 To cluster round it when we next shall meet. 
 Scarce can I scribble on ; for lovely airs 
 Are fluttering round the room like doves in pairs ; 
 Many delights of that glad day recalling. 
 
 When first my senses caught their tender falling. 330 
 
 And with these airs come forms of elegance 
 Stooping their shoulders o'er a horse's prance, 
 Careless, and grand — fingers soft and round 
 Parting luxuriant curls ; — and the swift bound 
 Of Bacchus from his chariot, when his eye 
 Made Ariadne's cheek look blushingly. 
 Thus I remember all the pleasant flow 
 Of words at opening a portfolio. 
 
 Things such as these are ever harbingers 
 
 To trains of peaceful images : the stirs 340 
 
 Of a swan's neck unseen among the rushes : 
 
 A linnet starting all about the bushes :
 
 48 JOHN KEATS 
 
 A butterfly, with golden wings broad parted. 
 
 Nestling a rose, convuls'd as though it smarted 
 
 With over pleasure — many, many more, 
 
 Might I indulge at large in all my store 
 
 Of luxuries : yet I must not forget 
 
 Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet ; 
 
 For what there may be worthy in these rhymes 
 
 I partly owe to him : and thus, the chimes 350 
 
 Of friendly voices had just given place 
 
 To as sweet a silence, when I 'gan retrace 
 
 The pleasant day, upon a couch at ease. 
 
 It was a poet's house who keeps the keys 
 
 Of pleasure's temple. Round about were hung 
 
 The glorious features of the bards who sung 
 
 In other ages — cold and sacred busts 
 
 Smiled at each other. Happy he who trusts 
 
 To clear Futurity his darling fame ! 
 
 Then there were fauns and satyrs taking aim 360 
 
 At swelling apples with a frisky leap 
 
 And reaching fingers, 'mid a luscious heap 
 
 Of vine-leaves. Then there rose to view a fane 
 
 Of liny mai'ble, and thereto a train 
 
 Of nymphs approaching fairly o'er the sward : 
 
 One, loveliest, holding her white hand toward 
 
 The dazzling sun-rise : two sisters sweet 
 
 Bending their graceful figures till they meet 
 
 Over the trippings of a little child : 
 
 And some are hearing, eagerly, the wild 370 
 
 Thrilling liquidity of dewy piping. 
 
 See, in another picture, nymphs are wiping 
 
 Cherishingly Diana's timorous limbs ; — 
 
 A fold of lawny mantle dabbling swims 
 
 At the bath's edge, and keeps a gentle motion 
 
 With the subsiding crystal : as when ocean 
 
 Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothness o'er 
 
 Its rocky marge, and balances once more 
 
 The patient weeds ; that now unshent by foam 
 
 Feel all about their undulating home. 380 
 
 Sappho's meek head was there half smiling down 
 At nothing ; just as though the earnest frown 
 Of over thinking had that moment gone 
 From off her brow, and left her all alone. 
 
 Great Alfred's too, with anxious, pitying eyes, 
 As if he always listened to the sighs 
 Of the goaded world ; and Kosciusko's worn 
 By horrid suffrance— mightily forlorn.
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY 49 
 
 Petrarch, outstepping from the shady green, 
 
 Starts at the sight of Laura ; nor can wean 390 
 
 His eyes from her sweet face. Most happy they ! 
 
 For over them was seen a free display 
 
 Of out-spread wings, and from between them shone 
 
 The face of Poesy : from off her throne 
 
 She overlook'd things that I scarce could tell. 
 
 The very sense of where I was might well 
 
 Keep Sleep aloof: but more than that there came 
 
 Thought after thought to nourish up the flame 
 
 Within my breast ; so that the morning light 
 
 Surprised me even from a sleepless night ; 400 
 
 And up I rose refresh'd, and glad, and gay. 
 
 Resolving to begin that very day 
 
 These lines ; and howsoever they be done, 
 
 I leave them as a father does his son.
 
 ENDYMION 
 
 a H^oetic IRomance 
 
 ■'the stretched metre op an antique song" 
 
 IXSCRIBED 
 
 TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THOMAS CHATTERTON
 
 ENDYMION 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 KNOWING within myself the manner in which this Poem has 
 been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I 
 make it public. 
 
 What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who must 
 soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error de- 
 noting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished. The 
 two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are not of 
 such completion as to warrant their passing the press ; nor should 
 they if I thought a year's castigation would do them any good ; — 
 it will not : the foundations are too sandy. It is just that this 
 youngster should die away : a sad thought for me, if I had not 
 some hope that while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting 
 myself for verses fit to live. 
 
 This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a 
 punishment : but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it : he 
 will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not a fiercer 
 hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written with 
 the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from 
 the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, 
 and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honour of English 
 literature. 
 
 The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination 
 of a man is healthy ; but there is a space of life between, in which 
 the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life 
 uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted : thence proceeds mawkish- 
 ness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must 
 necessarily taste in going over the following pages. 
 
 I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful 
 mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness : for I wish to try 
 once more, before I bid it farewel. 
 
 Teignmotith, 
 April lo, 1818.
 
 ENDYMION 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 A THING of beauty is a joy for ever : 
 Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
 Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep 
 A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
 
 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 
 Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing 
 A flowery band to bind us to the earth. 
 Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth 
 Of noble natures, of the gloomy days. 
 
 Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways lo 
 
 Made for our searching : yes, in spite of all. 
 Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 
 From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon. 
 Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon 
 For simple sheep ; and such are daffodils 
 With the green world they live in ; and clear rills 
 That for themselves a cooling covert make 
 'Gainst the hot season ; the mid forest brake. 
 Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms : 
 And such too is the grandeur of the dooms 20 
 
 We have imagined for the mighty dead ; 
 All lovely tales that we have heard or read : 
 An endless fountain of immortal drink, 
 Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. 
 
 Nor do we merely feel these essences 
 For one short hour ; no, even as the trees 
 That whisper round a temple become soon 
 Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, 
 The passion poesy, glories infinite. 
 
 Haunt us till they become a cheering light 30 
 
 Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast. 
 That, whether there be jhine, or gloom o'ercast. 
 They alway must be with us, or we die.
 
 54 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I 
 Will trace the story of Endymion. 
 The very music of the name has gone 
 Into my being, and each pleasant scene 
 Is growing. fresh before me as the green 
 Of our own vallies : so I will begin 
 
 Now while I cannot hear the city's din ; 40 
 
 Now while the early budders are just new, 
 And run in mazes of the youngest hue 
 About old forests ; while the willow trails 
 Its delicate amber ; and the dairy pails 
 Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year 
 Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer 
 My little boat, for many quiet hours. 
 With streams that deepen freshly into bowers. 
 Many and many a verse I hope to write. 
 
 Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white, 50 
 
 Hide in deep herbage ; and ere yet the bees 
 Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas, 
 I must be near the middle of my story. 
 O may no wintry season, bare and hoary. 
 See it half finished : but let Autumn bold. 
 With universal tinge of sober gold. 
 Be all about me when I make an end. 
 And now at once, adventuresome, I send 
 My herald thought into a wilderness : 
 
 There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress 60 
 
 My uncertain path with green, that I may speed 
 Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed. 
 
 Upon the sides of Latmus was outspread 
 A mighty forest ; for the moist earth fed 
 So plenteously all weed-hidden roots 
 Into o'er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits. 
 And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep. 
 Where no man went ; and if from shepherd's keep 
 A lamb strayed far a- down those inmost glens. 
 Never again saw he the happy pens to 
 
 Whither his brethren, bleating with content. 
 Over the hills at every nightfall went. 
 Among the shepherds, 'twas believed ever. 
 That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever 
 From the white flock, but pass'd unworried 
 By angi-y wolf, or pard with prying head. 
 Until it came to some unfooted plains 
 Where fed the herds of Pan : ay great his gains 
 Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many.
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 55 
 
 Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny, 80 
 
 And ivy banks ; all leading pleasantly 
 
 To a wide lawn, whence one could only see 
 
 Stems thronging all around between the swell 
 
 Of turf and slanting branches : who could tell 
 
 The freshness of the space of heaven above, 
 
 Edg'd round with dark tree tops ? through which a dove 
 
 Would often beat its wings, and often too 
 
 A little cloud would move across the blue. 
 
 Full in the middle of this pleasantness 
 There stood a marble altar, with a tress 90 
 
 Of flowers budded newly ; and the dew 
 Had taken fairy phantasies to strew 
 Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve. 
 And so the dawned light in pomp receive. 
 For 'twas the morn : Apollo's upward fire 
 Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre 
 Of brightness so unsullied, that therein 
 A melancholy spirit well might win 
 Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine 
 
 Into the winds : rain-scented eglantine 100 
 
 Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun ; 
 The lark was lost in him ; cold spi-ings had run 
 To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass ; 
 Man's voice was on the mountains ; and the mass 
 Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold, 
 To feel this sun-rise and its glories old. 
 
 Now while the silent workings of the dawn 
 Were busiest, into that self-same lawn 
 All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped 
 
 A troop of little children garlanded ; no 
 
 Who gathering round the altar, seemed to pry 
 Earnestly round as wishing to espy 
 Some folk of holiday : nor had they waited 
 For many moments, ere their ears were sated 
 With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then 
 Fill'd out its voice, and died away again. 
 Within a little space again it gave 
 Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave. 
 To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking 
 Through copse-clad vallies, — ere their death, o'ertaking 120 
 The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea. 
 
 And now, as deep into the wood as we 
 Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmered light
 
 66 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 Fair faces and a rush of garments white, 
 
 Plainer and plainer shewing, till at last 
 
 Into the widest alley they all past. 
 
 Making directly for the woodland altar. 
 
 O kindly muse ! let not my weak tongue faulter 
 
 In telling of this goodly company. 
 
 Of their old piety, and of their glee : 130 
 
 But let a portion of ethereal dew 
 
 Fall on my head, and presently unmew 
 
 My soul ; that I may dare, in wayfaring. 
 
 To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing. 
 
 Leading the way, young damsels danced along. 
 Bearing the burden of a shepherd song ; 
 Each having a white wicker over brimm'd 
 With April's tender younglings : next, well trimm'd, 
 A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks 
 As may be read of in Arcadian books ; 140 
 
 Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe, 
 When the great deity, for earth too ripe. 
 Let his divinity o'erflowing die 
 In music, through the vales of Thessaly : 
 Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground, 
 And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound 
 With ebon-tipped flutes : close after these. 
 Now coming fi*om beneath the forest trees, 
 A venerable priest full soberly. 
 
 Begirt with ministring looks : alway his eye 150 
 
 Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept. 
 And after him his sacred vestments swept. 
 From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white. 
 Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light ; 
 And in his left he held a basket full 
 Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull : 
 Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still 
 Than Leda's love, and cresses from the rill. 
 His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath, 
 Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth 160 
 
 Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd 
 Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud 
 Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd. 
 Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd 
 Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car. 
 Easily rolling so as scarce to mar 
 The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown : 
 Who stood therein did seem of great renown 
 Among the throng. His youth was fully blown.
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 57 
 
 Showing like Ganymede to manhood grown : 170 
 
 And, for those simple times, his garments were 
 
 A chieftain king's : beneath his breast, half bare, 
 
 Was hung a silver bugle, and between 
 
 His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen. 
 
 A smile was on his countenance ; he seem'd, 
 
 To common lookers on, like one who dream'd 
 
 Of idleness in groves Elysian : 
 
 But there were some who feelingly could scan 
 
 A lurking ti-ouble in his nether lip, 
 
 And see that oftentimes the reins would slip 180 
 
 Through his forgotten hands : then would they sigh. 
 
 And think of yellow leaves, of owlets' cry. 
 
 Of logs piled solemnly. — Ah, well-a-day. 
 
 Why should our young Endymion pine away ! 
 
 Soon the assembly, in a circle rang'd, 
 Stood silent round the shrine : each look was chang'd 
 To sudden veneration : women meek 
 Beckon'd their sons to silence ; while each cheek 
 Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear. 
 Endymion too, without a forest peer, 190 
 
 Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face, 
 Among his brothers of the mountain chase 
 In midst of all, the venerable priest 
 Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least, 
 And, after lifting up his aged hands. 
 Thus spake he : " Men of Latmos ! shepherd bands ! 
 Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks : 
 Whether descended from beneath the rocks 
 That overtop your mountains ; whether come 
 From vallies where the pipe is never dumb ; 200 
 
 Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs 
 Blue hare -bells lightly, and where prickly furze 
 Buds lavish gold ; or ye, whose precious charge 
 Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge. 
 Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn 
 By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn : 
 Mothers and wives ! who day by day prepare 
 The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air ; 
 And all ye gentle girls who foster up 
 
 Udderless lambs, and in a little cup 210 
 
 Will put choice honey for a favoured youth : 
 Yea, every one attend ! for in good truth 
 Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan. 
 Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than 
 Night-swollen mushrooms ? Are not our wide plains
 
 58 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 Speckled with countless fleeces ? Have not rains 
 
 Green'd over April's lap ? No howling sad 
 
 Sickens our fearful ewes ; and we have had 
 
 Great bounty from Endymion our lord. 
 
 The earth is glad : the merry lark has pour'd 220 
 
 His early song against yon breezy sky, 
 
 That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity." 
 
 Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire 
 Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire ; 
 Anon he stain' d the thick and spongy sod 
 With wine, in honor of the shepherd -god. 
 Now while the earth was drinking it, and while 
 Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile, 
 And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright 
 'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light 230 
 
 Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang : 
 
 " O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang 
 From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth 
 Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death 
 Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness ; 
 Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress 
 Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken ; 
 And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken 
 The dreary melody of bedded reeds — 
 
 In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds 240 
 
 The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth ; 
 Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth 
 Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx — do thou now. 
 By thy love's milky brow ! 
 By all the trembling mazes that she ran, 
 Hear us, great Pan ! 
 
 " O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles 
 Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles. 
 What time thou wanderest at eventide 
 
 Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side 250 
 
 Of thine enmossed realms : O thou, to whom 
 Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom 
 Their ripen'd fruitage ; yellow girted bees 
 Their golden honeycombs ; our village leas 
 Their fairest blossom'd beans and poppied corn ; 
 The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, 
 To sing for thee ; low creeping strawberries 
 Their summer coolness ; pent up butterflies 
 Their freckled wings ; yea, the fresh budding year
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 59 
 
 All its completions — be quickly near, 260 
 
 By every wind that nods the mountain pine, 
 O forester divine ! 
 
 "Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies 
 For willing service ; whether to surprise 
 The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit ; 
 Or upward ragged precipices flit 
 To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw ; 
 Or by mysterious enticement draw 
 Bewildered shepherds to their path again ; 
 Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, 270 
 
 And gather up all fancifullest shells 
 For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells, 
 And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping ; 
 Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping. 
 The while they pelt each other on the crown 
 With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown — 
 By all the echoes that about thee ring. 
 Hear us, O satyr king ! 
 
 " O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears 
 While ever and anon to his shorn peers 280 
 
 A ram goes bleating : Winder of the horn. 
 When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn 
 Anger our huntsmen : Breather round our farms. 
 To keep off mildews, and all weather harms : 
 Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds. 
 That come a swooning over hollow grounds. 
 And wither drearily on barren moors : 
 Dread opener of the mysterious doors 
 Leading to universal knowledge — see, 
 
 Great son of Dryope, 290 
 
 The many that are come to pay their vows 
 With leaves about their brows ! 
 
 " Be still the unimaginable lodge 
 For solitary thinkings ; such as dodge 
 Conception to the very bourne of heaven. 
 Then leave the naked brain : be still the leaven, 
 That spreading in this dull and clodded earth 
 Gives it a touch ethereal — a new birth ; 
 Be still a symbol of immensity ; 
 
 A firmament reflected in a sea ; 300 
 
 An element filling the space between ; 
 An unknown — but no more : we humbly screen 
 With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending.
 
 60 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 And giving out a shout most heaven rending, 
 Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean, 
 Upon thy Mount Lycean ! " 
 
 Even while they brought the burden to a close, 
 A shout from the whole multitude arose. 
 That lingered in the air like dying rolls 
 
 Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals 310 
 
 Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine. 
 Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine, 
 Young companies nimbly began dancing 
 To the swift treble pipe, and humming string. 
 Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly 
 To tunes forgotten — out of memory : 
 Fair creatures ! whose young children's children bred 
 Thermopylae its heroes — not yet dead. 
 But in old marbles ever beautiful. 
 
 High genitors, unconscious did they cull 320 
 
 Time's sweet first-fruits — they danc'd to weariness. 
 And then in quiet circles did they press 
 The hillock turf, and caught the latter end 
 Of some strange history, potent to send 
 A young mind from its bodily tenement. 
 Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent 
 On either side ; pitying the sad death 
 Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath 
 Of Zephyr slew him, — Zephyr penitent. 
 
 Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, 330 
 
 Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. 
 The archers too, upon a wider plain. 
 Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft. 
 And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft 
 Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top, 
 Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope 
 Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee 
 And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, 
 Poor, lonely Niobe ! when her lovely young 
 Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue 340 
 
 Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip. 
 And very, very deadliness did nip 
 Her motherly cheeks. Arous'd from this sad mood 
 By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd. 
 Uplifting his strong bow into the air. 
 Many might after brighter visions stare : 
 After the Argonauts, in blind amaze 
 Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways. 
 Until, from the horizon's vaulted side.
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 61 
 
 There shot a golden splendour far and wide, 350 
 
 Spangling those million poutings of the brine 
 
 With quivering ore : 'twas even an awful shine 
 
 From the exaltation of Apollo's bow ; 
 
 A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe. 
 
 Who thus were ripe for high contemplating, 
 
 Might turn their, steps towards the sober ring 
 
 Where sat Endymion and the aged priest 
 
 'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas'd 
 
 The silvery setting of their mortal star. 
 
 There they discours'd upon the fragile bar 360 
 
 That keeps us from our homes ethereal ; 
 
 And what our duties there : to nightly call 
 
 Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather ; 
 
 To summon all the downiest clouds together 
 
 For the sun's purple couch ; to emulate 
 
 In ministring the potent rule of fate 
 
 With speed of fire-tailed exhalations ; 
 
 To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons 
 
 Sweet poesy by moonlight : besides these, 
 
 A world of other unguess'd offices. 370 
 
 Anon they wander'd, by divine converse, 
 
 Into Elysium ; vieing to rehearse 
 
 Each one his own anticipated bliss. 
 
 One felt heart-certain that he could not miss 
 
 His quick gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs. 
 
 Where every zephyr-sigh pouts, and endows 
 
 Her lips with music for the welcoming. 
 
 Another wish'd, mid that eternal spring. 
 
 To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails. 
 
 Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales : 380 
 
 Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth whid. 
 
 And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind ; 
 
 And, ever after, through those regions be 
 
 His messenger, his little Mercury. 
 
 Some were athirst in soul to see again 
 
 Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign 
 
 In times long past ; to sit with them, and talk 
 
 Of all the chances in their earthly walk ; 
 
 Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores 
 
 Of happiness, to when upon the moors, 390 
 
 Benighted, close they huddled from the cold. 
 
 And shar'd their famish'd scrips. Thus all out-told 
 
 Their fond imaginations, — saving him 
 
 Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim, 
 
 Endymion : yet hourly had he striven 
 
 To hide the cankering venom, that had riven
 
 62 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 His fainting recollections. Now indeed 
 
 His senses had swoon'd off: he did not heed 
 
 The sudden silence, or the whispers low. 
 
 Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe, 400 
 
 Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms. 
 
 Or maiden's sigh, that grief itself embalms : 
 
 But in the self-same fixed trance he kept. 
 
 Like one who on the earth had never stept. 
 
 Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man. 
 
 Frozen in that old tale Arabian. 
 
 Who whispers him so pantingly and close .'' 
 Peona, his sweet sister : of all those. 
 His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made, 
 And breath'd a sister's sorrow to persuade 410 
 
 A yielding up, a cradling on her care. 
 Her eloquence did breathe away the curse : 
 She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse 
 Of happy changes in emphatic dreams. 
 Along a path between two little streams, — 
 Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow. 
 From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow 
 From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small ; 
 Until they came to where these streamlets fall. 
 With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush, 420 
 
 Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush 
 With crystal mocking of the trees and sky. 
 A little shallop, floating there hard by. 
 Pointed its beak over the fringed bank ; 
 And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank, 
 And dipt again, with the young couple's weight, — 
 Peona guiding, through the water straight, 
 Towards a bowery island opposite ; 
 Which gaining presently, she steered light 
 
 Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove, ^30 
 
 Where nested was an arbour, overwove 
 By many a summer's silent fingering ; 
 To whose cool bosom she was used to bring 
 Her playmates, with their needle broidery. 
 And minstrel memories of times gone by. 
 
 So she was gently glad to see him laid 
 Under her favourite bower's quiet shade. 
 On her own couch, new made of flower leaves, 
 Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves 
 When last the sun his autumn tresses shook, 440
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 63 
 
 And the taiin'd harvesters rich armfuls took. 
 
 Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest : 
 
 But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest 
 
 Peona's busy hand against his lips, 
 
 And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips 
 
 In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps 
 
 A patient watch over the stream that creeps 
 
 Windingly by it, so the quiet maid 
 
 Held her in peace : so that a whispering blade 
 
 Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling 450 
 
 Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling 
 
 Among sere leaves and twigs, might all be heard. 
 
 O magic sleep ! O comfortable bird. 
 That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind 
 Till it is hush'd and smooth ! O unconfin'd 
 Restraint ! imprisoned liberty ! great key 
 To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy, 
 Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves. 
 Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves 
 
 And moonlight ; aye, to all the mazy world 460 
 
 Of silvery enchantment ! — who, upfurl'd 
 Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour. 
 But renovates and lives .'' — Thus, in the bower, 
 Endymion was calm'd to life again. 
 Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain. 
 He said : " I feel this thine endearing love 
 All through my bosom : thou art as a dove 
 Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings 
 About me ; and the pearliest dew not brings 
 Such morning incense from the fields of May, 470 
 
 As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray 
 From those kind eyes, — the very home and haunt 
 Of sisterly affection. Can I want 
 
 Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears ? 
 
 Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears 
 
 That, any longer, I will pass my days 
 
 Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise 
 
 My voice upon the mountain-heights ; once more 
 
 Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar ; 
 
 Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll 480 
 
 Around the breathed boar : again I'll poll 
 
 The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow : 
 
 And, when the pleasant sun is getting low. 
 
 Again I'll linger in a sloping mead 
 
 To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed 
 
 Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered sweet.
 
 64 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat 
 My soul to keep in its resolved course." 
 
 Hereat Peona, in their silver source, 
 Shut her pure sorrow drops with glad exclaim, 490 
 
 And took a lute, from which there pulsing came 
 A lively prelude, fashioning the way 
 In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay 
 More subtle cadenced, more forest wild 
 Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child ; 
 And nothing since has floated in the air 
 So mournful strange. Surely some influence rare 
 Went, spiritual, through the damsel's hand ; 
 For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd 
 The quick invisible strings, even though she saw 500 
 
 Endymion's spii'it melt away and thaw 
 Before the deep intoxication. 
 But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon 
 Her self-possession — swung the lute aside. 
 And earnestly said : " Brother, 'tis vain to hide 
 That thou dost know of things mysterious. 
 Immortal, starry ; such alone could thus 
 Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn'd in aught 
 Offensive to the heavenly powers .'' Caught 
 A Paphian dove upon a message sent ? 510 
 
 Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent 
 Sacred to Dian } Haply, thou hast seen 
 Her naked limbs among the alders green ; 
 And that, alas ! is death. No I can trace 
 Something more high perplexing in thy face ! " 
 
 Endymion look'd at her, and press'd her hand, 
 And said, " Art thou so pale, who wast so bland 
 And merry in our meadows ? How is this ? 
 Tell me thine ailment : tell me all amiss ! — 
 Ah ! thou hast been unhappy at the change 520 
 
 Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange ? 
 Or more complete to overwhelm surmise ? 
 Ambition is no sluggard : 'tis no prize. 
 That toiling years would put within my grasp. 
 That I have sigh'd for : with so deadly gasp 
 No man e'er panted for a mortal love. 
 So all have set my heavier grief above 
 These things which happen. Rightly have they done : 
 I, who still saw the horizontal sun 
 
 Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the world, 530 
 
 Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl'd
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 65 
 
 My spear aloft, as signal for the chace — 
 I, who, for very sport of heart, would race 
 With my own steed from Araby ; pluck down 
 A vulture from his towery perching ; frown 
 A lion into growling, loth retire — 
 To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire. 
 And sink thus low ! but I will ease my breast 
 Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest. 
 
 " This river does not see the naked sky, 540 
 
 Till it begins to progress silverly 
 Around the western border of the wood. 
 Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood 
 Seems at the distance like a crescent moon : 
 And in that nook, the very pride of June, 
 Had I been used to pass my weary eves ; 
 The rather for the sun unwilling leaves 
 So dear a picture of his sovereign power. 
 And I could witness his most kingly hour. 
 
 When he doth tighten up the golden reins, 550 
 
 And paces leisurely down amber plains 
 His snortinff four. Now when his chariot last 
 Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast. 
 There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed 
 Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red : 
 At which I wondered greatly, knowing well 
 That but one night had wrought this flowery spell ; 
 And, sitting down close by, began to muse 
 What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus, 
 In passing here, his owlet pinions shook ; 560 
 
 Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook 
 Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth, 
 Had dipt his rod in it : such garland wealth 
 Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought, 
 Until my head was dizzy and distraught. 
 Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole 
 A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul ; 
 And shaping visions all about my sight 
 Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light ; 
 The which became more strange, and strange, and dim, 570 
 
 And then were gulph'd in a tumultuous swim : 
 And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell 
 The enchantment that afterwards befel .'' 
 Yet it was but a dream : yet such a dream 
 That never tongue, although it overteem 
 With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring, 
 Could figure out and to conception bring 
 5
 
 66 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay 
 
 Watching the zenith, where the milky way 
 
 Among the stars in virgin splendour pours ; 580 
 
 And travelling my eye, until the doors 
 
 Of heaven appear'd to open for my flight, 
 
 I became loth and fearful to alight 
 
 From such high soaring by a downward glance : 
 
 So kept me stedfast in that airy trance. 
 
 Spreading imaginary pinions wide. 
 
 When, presently, the stars began to glide, 
 
 And faint away, before my eager view : 
 
 At which I sigh'd that I could not pursue, 
 
 And dropt my vision to the horizon's verge ; 590 
 
 And lo ! from opening clouds, I saw emerge 
 
 The loveliest moon, that ever silver'd o'er 
 
 A shell for Neptune's goblet ; she did soar 
 
 So passionately bright, my dazzled soul 
 
 Commingling with her argent spheres did roll 
 
 Through clear and cloudy, even when she went 
 
 At last into a dark and vapoury tent — 
 
 Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train 
 
 Of planets all were in the blue again. 
 
 To commune with those orbs, once more I rais'd 600 
 
 My sight right upward : but it was quite dazed 
 
 By a bright something, sailing down apace. 
 
 Making me quickly veil my eyes and face : 
 
 Again I look'd, and, O ye deities, 
 
 Who from Olympus watch our destinies ! 
 
 Whence that completed form of all completeness .'' 
 
 Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness ? 
 
 Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O where 
 
 Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair ? 
 
 Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun ; 610 
 
 Not — thy soft hand, fair sister ! let me shun 
 
 Such follying before thee — yet she had, 
 
 Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad ; 
 
 And they were simply gordian'd up and braided. 
 
 Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded, 
 
 Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow ; 
 
 The which were blended in, I know not how, 
 
 With such a paradise of lips and eyes. 
 
 Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs. 
 
 That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings 620 
 
 And plays about its fancy, till the stings 
 
 Of human neighbourhood envenom all. 
 
 Unto what awful power shall I call ? 
 
 To what high fane ? — Ah ! see her hovering feet,
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 67 
 
 More bluely vein'd, more soft, more whitely sweet 
 
 Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose 
 
 From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows 
 
 Her scarf into a fluttering pavillion ; 
 
 'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million 
 
 Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed, 630 
 
 Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed, 
 
 Handfuls of daisies." — ''Endymion, how strange ! 
 
 Dream within dream ! " — " She took an airy range, 
 
 And then, towards me, like a very maid, 
 
 Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid. 
 
 And press'd me by the hand : Ah ! 'twas too much ; 
 
 Methought I fainted at the charmed touch. 
 
 Yet held my recollection, even as one 
 
 Who dives three fathoms where the waters run 
 
 Gurgling in beds of coral : for anon, 640 
 
 I felt upmounted in that region 
 
 Where falling stars dart their artillery forth. 
 
 And eagles struggle with the buffeting north 
 
 That balances the heavy meteor-stone ; — 
 
 Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone. 
 
 But lapp'd and lull'd along the dangerous sky. 
 
 Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high. 
 
 And straightway into frightful eddies swoop' d ; 
 
 Such as ay muster where grey time has scoop'd 
 
 Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side : 650 
 
 There hollow sounds arous'd me, and I sigh'd 
 
 To faint once more by looking on my bliss — 
 
 I was distracted ; madly did I kiss 
 
 The wooing arms which held me, and did give 
 
 My eyes at once to death : but 'twas to live. 
 
 To take in draughts of life from the gold fount 
 
 Of kind and passionate looks ; to count, and count 
 
 The moments, by some greedy help that seem'd 
 
 A second self, that each might be redeem'd 
 
 And plunder' d of its load of blessedness. 660 
 
 Ah, desperate mortal ! I e'en dar'd to press 
 
 Her very cheek against my crowned lip. 
 
 And, at that moment, felt my body dip 
 
 Into a warmer air : a moment more. 
 
 Our feet were soft in flowers. There was store 
 
 Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes 
 
 A scent of violets, and blossoming limes. 
 
 Loiter' d around us ; then of honey cells. 
 
 Made delicate from all white-flower bells ; 
 
 And once, above the edges of our nest, 670 
 
 An arch face peep'd, — an Oread as I guess'd.
 
 68 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 " Why did I dream that sleep o'er-power'd me 
 In midst of all this heaven ? Why not see, 
 Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark. 
 And stare them from me ? But no, like a spark 
 That needs must die, although its little beam 
 Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream 
 Fell into nothing — into stupid sleep. 
 And so it was, until a gentle creep, 
 
 A careful moving caught my waking ears, 680 
 
 And up I started : Ah ! my sighs, my tears, 
 My clenched hands ; — for lo ! the poppies hung 
 Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung 
 A heavy ditty, and the sullen day 
 Had chidden herald Hesperus away. 
 With leaden looks : the solitary breeze 
 Bluster'd, and slept, and its wild self did teaze 
 W^ith wa)rward melancholy ; and I thought, 
 Mark me, Peona ! that sometimes it brought 
 Faint fare-thee-wels, and sigh-shrilled adieus ! — 6go 
 
 Away I wander' d — all the pleasant hues 
 Of heaven and earth had faded : deepest shades 
 Were deepest dungeons ; heaths and sunny glades 
 Were full of pestilent light ; our taintless rills 
 Seem'd sooty, and o'er-spread with upturn'd gills 
 Of dying fish ; the vermeil rose had blown 
 In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown 
 Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird 
 Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd 
 In little journeys, I beheld in it 700 
 
 A disguis'd demon, missioned to knit 
 My soul with under darkness ; to entice 
 My stumblings down some monstrous precipice : 
 Therefore I eager followed, and did curse 
 The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse, 
 Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven ! 
 These things, with all their comfortings, are given 
 To my down-sunken hours, and with thee. 
 Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea 
 Of weary life." 
 
 Thus ended he, and both 710 
 
 Sat silent : for the maid was very loth 
 To answer ; feeling well that breathed words 
 Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords 
 Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps 
 Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps. 
 And wonders ; struggles to devise some blame ;
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 69 
 
 To put on such a look as would say, Shame 
 
 On this poor weaktiess ! but, for all her strife, 
 
 She could as soon have crush'd away the life 
 
 From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause, 720 
 
 She said with trembling chance : " Is this the cause ? 
 
 This all ? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas ! 
 
 That one who through this middle earth should pass 
 
 Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave 
 
 His name upon the harp-string, should achieve 
 
 No higher bard than simple maidenhood, 
 
 Singing alone, and fearfully, — how the blood 
 
 Left his young cheek ; and how he us'd to stray 
 
 He knew not where ; and how he would say, nay, 
 
 If any said 'twas love : and yet 'twas love ; 730 
 
 What could it be but love ? How a ring-dove 
 
 Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path ; 
 
 And how he died : and then, that love doth scathe. 
 
 The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses ; 
 
 And then the ballad of his sad life closes 
 
 With sighs, and an alas ! — Endymion ! 
 
 Be rather in the trumpet's mouth, — anon 
 
 Among the winds at large — that all may hearken ! 
 
 Although, before the crystal heavens dai'ken, 
 
 I watch and dote upon the silver lakes 740 
 
 Pictur'd in western cloudiness, that takes 
 
 The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands. 
 
 Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands 
 
 With horses prancing o'er them, palaces 
 
 And towers of amethyst, — would I so teaze 
 
 My pleasant days, because I could not mount 
 
 Into those regions ? The Morphean fount 
 
 Of that fine element that visions, dreams. 
 
 And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams 
 
 Into its airy channels with so subtle, 750 
 
 So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle, 
 
 Circled a million times within the space 
 
 Of a swallow's nest-door, could delay a trace, 
 
 A tinting of its quality : how light 
 
 Must dreams themselves be ; seeing they're more slight 
 
 Than the mere nothing that engenders them ! 
 
 Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem 
 
 Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick ? 
 
 Why pierce high -fronted honour to the quick 
 
 For nothing but a dream ? " Hereat the youth 760 
 
 Look'd up : a conflicting of shame and ruth 
 
 Was in his plaited brow : yet, his eyelids 
 
 Widened a httle, as when Zephyr bids
 
 70 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 A little breeze to creep between the fans 
 Of careless butterflies : amid his pains 
 He seem'd to taste a drop of manna-dew, 
 Full palatable ; and a colour grew 
 Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake. 
 
 " Peona ! ever have I long'd to slake 
 My thirst for the world's praises : nothing base, 770 
 
 No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace 
 The stubborn canvas for my voyage pre par' d — 
 Though now 'tis tatter' d ; leaving my bark bar'd 
 And sullenly drifting : yet my higher hope 
 Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope. 
 To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks. 
 Wherein lies happiness ? In that which becks 
 Our ready minds to fellowship divine, 
 A fellowship with essence ; till we shine. 
 
 Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold 780 
 
 The clear religion of heaven ! Fold 
 A rose leaf round thy finger's tapemess. 
 And soothe thy lips : hist, when the airy stress 
 Of music's kiss impregnates the free winds. 
 And with a sympathetic touch unbinds 
 ^^olian magic from their lucid wombs : 
 Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs ; 
 Old ditties sigh above their father's grave ; 
 Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave 
 
 Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot ; 790 
 
 Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, 
 Where long ago a giant battle was ; 
 And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass 
 In every place where infent Orpheus slept. 
 Feel we these things ? — that moment have we stept 
 Into a sort of oneness, and our state 
 Is like a floating spirit's. But there are 
 Richer entanglements, enthralments far ' 
 
 More self-destroying, leading, by degrees. 
 
 To the chief intensity : the crown of these 800 
 
 Is made of love and friendship, and sits high 
 Upon the forehead of humanity. 
 All its more ponderous and bulky worth 
 Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth 
 A steady splendour ; but at the tip- top. 
 There hangs by miseen film, an orbed drop 
 Of light, and that is love : its influence. 
 Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense. 
 At which we start and fret ; till in the end.
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 71 
 
 Melting into its radiance, we blend, 8io 
 
 Mingle, and so become a part of it, — 
 
 Nor with aught else can our souls interknit 
 
 So wingedly : when we combine therewith 
 
 Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith, 
 
 And we are nurtured like a pelican brood. 
 
 Aye, so delicious is the unsating food, 
 
 That men, who might have tower'd in the van 
 
 Of all the congregated world, to fan 
 
 And winnow from the coming step of time 
 
 All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime 820 
 
 Left by men-slugs and human serpentry, 
 
 Have been content to let occasion die. 
 
 Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium. 
 
 And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb, 
 
 Than speak against this ardent listlessness : 
 
 For I have ever thought that it might bless 
 
 The world with benefits unknowingly ; 
 
 As does the nightingale, upperched high. 
 
 And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves — 
 
 She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives 830 
 
 How tiptoe Night holds back her dark -grey hood. 
 
 Just so may love, although 'tis understood 
 
 The mere commingling of passionate breath. 
 
 Produce more than our searching witnesseth : 
 
 What I know not : but who, of men, can tell 
 
 That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell 
 
 To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, 
 
 The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, 
 
 The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones. 
 
 The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, 840 
 
 Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet 
 
 If human souls did never kiss and greet ? 
 
 " Now, if this earthly love has power to make 
 Men's being mortal, immortal ; to shake 
 Ambition from their memories, and brim 
 Their measure of content : what merest whim. 
 Seems all this poor endeavour after fame. 
 To one, who keeps within his steadfast aim 
 A love immortal, an immortal too. 
 
 Look not so wilder'd ; for these things a^e true, 850 
 
 And never can be born of atomies 
 That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies, 
 Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I'm sure. 
 My restless spirit never could endure 
 To brood so long upon one luxury.
 
 72 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 Unless it did, though fearfully, espy 
 
 A hope beyond the shadow of a dream. 
 
 My sayings will the less obscui*ed seem. 
 
 When I have told thee how my waking sight 
 
 Has made me scruple whether that same night 860 
 
 Was pass'd in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona ! 
 
 Beyond the matron-temple of Latona, 
 
 Which we should see but for these darkening boughs. 
 
 Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows 
 
 Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart 
 
 And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught. 
 
 And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide 
 
 Past them, but he must brush on every side. 
 
 Some moulder'd steps lead into this cool cell. 
 
 Far as the slabbed margin of a well, 870 
 
 Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye 
 
 Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky. 
 
 Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set 
 
 Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet 
 
 Edges them round, and they have golden pits : 
 
 'Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits 
 
 In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat. 
 
 When all above was faint with mid-day heat. 
 
 And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed, 
 
 I'd bubble up the water through a reed ; 880 
 
 So reaching back to boy-hood : make me ships 
 
 Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips, 
 
 With leaves stuck in them ; and the Neptune be 
 
 Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily, 
 
 When love-lorn hours had left me less a child, 
 
 I sat contemplating the figures wild 
 
 Of o'er-head clouds melting the mirror through. 
 
 Upon a day, while thus I watch'd, by flew 
 
 A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver ; 
 
 So plainly character'd, no breeze would shiver S90 
 
 The happy chance : so happy, I was fain 
 
 To follow it upon the open plain, 
 
 And, therefore, was just going ; when, behold ! 
 
 A wonder, fair as any I have told — 
 
 The same bright face I tasted in my sleep. 
 
 Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap 
 
 Through the cool depth. — It mov'd as if to flee — 
 
 I started up, when lo ! refreshfully, 
 
 There came upon my face in plenteous showers 
 
 Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers, 900 
 
 Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight. 
 
 Bathing my spirit in a new delight.
 
 BOOK I] ENDYMION 73 
 
 Aye, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss 
 
 Alone preserved me from the drear abyss 
 
 Of death, for the fair form had gone again. 
 
 Pleasure is oft a visitant ; but pain 
 
 Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth 
 
 On the deer's tender haunches : late, and loth, 
 
 'Tis scar'd away by slow returning pleasure. 
 
 How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure 910 
 
 Of weary days, made deeper exquisite. 
 
 By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night ! 
 
 Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still. 
 
 Than when I wander'd from the poppy hill : 
 
 And a whole age of lingering moments crept 
 
 Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept 
 
 Away at once the deadly yellow spleen. 
 
 Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen ; 
 
 Once more been tortured with renewed life. 
 
 When last the wintry gusts gave over strife 920 
 
 With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies 
 
 Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes 
 
 In pity of the shatter'd infant buds, — 
 
 That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs, 
 
 My hunting cap, because I laugh'd and smil'd, 
 
 Chatted with thee, and many days exil'd 
 
 All torment from my breast ; — 'twas even then, 
 
 Straying about, yet, coop'd up in the den 
 
 Of helpless discontent, — hurling my lance 
 
 From place to place, and following at chance, 930 
 
 At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck, 
 
 And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck 
 
 In the middle of a brook, — whose silver ramble 
 
 Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble. 
 
 Tracing along, it brought me to a cave, 
 
 Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave 
 
 The nether sides of mossy stones and rock, — 
 
 'Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock 
 
 Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead, 
 
 Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread 940 
 
 Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph's home. 
 
 * Ah ! impious mortal, whither do I roam ? ' 
 
 Said I, low voic'd : ' Ah, whither ! 'Tis the grot 
 
 Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot, 
 
 Doth her resign ; and where her tender hands 
 
 She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands : 
 
 Or 'tis the cell of Echo, where she sits, 
 
 And babbles thorough silence, till her wits 
 
 Are gone in tender madness, and anon,
 
 74 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone 950 
 
 Of sadness. O that she would take my vows, 
 
 And breathe them sighingly among the boughs, 
 
 To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head, 
 
 Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed. 
 
 And weave them dyingly — send honey-whispers 
 
 Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers 
 
 May sigh my love unto her pitying ! 
 
 O charitable echo ! hear, and sing 
 
 This ditty to her ! — tell her ' — so I stay'd 
 
 My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid, gSo 
 
 Stood stupefied with my own empty folly, 
 
 And blushing for the freaks of melancholy. 
 
 Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name 
 
 Most fondly lipp'd, and then these accents came : 
 
 ' Endymion ! the cave is secreter 
 
 Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir 
 
 No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise 
 
 Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys 
 
 And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.' 
 
 At that oppress'd I hurried in. — Ah ! where 970 
 
 Are those swift moments .'' Whither are they fled ? 
 
 I'll smile no more, Peona ; nor will wed 
 
 Sorrow the way to death ; but patiently 
 
 Bear up against it : so farewel, sad sigh ; 
 
 And come instead demurest meditation. 
 
 To occupy me wholly, and to fashion 
 
 My pilgrimage for the world's dusky brink. 
 
 No more will I count over, link by link. 
 
 My chain of grief : no longer strive to find 
 
 A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind ggo 
 
 Blustering about my ears : aye, thou shalt see. 
 
 Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be ; 
 
 What a calm round of hours shall make my days. 
 
 There is a paly flame of hope that plays 
 
 Where'er I look : but yet, I'll say ' tis naught — 
 
 And here I bid it die. Have not I caught. 
 
 Already, a more healthy countenance .'' 
 
 By this the sun is setting ; we may chance 
 
 Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car." 
 
 This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star ggo 
 
 Through autumn mists, and took Peona' s hand : 
 They stept into the boat, and launch'd from land.
 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 75 
 
 ENDYMION 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 O SOVEREIGN power of love ! O grief ! O balm ! 
 All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm, 
 And shadowy, through the mist of passed years : 
 For others, good or bad, hatred and tears 
 Have become indolent ; but touching thine. 
 One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine. 
 One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days. 
 The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze, 
 StifF-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades. 
 Struggling, and blood, and shrieks — all dimly fades lo 
 
 Into some backward corner of the brain ; 
 Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain 
 The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet. 
 Hence, pageant history ! hence, gilded cheat ! 
 Swart planet in the vmiverse of deeds ! 
 Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds 
 Along the pebbled shore of memory ! 
 Many old rotten-timber' d boats there be 
 Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified 
 
 To goodly vessels ; many a sail of pride, 20 
 
 And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry. 
 But wherefore this ? What care, though owl did fly 
 About the great Athenian admiral's mast ? 
 What care, though striding Alexander past 
 The Indus with his Macedonian numbers ? 
 Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers 
 The glutted Cyclops, what care .'' — Juliet leaning 
 Amid her window-flowers, — sighing, — weaning 
 Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow. 
 
 Doth more avail than these : the silver flow 30 
 
 Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, 
 Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den. 
 Are things to brood on with more ardency 
 Than the death-day of empires. Fearfully 
 Must such conviction come upon his head,
 
 76 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Who, thus far, discontent, has dared to tread. 
 
 Without one muse's smile, or kind behest. 
 
 The path of love and poesy. But rest, 
 
 In chaffing restlessness, is yet more drear 
 
 Than to be crush'd, in striving to uprear 40 
 
 Love's standard on the battlements of song. 
 
 So once more days and nights aid me along. 
 
 Like legion'd soldiers. 
 
 Brain-sick shepherd prince, 
 What promise hast thou faithful guarded since 
 The day of sacrifice ? Or, have new sorrows 
 Come with the constant dawn upon thy morrows ? 
 Alas ! ' tis his old grief. For many days. 
 Has he been wandering in uncertain ways : 
 Through wilderness, and woods of mossed oaks ; 
 Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes 50 
 
 Of the lone woodcutter ; and listening still. 
 Hour after hour, to each lush-leav'd rill. 
 Now he is sitting by a shady spring. 
 And elbow-deep with feverous fingering 
 Stems the upbursting cold : a wild rose tree 
 Pavilions him in bloom, and he doth see 
 A bud which snares his fancy: lo ! but now 
 He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water : how ! 
 It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight ; 
 And, in the middle, there is softly pight 60 
 
 A golden butterfly ; upon whose wings 
 There must be surely character'd strange things. 
 For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft. 
 
 Lightly this little herald flew aloft, 
 Follow'd by glad Endymion's clasped hands : 
 Onward it flies. From languor's sullen bands 
 His limbs are loos'd, and eager, on he hies 
 Dazzled to trace it in the sunny skies. 
 It seem'd he flew, the way so easy was ; 
 
 And like a new-born spirit did he pass 70 
 
 Through the green evening quiet in the sun. 
 O'er many a heath, through many a woodland dun. 
 Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams 
 The summer time away. One track unseams 
 A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue 
 Of ocean fades upon him ; then, anew. 
 He sinks adown a solitary glen. 
 Where there was never sound of mortal men, 
 Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences
 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 77 
 
 Melting to silence, when upon the breeze 80 
 
 Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet, 
 
 To cheer itself to Delphi. Still his feet 
 
 Went swift beneath the merry-winged guide. 
 
 Until it reach'd a splashing fountain's side 
 
 That, near a cavern's mouth, for ever pour'd 
 
 Unto the temperate air : then high it soar'd, 
 
 And, downward, suddenly began to dip, 
 
 As if, athirst with so much toil, 'twould sip 
 
 The crystal spout-head : so it did, with touch 
 
 Most delicate, as though afraid to smutch 90 
 
 Even with mealy gold the waters clear. 
 
 But, at that very touch, to disappear 
 
 So fairy-quick, was strange ! Bewildered, 
 
 Endymion sought around, and shook each bed 
 
 Of covert flowers in vain ; and then he flung 
 
 Himself along the grass. What gentle tongue. 
 
 What whisperer disturb'd his gloomy rest ? 
 
 It was a nymph uprisen to the breast 
 
 In the fountain's pebbly margin, and she stood 
 
 'Mong lilies, like the youngest of the brood. 100 
 
 To him her dripping hand she softly kist. 
 
 And anxiously began to plait and twist 
 
 Her ringlets round her fingers, saying : " Youth ! 
 
 Too long, alas, hast thou starv'd on the ruth. 
 
 The bitterness of love : too long indeed, 
 
 Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I weed 
 
 Thy soul of care, by heavens, I would offer 
 
 All the bright riches of my crystal coffer 
 
 To Amphitrite ; all my clear-eyed fish. 
 
 Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish, 1 10 
 
 Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze ; 
 
 Yea, or my veined pebble-floor, that draws 
 
 A virgin light to the deep ; my grotto-sands 
 
 Tawny and gold, ooz'd slowly from far lands 
 
 By my diligent springs ; my level lilies, shells, 
 
 My charming rod, my potent river spells ; 
 
 Yes, every thing, even to the pearly cup 
 
 Meander gave me, — for I bubbled up 
 
 To fainting creatures in a desert wild. 
 
 But woe is me, I am but as a child 120 
 
 To gladden thee ; and all I dare to say, 
 
 Is, that I pity thee ; that on this day 
 
 I've been thy guide ; that thou must wander far 
 
 In other regions, past the scanty bar 
 
 To mortal steps, before thou canst be ta'en 
 
 From every wasting sign, from every pain,
 
 78 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Into the gentle bosom of thy love. 
 
 Why it is thus, one knows in heaven above : 
 
 But, a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewel ! 
 
 I have a ditty for my hollow cell." 130 
 
 Hereat, she vanished from Endymion's gaze, 
 Who brooded o'er the water in amaze : 
 The dashing fount pour'd on, and where its pool 
 Lay, half asleep, in grass and rushes cool. 
 Quick waterflies and gnats were sporting still, 
 And fish were dimpling, as if good nor ill 
 Had fallen out that hour. The wanderer. 
 Holding his forehead, to keep off the burr 
 Of smothering fancies, patiently sat down ; 
 And, while beneath the evening's sleepy frown 140 
 
 Glow-worms began to trim their starry lamps, 
 Thus breath'd he to himself: " Whoso encamps 
 To take a fancied city of delight, 
 O what a wretch is he ! and when 'tis his, 
 After long toil and travelling, to miss 
 The kernel of his hopes, how more than vile : 
 Yet, for him there's refreshment even in toil ; 
 Another city doth he set about, 
 Free from the smallest pebble-head of doubt 
 That he will seize on trickling honey-combs : 150 
 
 Alas, he finds them dry ; and then he foams. 
 And onward to another city speeds. 
 But this is human life : the war, the deeds. 
 The disappointment, the anxiety. 
 Imagination's struggles, far and nigh. 
 All human ; bearing in themselves this good. 
 That they are still the air, the subtle food. 
 To make us feel existence, and to shew 
 How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow. 
 Whether to weeds or flowers ; but for me, 160 
 
 There is no depth to strike in : I can see 
 Nought earthly worth my compassing ; so stand 
 Upon a misty, jutting head of land — 
 Alone ? No, no ; and by the Orphean lute. 
 When mad Eurydice is listening to't ; 
 I'd rather stand upon this misty peak, 
 With not a thing to sigh for, or to seek. 
 But the soft shadow of my thrice-seen love. 
 Than be — I care not what. O meekest dove 
 Of heaven ! O Cynthia, ten-times bright and fair ! 170 
 
 From thy blue throne, now filling all the air. 
 Glance but one little beam of temper'd light 

 
 BOOK ii] ENDYMION 79 
 
 Into my bosom, that the dreadful might 
 
 And tyranny of love be somewhat sear'd ! 
 
 Yet do not so, sweet queen ; one torment spar'd. 
 
 Would give a pang to jealous misery. 
 
 Worse than the torment's self : but rather tie 
 
 Large wings upon my shoulders, and point out 
 
 My love's far dwelling. Though the playful rout 
 
 Of Cupids shun thee, too divine art thou, i8o 
 
 Too keen in beauty, for thy silver prow 
 
 Not to have dipp'd in love's most gentle stream. 
 
 O be propitious, nor severely deem 
 
 My madness impious ; for, by all the stars 
 
 That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars 
 
 That kept my spirit in are burst — that I 
 
 Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky ! 
 
 How beautiful thou art ! The world how deep ! 
 
 How tremulous-dazzlingly the wheels sweep 
 
 Around their axle ! Then these gleaming reins, igo 
 
 How lithe ! When this thy chariot attains 
 
 Its airy goal, haply some bower veils 
 
 Those twilight eyes ? Those eyes ! — my spirit fails — 
 
 Dear goddess, help ! or the wide-gaping air 
 
 Will gulph me — help ! " — At this with madden'd stare, 
 
 And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood ; 
 
 Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood. 
 
 Or blind Orion hungry for the morn. 
 
 And, but from the deep cavern there was borne 
 
 A voice, he had been froze to senseless stone ; 200 
 
 Nor sigh of his, nor plaint, nor passion'd moan 
 
 Had more been heard. Thus swell' d it forth : " Descend, 
 
 Young mountaineer ! descend where alleys bend 
 
 Into the sparry hollows of the world ! 
 
 Oft hast thou seen bolts of the thunder hurl'd 
 
 As from thy threshold ; day by day hast been 
 
 A little lower than the chilly sheen 
 
 Of icy pinnacles, and dipp'dst thine arms 
 
 Into the deadening ether that still charms 
 
 Their marble being : now, as deep profound 210 
 
 As those are high, descend ! He ne'er is crown'd 
 
 With immortality, who fears to follow 
 
 Where aiiy voices lead : so through the hollow. 
 
 The silent mysteries of earth, descend ! " 
 
 He heard but the last words, nor could contend 
 One moment in reflection : for he fled 
 Into the fearful deep, to hide his head 
 From the clear moon, the trees, and coming madness.
 
 80 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 'Twas far too strange, and wonderful for sadness ; 
 Sharpening, by degrees, his appetite 220 
 
 To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light, 
 The region ; nor bright, nor sombre wholly, 
 But mingled up ; a gleaming melancholy ; 
 A dusky empire and its diadems ; 
 One faint eternal eventide of gems. 
 Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold, 
 Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told, 
 With all its lines abrupt and angular : 
 Out-shooting sometimes, like a meteor-star. 
 Through a vast antre ; then the metal woof, 230 
 
 Like Vulcan's rainbow, with some monstrous roof 
 Curves hugely : now, far in the deep abyss. 
 It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss 
 Fancy into belief: anon it leads 
 Through winding passages, where sameness breeds 
 Vexing conceptions of some sudden change ; 
 Whether to silver gi-ots, or giant range 
 Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge 
 Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge 
 
 Now fareth he, that o'er the v^ast beneath 240 
 
 Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth 
 A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come 
 But as the murmui'ing surge. Chilly and numb 
 His bosom grew, when first he, far away 
 Descried an orbed diamond, set to fray 
 Old darkness from his throne : 'twas like the sun 
 Uprisen o'er chaos : and with such a stun 
 Came the amazement, that, absorb'd in it. 
 He saw not fiercer wonders — past the wit 
 
 Of any spirit to tell, but one of those 250 
 
 Who, when this planet's sphering time doth close. 
 Will be its high remembrancers : who they ? 
 The mighty ones who have made eternal day 
 For Greece and England. While astonishment 
 With deep-drawn sighs was quieting, he went 
 Into a marble gallery, passing through 
 A mimic temple, so complete and true 
 In sacred custom, that he well nigh fear'd 
 To search it inwards ; whence far off appear'd, 
 Through a long pillar' d vista, a fair shrine, 260 
 
 And just beyond, on light tiptoe divine, 
 A quiver'd Dian. Stepping awfully. 
 The youth approach'd ; oft turning his veil'd eye 
 Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old. 
 And when, more near figainst the marble cold
 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 81 
 
 He had touch'd his forehead, he began to thread 
 
 All courts and passages, where silence dead 
 
 Rous'd by his whispering footsteps murmured faint : 
 
 And long he travers'd to and fro, to acquaint 
 
 Himself with every mystery, and awe ; 270 
 
 Till, weary, he sat down before the maw 
 
 Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim. 
 
 To wild uncertainty and shadows grim. 
 
 There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before. 
 
 And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore 
 
 The journey homeward to habitual self! 
 
 A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf. 
 
 Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar. 
 
 Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire. 
 
 Into the bosom of a hated thing. 280 
 
 What misery most drowningly doth sing 
 In lone Endymion's ear, now he has raught 
 The goal of consciousness ? Ah, 'tis the thought, 
 The deadly feel of solitude : for lo I 
 He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow 
 Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild 
 In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-pil'd. 
 The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west. 
 Like herded elephants ; nor felt, nor prest 
 Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air ; 290 
 
 But far from such companionship to wear 
 An unknown time, surcharg'd with grief, away, 
 Was now his lot. And must he patient stay. 
 Tracing fantastic figures with his spear ? 
 "No!" exclaim'd he, ''why should I tarry here.''" 
 No! loudly -echoed times innumerable. 
 At which he straightway started, and 'gan tell 
 His paces back into the temple's chief; 
 Warming and glowing strong in the belief 
 
 Of help from Dian : so that when again 300 
 
 He caught her airy form, thus did he plain. 
 Moving more near the while : " O Haunter chaste 
 Of river sides, and woods, and heathy waste. 
 Where with thy silver bow and arrows keen 
 Art thou now forested? O woodland Queen, 
 What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos .-' 
 Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos 
 Of thy disparted nymphs ? Through what dark tree 
 Glimmers thy crescent ? Wheresoe'er it be, 
 'Tis in the breath of heaven : thou dost taste 310 
 
 Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste 
 6
 
 S'2 
 
 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Thy loveliness in dismal elements ; 
 
 But, finding in our green earth sweet contents. 
 
 There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee 
 
 It feels Elysian, how rich to me, 
 
 An exil'd mortal, sounds its pleasant name ! 
 
 Within my breast there lives a choking flame— 
 
 O let me cool 't the zephyr-boughs among ! 
 
 A homeward fever parches up my tongue— 
 
 O let me slake it at the running springs ! 320 
 
 Upon my ear a noisy nothing rings— 
 
 O let me once more hear the linnet's note ! 
 
 Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float — 
 
 O let me 'noint them with the heaven's light ! 
 
 Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white ? 
 
 O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice ! 
 
 Dost thou now please thy thirst Avith berry-juice ? 
 
 O think how this dry palate would rejoice ! 
 
 If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice, 
 
 O think how I should love a bed of flowers ! — 330 
 
 Young goddess ! let me see my native bowers ! 
 
 Deliver me from this rapacious deep ! " 
 
 Thus ending loudly, as he would o'erleap 
 His destiny, alert he stood : but when 
 Obstinate silence came heavily again. 
 Feeling about for its old couch of space 
 And airy cradle, lowly bow'd his face 
 Desponding, o'er the marble floor's cold thrill. 
 But 'twas not long ; for, sweeter than the rill 
 To its old channel, or a swollen tide 34& 
 
 To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied, 
 And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns 
 Up heaping through the slab : refreshment di'owns 
 Itself, and strives its own delights to hide — 
 Nor in one spot alone ; the floral pride 
 In a long whispering birth enchanted grew 
 Before his footsteps ; as when heav'd anew 
 Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore, 
 Down whose green back the short-liv'd foam, all hoar, 
 Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence. 350 J 
 
 Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense. 
 Upon his fairy journey on he hastes ; 
 So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes 
 One moment with his hand among the sweets : 
 Onward he goes — he stops — his bosom beats 
 As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm
 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 83 
 
 Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm, 
 
 This sleepy music, forc'd him walk tiptoe : 
 
 For it came more softly than the east could blow 
 
 Arion's magic to the Atlantic isles ; 360 
 
 Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles 
 
 Of thron'd Apollo, could breathe back the lyre 
 
 To seas Ionian and Tyrian. 
 
 O did he ever live, that lonely man, 
 Who lov'd — and music slew not ? 'Tis the pest 
 Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest ; 
 That things of delicate and tenderest worth 
 Are swallow'd all, and made a seared dearth. 
 By one consuming flame : it doth immerse 
 
 And suffocate true blessings in a curse. 370 
 
 Half-happy, by comparison of bliss. 
 Is miserable. 'Twas even so with this 
 Dew-dropping melody, in the Carian's ear ; 
 First heaven, then hell, and then forgotten clear, 
 Vanish'd in elemental passion. 
 
 And down some swart abysm he had gone. 
 Had not a heavenly guide benignant led 
 To where thick myrtle branches, 'gainst his head 
 Brushing, awakened : then the sounds again 
 Went noiseless as a passing noontide rain 380 
 
 Over a bower, where little space he stood ; 
 For as the sunset peeps into a wood 
 So saw he panting light, and towards it went 
 Through windmg alleys ; and lo, wonderment ! 
 Upon soft verdure saw, one here, one there, 
 Cupids a slumbering on their pinions fair. 
 
 After a thousand mazes overgone. 
 At last, with sudden step, he came upon 
 A chamber, myrtle wall'd, embowered high, 
 Full of light, incense, tender minstrelsy, 390 
 
 And more of beautiful and strange beside : 
 For on a silken couch of rosy pride. 
 In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth 
 Of fondest beauty ; fonder, in fair sooth. 
 Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach : 
 And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach. 
 Or ripe October's faded marigolds. 
 Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds — 
 Not hiding up an Apollonian curve 
 Of neck and shoulder, nor the tenting swerve 400
 
 84 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light ; 
 
 But rather, giving them to the filled sight 
 
 Officiously. Sideway his face repos'd 
 
 On one white arm, and tenderly unclos'd. 
 
 By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth 
 
 To slumbery pout ; just as the morning south 
 
 Disparts a dew-lipp'd rose. Above his head, 
 
 Four lily stalks did their white honours wed 
 
 To make a coronal ; and round him grew 
 
 All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue, 410 
 
 Together intertwin'd and tramrael'd fresh : 
 
 The vine of glossy sprout ; the ivy mesh. 
 
 Shading its Ethiop berries ; and woodbine. 
 
 Of velvet leaves and bugle-blooms divine ; 
 
 Convolvulus in streaked vases flush ; 
 
 The creeper, mellowing for an autumn blush ; 
 
 And virgin's bower, trailing airily ; 
 
 With others of the sisterhood. Hard by. 
 
 Stood serene Cupids watching silently. 
 
 One, kneeling to a lyre, touch'd the strings, 420 
 
 Muffling to death the pathos with his wings ; 
 
 And, ever and anon, uprose to look 
 
 At the youth's slumber ; while another took 
 
 A willow-bough, distilling odorous dew. 
 
 And shook it on his hair ; another flew 
 
 In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise 
 
 Rain'd violets upon his sleeping eyes. 
 
 At these enchantments, and yet many more. 
 The breathless Latmian wonder' d o'er and o'er ; 
 Until, impatient in embarrassment, 43<3 
 
 He forthright pass'd, and lightly treading went 
 To that same feather'd lyrist, who straightway, 
 Smihng, thus whisper'd : " Though from upper day 
 Thou art a wanderer, and thy presence here 
 Might seem unholy, be of happy cheer ! 
 For 'tis the nicest touch of human honour. 
 When some ethereal and high-favouring donor 
 Presents immortal bowers to mortal sense ; 
 As now 'tis done to thee, Endymion. Hence 
 Was I in no wise startled. So recline 
 Upon these living flowers. Here is wine. 
 Alive with sparkles — never, I aver. 
 Since Ariadne was a vintager. 
 So cool a purple : taste these juicy pears. 
 Sent me by sad Vertumnus, when his fears 
 Were high about Pomona : here is cream. 
 
 440 

 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 85 
 
 Deepening to richness from a snowy gleam ; 
 
 Sweeter than that nurse Amalthea skimm'd 
 
 For the boy Jupiter : and here, undimm'd 
 
 By any touch, a bunch of blooming plums 450 
 
 Ready to melt between an infant's gums : 
 
 And here is manna pick'd from Syrian trees, 
 
 In starlight, by the three Hesperides, 
 
 Feast on, and meanwhile I will let thee know 
 
 Of all these things around us." He did so, 
 
 Still brooding o'er the cadence of his lyre ; 
 
 And thus : " I need not any hearing tire 
 
 By telling how the sea-born goddess pin'd 
 
 For a mortal youth, and how she strove to bind 
 
 Him all in all unto her doting self. 460 
 
 Who would not be so prison' d ? but, fond elf. 
 
 He was content to let her amorous plea 
 
 Faint through his careless arms ; content to see 
 
 An unseiz'd heaven dying at his feet ; 
 
 Content, O fool ! to make a cold retreat. 
 
 When on the pleasant grass such love, lovelorn. 
 
 Lay sorrowing ; when every tear was bom 
 
 Of diverse passion ; when her lips and eyes 
 
 Were clos'd in sullen moisture, and quick sighs 
 
 Came vex'd and pettish through her nostrils small. 470 
 
 Hush ! no exclaim — yet, justly mightst thou call 
 
 Curses upon his head. — I was half glad. 
 
 But my poor mistress went distract and mad. 
 
 When the boar tusk'd him : so away she flew 
 
 To Jove's high throne, and by her plainings drew 
 
 Immortal tear-drops down the thunderer's beard ; 
 
 Whereon, it was decreed he should be rear'd 
 
 Each summer time to life. Lo ! this is he, 
 
 That same Adonis, safe in the privacy 
 
 Of this still region all his winter-sleep. 480 
 
 Aye, sleep ; for when our love -sick queen did weep 
 
 Over his waned corse, the tremulous shower 
 
 Heal'd up the wound, and, with a balmy power, 
 
 Medicined death to a lengthened drowsiness : 
 
 The which she fills with visions, and doth dress 
 
 In all this quiet luxury ; and hath set 
 
 Us young immortals, without any let, 
 
 To watch his slumber through. 'Tis well nigh pass'd. 
 
 Even to a moment's filling up, and fast 
 
 She scuds with summer breezes, to pant through 490 
 
 The first long kiss, warm firstling, to renew 
 
 Embower'd sports in Cytherea's isle. 
 
 Look ! how those winged listeners all this while
 
 86 JOHN KEATS [book il 
 
 Stand anxious : see ! behold ! " — This clamant word 
 
 Broke through the careful silence ; for they heard 
 
 A rustling noise of leaves, and out there flutter'd 
 
 Pigeons and doves : Adonis something mutter'd 
 
 The while one hand, that erst upon his thigh 
 
 Lay dormant, mov'd convuls'd and gradually 
 
 Up to his forehead. Then there was a hum 500 
 
 Of sudden voices, echoing, " Come ! come ! 
 
 Arise ! awake ! Clear summer has forth walk'd 
 
 Unto the clover -sward, and she has talk'd 
 
 Full soothingly to every nested finch : 
 
 Rise, Cupids ! or we'll give the blue-bell pinch 
 
 To your dimpled arms. Once more sweet life begin ! " 
 
 At this, from every side they hurried in. 
 
 Rubbing their sleepy eyes with lazy wrists. 
 
 And doubling over head their little fists 
 
 In backward yawns. But all were soon alive : 510 
 
 For as delicious wine doth, sparkling, dive 
 
 In nectar'd clouds and curls through water fair. 
 
 So from the arbour roof down swell'd an air 
 
 Odorous and enlivening ; making all 
 
 To laugh, and play, and sing, and loudly call 
 
 For their sweet queen : when lo ! the wreathed green 
 
 Disparted, and far upward could be seen 
 
 Blue heaven, and a silver car, air-borne, 
 
 Whose silent wheels, fresh wet from clouds of mom, 
 
 Spun off a drizzling dew, — which falling chill 520 
 
 On soft Adonis' shoulders, made him still 
 
 Nestle and turn uneasily about. 
 
 Soon were the white doves plain, with neck stretch'd out. 
 
 And silken traces lighten'd in descent ; 
 
 And soon, returning from love's banishment. 
 
 Queen Venus leaning downward open arm'd : 
 
 Her shadow fell upon his breast, and charm'd 
 
 A tumult to his heart, and a new life 
 
 Into his eyes. Ah, miserable strife. 
 
 But for her comforting ! unhappy sight, 530 
 
 But meeting her blue orbs ! Who, who can write 
 
 Of these first minutes ? The unchariest muse 
 
 To embracements warm as theirs makes coy excuse. 
 
 O it has ruffled every spirit there. 
 Saving love's self, who stands superb to share 
 The general gladness : awfully he stands ; 
 A sovereign quell is in his waving hands ; 
 No sight can bear the lightning of his bow ; 
 His quiver is mysterious, none can know
 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 87 
 
 What themselves think of it ; from forth his eyes 540 
 
 There darts strange light of varied hues and dyes : 
 
 A scowl is sometimes on his brow, but who 
 
 Look full upon it feel anon the blue 
 
 Of his fair eyes run liquid through their souls. 
 
 Endymion feels it, and no more controls 
 
 The burning prayer within him ; so, bent low, 
 
 He had begun a plaining of his woe. 
 
 But Venus, bending forward, said : " My child, 
 
 Favour this gentle youth ; his days are wild 
 
 With love — he — but alas ! too well I see 550 
 
 Thou know'st the deepness of his misery. 
 
 Ah, smile not so, my son : I tell thee true, 
 
 That when through heavy hours I us'd to rue 
 
 The endless sleep of this new-bom Adon', 
 
 This stranger ay I pitied. For upon 
 
 A dreary morning once I fled awaj^ 
 
 Into the breezy clouds, to weep and pray 
 
 For this my love : for vexing Mars had teaz'd 
 
 Me even to tears : thence, when a little eas'd, 
 
 Down-looking, vacant, through a hazy wood, 560 
 
 I saw this youth as he despairing stood : 
 
 Those same dark curls blown vagrant in the wind ; 
 
 Those same full fringed lids a constant blind 
 
 Over his sullen eyes : I saw him throw 
 
 Himself on wither'd leaves, even as though 
 
 Death had come sudden ; for no jot he mov'd. 
 
 Yet mutter'd wildly. I could hear he lov'd 
 
 Some fair immortal, and that his embrace 
 
 Had zoned her through the night. There is no trace 
 
 Of this in heaven : I have mark'd each cheek, 570 
 
 And find it is the vainest thing to seek ; 
 
 And that of all things 'tis kept secretest. 
 
 Endymion ! one day thou wilt be blest : 
 
 So still obey the guiding hand that fends 
 
 Thee safely through these wonders for sweet ends. 
 
 'Tis a concealment needful in extreme ; 
 
 And if I guess'd not so, the sunny beam 
 
 Thou shouldst mount up to with me. Now adieu ! 
 
 Here must we leave thee." — At these words up flew 
 
 The impatient 1 loves, up rose the floating car, 580 
 
 Up went the htim celestial. High afar 
 
 The Latmian saw them minish into nought ; 
 
 And, when all were clear vanish'd, still he caught 
 
 A vivid lightning from that dreadful bow. 
 
 When all was darkened, with .^tnean throe 
 
 The earth clos'd — gave a solitary moan — 
 
 And left him once again in twilight lone.
 
 590 
 
 6oo 
 
 88 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 He did not rave, he did not stare aghast, 
 For all those visions were o'ergone, and past, 
 And he in loneliness : he felt assur'd 
 Of happy times, virhen all he had endur'd 
 Would seem a feather to the mighty prize. 
 So, with unusual gladness, on he hies 
 Through caves, and palaces of mottled ore, 
 Gold dome, and crystal wall, and turquois floor. 
 Black polish'd porticos of awful shade. 
 And, at the last, a diamond balustrade. 
 Leading afar past wild magnificence. 
 Spiral through ruggedest loopholes, and thence 
 Stretching across a void, then guiding o'er 
 Enormous chasms, where, all foam and roar. 
 Streams subteiTanean tease their granite beds ; 
 Then heighten'd just above the silvery heads 
 Of a thousand fountains, so that he could dash 
 The waters with his spear ; but at the splash, 
 Done heedlessly, those spouting columns rose 
 Sudden a poplar's height, and 'gan to enclose 
 His diamond path with fretwork, streaming round 
 Alive, and dazzling cool, and with a sound. 
 Haply, like dolphin tumults, when sweet shells 
 Welcome the float of Thetis. Long he dwells 
 On this delight ; for, every minute's space. 
 The streams with changed magic interlace : 
 Sometimes like delicatest lattices, 
 Cover' d with crystal vines ; then weeping trees. 
 Moving about as in a gentle wind. 
 Which, in a wink, to watery gauze refin'd, 
 Pour'd into shapes of curtain'd canopies, 
 Spangled, and rich with liquid broideries 
 Of flowers, peacocks, swans, and naiads fair. 
 Swifter than lightning went these wonders rare ; 
 And then the water, into stubborn streams 
 Collecting, mimick'd the wrought oaken beams, 
 Pillars, and frieze, and high fantastic roof. 
 Of those dusk places in times far aloof 
 Cathedrals call'd. He bade a loth farewel 
 To these founts Protean, passing gulph, and dell. 
 And torrent, and ten thousand jutting shapes. 
 Half seen through deepest gloom, and griesly gapes. 
 Blackening on every side, and overhead 630 
 
 A vaulted dome like Heaven's, far bespread 
 With starlight gems : aye, all so huge and strange. 
 The solitary felt a hurried change 
 Working within him into something dreary,-^ 
 
 
 610 
 
 620
 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 89 
 
 Vex'd like a morning eagle, lost, and weary. 
 
 And purblind amid foggy, midnight wolds. 
 
 But he revives at once : for who beholds 
 
 New sudden things, nor casts his mental slough ? 
 
 Forth from a rugged arch, in the dusk below. 
 
 Came mother Cybele ! alone — alone — 6^0 
 
 In sombre chariot ; dark foldings thrown 
 
 About her majesty, and front death-pale. 
 
 With turrets crown'd. Four maned lions hale 
 
 The sluggish wheels ; solemn their toothed maws, 
 
 Their surly eyes brow-hidden, heavy paws 
 
 Uplifted drowsily, and nervy tails 
 
 Gswering their tawny brushes. Silent sails 
 
 This shadowy queen athwart, and faints away 
 
 In another gloomy arch. 
 
 Wherefore delay. 
 Young traveller, in such a mournful place .'' 650 
 
 Art thou wayworn, or canst not further trace 
 The diamond path ? And does it indeed end 
 Abrupt in middle air ? Yet earthward bend 
 Thy forehead, and to Jupiter cloud-borne 
 Call ardently ! He was indeed wayworn ; 
 Abrupt, in middle air, his way was lost ; 
 To cloud -borne Jove he bowed, and there crost 
 Towards him a large eagle, 'twixt whose wings. 
 Without one impious word, himself he flings. 
 Committed to the darkness and the gloom : 660 
 
 Down, down, uncertain to what pleasant doom. 
 Swift as a fathoming plummet down he fell 
 Through unknown thing s ; till exhaled asphodel. 
 And rose, with spicy fannings interbreath'd. 
 Came swelling forth where little caves were wreath'd 
 So thick with leaves and mosses, that they seem'd 
 Large honey-combs of green, and freshly teem'd 
 With airs delicious. In the greenest nook 
 The eagle landed him, and farewel took. 
 
 It was a jasmine bower, all bestrown 670 
 
 With golden moss. His every sense had grown 
 Ethereal for pleasure ; 'bove his head 
 Flew a delight half-graspable ; his tread 
 Was Hesperean ; to his capable ears 
 Silence was music from the holy spheres ; 
 A dewy luxury was in his eyes ; 
 The little flowers felt his pleasant sighs 
 And stirr'd them faintly. Verdant cave and cell 
 He wander'd through, ott wondering at such swell
 
 90 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Of sudden exaltation : but, " Alas ! " 680 
 
 Said he, " will all this gush of feeling pass 
 
 Away in solitude ? And must they wane. 
 
 Like melodies upon a sandy plain. 
 
 Without an echo ? Then shall I be left 
 
 So sad, so melancholy, so bereit ! 
 
 Yet still I feel immortal ! O my love, 
 
 My breath of life, where art thou ? High above. 
 
 Dancing before the morning gates of heaven ? 
 
 Or keeping watch among those stan-y seven. 
 
 Old Atlas' children ? Art a maid of the waters, 690 
 
 One of shell-winding Triton's bright-hair'd daughters ? 
 
 Or art, impossible ! a nymph of Dian's, 
 
 Weaving a coronal of tender scions 
 
 For very idleness ? Where'er thou art, 
 
 Methinks it now is at my will to start 
 
 Into thine arms ; to scare Aurora's train. 
 
 And snatch thee from the morning ; o'er the main 
 
 To scud like a wild bird, and take thee off 
 
 From thy sea-foamy cradle ; or to doff 
 
 Thy shepherd vest, and woo thee mid fresh leaves. 700 
 
 No, no, too eagerly my soul deceives 
 
 Its powerless self: I know this cannot be. 
 
 O let me then by some sweet dreaming flee 
 
 To her entrancements : hither sleep awhile ! 
 
 Hither most gentle sleep ! and soothing foil 
 
 For some few hours the coming solitude." 
 
 Thus spake he, and that moment felt endued 
 With power to dream deliciously ; so wound 
 Through a dim passage, searching till he found 
 The smoothest mossy bed and deepest, where 710 
 
 He threw himself, and just into the air 
 Stretching his indolent arms, he took, O bliss ! 
 A naked waist : " Fair Cupid, whence is this ? " 
 A well-known voice sigh'd, " Sweetest, here am I ! " 
 At which soft ravishment, with doting cry 
 They trembled to each other. — Helicon ! 
 O fountain'd hill ! Old Homer's Helicon ! 
 That thou wouldst spout a little streamlet o'er 
 These sorry pages ; then the verse would soar 
 And sing above this gentle paix-, like lark 720 
 
 Over his nested young : but all is dark 
 Around thine aged top, and thy clear fount 
 Exhales in mists to heaven. Aye, the count 
 Of mighty Poets is made up ; the scroll 
 Is folded by the Muses ; the bright roll
 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 91 
 
 Is in Apollo's hand : our dazed eyes 
 
 Have seen a new tinge in the western skies : 
 
 The world has done its duty. Yet, oh yet. 
 
 Although the sun of poesy is set, 
 
 These lovers did embrace, and we must weep 730 
 
 That there is no old power left to steep 
 
 A quill immortal in their joyous tears. 
 
 Long time ere silence did their anxious fears 
 
 Question that thus it was ; long time they lay 
 
 Fondling and kissing eveiy doubt away ; 
 
 Long time ere soft caressing sobs began 
 
 To mellow into words, and then there ran 
 
 Two bubbling springs of talk from their sweet lips. 
 
 " O known Unknown ! from whom my being sips 
 
 Such darling essence, wherefore may I not 740 
 
 Be ever in these arms ? in this sweet spot 
 
 Pillow my chin for ever ? ever press 
 
 These toying hands and kiss their smooth excess ? 
 
 Why not for ever and for ever feel 
 
 That breath about my eyes ? Ah, thou wilt steal 
 
 Away from me again, indeed, indeed — 
 
 Thou wilt be gone away, and wilt not heed 
 
 My lonely madness. Speak, my kindest fkir ! 
 
 Is — is it to be so ? No ! Who will dare 
 
 To pluck thee from me ? And, of thine own will, 750 
 
 Full well I feel thou wouldst not leave me. Still 
 
 Let me entwine thee surer, surer — now 
 
 How can we part ? Elysium ! who art thou ? 
 
 Who, that thou canst not be for ever here. 
 
 Or lift me with thee to some starry sphere ? 
 
 Enchantress ! tell me by this soft embrace, 
 
 By the most soft completion of thy face, 
 
 Those lips, O slippery blisses, twinkling eyes, 
 
 And by these tenderest, milky sovereignties — 
 
 These tenderest, and by the nectar-wine, 760 
 
 The passion " "O dov'd Ida the divine ! 
 
 Endymion ! dearest ! Ah, unhappy me ! 
 
 His soul will 'scape us — O felicity ! 
 
 How he does love me ! His poor temples beat 
 
 To the very tune of love — how sweet, sweet, sweet. 
 
 Revive, dear youth, or I shall faint and die ; 
 
 Revive, or these soft hours will hurry by 
 
 In tranced dulness ; speak, and let that spell 
 
 Affright this lethargy ! I cannot quell 
 
 Its heavy pressure, and will press at least 770 
 
 My lips to thine, that they may richly feast 
 
 Until we taste the life of love again.
 
 92 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 What ! dost thou move ? dost kiss ? O bliss ! O pain ! 
 
 I love thee, youth, more than I can conceive ; 
 
 And so long absence from thee doth bereave 
 
 My soul of any rest : yet must I hence : 
 
 Yet, can I not to starry eminence 
 
 Uplift thee ; nor for very shame can own 
 
 Myself to thee : Ah, dearest, do not groan 
 
 Or thou wilt force me from this secrecy, 780 
 
 And I must blush in heaven. O that I 
 
 Had done it already ; that the dreadful smiles 
 
 At my lost brightness, my impassion'd wiles. 
 
 Had waned from Olympus' solemn height. 
 
 And from all serious Gods ; that our delight 
 
 Was quite forgotten, save of us alone ! 
 
 And wherefore so ashamed ? 'Tis but to atone 
 
 For endless pleasure, by some coward blushes : 
 
 Yet must I be a coward ! — Horror rushes 
 
 Too palpable before me — the sad look 790 
 
 Of Jove — Minerva's start — no bosom shook 
 
 With awe of purity — no Cupid pinion 
 
 In reverence vailed — my crystaline dominion 
 
 Half lost, and all old hymns made nullity ! 
 
 But what is this to love ? 1 could fly 
 
 With thee into the ken of heavenly powers. 
 
 So thou wouldst thus, for many sequent hours. 
 
 Press me so sweetly. Now I swear at once 
 
 That I am wise, that Pallas is a dunce — 
 
 Perhaps her love like mine is but unknown — 800 
 
 I do think that I have been alone 
 
 In chastity : yes, Pallas has been sighing. 
 While every eve saw me my hair uptying 
 With fingers cool as aspen leaves. Sweet love, 
 
 1 was as vague as solitary dove. 
 
 Nor knew that nests were built. Now a soft kiss — 
 
 Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss. 
 
 An immortality of passion's thine : 
 
 Ere long I will exalt thee to the shine 
 
 Of heaven ambrosial ; and we will shade 810 
 
 Ourselves whole summers by a river glade ; 
 
 And I will tell thee stories of the sky. 
 
 And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy. 
 
 My happy love will overwing all bounds ! 
 
 O let me melt into thee ; let the sounds 
 
 Of our close voices marry at their birth ; 
 
 Let us entwine hoveringly — O dearth 
 
 Of human words ! roughness of mortal speech ! 
 
 Lispings empyrean will I sometime teach
 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 93 
 
 Thine honied tongue — hite-breathings, which I gasp 820 
 
 To have thee understand, now while I clasp 
 
 Thee thus, and weep for fondness — I am pain'd, 
 
 Endymion : woe ! woe ! is grief contain'd 
 
 In the very deeps of pleasure, my sole life ? " — 
 
 Hereat, with many sobs, her gentle strife 
 
 Melted into a languor. He return'd 
 
 Entranced vows and tears. 
 
 Ye who have yearn'd 
 With too much passion, will here stay and pity. 
 For the mere sake of truth ; as 'tis a ditty 
 
 Not of these days, but long ago 'twas told 830 
 
 By a cavern wind unto a forest old ; 
 And then the forest told it in a dream 
 To a sleeping lake, whose cool and level gleam 
 A poet caught as he was journeying 
 To Phoebus ' shrine ; and in it he did fling 
 His weary limbs, bathing an hour's space. 
 And after, straight in that inspired place 
 He sang the story up into the air. 
 Giving it universal freedom. There 
 
 Has it been ever sounding for those ears 840 
 
 Whose tips are glowing hot. The legend cheers 
 Yon centinel stars ; and he who listens to it 
 Must surely be self-doom'd or he will rue it : 
 For quenchless burnings come upon the heart. 
 Made fiercer by a fear lest any part 
 Should be engulphed in the eddying wind. 
 As much as here is penn'd doth always find 
 A resting place, thus much comes clear and plain ; 
 Anon the strange voice is upon the wane — 
 And 'tis but echo'd from departing sound, 850 
 
 That the fair visitant at last unwound 
 Her gentle limbs, and left the youth asleep. — 
 Thus the tradition of the gusty deep. 
 
 Now turn we to our former chroniclers. — 
 Endymion awoke, that grief of hers 
 Sweet paining on his ear : he sickly guess'd 
 How lone he was once more, and sadly press'd 
 His empty arms togethei*, hung his head. 
 And most forlorn upon that widow'd bed 
 
 Sat silently. Love's madness he had known : S60 
 
 Often with more than tortured lion's groan 
 Moanings had burst from him ; but now that rage 
 Had pass'd away : no longer did he wage
 
 94 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 A rough-voic'd war against the dooming stars. 
 
 No, he had felt too much for such harsh jai-s : 
 
 The lyre of his soul iEolian tun'd 
 
 Forgot all violence, and but commun'd 
 
 With melancholy thought : O he had swoon'd 
 
 Drunken from pleasure's nipple ; and his love 
 
 Henceforth was dove-like.— Loth was he to move 870 
 
 From the imprinted couch, and when he did, 
 
 'Twas with slow, languid paces, and face hid 
 
 In muffling hands. So temper'd, out he stray'd 
 
 Half seeing visions that might have dismay'd 
 
 Alecto's serpents ; ravishments more keen 
 
 Than Hermes' pipe, when anxious he did lean 
 
 Over eclipsing eyes : and at the last 
 
 It was a sounding grotto, vaulted, vast. 
 
 O'er studded with a thousand, thousand pearls. 
 
 And crimson mouthed shells with stubborn curls, 880 
 
 Of every shape and size, even to the bulk 
 
 In which whales arbour close, to brood and sulk 
 
 Against an endless storm. Moreover too. 
 
 Fish-semblances, of green and azure hue. 
 
 Ready to snort their streams. In this cool wonder 
 
 Endymion sat down, and 'gan to ponder 
 
 On all his life : his youth, up to the day 
 
 When 'mid acclaim, and feast, and garlands gay. 
 
 He stept upon his shepherd throne : the look 
 
 Of his white palace in wild forest nook, 890 
 
 And all the revels he had lorded there : 
 
 Each tender maiden whom he once thought fair. 
 
 With every friend and fellow-woodlander — 
 
 Pass'd like a dream before him. Then the spur 
 
 Of the old bards to mighty deeds : his plans 
 
 To nurse the golden age 'mong shepherd clans : 
 
 That wondrous night : the great Pan-festival : 
 
 His sister's sorrow ; and his wanderings all, 
 
 Until into the earth's deep maw he rush'd : 
 
 Then all its buried magic, till it flush'd 900 
 
 High with excessive love. "And now," thought he, 
 
 " How long must I remain in jeopardy 
 
 Of blank amazements that amaze no more } 
 
 Now I have tasted her sweet soul to the core 
 
 All other depths are shallow : essences. 
 
 Once spiritual, are like muddy lees. 
 
 Meant but to fertilize my earthly root. 
 
 And make my branches lift a golden fruit 
 
 Into the bloom of heaven : other light. 
 
 Though it be quick and sharp enough to blight 910
 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 95 
 
 The Olympian eagle's vision, is dark. 
 
 Dark as the parentage of chaos. Hark ! 
 
 My silent thoughts are echoing from these shells ; 
 
 Or they are but the ghosts, the dying swells 
 
 Of noises far away ? — list ! " — Hereupon 
 
 He kept an anxious ear. The humming tone 
 
 Came louder, and behold, there as he lay. 
 
 On either side outgush'd, with misty spray, 
 
 A copious spring ; and both together dash'd 
 
 Swift, mad, fantastic round the rocks, and lash'd 920 
 
 Among the conchs and shells of the lofty grot. 
 
 Leaving a trickling dew. At last they shot 
 
 Down from the ceiling's height, pouring a noise 
 
 As of some breathless racers whose hopes poize 
 
 Upon the last few steps, and with spent force 
 
 Along the ground they took a winding course. 
 
 Endymion follow'd — for it seem'd that one 
 
 Ever pursued, the other strove to shun — 
 
 Follow'd their languid mazes, till well nigh 
 
 He had left thinking of the mystery, — 930 
 
 And was now rapt in tender hoverings 
 
 Over the vanish'd bliss. Ah ! what is it sings 
 
 His dream away .'' What melodies are these ? 
 
 They sound as through the whispering of trees, 
 
 Not native in such barren vaults. Give ear ! 
 
 " O Arethusa, peerless nymph ! why fear 
 Such tenderness as mine .'' Great Dian, why. 
 Why didst thou hear her prayer ? O that I 
 Were rippling round her dainty fairness now, 
 Circling about her waist, and striving how 940 
 
 To entice her to a dive ! then stealing in 
 Between her luscious lips and eyelids thin. 
 O that her shining hair was in the sun. 
 And I distilling from it thence to run 
 In amorous rillets down her shrinking form ! 
 To linger on her lily shoulders, warm 
 Between her kissing breasts, and every charm 
 Touch raptur'd ! — See how painfully I flow : 
 Fair maid, be pitiful to my great woe. 
 
 Stay, stay thy weary course, and let me lead, 950 
 
 A happy wooer, to the flowery mead 
 Where all that beauty snar'd me." — "Cruel god. 
 Desist ! or my offended mistress' nod 
 Will stagnate all thy fountains : — tease me not 
 With syren words — Ah, have 1 really got 
 Such power to madden thee ? And is it true —
 
 96 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Away, away, or I shall dearly rue 
 
 My very thoughts : in mercy then away, 
 
 Kindest Alpheus, for should I obey 
 
 My owTi dear will, 'twould be a deadly bane. 960 
 
 O, Oread-Queen ! would that thou hadst a pain 
 
 Like this of mine, then would I fearless turn 
 
 And be a criminal. Alas, I bum, 
 
 I shudder — gentle river, get thee hence, 
 
 Alpheus ! thou enchanter ! every sense 
 
 Of mine was once made perfect in these woods. 
 
 Fresh breezes, bowery lawns, and innocent floods. 
 
 Ripe fruits, and lonely couch, contentment gave ; 
 
 But ever since I heedlessly did lave 
 
 In thy deceitful stream, a panting glow 970 
 
 Grew strong within me : wherefore serve me so, 
 
 And call it love ? Alas, 'twas cruelty. 
 
 Not once more did I close my happy eye 
 
 Amid the thrushes' song. Away ! A vaunt ! 
 
 'twas a cruel thing." — ''Now thou dost taunt 
 So softly, Arethusa, that I think 
 
 If thou wast playing on my shady brink. 
 
 Thou wouldst bathe once again. Innocent maid ! 
 
 Stifle thine heart no more ; nor be afraid 
 
 Of angry powers : there are deities ggo 
 
 Will shade us with their Avings. Those fitful sighs 
 
 'Tis almost death to hear : O let me pour 
 
 A dewy balm upon them ! — fear no more. 
 
 Sweet Arethusa ! Dian's self must feel 
 
 Sometime these very pangs. Dear maiden, steal 
 
 Blushing into my soul, and let us fly 
 
 These dreary caverns for the open sky. 
 
 1 will delight thee all my winding course. 
 From the green sea up to my hidden source 
 
 About Arcadian forests ; and will shew ggo 
 
 The chamiels where my coolest waters flow 
 
 Through mossy rocks ; where, 'mid exuberant green, 
 
 I roam in pleasant darkness, more unseen 
 
 Than Saturn in his exile ; where I brim 
 
 Round flowery islands, and take thence a skim 
 
 Of mealy sweets, which myriads of bees 
 
 Buzz from their honied wings : and thou shouldst please 
 
 Thyself to choose the richest, where we might 
 
 Be incense-pillow'd every summer night. 
 
 Doff all sad fears, thou white deliciousness, 1000 
 
 And let us be thus comforted ; unless 
 
 Thou couldst rejoice to see my hopeless sti*eam 
 
 Hurry distracted from Sol's temperate beam, 

 
 BOOK II] ENDYMION 97 
 
 And pour to death along some hungry sands." — 
 
 " What can I do, Alpheus ? Dian stands 
 
 Severe before me : persecuting fate ! 
 
 Unhappy Arethusa ! thou wast late 
 
 A huntress free in " — At this, sudden fell 
 
 Those two sad streams adown a fearful dell. 
 
 The Latmian listen'd, but he heard no more, loio 
 
 Save echo, faint repeating o'er and o'er 
 
 The name of Arethusa. On the verge 
 
 Of that dark gulph he wept, and said : " I urge 
 
 Thee, gentle Goddess of my pilgrimage. 
 
 By our eternal hopes, to soothe, to assuage. 
 
 If thou art powerful, these lovers' pains ; 
 
 And make them happy in some happy plains." 
 
 He tum'd — there was a whelming sound — he stept, 
 There was a cooler light ; and so he kept 
 
 Towards it by a sandy path, and lo ! 1020 
 
 More suddenly than doth a moment go. 
 The visions of the earth were gone and fled — 
 He saw the giant sea above his head.
 
 98 JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 ENDYMION 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 THERE are who lord it o'er their fellow-men 
 With most prevailing tinsel : who unpen 
 Their baaing vanities, to browse away 
 The comfortable green and juicy hay 
 From human pastures ; or, O torturing fact ! 
 Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd 
 Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe 
 Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge 
 Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight 
 
 Able to face an owl's, they still are dight lo 
 
 By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests. 
 And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts. 
 Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount 
 To their spirit's perch, their being's high account. 
 Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones — 
 Amid the fierce intoxicating tones 
 Of trumpets, shoutings, and belabour' d drums. 
 And sudden cannon. Ah ! how all this hums, 
 In wakeful ears, like uproar past and gone — 
 Like thunder clouds that spake to Babylon, 20 
 
 And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks. — 
 Are then regalities all gilded masks .'' 
 No, there are throned seats unscalable 
 But by a patient wing, a constant spell, 
 Or by ethereal things that, unconfin'd. 
 Can make a ladder of the eternal wind. 
 And poize about in cloudy thunder-tents 
 To watch the abysm-birth of elements. 
 Aye, 'bove the withering of old-lipp'd Fate 
 A thousand Powers keep i-eligious state, 30 
 
 In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne ; 
 And, silent, as a consecrated urn, 
 Hold sphery sessions for a season due. 
 Yet few of these far majesties, ah, few !
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 99 
 
 Have bared their operations to this globe — 
 
 Few, who with gorgeous pageantry enrobe 
 
 Our piece of heaven — whose benevolence 
 
 Shakes hands with our own Ceres ; every sense 
 
 Filling with spiritual sweets to plenitude, 
 
 As bees gorge full their cells. And, by the feud 40 
 
 'Twixt Nothing and Creation, I here swear, 
 
 Eterne Apollo ! that thy Sister fair 
 
 Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest. 
 
 When thy gold breath is misting in the west, 
 
 She unobserved steals unto her throne. 
 
 And there she sits most meek and most alone ; 
 
 As if she had not pomp subservient ; 
 
 As if thine eye, high Poet ! was not bent 
 
 Towards her with the Muses in thine heart ; 
 
 As if the ministring stars kept not apart, 50 
 
 Waiting for silver-footed messages. 
 
 O Moon ! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees 
 
 Feel palpitations when thou lookest in : 
 
 O Moon ! old boughs lisp forth a holier din 
 
 The while they feel thine airy fellowship. 
 
 Thou dost bless every where, with silver lip 
 
 Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine. 
 
 Couched in thy brightness, dream of fields divine : 
 
 Innmnerable mountains rise, and rise, 
 
 Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes ; 60 
 
 And yet thy benediction passeth not 
 
 One obscure hiding-place, one little spot 
 
 Where pleasure may be sent : the nested wren 
 
 Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken. 
 
 And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf 
 
 Takes glimpses of thee ; thou art a relief 
 
 To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps 
 
 Within its pearly house. — The mighty deeps. 
 
 The monstrous sea is thine — the myriad sea ! 
 
 O Moon ! far-spooming Ocean bows to thee, 70 
 
 And Tellus feels his forehead's cumbrous load. 
 
 Cynthia ! where art thou now .^ What far abode 
 Of green or silvery bower doth enshrine 
 Such utmost beauty ? Alas, thou dost pine 
 For one as sorrowful : thy cheek is pale 
 For one whose cheek is pale : thou dost bewail 
 His tears, who weeps for thee. Where dost thou sigh ? 
 Ah ! surely that light peeps from Vesper's eye. 
 Or what a thing is love ! 'Tis She, but lo ! 
 How chang'd, how full of ache, how gone in woe ! 80
 
 100 JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 She dies at the thinnest cloud ; her loveliness 
 
 Is wan on Neptune's blue : yet thei-e's a stress 
 
 Of love-spangles, just off yon cape of trees. 
 
 Dancing upon the waves, as if to please 
 
 The curly foam with amorous influence. 
 
 O, not so idle : for down-glancing thence 
 
 She fathoms eddies, and runs wild about 
 
 O'erwhelming water-courses ; scaring out 
 
 The thoniy sharks from hiding-holes, and fright' ning 
 
 Their savage eyes with unaccustomed lightning. go 
 
 Where will the splendor be content to reach ? 
 
 O love ! how potent hast thou been to teach 
 
 Strange journeyings ! Wherever beauty dwells. 
 
 In gulph or aerie, mountains or deep dells. 
 
 In light, in gloom, in star or blazing sun. 
 
 Thou pointest out the way, and straight 'tis won. 
 
 Amid his toil thou gav'st Leander breath ; 
 
 Thou leddest Orpheus through the gleams of death ; 
 
 Thou madest Pluto bear thin element ; 
 
 And now, O winged Chieftain ! thou hast sent loo 
 
 A moon-beam to the deep, deep water-world, 
 
 To find Endymion. 
 
 On gold sand impearl'd 
 With lily shells, and pebbles milky white. 
 Poor Cynthia greeted him, and sooth'd her light 
 Against his pallid face : he felt the charm 
 To breathlessness, and suddenly a warm 
 Of his heart's blood : 'twas very sweet ; he stay'd 
 His wandering steps, and half- entranced laid 
 His head upon a tuft of straggling weeds. 
 
 To taste the gentle moon, and freshening beads, no 
 
 Lashed from the crystal roof by fishes' tails. 
 And so he kept, until the rosy veils 
 Mantling the east, by Aurora's peering hand 
 Were lifted from the water's breast, and fann'd 
 Into sweet air ; and sober'd morning came 
 Meekly through billows : — when like taper-flame 
 Left sudden by a dallying breath of air. 
 He rose in silence, and once more 'gan fare 
 Along his fated way. 
 
 Far had he roam'd, 
 With nothing save the hollow vast, that foam'd. 
 Above, around, and at his feet ; save things 
 More dead than Morpheus' imaginings : 
 Old rusted anchors, helmets, breast-plates large 
 
 1 20
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 101 
 
 Of gone sea-warriors ; brazen beaks and targe ; 
 
 Rudders that for a hundred years had lost 
 
 The sway of human hand ; gold vase emboss'd 
 
 With long- forgotten story, and wherein 
 
 No reveller had ever dipp'd a chin 
 
 But those of Saturn's vintage ; mouldering scrolls. 
 
 Writ in the tongue of heaven, by those souls 130 
 
 Who first were on the earth ; and sculptures rude 
 
 In ponderous stone, developing the mood 
 
 Of ancient Nox ; — then skeletons of man. 
 
 Of beast, behemoth, and leviathan. 
 
 And elephant, and eagle, and huge jaw 
 
 Of nameless monster. A cold leaden awe 
 
 These secrets struck into him ; and unless 
 
 Dian had chaced away that heaviness, 
 
 He might have died : but now, with cheered feel. 
 
 He onward kept ; wooing these thoughts to steal 140 
 
 About the labyrinth in his soul of love. 
 
 " What is there in thee. Moon ! that thou shouldst move 
 My heart so potently ? When yet a child 
 I oft have dried my tears when thou hast smil'd. 
 Thou seem'dst my sister : hand in hand we went 
 From eve to morn across the firmament. 
 No apples would I gather from the tree. 
 Till thou hadst cool'd their cheeks deliciously : 
 No tumbling water ever spake romance. 
 
 But when my eyes with thine thereon could dance : 150 
 
 No woods were green enough, no bower divine. 
 Until thou liftedst up thine eyelids fine : 
 In sowing time ne'er would I dibble take. 
 Or drop a seed, till thou wast wide awake ; 
 And, in the summer tide of blossoming. 
 No one but thee hath heard me blithly sing 
 And mesh my dewy flowers all the night. 
 No melody was like a passing spright 
 If it went not to solemnize thy reign. 
 
 Yes, in my boyhood, every joy and pain 160 
 
 By thee were fashion'd to the self-same end ; 
 And as I grew in years, still didst thou blend 
 With all my ardours : thou wast the deep glen ; 
 Thou wast the mountain-top — the sage's pen — 
 The poet's harp — the voice of friends — the sun ; 
 Thou wast the river — thou wast glory won ; 
 Thou wast my clarion's blast — thou wast my steed — 
 My goblet full of wine — my topmost deed : —
 
 102 JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon ! 
 
 O what a wild and harmonized tune 170 
 
 My spirit struck from all the beautiful ! 
 
 On some bright essence could I lean, and lull 
 
 Myself to immortality : I prest 
 
 Nature's soft pillow in a wakeful rest. 
 
 But, jrentle Orb ! there came a nearer bliss — 
 
 My strange love came — Felicity's abyss ! 
 
 She came, and thou didst fade, and fade away — 
 
 Yet not entirely ; no, thy starry sway 
 
 Has been an under-passion to this hour. 
 
 Now I begin to feel thine orby power 180 
 
 Is coming fresh upon me : O be kind. 
 
 Keep back thine influence, and do not blind 
 
 My sovereign vision. — Dearest love, forgive 
 
 That I can think away from thee and live ! — 
 
 Pardon me, airy planet, that I prize 
 
 One thought beyond thine argent luxuries ! 
 
 How far beyond ! " At this a surpris'd start 
 
 Frosted the springing verdure of his heart ; 
 
 For as he lifted up his eyes to swear 
 
 How his own goddess was past all things fair, 190 
 
 He saw far in the concave green of the sea 
 
 An old man sitting calm and peacefully. 
 
 Upon a weeded rock this old man sat. 
 
 And his white hair was awful, and a mat 
 
 Of weeds were cold beneath his cold thin feet ; 
 
 And, ample as the largest winding-sheet, 
 
 A cloak of blue wrapp'd up his aged bones, 
 
 O'erwrought with symbols by the deepest groans 
 
 Of ambitious magic : every ocean-form 
 
 Was woven in with black distinctness ; storm, ;2oo 
 
 And calm, and whispering, and hideous roar. 
 
 Quicksand, and whirlpool, and deserted shore, 
 
 Were emblem'd in the woof; with every shape 
 
 That skims, or dives, or sleeps, 'twixt cape and cape. 
 
 The gulphing whale was like a dot in the spell. 
 
 Yet look upon it, and 'twould size and swell 
 
 To its huge self ; and the minutest fish 
 
 Would pass the very hardest gazer's wish, 
 
 And show his little eye's anatomy. 
 
 Then there was pictur'd the regality 210 
 
 Of Neptune ; and the sea nymphs round his state, 
 
 in beauteous vassalage, look up and wait. 
 
 Beside this old man lay a pearly wand. 
 
 And in his lap a book, the which he conn'd 
 
 So stedfastly, that the new denizen
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 103 
 
 Had time to keep him in amazed ken. 
 
 To mark these shadowings, and stand in awe. 
 
 The old man rais'd his hoary head and saw 
 The wilder'd stranger — seeming not to see, 
 His features were so lifeless. Suddenly 220 
 
 He woke as from a trance ; his snow-white brows 
 Went arching up, and like two magic ploughs 
 Furrow'd deep wrinkles in his forehead large. 
 Which kept as fixedly as rocky marge. 
 Till round his wither'd lips had gone a smile. 
 Then up he rose, like one whose tedious toil 
 Had watch'd for years in forlorn hermitage. 
 Who had not from mid-life to utmost age 
 Eas'd in one accent his o'er-burden'd soul, 
 
 Even to the trees. He rose : he grasp'd his stole, 230 
 
 With convuls'd clenches waving it abroad. 
 And in a voice of solemn joy, that aw'd 
 Echo into oblivion, he said : — 
 
 " Thou art the man ! Now shall I lay my head 
 In peace upon my watery pillow : now 
 Sleep will come smoothly to my weary brow. 
 O Jove ! I shall be young again, be young ! 
 
 shell-bome Neptune, I am pierc'd and stung 
 With new-born life ! What shall I do } Where go. 
 
 When I have cast this serpent-skin of woe .'' — 240 
 
 I'll swim to the syrens, and one moment listen 
 
 Their melodies, and see their long hair glisten ; 
 
 Anon upon that giant's arm I'll be. 
 
 That writhes about the roots of Sicily : 
 
 To northern seas I'll in a twinkling sail, 
 
 And mount upon the snortings of a whale 
 
 To some black cloud ; thence down I'll madly sweep 
 
 On forked lightning, to the deepest deep. 
 
 Where through some sucking pool I will be hurl'd 
 
 With rapture to the other side of the world ! 250 
 
 O, I am full of gladness ! Sisters three, 
 
 1 bow full hearted to your old decree ! 
 
 Yes, every god be thank'd, and power benign, 
 
 For I no more shall wither, droop, and pine. 
 
 Thou art the man ! ' Endymion started back 
 
 Dismay'd ; and, like a wretch from whom the rack 
 
 Tortures hot breath, and speech of agony, 
 
 Mutter'd : " What lonely death am I to die 
 
 In this cold region } Will he let me freeze, 
 
 And float my brittle limbs o'er polar seas ? 260
 
 104 JOHxN KEATS [book hi 
 
 Or will he touch me with his searing hand. 
 
 And leave a black memorial on the sand ? 
 
 Or tear me piece-meal with a bony saw. 
 
 And keep me as a chosen food to draw 
 
 His magian fish through hated fire and flame ? 
 
 O misery of hell ! resistless, tame, 
 
 Am 1 to be burnt up ? No, I will shout. 
 
 Until the gods through heaven's blue look out ! — 
 
 Tartarus ! but some few days agone 
 
 Her soft arms were entwining me, and on 270 
 
 Her voice I hung like fruit among green leaves : 
 
 Her lips were all my own, and — ah, ripe sheaves 
 
 Of happiness ! ye on the stubble droop. 
 
 But never may be garner'd. I must stoop 
 
 My head, and kiss death's foot. Love ! love, farewel ! 
 
 Is thex'e no hope from thee ? This horrid spell 
 
 Would melt at thy sweet breath. — By Dian's hind 
 
 Feeding from her white fingers, on the wind 
 
 1 see thy streaming hair ! and now, by Pan, 
 
 I care not for this old mysterious man ! " 2S0 
 
 He spake, and walking to that aged form, 
 Look'd high defiance. Lo ! his heart 'gan warm 
 With pity, for the grey-hair' d creature wept. 
 Had he then wrong'd a heart where sorrow kept ? 
 Had he, though blindly contumelious, brought 
 Rheum to kind eyes, a sting to human thought. 
 Convulsion to a mouth of many years ? 
 He had in truth ; and he was ripe for tears. 
 The penitent shower fell, as down he knelt 
 Before that care-worn sage, who trembling felt 290 
 
 About his large dark locks, and faultering spake : 
 
 " Arise, good youth, for sacred Phoebus' sake ! 
 I know thine inmost bosom, and I feel 
 A very brother's yearning for thee steal 
 Into mine own : for why ? thou openest 
 The prison gates that have so long opprest 
 My weary watching. Though thou know'st it not. 
 Thou art coramission'd to this fated spot 
 For great enfranchisement. O weep no more ; 
 I am a friend to love, to loves of yore : 300 
 
 Aye, hadst thou never lov'd an unknown power, 
 I had been grieving at this joyous hour. 
 But even now most miserable old, 
 I saw thee, and my blood no longer cold 
 Gave mighty pulses : in this tottering case
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 105 
 
 Grew a new heart, which at this moment plays 
 As dancingly as thine. Be not afraid. 
 For thou shalt hear this secret all display'd. 
 Now as we speed towards our joyous task." 
 
 So saying, this young soul in age's mask 310 
 
 Went forward with the Carian side by side : 
 Resuming quickly thus ; while ocean's tide 
 Hung swollen at their backs, and jewel'd sands 
 Took silently their foot-prints. 
 
 " My soul stands 
 Now past the midway from mortality. 
 And so I can prepare without a sigh 
 To tell thee briefly all my joy and pain. 
 I was a fisher once, upon this main. 
 And my boat danc'd in every creek and bay ; 
 Rough billows were my home by night and day, — ■ 32(1 
 
 The sea-gulls not more constant ; for I had 
 No housing from the storm and tempests mad. 
 But hollow rocks, — and they were palaces 
 Of silent happiness, of slumberous ease : 
 Long years of misery have told me so. 
 Aye, thus it was one thousand years ago. 
 One thousand years ! — Is it then possible 
 To look so plainly through them ? to dispel 
 A thousand years with backward glance sublime ? 
 To breathe away as 'twere all scummy slime 330 
 
 From off a crystal pool, to see its deep. 
 And one's own image from the bottom peep ? 
 Yes : now I am no longer wretched thrall. 
 My long captivity and moanings all 
 Are but a slime, a thin-pervading scum, 
 The which I breathe away, and thronging come 
 Like things of yesterday my youthful pleasures. 
 
 " I touch'd no lute, I sang not, trod no measures : 
 I was a lonely youth on desert shores. 
 
 My sports were lonely, 'mid continuous roars, 340 
 
 And craggy isles, and sea-mew's plaintive cry 
 Plaining discrepant between sea and sky. 
 Dolphins were still my playmates ; shapes unseen 
 Would let me feel their scales of gold and green. 
 Nor be my desolation ; and, full oft, 
 When a dread waterspout had rear'd aloft 
 Its hungry hugeness, seeming ready ripe 
 To burst with hoarsest thunderings, and wipe
 
 106 JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 My life away like a vast sponge of fate, 
 
 Some friendly monster, pitying my sad state, 350 
 
 Has dived to its foundations, gulph'd it down. 
 
 And left me tossing safely. But the crown 
 
 Of all my life was utmost quietude : 
 
 More did 1 love to lie in cavern rude. 
 
 Keeping in wait whole days for Neptune's voice. 
 
 And if it came at last, hark, and rejoice ! 
 
 There blush'd no summer eve but I would steer 
 
 My skiff along green shelving coasts, to hear 
 
 The shepherd's pipe come clear from aery steep. 
 
 Mingled with ceaseless bleatings ot his sheep : 360 
 
 And never was a day of summer shine. 
 
 But I beheld its birth upon the brine : 
 
 For I would watch all night to see unfold 
 
 Heaven's gates, and ^Ethon snort his morning gold 
 
 Wide o'er the swelling streams : and constantly 
 
 At brim of day-tide, on some grassy lea. 
 
 My nets would be spread out, and I at rest. 
 
 The poor folk of the sea-country I blest 
 
 With daily boon of fish most delicate : 
 
 They knew not whence this bounty, and elate 370 
 
 Would strew sweet flowers on a sterile beach. 
 
 " Why was I not contented ? Wherefore reach 
 At things which, but for thee, O Latmian ! 
 Had been my dreary death ? Fool ! I began 
 To feel distemper'd longings : to desire 
 The utmost privilege that ocean's sire 
 Could grant in benediction : to be free 
 Of all his kingdom. Long in misery 
 I wasted, ere in one extremest fit 
 
 I plung'd for life or death. To interknit 380 
 
 One's senses with so dense a breathing stuff 
 Might seem a work of pain ; so not enough 
 Can I admire how crystal-smooth it felt. 
 And buoyant round my limbs. At first I dwelt 
 Whole days and days in sheer astonishment ; 
 Forgetful utterly of self-intent ; 
 Moving but with the mighty ebb and flow. 
 Then, like a new fledg'd bird that first doth show 
 His spreaded feathers to the morrow chill, 
 I tried in fear the pinions of my will. 390 
 
 'Twas freedom ! and at once I visited 
 The ceaseless wonders of this ocean-bed. 
 No need to tell thee of them, for I see 
 That thou hast been a witness — it must be —
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 107 
 
 For these I know thou canst not feel a drouth, 
 
 By the melancholy corners of that mouth. 
 
 So I will in my story straightway pass 
 
 To more immediate matter. Woe, alas ! 
 
 That love should be my bane ! Ah, Scylla fair ! 
 
 Why did poor Glaucus ever — ever dare ,^oo 
 
 To sue thee to his heart ? Kind stranger-youth ! 
 
 I lov'd her to the veiy white of truth, 
 
 And she would not conceive it. Timid thing ! 
 
 She fled me swift as sea-bird on the wing, 
 
 Round every isle, and point, and promontory. 
 
 From where large Hercules wound up his story 
 
 Far as Egyptian Nile. My passion grew 
 
 The more, the more I saw her dainty hue 
 
 Gleam delicately through the azure clear : 
 
 Until 'twas too fierce agony to bear ; 410 
 
 And in that agony, across my grief 
 
 It flash'd, that Circe might find some relief — 
 
 Cruel enchantress ! So above the water 
 
 I rear'd my head, and look'd for Phoebus' daughter. 
 
 Maea's isle was wondering at the moon : — 
 
 It seem'd to whirl around me, and a swoon 
 
 Left me dead-drifting to that fatal power. 
 
 " When I awoke, 'twas in a twilight bower ; 
 Just when the light of morn, with hum of bees. 
 Stole through its verdurous matting of fresh trees. 420 
 
 How sweet, and sweeter ! for I heai*d a lyre, 
 And over it a sighing voice expire. 
 It ceas'd — I caught light footsteps ; and anon 
 The fairest face that morn e'er look'd upon 
 Push'd through a screen of roses. — Starry Jove ! 
 With tears, and smiles, and honey-words she wove 
 A net whose thraldom was more bliss than all 
 The range of flower' d Elysium. Thus did fall 
 The dew of her rich speech : ' Ah ! Art awake ? 
 
 let me hear thee speak, for Cupid's sake ! 430 
 
 1 am so oppress'd with joy ! Why, I have shed 
 An urn of tears, as though thou wert cold dead ; 
 And now I find thee living, I will pour 
 
 From these devoted eyes their silver store, 
 
 Until exhausted of the latest drop, 
 
 So it will pleasure thee, and force thee stop 
 
 Here, that 1 too may live : but if beyond 
 
 Such cool and sorrowful offerings, thou art fond 
 
 Of soothing warmth, of dalliance supreme ; 
 
 If thou art ripe to taste a long love dream ; 440
 
 1 
 
 108 JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 If smiles, if dimples, tongues for ardour mute, 
 Hang in thy vision like a tempting fruit, 
 O let me pluck it for thee.' Thus she link'd 
 Her charming syllables, till indistinct 
 Their music came to my o'er-sweeten'd soul ; 
 And tlien she hover'd over me, and stole 
 So near, that it no nearer it had been 
 This furrow'd visage thou hadst never seen. 
 
 " Young man of Latmos ! thus particular 
 Am I, that thou may'st plainly see how far 450 
 
 This fierce temptation went : and thou may'st not 
 Exclaim, How then, was Scylla quite forgot ? 
 
 " Who could resist ? Who in this universe f 
 She did so breathe ambrosia ; so immerse 
 My fine existence in a golden clime. 
 She took me like a child of suckling time, 
 And cradled me in roses. Thus condemn'd. 
 The current of my former life was stemm'd, 
 And to this arbitrary queen of sense 
 
 I bow'd a tranced vassal : nor would thence 460 
 
 Have mov'd, even though Amphion's harp had woo'd 
 Me back to Scylla o'er the billows rude. 
 For as Apollo each eve doth devise 
 A new appareling for western skies ; 
 So every eve, nay every spendthrift hour 
 Shed balmy consciousness within that bower. 
 And I was free of haunts umbrageous ; 
 Could wander in the mazy forest-house 
 Of squirrels, foxes shy, and antler'd deer. 
 
 And birds from coverts innermost and drear 470 
 
 Warbling for very joy mellifluous sorrow — 
 To me new born dehghts ! 
 
 " Now let me borrow. 
 For moments few, a temperament as stern 
 As Pluto's sceptre, that my words not burn 
 These uttering lips, while I in calm speech tell 
 How specious heaven was changed to real hell. 
 
 " One morn she left me sleeping : half awake 
 1 sought for her smooth arms and lips, to slake 
 My greedy thirst with nectarous camel-draughts ; 
 But she was gone. Whereat the barbed shafts 480 
 
 Of disappointment stuck in me so sore. 
 That out I ran and search'd the forest o'er.
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 109 
 
 Wandering about in pine and cedar gloom 
 
 Damp awe assail'd me ; for there 'gan to boom 
 
 A sound of moan, an agony of sound, 
 
 Sepulchral from the distance all around. 
 
 Then came a conquering earth-thunder, and rumbled 
 
 That fierce complain to silence : while I stumbled 
 
 Down a precipitous path, as if impell'd. 
 
 I came to a dark valley. — Groanings swell'd 490 
 
 Poisonous about my ears, and louder grew, 
 
 The nearer I approach'd a flame's gaunt blue, 
 
 That glar'd before me through a thorny brake. 
 
 This fire, like the eye of gordian snake, 
 
 Bewitch'd me towards ; and I soon was near 
 
 A sight too fearful for the feel of fear : 
 
 In thicket hid I curs'd the haggard scene — 
 
 The banquet of my arms, my arbour queen, 
 
 Seated upon an uptorn forest root ; 
 
 And all around her shapes, wizard and brute, 500 
 
 Laughing, and wailing, groveling, serpenting. 
 
 Showing tooth, tusk, and venom-bag, and sting ! 
 
 O such deformities ! Old Charon's self, 
 
 Should he give up awhile his penny pelf. 
 
 And take a dream 'mong rushes Stygian, 
 
 It could not be so phantasied. Fierce, wan. 
 
 And tyrannizing was the lady's look, 
 
 As over them a gnarled staff she shook. 
 
 Oft-times upon the sudden she laugh'd out, 
 
 And from a basket emptied to the rout 510 
 
 Clusters of grapes, the which they raven'd quick 
 
 And roar'd for more ; with many a hungry lick 
 
 About their shaggy jaws. Avenging, slow. 
 
 Anon she took a branch of mistletoe, 
 
 And emptied on't a black dull-gurgling phial : 
 
 Groan'd one and all, as if some piercing trial 
 
 Was sharpening for their pitiable bones. 
 
 She lifted up the charm : appealing groans 
 
 From their poor breasts went sueing to her ear 
 
 In vain ; remorseless as an infant's bier 520 
 
 She whisk'd against their eyes the sooty oil. 
 
 Whereat was heard a noise of painful toil, 
 
 Increasing gradual to a tempest rage. 
 
 Shrieks, yells, and groans of torture-pilgrimage ; 
 
 Until their grieved bodies 'gan to bloat 
 
 And puff" from the tail's end to stifled throat : 
 
 Then was appalling silence : then a sight 
 
 More wildering than all that hoarse affright ; 
 
 For the whole herd, as b) a whirlwind writhen,
 
 110 JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 Went through the dismal air like one huge Python 530 
 
 Antagonizing Boreas, — and so vanish'd. 
 
 Yet there was not a breath of wind : she banish'd 
 
 These phantoms with a nod. Lo ! from the dark 
 
 Came waggish fauns, and nymphs, and satyrs stark, 
 
 With dancing and loud revelry, — and went 
 
 Swifter than centaurs after rapine bent. — 
 
 Sighing an elephant appear'd and bow'd 
 
 Before the fierce witch, speaking thus aloud 
 
 In human accent : ' Potent goddess ! chief 
 
 Of pains resistless ! make my being brief, 540 
 
 Or let me from this heavy prison fly : 
 
 Or give me to the air, or let me die ! 
 
 I sue not for my happy crown again ; 
 
 I sue not for my phalanx on the plain ; 
 
 I sue not for my lone, my widow'd wife ; 
 
 I sue not for my ruddy drops of life. 
 
 My children fair, my lovely girls and boys ! 
 
 I will forget them ; I will pass these joys ; 
 
 Ask nought so heavenward, so too — too high : 
 
 Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die, 550 
 
 Or be deliver'd from this cumbrous flesh, 
 
 From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh. 
 
 And merely given to the cold bleak air. 
 
 Have mercy. Goddess ! Circe, feel my prayer ! ' 
 
 " That curst magician's name fell icy numb 
 Upon my wild conjecturing : truth had come 
 Naked and sabre-like against my heart. 
 I saw a fury whetting a death-dart ; 
 And my slain spirit, overwrought with fright. 
 Fainted away in that dark lair of night. 560 
 
 Think, my deliverer, how desolate 
 My waking must have been ! disgust, and hate, 
 And terrors manifold divided me 
 A spoil amongst them. I prepar'd to flee 
 Into the dungeon core of that wild wood : 
 I fled three days^when lo ! before me stood 
 Glaring the angry witch. O Dis, even now, 
 A clammy dew is beading on my brow, 
 At mere remembering her pale laugh, and curse. 
 'Ha ! ha ! Sir Dainty ! there must be a nurse 570 
 
 Made of rose leaves and thistledown, express. 
 To cradle thee my sweet, and lull thee : yes, 
 I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch : 
 My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch. 
 So, fairy-thing, it shall have lullabies
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 111 
 
 Unheard of yet : and it shall still its cries 
 
 Upon some breast more lily-feminine. 
 
 Oh, no — it shall not pine, and pine, and pine 
 
 More than one pretty, trifling thousand years ; 
 
 And then 'twere pity, but fate's gentle shears 580 
 
 Cut short its immortality. Sea-flirt ! 
 
 Young dove of the waters ! truly I'll not hurt 
 
 One hair of thine : see how I weep and sigh, 
 
 That our heart-broken parting is so nigh. 
 
 And must we part .'' Ah, yes, it must be so. 
 
 Yet ere thou leavest me in utter woe, 
 
 Let me sob over thee my last adieus. 
 
 And speak a blessing : Mark me ! Thou hast thews 
 
 Immortal, for thou art of heavenly race : 
 
 But such a love is mine, that here I chase 590 
 
 Eternally away from thee all bloom 
 
 Of youth, and destine thee towards a tomb. 
 
 Hence shalt thou quickly to the watery vast ; 
 
 And there, ere many days be overpast. 
 
 Disabled age shall seize thee ; and even then 
 
 Thou shalt not go the way of aged men ; 
 
 But live and wither, cripple and still breathe 
 
 Ten hundred years : which gone, I then bequeath 
 
 Thy fragile bones to unknown burial. 
 
 Adieu, sweet love, adieu ! ' — As shot stars fall, 600 
 
 She fled ere I could groan for mercy. Stung 
 
 And poisoned was my spirit : despair sung 
 
 A war-song of defiance 'gainst all hell. 
 
 A hand was at my shoulder to compel 
 
 My sullen steps ; another 'fore my eyes 
 
 Moved on with pointed finger. In this guise 
 
 Enforced, at the last by ocean's foam 
 
 I found me ; by my fresh, my native home. 
 
 Its tempering coolness, to my life akin. 
 
 Came salutary as I waded in ; 610 
 
 And, with a blind voluptuous rage, I gave 
 
 Battle to the swollen billow-ridge, and drave 
 
 Large froth before me, while there yet remain'd 
 
 Hale strength, nor from my bones all marrow drain'd. 
 
 " Young lover, I must weep — such hellish spite 
 With dry cheek who can tell .'' While thus my might 
 Proving upon this element, dismay'd. 
 Upon a dead thing's face my hand I laid ; 
 I look'd — 'twas Scylla ! Cursed, cursed Circe ! 
 O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy .'' C20 
 
 Could not thy harshest vengeance be content.
 
 112 JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 But thou must nip this tender innocent 
 
 Because I lov'd her ? — Cold, O cold indeed 
 
 Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed 
 
 The sea-swell took her hair. Dead as she was 
 
 I clung about her waist, nor ceas'd to pass 
 
 Fleet as an arrow through unfathom'd brine, 
 
 Until there shone a fabric crystalline, 
 
 Ribb'd and inlaid Avith coral, pebble, and pearl. 
 
 Headlong I darted ; at one eager swirl 630 
 
 Gain'd its bright portal, enter'd, and behold ! 
 
 'Twas vast, and desolate, and icy-cold ; 
 
 And all around — But wherefore this to thee 
 
 Who in few minutes more thyself shalt see ? — 
 
 I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled. 
 
 My fever'd parchings up, my scathing dread 
 
 Met palsy half way : soon these limbs became 
 
 Gaunt, wither'd, sapless, feeble, cramp'd, and lame. 
 
 " Now let me pass a cruel, cruel space. 
 Without one hope, without one faintest trace 640 
 
 Of mitigation, or redeeming bubble 
 Of colour'd phantasy ; for I fear 'twould trouble 
 Thy brain to loss of reason : and next tell 
 How a restoring chance came down to quell 
 One half of the witch in me. 
 
 "On a day, 
 Sitting upon a rock above the spray, 
 I saw grow up from the horizon's brink 
 A gallant vessel : soon she seem'd to sink 
 Away from me again, as though her course 
 Had been resum'd in spite of hindering force — 650 
 
 So vanish d : and not long, before arose 
 Dark clouds, and muttering of winds morose. 
 Old i?iolus would stifle his mad spleen, 
 But could not : therefore all the billows green 
 Toss'd up the silver spume against the clouds. 
 The tempest came : I saw that vessel's shrouds 
 In perilous bustle ; while upon the deck 
 Stood trembling creatures. I beheld the wreck ; 
 The final gulphing ; the poor struggling souls : 
 I heard their cries amid loud thunder-rolls. 660 
 
 O they had all been sav'd but crazed eld 
 Annull'd my vigorous cravings : and thus quell'd 
 And curb'd think on't, O Latmian ! did I sit 
 Writhing with pity, and a cursing fit 
 Against that hell -born Circe. The crew had gone.
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION US 
 
 By one and one, to pale oblivion ; 
 
 And I was gazing on the surges prone. 
 
 With many a scalding tear and many a groan, 
 
 When at my feet emerg'd an old man's hand, 
 
 Grasping this scroll, and this same slender wand. 670 
 
 I knelt with pain — reached out my hand — had grasp'd 
 
 These treasures — touch'd the knuckles — they unclasp'd — 
 
 I caught a finger : but the downward weight 
 
 O'erpowered me — it sank. Then 'gan abate 
 
 The storm, and through chill aguish gloom outburst 
 
 The comfortable sun. I was athirst 
 
 To search the book, and in the warming air 
 
 Parted its dripping leaves with eager care. 
 
 Strange matters did it treat of, and drew on 
 
 My soul page after page, till well-nigh won 680 
 
 Into forgetfulness ; when, stupefied, 
 
 I read these words, and read again, and tried 
 
 My eyes against the heavens, and read again. 
 
 O what a load of misery and pain 
 
 Each Atlas-line bore off! — a shine of hope 
 
 Came gold around me, cheering me to cope 
 
 Strenuous with hellish tyranny. Attend ! 
 
 For thou hast brought their promise to an end. 
 
 " In the wide sea there lives a forlorn wretch, 
 Doom'd with enfeebled carcase to outstretch 690 
 
 His loath'd existence through ten centuries. 
 And then to die alone. Who can devise 
 A total opposition ? No one. So 
 One millio7i times ocean must ebb and flow. 
 And he oppressed. Yet he shall not die. 
 These things accomplish' d : — If he utterly 
 Sca?is all the depths of magic, and expounds 
 The meanings of all motions, shapes, and soiinds ; 
 If he explores all forms and substances 
 
 Straight homeward to their symbol-essences ; 700 
 
 He shall not die. Moreover, and in chiej. 
 He must pursue this task of Joy and grief 
 Most piously ; — all lovers tempest-tost. 
 And in the savage overwhelming lost. 
 He shall deposit side by side, until 
 Time's creeping shall the dreary space fulfil : 
 Which done, and all these labours ripened, 
 A youth, by heave?ily power lov'd and led. 
 Shall stand before him ; whom he shall direct 
 
 How to consummate all. The youth elect 710 
 
 Must do the thing, or both will be destroy d." — 
 8
 
 114 JOHN KEATS [book ni 
 
 "Then," cried the young Endymion, overjoy'd, 
 "We are twin brothers in this destiny ! 
 Say, I intreat thee, what achievement high 
 Is, in this restless world, for me reserv'd. 
 What ! if from thee my wandering feet had swerv'd, 
 Had we both perish'd ? " — " Look ! " the sage replied, 
 " Dost thou not mark a gleaming through the tide. 
 Of divers brilliances ? 'tis the edifice 
 
 I told thee of, where lovely Scylla lies ; 720 
 
 And where I have enshrined piously 
 All lovers, whom fell storms have doom'd to die 
 Throughout my bondage." Thus discoursing, on 
 They went till unobscur'd the porches shone ; 
 Which hurryingly they gain'd, and enter'd straight. 
 Sure never since king Neptune held his state 
 Was seen such wonder underneath the stars. 
 Turn to some level plain where haughty Mars 
 Has legion'd all his battle ; and behold 
 
 How every soldier, with firm foot, doth hold 730 
 
 His even breast : see, many steeled squares. 
 And rigid ranks of iron — whence who dares 
 One step ? Imagine further, line by line, 
 These warrior thousands on the field supine : — 
 So in that crystal place, in silent rows. 
 Poor lovers lay at rest from joys and woes. — 
 The sti'anger from the mountains, breathless, trac'd 
 Such thousands of shut eyes in order plac'd ; 
 Such ranges of white feet, and patient lips 
 
 All ruddy, — for here death no blossom nips. 740 
 
 He mark'd their brows and foreheads ; saw their hair 
 Put sleekly on one side w ith nicest care ; 
 And each one's gentle wrists, with reverence, 
 Put cross-wise to its heart. 
 
 " Let us commence," 
 Whisper'd the guide, stuttering with joy, "even now." 
 He spake, and, trembling like an aspen-bough, 
 Began to tear his scroll in pieces small, 
 Uttermg the while some mumblings funeral. 
 He tore it into pieces small as snow 
 
 That drifts unfeather'd when bleak northerns blow ; 750 
 
 And having done it, took his dark blue cloak 
 And bound it round Endymion : then struck 
 His wand against the empty air times nine. — 
 " What more there is to do, young man, is thine : 
 But first a little patience ; first undo 
 This tangled thread, and wind it to a clue. 
 
 1
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 115 
 
 Ah, gentle ! 'tis as weak as spider's skein ; 
 
 And shouldst thou break it— What, is it done so clean ? 
 
 A power overshadows thee ! O, brave ! 
 
 The spite of hell is tumbling to its grave. 760 
 
 Here is a shell ; 'tis pearly blank to me, 
 
 Nor mark'd with any sign or charactery — 
 
 Canst thou read aught ? O read for pity's sake ! 
 
 Olympus ! we are safe ! Now, Carian, break 
 
 This wand against yon lyre on the pedestal." 
 
 'Twas done : and straight with sudden swell and fall 
 Sweet music breath' d her soul away, and sigh'd 
 A lullaby to silence. — " Youth ! now strew 
 These minced leaves on me, and passing througii 
 Those files of dead, scatter the same around, 770 
 
 And thou wilt see the issue." — 'Mid the sound 
 Of flutes and viols, ravishing his heart, 
 Endymion from Glaucus stood apart. 
 And scatter'd in his face some fragments light. 
 How lightning-swift the change ! a youthful wight 
 Smiling beneath a coral diadem, 
 Out-sparkling sudden like an upturn'd gem, 
 Appear'd, and, stepping to a beauteous corse, 
 Kneel'd down beside it, and with tenderest force 
 Press'd its cold hand, and wept, — and Scylla sigh'd ! 780 
 
 Endymion, with quick hand, the charm apply'd — 
 The nymph arose : he left them to their joy, 
 And onward went upon his high employ, 
 Showering those powerful fragments on the dead. 
 And, as he pass'd, each lifted up his head, 
 As doth a flower at Apollo's touch. 
 Death felt it to his inwards : 'twas too much : 
 Death fell a weeping in his charnel-house. 
 The Latmian persever'd along, and thus 
 
 All were re-animated. There arose 790 
 
 A noise of harmony, pulses and throes 
 Of gladness in the air — while many, who 
 Had died in mutual arms devout and true. 
 Sprang to each other madly ; and the rest 
 Felt a high certainty of being blest. 
 They gaz'd upon Endymion. Enchantment 
 Grew drunken, and would have its head and bent. 
 Delicious symphonies, like airy flowers, 
 Budded, and swell'd, and, fuU-blown, shed full showers 
 Of light, soft, unseen leaves of sounds divine. Soo 
 
 The two dehverers tasted a pure wine 
 Of happiness, from fairy-press ooz'd out.
 
 116 JOHN KEATS [book iii 
 
 Speechless they eyed each other, and about 
 The fair assembly wander'd to and fro, 
 Distracted with the richest overtlow 
 Of joy that ever pour'd from heaven. 
 
 " Awav ! " 
 
 Shouted the new bom god ; " Follow, and pay 
 
 Our piety to Neptunus supreme ! " — 
 
 Then Scylla, blushing sweetly from her dream, 
 
 They led on first, bent to her meek surprise, Sio 
 
 Through portal columns of a giant size. 
 
 Into the vaulted, boundless emerald. 
 
 Joyous all foUow'd, as the leader call'd, 
 
 Down marble steps ; pouring as easily 
 
 As hour-glass sand, — and fast, as you might see 
 
 Swallows obeying the south summer's call. 
 
 Or swans upon a gentle waterfall. 
 
 Thus went that beautiful multitude, nor far, 
 Ere from among some rocks of glittering spar, 
 Just within ken, they saw descending thick S20 
 
 Another multitude. Whereat more quick 
 Moved either host. On a wide sand they met, 
 And of those numbers every eye was wet ; 
 For each their old love found. A murmuring rose. 
 Like what was never heard in all the throes 
 Of wind and waters : 'tis past human wit 
 To tell ; 'tis dizziness to think of it. 
 
 This miglity consummation made, the host 
 Mov'd on for many a league ; and gain'd, and lost 
 Huge sea-marks ; vanward swelling in array, 830 
 
 And from the rear diminishing away, — 
 Till a faint dawn surprise! them. Glaucus cried, 
 "Behold ! behold, the palace of his pride I 
 God Neptune's palaces ! " With noise increas'd, 
 They shoulder'd on towards that brightening east. 
 At every onward step proud domes arose 
 In prospect, — diamond gleams, and golden glows 
 Of amber 'gainst their faces levelling. 
 Joyous, and many as the leaves in spring, 
 
 Still onward ; still the splendour gradual swell'd. 840 
 
 Rich opal domes were seen, on high upheld 
 By jasper pillars, letting through their shafts 
 A blush of coral. Copious wonder-draughts 
 Each gazer drank ; and deeper drank more near : 
 For what poor mortals fragment up, as mere
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 117 
 
 As marble was there lavish, to the vast 
 Of one fair palace, that far far surpass'd, 
 Even for common bulk, those olden three, 
 Memphis, and Babylon, and Nineveh. 
 
 As large, as bright, as colour'd as the bow 850 
 
 Of Iris, when unfading it doth shew 
 Beyond a silvery shower, was the arch 
 Through which this Paphian army took its march, 
 Into the outer courts of Neptune's state : 
 Whence could be seen, direct, a golden gate, 
 To which the leaders sped ; but not half raught 
 Ere it burst open swift as fairy thought, 
 And made those dazzled thousands veil their eyes 
 Like callow eagles at the first sunrise. 
 
 Soon with an eagle nativeness their gaze 860 
 
 Ripe from hue-golden swoons took all the blaze. 
 And then, behold ! large Neptune on his throne 
 Of emerald deep : yet not exalt alone ; 
 At his right hand stood winged Love, and on 
 His left sat smiling Beauty's paragon. 
 
 Far as the mariner on highest mast 
 Can see all round upon the calmed vast. 
 So wide was Neptune's hall : and as the blue 
 Doth vault the waters, so the waters drew 
 
 Their doming curtains, high, magnificent, 870 
 
 Aw'd from the throne aloof; — and when storm-rent 
 Disclos'd the thunder-gloomings in Jove's air ; 
 But sooth'd as now, flash'd sudden everywhere, 
 Noiseless, sub-marine cloudlets, glittering 
 Death to a human eye : for there did spring 
 From natural west, and east, and south, and north, 
 A light as of four sunsets, blazing forth 
 A gold-green zenith 'bove the Sea-God's head. 
 Of lucid depth the floor, and far outspread 
 
 As breezeless lake, on which the slim canoe 880 
 
 Of feather'd Indian darts about, as through 
 The delicatest air : air verily. 
 But for the portraiture of clouds and sky : 
 This palace floor breath-air, — but for the amaze 
 Of deep-seen wonders motionless, — and blaze 
 Of the dome pomp, reflected in extremes. 
 Globing a golden sphere. 
 
 They stood in dreams 
 Till Triton blew his horn. The palace rang ;
 
 US JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 The Nereids djuie'd ; the Syrens faintly satig ; 
 
 And the great Sea-Kinjj how'd his th-ippinsj head. ggo 
 
 Then Love look wino-. and tVoni Ills pinions shed 
 
 On all the nuiltitude a neetaroiis tlew. 
 
 The ooze-born Goddess beekoned and drew 
 
 Fair Seylla and her i^nides to conferenee ; 
 
 And wlien they reaehd the tln-oned eminence 
 
 She kist the soa-nyniph's eheek, who sat her doAvn 
 
 A toyinsx with the doves. Theai,— -•' Mii^hty eroAvn 
 
 And sceptre of this kinsjdom ! " Venus said. 
 
 "Thy vows were on a time to Nais paid : 
 
 Behold ! " — Two copious tear-drops instant fell goo 
 
 From the Ood's lar^e eyes; he smild delectable, 
 
 And over Glaucus held his blessinj; hands. — 
 
 "Endymion I Ah ! still wandering in the bands 
 
 Of love ? Now this is cruel. Since the hour 
 
 1 met thee in earths bosom, all my power 
 
 Have 1 put forth to serve tliee. What, not yet 
 
 Escap'd from dull mortality's harsh net .^ 
 
 A little patience, youth ! twill not be long. 
 
 Or 1 am skilless quite : an iille tongue, 
 
 A humiil eye. and steps luxuriOiis. 910 
 
 Where these are new juid stnmge, jire ominous. 
 
 Ave. I have seen these signs in one of heaven, 
 
 When others were all blind : and were I given 
 
 To utter secrets, haply I might &iy 
 
 Some pleasant words : — but Love will have his day. 
 
 So wait awhile expectant. Pr'ythee soon. 
 
 Even in the passing ot thine honey-moon, 
 
 Visit thou my Cythera : thou wilt tind 
 
 Cupid well-natured, mv .Vdonis kind ; 
 
 And pray persuade with thee — Ah, I have done, 920 
 
 All blisses be upon thee, my sweet son I " — 
 
 Thus the fair goddess : While Etidymion 
 
 Knelt to receive those accents halcyon. 
 
 Meantime a glorious revelry beiran 
 Before the Water-Monarch. Nectar ran 
 In courteous fountains to all cups outreach'd ; 
 And plui\der"d vines, teeming exhaustless pleach'd 
 New growth about each shell and penden't lyre ; 
 The which, in disentangling for their tire. 
 
 Pull'd down fresh foliage and coverture 930 
 
 For dainty toying. Cupid, empire-sure, 
 Flutter"d and lauijh'd. ;md oft-times throutrh the thronjr 
 Made a ilelighted way. Then dance, and song. 
 And g.irlanding grew wild ; and pleasure reign'd,
 
 BOOK III] ENDYMION 119 
 
 In harmless tendril they each other chain'd, 
 And strove who should be smother'd deepest in 
 Fresh crush of leaves. 
 
 O 'tis a very sin 
 For one so weak to venture his poor verse 
 In such a place as this. O do not curse. 
 High Muses ! let him hurry to the ending. g^o 
 
 All suddenly were silent. A soft blending 
 Of dulcet instruments came charmingly ; 
 And then a hymn. 
 
 " King of the stormy sea ! 
 Brother of Jove, and co-inheritor 
 Of elements ! Eternally before 
 Thee the waves awful bow. Fast, stubborn rock. 
 At thy fear'd trident shrinking, doth unlock 
 Its deep foundations, hissing into foam. 
 All mountain-rivers, lost in the wide home 
 
 Of thy capacious bosom, ever flow. g^o 
 
 Thou frownest, and old .^olus thy foe 
 Skulks to his cavern, 'mid the gruff complaint 
 Of all his rebel tempests. Dark clouds faint 
 When, from thy diadem, a silver gleam 
 Slants over blue dominion. Thy bright team 
 Gulphs in the morning light, and scuds along 
 To bring thee nearer to that golden song 
 Apollo singeth, while his chariot 
 Waits at the doors of heaven. Thou art not 
 For scenes like this : an empire stern hast thou ; 960 
 
 And it hath furrow'd that large front : yet now. 
 As newly come of heaven, dost thou sit 
 To blend and interknit 
 Subdued majesty with this glad time. 
 O shell-borne King sublime ! 
 We lay our hearts before thee evermore — 
 We sing, and we adore ! 
 
 " Breathe softly, flutes ; 
 Be tender of your strings, ye soothing lutes ; 
 Nor be the trumpet heard ! O vain, O vain ; 970 
 
 Not flowers budding in an April rain. 
 Nor breath of sleeping dove, nor river's flow, — 
 No, nor the ^Eolian twang of Love's own bow, 
 Can mingle music fit for the soft ear 
 Of goddess Cytherea !
 
 120 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 [book III 
 
 Yet deign, white Queen of Beauty, thy fair eyes 
 On our souls' sacrifice. 
 
 " Bright-winged Child ! 
 Who has another care when thou hast smil'd ? 
 Unfortunates on earth, we see at last 
 All death-shadows, and glooms that overcast 
 Our spirits, fann'd away by thy light pinions. 
 
 sweetest essence ! sweetest of all minions ! 
 God of warm pulses, and dishevell'd hair, 
 And panting bosoms bare ! 
 
 Dear unseen light in darkness ! eclipser 
 Of light in light ! delicious poisoner ! 
 Thy venom'd goblet will we quaff until 
 We fill— we fill ! 
 And by thy Mother's lips " 
 
 Was heard no more 
 For clamour, when the golden palace door 
 Opened again, and from without, in shone 
 A new magnificence. On oozy throne 
 Smooth-moving came Oceanus the old. 
 To take a latest glimpse at his t>heep-fold. 
 Before he went into his quiet cave 
 To muse for ever — Then a lucid wave, 
 Scoop'd from its trembling sisters of mid-sea, 
 Afloat, and pillowing up the majesty 
 Of Doris, and the j95gean seer, her spouse — 
 Next, on a dolphin, clad in laurel boughs, 
 Theban Amphion leaning on his lute : 
 His fingers went across it — All were mute 
 To gaze on Amphitrite, queen of pearls, 
 And Thetis pearly too. — 
 
 The palace whirls 
 Around giddy Endymion ; seeing he 
 Was there far strayed from mortality. 
 He could not bear it — shut his eyes in vain ; 
 Imagination gave a dizzier pain. 
 " O I shall die ! sweet Venus, be my stay ! 
 Where is my lovely mistress .'' Well-away ! 
 
 1 die — I hear her voice — I feel my wing — " 
 At Neptune's feet he sank. A sudden ring 
 Of Nereids were about him, in kind strife 
 To usher back his spirit into life : 
 
 But still he slept. At last they interwove 
 Their cradling arms, and purpos'd to convey 
 Towards a crystal bower far away. 
 
 g8o 
 
 990 
 
 1000 
 
 1010
 
 BOOK III] ExNDYMION 121 
 
 Lo ! while slow carried through the pitying crowd, 
 To his inward senses these words spake aloud ; 1020 
 
 Written in star light on the dark above : 
 Dearest Eiidijmion ! mij entire love ! 
 How have I dwelt in fear of fate : 'tis done — 
 Immortal bliss for me too hast thou won. 
 Arise then ! for the hen-dove shall not hatch 
 Her ready eggs, before I'll kissing snatch. 
 Thee into endless heaven. Awake ! awake ! 
 
 The youth at once arose : a placid lake 
 Came quiet to his eyes ; and forest green, 1030 
 
 Cooler than all the wonders he had seen, 
 Lull'd with its simple song his fluttering breast. 
 How happy once again in grassy nest !
 
 122 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 ENDYMION 
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 MUSE of my native land ! loftiest Muse ! 
 O first-born on the mountains ! by the hues 
 Of heaven on the spiritual air begot : 
 Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot, 
 While yet our England was a wolfish den ; 
 Before our forests heard the talk of men ; 
 Before the first of Druids was a child ; — 
 Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild 
 Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude. 
 
 There came an eastern voice of solemn mood : — lo 
 
 Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine, 
 Apollo's garland : — yet didst thou divine 
 Such home-bred glory, that they cry'd in vain, 
 " Come hither. Sister of the Island ! " Plain 
 Spake fair Ausonia ; and once more she spake 
 A higher summons : — still didst thou betake 
 Thee to thy native hopes. O thou hast won 
 A full accomplishment! The thing is done, 
 Which undone, these our latter days had risen 
 On barren souls. Great Muse, thou know'st what prison, 20 
 Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets 
 Our spirit's wings : despondency besets 
 Our pillows ; and the fresh to-morrow mom 
 Seems to give foi'th its light in very scorn 
 Of our dull, uninspired, snail-paced lives. 
 Long have I said, how happy he who shrives 
 To thee ! But then I thought on poets gone. 
 And could not pray : — nor could I now — so on 
 I move to the end in lowliness of heart. 
 
 " Ah, woe is me ! that I should fondly part 30 
 
 From my dear native land ! Ah, foolish maid ! 
 Glad was the hour, when, with thee, myriads bade 
 Adieu to Ganges and their pleasant fields ! 
 To one so friendless the clear freshet yields
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 123 
 
 A bitter coolness ; the ripe grape is sour : 
 
 Yet I would have^ great gods ! but one short hour 
 
 Of native air — let me but die at home." 
 
 Endymion to heaven's airj' dome 
 Was offering up a hecatomb of vows. 
 
 When these words reach'd him. Whereupon he bows 40 
 
 His head through thorny-green entanglement 
 Of underwood, and to the sound is bent, 
 Anxious as hind towards her hidden fawn. 
 
 " Is no one near to help me ? No fair dawn 
 Of life from charitable voice ? No sweet saying 
 To set my dull and sadden'd spirit playing ? 
 No hand to toy with mine ? No lips so sweet 
 That I may worship them ? No eyelids meet 
 To twinkle on my bosom'? No one dies 
 
 Before me, till from these enslaving eyes 50 
 
 Redemption sparkles ! — I am sad and lost." 
 
 Thou, Carian lord, hadst better have been tost 
 Into a whirlpool. Vanish into air, 
 Warm mountaineer ! for canst thou only bear 
 A woman's sigh alone and in distress ? 
 See not her charms ! Is Phoebe passionless ? 
 PhcEbe is fairer far — O gaze no more : — 
 Yet if thou wilt behold all beauty's store. 
 Behold her panting in the forest grass ! 
 
 Do not those curls of glossy jet surpass 60 
 
 For tenderness the arms so idly lain 
 Amongst them ? Feelest not a kindred pain. 
 To see such lovely eyes in swimming search 
 After some warm delight, that seems to pei-ch 
 Dovelike in the dim cell lying beyond 
 Their upper lids ? — Hist ! 
 
 " O for Hermes' wand, 
 To touch this flower into human shape ! 
 That woodland Hyacinthus could escape 
 From his green prison, and here kneeling down 
 Call me his queen, his second life's fair crown ! 70 
 
 Ah me, how I could love ! — My soul doth melt 
 For the unhappy youth — Love ! I have felt 
 So faint a kindness, such a meek surrender 
 To what my own full thoughts had made too tender. 
 That but for tears my life had fled away ! — 
 Ye deaf and senseless minutes of the day,
 
 124 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 And thou, old forest, hold ye this for true, 
 
 There is no lightning, no authentic dew 
 
 But in the eye of love : there's not a sound. 
 
 Melodious howsoever, can confound 80 
 
 The heavens and earth in one to such a death 
 
 As doth the voice of love : there's not a breath 
 
 Will mingle kindly with the meadow air. 
 
 Till it has panted round, and stolen a share 
 
 Of passion from the heart ! " — 
 
 Upon a bough 
 He leant, wretched. He surely cannot now 
 Thirst for another love : O impious, 
 That he can even dream upon it thus ! — 
 Thought he, " Why am I not as are the dead. 
 Since to a woe like this I have been led 90 
 
 Through the dark earth, and through the wondrous sea ? 
 Goddess ! I love thee not the less : from thee 
 By Juno's smile I turn not — no, no, no — 
 While the great waters are at ebb and flow. — 
 I have a triple soul ! O fond pretence — 
 For both, for both my love is so immense, 
 I feel my heart is cut for them in twain." 
 
 And so he groan'd, as one by beauty slain. 
 The lady's heart beat quick, and he could see 
 Her gentle bosom heave tumultuously. 100 
 
 He sprang from his green covert : there she lay, 
 Sweet as a muskrose upon new-made hay ; 
 With all her limbs on tremble, and her eyes 
 Shut softly up alive. To speak he tries. 
 " Fair damsel, pity me ! forgive that I 
 Thus violate thy bower's sanctity ! 
 
 pardon me, for I am full of grief — 
 
 Grief bom of thee, young angel ! fairest thief! 
 Who stolen hast away the wings wherewith 
 
 1 was to top the heavens. Dear maid, sith no 
 Thou art my executioner, and I feel 
 
 Loving and hatred, misery and weal. 
 
 Will in a few short hours be nothing to me. 
 
 And all ray story that much passion slew me ; 
 
 Do smile upon the evening of my days : 
 
 And, for my tortur'd brain begins to craze. 
 
 Be thou my nurse ; and let me understand 
 
 How dying I shall kiss that lily hand. — 
 
 Dost weep for me ? Then should I be content. 
 
 Scowl on, ye fates ! until the firmament 120
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 125 
 
 Outblackens Erebus, and the full-cavern'd earth 
 
 Crumbles into itself. By the cloud girth 
 
 Of Jove, those tears have given me a thirst 
 
 To meet oblivion." — As her heart would burst 
 
 The maiden sobb'd awhile, and then replied : 
 
 " Why must such desolation betide 
 
 As that thou speakest of .'' Are not these green nooks 
 
 Empty of all misfortune .'' Do the brooks 
 
 Utter a gorgon voice ? Does yonder thrush, 
 
 Schooling its half-fledg'd little ones to brush 130 
 
 About the dewy forest, whisper tales .-' — 
 
 Speak not of grief, young stranger, or cold snails 
 
 Will slime the rose to-night. Though if thou wilt, 
 
 Methinks 'twould be a guilt — a very guilt — 
 
 Not to companion thee, and sigh away 
 
 The light — the dusk — the dark — till break of day ! " 
 
 " Dear lady," said Endymion, " 'tis past : 
 
 I love thee ! and my days can never last. 
 
 That I may pass in patience still speak : 
 
 Let me have music dying, and I seek 140 
 
 No more delight — I bid adieu to all. 
 
 Didst thou not after other climates call. 
 
 And murmur about Indian streams ?" — Then she. 
 
 Sitting beneath the midmost forest tree. 
 
 For pity sang this roundelay 
 
 "O Sorrow, 
 
 Why dost borrow 
 The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips ? — 
 
 To give maiden blushes 
 
 To the white rose bushes ? 
 Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips ? 
 
 150 
 
 "O Sorrow, 
 
 Why dost borrow 
 The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye ? — 
 
 To give the glow-worm light ? 
 
 Or, on a moonless night. 
 To tinge, on syren shores, the salt sea-spry ? 
 
 "O Sorrow, 
 
 Why dost borrow 
 The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue .'' — 160 
 
 To give at evening pale 
 
 Unto the nightingale. 
 That thou mayst listen the cold dews among .''
 
 126 
 
 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 " O Sorrow, 
 
 Why dost borrow 
 Heart's lightness from the merriment of May ?— 
 
 A lover would not tread 
 
 A cowslip on the head. 
 Though he should dance from eve till peep ot day— 
 
 " Nor any drooping flower 17° 
 
 Held sacred for thy bower. 
 Wherever he may sport himself and play. 
 
 " To Sorrow, 
 
 I bade good-morrow. 
 And thought to leave her far away behind ; 
 
 But cheerly, cheerly. 
 
 She loves me dearly ; 
 She is so constant to me, and so kind : 
 
 I would deceive her 
 
 And so leave her, ^^° 
 
 But ah ! she is so constant and so kind. 
 
 " Beneath my palm trees, by the river side, 
 I sat a weeping : in tiie whole world wide 
 There was no one to ask me why I wept, — 
 
 And so I kept 
 Brimming the water-lily cups with tears 
 
 Cold as my fears. 
 
 " Beneath my palm trees, by the river side, 
 
 1 sat a weeping : what enamour'd bride, 
 
 Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds, 19° 
 
 But hides and shrouds 
 Beneath dark palm trees by a river side ? 
 
 " And as I sat, over the light blue hills 
 There came a noise of revellers : the rills 
 Into the wide stream came of purple hue — 
 
 'Twas Bacchus and his crew ! 
 The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills 
 From kissing cymbals made a merry din — 
 
 'Twas Bacchus and his kin ! 
 Like to a moving vintage down they came, 200 
 
 Crown' d with green leaves, and faces all on flame ; 
 All madly dancing through the pleasant valley, 
 
 To scare thee. Melancholy ! 
 O then, O then, thou wast a simple name ! 
 And I forgot thee, as the berried holly 
 By shepherds is forgotten, when, in June 
 Tall chesnuts keep away the sun and moon : — 
 
 I rush'd into the folly !
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 127 
 
 " Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood. 
 
 Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood, 210 
 
 With sidelong laughing ; 
 And little rills of crimson wine imbru'd 
 His plump white arms, and shoulders, enough white 
 
 For Venus' pearly bite ; 
 And near him rode Silenus on his ass. 
 Pelted with flowers as he on did pass 
 
 Tipsily quafling. 
 
 " Whence came ye, merry Damsels ! whence came ye ! 
 
 So many, and so many, and such glee ? 
 
 Why have ye left your bowers desolate, 220 
 
 Your lutes, and gentler fate ? — 
 'We follow Bacchus ! Bacchus on the wing, 
 
 A conquering ! 
 Bacchus, young Bacchus ! good or ill betide. 
 We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide : — 
 Come hither, lady fair, and joined be 
 
 To our wild minstrelsy ! ' 
 
 " Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs ! whence came ye ! 
 
 So many, and so many, and such glee ? 
 
 Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left 230 
 
 Your nuts in oik-tree cleft ? — 
 ' For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree ; 
 For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms. 
 
 And cold mushrooms ; 
 For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth ; 
 Great God of breathless cups and chirping mirth ! — 
 Come hither, lady fair, and joined be 
 
 To our mad minstrelsy ! ' 
 
 " Over wide streams and mountains great we went, 
 
 And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent, 240 
 
 Onward the tiger and the leopard pants. 
 
 With Asian elephants : 
 Onward these myriads — with song and dance, 
 With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance. 
 Web-footed alligators, crocodiles. 
 Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files. 
 Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil 
 Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil : 
 With toying oars and silken sails they glide, 
 
 Nor care for wind and tide. 250
 
 128 JOHxV KEATS [book iv 
 
 " Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes, 
 From rear to van they scour about the plains ; 
 A three days' journey in a moment done : 
 And always, at the rising of the sim. 
 About the wilds they hunt with spear and horn, 
 On spleenful unicorn. 
 
 " I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown 
 
 Before the vine-wreath crown ! 
 I saw parch'd Abyssinia rouse and sing 
 
 To the silver cymbals' ring ! 260 
 
 I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce 
 
 Old Tartary the fierce ! 
 The kings of Inde their jewel-sceptres vail. 
 And irom their treasures scatter pearled hail ; 
 Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans. 
 
 And all his priesthood moans ; 
 Before young Bacchus' eye-wink turning pale. — 
 Into these regions came I following him, 
 Sick hearted, weary — so I took a whim 
 To stray away into these forests drear 270 
 
 Alone, without a peer : 
 And I have told thee all thou mayest hear. 
 
 " Young stranger ! 
 
 I've been a ranger 
 In search of pleasure throughout every clime : 
 
 Alas, 'tis not for me ! 
 
 Bewitch'd I sure must be. 
 To lose in grieving all my maiden prime. 
 
 " Come then, Sorrow ! 
 
 Sweetest Sorrow ! 280 
 
 Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast : 
 
 I thought to leave thee 
 
 And deceive thee. 
 But now of all the world I love thee best. 
 
 " There is not one. 
 
 No, no, not one 
 But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid ; 
 
 Thou art her mother. 
 
 And her brother. 
 Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade." 290 
 
 O what a sigh she gave in finishing. 
 And look, quite dead to every worldly thing !
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 129 
 
 Endymion could not speak, but gazed on her ; 
 
 And listened to the wind that now did stir 
 
 About the crisped oaks full drearily, 
 
 Yet with as sweet a softness as might be 
 
 Remember'd from its velvet summer song. 
 
 At last he said : " Poor lady, how thus long 
 
 Have I been able to endure that voice ? 
 
 Fair Melody ! kind Syren ! I've no choice ; 300 
 
 I must be thy sad servant evermore : 
 
 I cannot choose but kneel here and adore. 
 
 Alas, I must not think — by Phoebe, no ! 
 
 Let me not think, soft Angel ! shall it be so .'' 
 
 Say, beautifullest, shall I never think ? 
 
 O thou could'st foster me beyond the brink 
 
 Of recollection ! make my watchful care 
 
 Close up its bloodshot eyes, nor see despair ! 
 
 Do gently murder half my soul, and I 
 
 Shall feel the other half so utterly ! — 310 
 
 I'm giddy at that cheek so fair and smooth ; 
 
 O let it blush so ever ! let it soothe 
 
 My madness ! let it mantle rosy-warm 
 
 With the tinge of love, panting in safe alarm. — 
 
 This cannot be thy hand, and yet it is ; 
 
 And this is sure thine other softling — this 
 
 Thine own fair bosom, and I am so near ! 
 
 Wilt fall asleep ? O let me sip that tear ! 
 
 And whisper one sweet word that I may know 
 
 This is this world — sweet dewy blossom ! " — fVoe ! 320 
 
 Woe ! Woe to that Endymion ! Where is he ? — - 
 
 Even these words went echoing dismally 
 
 Through the wide forest — a most fearful tone. 
 
 Like one repenting in his latest moan ; 
 
 And while it died away a shade pass'd by. 
 
 As of a thunder cloud. When aiTows fly 
 
 Through the thick branches, poor ring-doves sleek forth 
 
 Their timid necks and tremble ; so these both 
 
 Leant to each other trembling, and sat so 
 
 Waiting for some destruction — when lo, 330 
 
 Foot-feather' d Mercury appear'd sublime 
 
 Beyond the tall tree tops ; and in less time 
 
 Than shoots the slanted hail-storm, down he dropt 
 
 Towards the ground ; but rested not, nor stopt 
 
 One moment from his home : only the sward 
 
 He with his wand light touch'd, and heavenward 
 
 Swifter than sight was gone — even before 
 
 The teeming earth a sudden witness bore 
 
 Of his swift magic. Diving swans appear 
 
 9
 
 130 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 Above the crystal circlings white and clear ; 340 
 
 And catch the cheated eye in wild surprise. 
 
 How they can dive in sight and unseen rise — 
 
 So from the turf outsprang two steeds jet-black. 
 
 Each with large dark blue wings upon his back. 
 
 The youth of Caria plac'd the lovely dame 
 
 On one, and felt himself in spleen to tame 
 
 The other's fierceness. Through the air they flew. 
 
 High as the eagles. Like two drops of dew 
 
 Exhal'd to Phoebus' lips, away they are gone, 
 
 Far from the earth away — unseen, alone, 350 
 
 Among cool clouds and winds, but that the free. 
 
 The buoyant life of song can floating be 
 
 Above their heads, and follow them untir'd. — 
 
 Muse of my native land, am I inspir'd ? 
 
 This is the giddy air, and I must spread 
 
 Wide pinions to keep here ; nor do I dread 
 
 Or height, or depth, or width, or any chance 
 
 Precipitous : I have beneath my glance 
 
 Those towering horses and their mournful freight. 
 
 Could I thus sail, and see, and thus await 360 
 
 Fearless for power of thought, without thine aid ? — 
 
 There is a sleepy dusk, an odorous shade 
 
 From some approaching wonder, and behold 
 
 Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold 
 
 Snuff at its faint extreme, and seem to tire. 
 
 Dying to embers from their native fire ! 
 
 There curl'd a purple mist around them ; soon, 
 It seem'd as when around the pale new moon 
 Sad Zephyr droops the clouds like weeping willow : 
 'Twas Sleep slow journeying with head on pillow, 370 
 
 For the first time, since he came nigh dead born 
 From the old womb of night, his cave forlorn 
 Had he left more forlorn ; for the first time, 
 He felt aloof the day and morning's prime — 
 Because into his depth Cimmerian 
 There came a dream, showing how a young man, 
 Ere a lean bat could plump its wintery skin. 
 Would at high Jove's empyreal footstool win 
 An immortality, and how espouse 
 
 Jove's daughter, and be reckon'd of his house. 380 
 
 Now was he slumbering towards heaven's gate. 
 That he might at the threshold one hour wait; 
 To hear the marriage melodies, and then 
 Sink downward to his dusky cave again, 
 His litter of smooth semilucent mist,
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 131 
 
 Diversely ting'd with rose and amethyst, 
 
 Puzzled those eyes that for the centre sought ; 
 
 And scarcely for one moment could be caught 
 
 His sluggish form reposing motionless. 
 
 Those two on winged steeds, with all the stress 390 
 
 Of vision search'd for him, as one would look 
 
 Athwart the sallows of a river nook 
 
 To catch a glance at silver throated eels, — 
 
 Or from old Skiddaw's top, when fog conceals 
 
 His rugged forehead in a mantle pale. 
 
 With an eye-guess towards some pleasant vale 
 
 Descry a favourite hamlet faint and far. 
 
 These raven horses, though they foster'd are 
 Of earth's splenetic fire, dully drop 
 
 Their full -veined ears, nostrils blood wide, and stop ; 400 
 
 Upon the spiritless mist have they outspread 
 Their ample feathers, are in slumber dead, — 
 And on those pinions, level in mid air, 
 Endymion sleepeth and the lady fair. 
 Slowly they sail, slowly as icy isle 
 Upon a calm sea drifting : and meanwhile 
 The mournful wanderer dreams. Behold ! he walks 
 On heaven's pavement ; brotherly he talks 
 To divine powers : from his hand full fain 
 
 Juno's proud birds are pecking pearly grain : 410 
 
 He tries the nerve of Phoebus' golden bow, 
 And asketh where the golden apples grow : 
 Upon his arm he braces Pallas' shield. 
 And strives in vain to unsettle and wield 
 A Jovian thunderbolt : arch Hebe brings 
 A full-brimm'd goblet, dances lightly, sings 
 And tantalizes long ; at last he drinks, 
 And lost in pleasure at her feet he sinks. 
 Touching with dazzled lips her starlight hand. 
 He blows a bugle, — an ethereal band 420 
 
 Are visible above : the Seasons four, — 
 Green-kyrtled Spring, flush Summer, golden store 
 In Autumn's sickle. Winter frosty hoar. 
 Join dance with shadowy Hours ; while still the blast, 
 In swells unmitigated, still doth last 
 To sway their floating morris. " Whose is this ? 
 Whose bugle ? " he inquires ; they smile — " O Dis ! 
 Why is this mortal here ? Dost thou not know 
 Its mistress' lips ? Not thou .'' — 'Tis Dian's : lo ! 
 She rises crescented ! " He looks, 'tis she, 430, 
 
 His very goddess : good-bye earth, and sea,
 
 132 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 And air, and pains, and cai-e, and suffering ; 
 Good-bye to all but love ! Then doth he spring 
 Towards her, and awakes — and, strange, o'erhead. 
 Of those same fragrant exhalations bred, 
 Beheld awake his very dream : the gods 
 Stood smiling ; merry Hebe laughs and nods ; 
 And Phcebe bends towards him crescented. 
 
 state perplexing ! On the pinion bed, 
 
 Too well awake, he feels the panting side 440 
 
 Of his delicious lady. He who died 
 
 For soarin<r too audacious in the sun, 
 
 Where that same treacherous wax began to run, 
 
 Felt not more tongue-tied than Endymion. 
 
 His heart leapt up as to its rightful throne. 
 
 To that fair shadow'd passion puls'd its way — 
 
 Ah, what perplexity ! Ah, well a day ! 
 
 So fond, so beauteous was his bed-fellow, 
 
 He could not help but kiss her : then he grew 
 
 Awhile forgetful of all beauty save 450 
 
 Young Phoebe's, golden hair'd ; and so 'gan crave 
 
 Forgiveness : yet he turn'd once more to look 
 
 At the sweet sleeper, — all his soul was shook, — 
 
 She press'd his hand in slumber ; so once more 
 
 He could not help but kiss her and adore. 
 
 At this the shadow wept, melting away. 
 
 The Latmian started up : " Bright goddess, stay ! 
 
 Search ray most hidden breast ! By truth's own tongue, 
 
 1 have no daedale heart : why is it wrung 
 
 To desperation ? Is there nought for me, 460 
 
 Upon the bourne of bliss, but misery ? " 
 
 These words awoke the stranger of dark tresses : 
 Her dawning love-look rapt Endymion blesses 
 With 'haviour soft. Sleep yawned from underneath. 
 " Thou swan of Ganges, let us no more breathe 
 This murky phantasm ! thou contented seem'st 
 Pillow'd in lovely idleness, nor dieam'st 
 What horrors may discomfort thee and me. 
 Ah, shouldst thou die from my heart-treachery ! — 
 Yet did she merely weep — her gentle soul 470 
 
 Hath no revenge in it : as it is whole 
 In tenderness, would I were whole in love ! 
 Can I prize thee, fair maid, all price above. 
 Even when I feel as true as innocence ? 
 I do, I do. — What is this soul then ? Whence 
 Came it ? It does not seem my own, and I 
 Have no self-passion or identity.
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 133 
 
 Some fearful end must be : where, where is it ? 
 
 By Nemesis, I see my spirit flit 
 
 Alone about the dark — Forgive me, sweet : 480 
 
 Shall we away r " He rous'd the steeds : they beat 
 
 Their wings chivalrous into the clear air, 
 
 Leaving old Sleep within his vapoury lair. 
 
 The good-night blush of eve was waning slow. 
 And Vesper, risen star, began to throe 
 In the dusk heavens silverly, when they 
 Thus sprang direct towards the Galaxy. 
 Nor did speed hinder converse soft and strange — 
 Eternal oaths and vows they interchange. 
 
 In such wise, in such temper, so aloof 490 
 
 Up in the winds, beneath a staiTy roof. 
 So witless to their doom, that verily 
 'Tis well nigh past man's search their hearts to see ; 
 Whether they wept, or laugh 'd, or griev'd, or toy'd — 
 Most like with joy gone mad, with soitow cloy'd. 
 
 Full facing their swift flight, from ebon streak. 
 The moon put forth a little diamond peak, 
 No bigger than an unobserved star, 
 Or tiny point of fairy scymetar ; 
 
 Bright signal that she only stoop'd to tie 500 
 
 Her silver sandals, ere deliciously 
 She bow'd into the heavens her timid head. 
 Slowly she rose, as though she would have fled, 
 While to his lady meek the Carian turn'd, 
 To mark if her dark eyes had yet discern'd 
 This beauty in its birth — Despair ! despair ! 
 He saw her body fading gaunt and spare 
 In the cold moonshine. Straight he seiz'd her wrist ; 
 It melted from his grasp : her hand he kiss'd, 
 And, horror! kiss'd his own — he was alone. 510 
 
 Her steed a little higher soar'd, and then 
 Dropt hawkwise to the earth. 
 
 There lies a den, 
 Beyond the seeming confines of the space 
 Made for the soul to wander in and trace 
 Its own existence, of remotest glooms. 
 Dark regions are around it, where the tombs 
 Of buried griefs the spirit sees, but scarce 
 One hour doth linger weeping, for the pierce 
 Of new-born woe it feels more inly smart : 
 And in these regions many a venom'd dai't 520
 
 134 J(JHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 At random flies ; they are the proper home 
 
 Of every ill : the man is yet to come 
 
 Who hath not journeyed in this native hell. 
 
 But few have ever felt how calm and well 
 
 Sleep may be had in that deep den of all. 
 
 There anguish does not sting ; nor pleasure pall : 
 
 Woe-hurricanes beat ever at the gate. 
 
 Yet all is still within and desolate. 
 
 Beset with plainful gusts, within ye hear 
 
 No sound so loud as when on curtain 'd bier 530 
 
 The death-watch tick is stifled. Enter none 
 
 Who strive therefore : on the sudden it is won. 
 
 Just when the sufferer begins to burn, 
 
 Then it is free to him ; and from an urn, 
 
 Still fed by melting ice, he takes a draught — 
 
 Young Semele such richness never quaft 
 
 In her maternal longing ! Happy gloom ! 
 
 Dark Paradise ! where pale becomes the bloom 
 
 Of health by due ; where silence dreariest 
 
 Is most articulate ; where hopes infest ; 540 
 
 Where those eyes are the brightest far that keep 
 
 Their lids shut longest in a dreamless sleep. 
 
 O happy spirit-home ! O wondrous soul !. 
 
 Pregnant with such a den to save the whole 
 
 In thine own depth. Hail, gentle Carian ! 
 
 For, never since thy griefs and woes began. 
 
 Hast thou felt so content : a grievous feud 
 
 Hath led thee to this Cave of Quietude. 
 
 Aye, his lull'd soul was there, although upborne 
 
 With dangerous speed : and so he did not mourn 550 
 
 Because he knew not whither he was going. 
 
 So happy was he, not the aerial blowing 
 
 Of trumpets at clear parley from the east 
 
 Could rouse from that fine relish, that high feast. 
 
 They stung the feather'd horse : with fierce alarm 
 
 He flapp'd towards the sound. Alas, no charm 
 
 Could lift Endymion's head, or he had view'd 
 
 A skyey mask, a pinion'd multitude, — 
 
 And silvery was its passing : voices sweet 
 
 Warbling the while as if to lull and greet 560 
 
 The wanderer in his path. Thus warbled they. 
 
 While past the vision went in bright array. 
 
 " Who, who from Dian's feast would be away ? 
 For all the golden bowers of the day 
 Are empty left .^ Who, who away would be 
 From Cynthia's wedding and festivity ?
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 135 
 
 Not Hesperus : lo ! upon his silver wings 
 
 He leans away for highest heaven and sings, 
 
 Snapping his lucid fingers merrily ! — 
 
 Ah, Zephyrus ! art here, and Flora too ! 570 
 
 Ye tender bibbers of the rain and dew. 
 
 Young playmates of the rose and daffodil. 
 
 Be careful, ere ye enter in, to fill 
 
 Your baskets high 
 With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines. 
 Savory, latter-mint, and columbines, 
 Cool parsley, basil sweet, and sunny thyme ; 
 Yea, every flower and leaf of every clime, 
 All gather'd in the dewy morning : hie 
 
 Away ! fly, fly ! — 580 
 
 Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven, 
 Aquarius ! to whom king Jove has given 
 Two liquid pulse streams 'stead of feather'd wings, 
 Two fan-like fountains, — thine illuminings 
 
 For Dian play : 
 Dissolve the frozen purity of air ; 
 Let thy white shoulders silvery and bare 
 Show cold through watery pinions ; make more bright 
 The Star-Queen's crescent on her marriage night : 
 
 Haste, haste away ! — 590 
 
 Castor has tam'd the planet Lion, see ! 
 And of the Bear has Pollux mastery : 
 A third is in the race ! who is the third 
 Speeding away swift as the eagle bird ? 
 
 The ramping Centaur ! 
 The Lion's mane's on end : the Bear how fierce ! 
 The Centaur's arrow ready seems to pierce 
 Some enemy : far forth his bow is bent 
 Into the blue of heaven. He'll be shent 
 
 Pale unrelentor, 600 
 
 When he shall hear the wedding lutes a playing. — 
 Andromeda ! sweet woman ! why delaying 
 So timidly among the stars : come hither ! 
 Join this bright throng, and nimbly follow whitlier 
 
 They all are going. 
 
 Danae's Son, before Jove newly bow'd,' 
 Has wept for thee, calling to Jove aloud. 
 Thee, gentle lady, did he disenthral : 
 Ye shall for ever live and love, for all 
 
 Thy tears are flowing. — 610 
 
 By Daphne's fright, behold Apollo! — "
 
 136 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 More 
 Endymion heard not : down his steed him boi*e. 
 Prone to the green head of a misty hill. 
 
 His first touch of the earth went nigh to kill. 
 " Alas ! " said he, " were I but always borne 
 Through dangerous winds, had but my footsteps Avorn 
 A path in hell, for ever would I bless 
 Horrors which nourish an uneasiness 
 For my own sullen conquering : to him 
 
 VV'ho lives beyond earth's boundary, grief is dim, 620 
 
 Sorrow is but a shadow : now I see 
 The grass ; 1 feel the solid ground — Ah, me ! 
 It is thy voice— divinest ! Where ? — who ? who 
 Left thee so quiet on this bed of dew ? 
 Behold upon this happy earth we are ; 
 Let us ay love each other ; let us fare 
 On forest- fruits, and never, never go 
 Among the abodes of mortals here below, 
 Or be by phantoms duped. O destiny ! 
 
 Into a labyrinth now my soul would fly, 630 
 
 But with thy beauty will I deaden it. 
 Where didst thou melt to ? By thee will I sit 
 For ever : let our fate stop here — a kid 
 I on this spot will offer : Pan will bid 
 Us live in peace, in love and peace among 
 His forest wildernesses. I have clung 
 To nothing, lov'd a nothing, nothing seen 
 Or felt but a great dream ! O I have been 
 Presumptuous against love, against the sky, 
 Against all elements, against the tie 640 
 
 Of mortals each to each, against the blooms 
 Of flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombs 
 Of heroes gone ! Against his proper glory 
 Has my own soul conspired : so my story 
 Will I to children utter, and repent. 
 There never liv'd a mortal man, who bent 
 His appetite beyond his natural sphere. 
 But starv'd and died. My sweetest Indian, here, 
 Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast 
 
 My life from too thin breathing : gone and past 650 
 
 Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewel ! 
 And air of visions, and the monstrous swell 
 Of visionary seas ! No, never more 
 Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore 
 Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast. 
 Adieu, my daintiest Dream ! although so vast 
 
 I
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 137 
 
 My love is still for thee. The hour may come 
 
 When we shall meet in pure elysiura. 
 
 On earth I may not love thee ; and therefore 
 
 Doves will I offer up, and sweetest store 660 
 
 All through the teeming year : so thou wilt shine 
 
 On me, and on this damsel fair of mine. 
 
 And bless our simple lives. My Indian bliss ! 
 
 My river-lily bud ! one human kiss ! 
 
 One sigh of real breath — one gentle squeeze. 
 
 Warm as a dove's nest among summer trees. 
 
 And warm with dew at ooze from living blood ! 
 
 Whither didst melt ? Ah, what of that ! — all good 
 
 We'll talk about — no more of dreaming. — Now, 
 
 Where shall our dwelling be ? Under the brow 670 
 
 Of some steep mossy hill, where ivy dun 
 
 Would hide us up, although spring leaves were none ; 
 
 And where dark yew trees, as we rustle through. 
 
 Will drop their scarlet berry cups of dew ? 
 
 thou wouldst joy to live in such a place ; 
 Dusk for our loves, yet light enough to grace 
 Those gentle limbs on mossy bed reclin'd : 
 
 For by one step the blue sky shouldst thou find. 
 
 And by another, in deep dell below. 
 
 See, through the trees, a little river go fiSo 
 
 All in its mid-day gold and glimmering. 
 
 Honey from out the gnarled hive I'll bring. 
 
 And apples, wan with sweetness, gather thee, — 
 
 Cresses that grow where no man may them see. 
 
 And sorrel untorn by the dew-claw'd stag : 
 
 Pipes will I fashion of the syrinx flag. 
 
 That thou mayst always know whither I roam. 
 
 When it shall please thee in our quiet home 
 
 To listen and think of love. Still let me speak ; 
 
 Still let me dive into the joy I seek, — 690 
 
 For yet the past doth prison me. The rill. 
 
 Thou haply mayst delight in, will I fill 
 
 With fairy fishes from the mountain tarn. 
 
 And thou shalt feed them from the squirrel's bam. 
 
 Its bottom will I strew with amber shells. 
 
 And pebbles blue from deep enchanted wells. 
 
 Its sides I'll plant with dew-sweet eglantine, 
 
 And honeysuckles full of clear bee-wine. 
 
 1 will entice this crystal rill to trace 
 
 Love's silver name upon the meadow's lace. 700 
 
 I'll kneel to Vesta, for a flame of fire ; 
 And to God Phoebus, for a golden lyre ; 
 To Empress Dian, for a hunting spear ;
 
 138 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 To Vesper, for a taper silver-clear. 
 
 That I may see thy beauty through the night ; 
 
 To Flora, and a nightingale shall light 
 
 Tame on thy finger ; to the River-gods, 
 
 And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods 
 
 Of gold, and lines of Naiads' long bright tress. 
 
 Heaven shield thee for thine utter loveUness ! 710 
 
 Thy mossy footstool shall the altar be 
 
 'Fore which I'll bend, bending, dear love, to thee : 
 
 Those lips shall be my Delphos, and shall speak 
 
 Laws to my footsteps, colour to my cheek. 
 
 Trembling or stedfastness to this same voice. 
 
 And of three sweetest pleasurings the choice : 
 
 And that affectionate light, those diamond things. 
 
 Those eyes, those passions, those supreme pearl springs. 
 
 Shall be my grief, or twinkle me to pleasure. 
 
 Say, is not bliss within our perfect seisure ? 720 
 
 that I could not doubt ! " 
 
 The mountaineer 
 Thus strove by fancies vain and crude to clear 
 His briar'd path to some tranquillity. 
 It gave bright gladness to his lady's eye. 
 And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow ; 
 Answering thus. Just as the golden morrow 
 Beam'd upward from the vallies of the east : 
 "O that the flutter of this heart had ceas'd. 
 Or the sweet name of love had pass'd away. 
 Young feather'd tyrant ! by a swift decay 730 
 
 Wilt thou devote this body to the earth : 
 And I do think that at my very birth 
 
 1 lisp'd thy blooming titles inwardly ; 
 
 For at the first, first dawn and thought of thee. 
 
 With uplift hands I blest the stars of heaven. 
 
 Art thou not cruel ? Ever have I striven 
 
 To think thee kind, but ah, it will not do ! 
 
 When yet a child, I heard that kisses drew 
 
 Favour from thee, and so I kisses gave 
 
 To the void air, bidding them find out love : 740 
 
 But when I came to feel how far above 
 
 All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood. 
 
 All earthly pleasure, all imagin'd good. 
 
 Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss, — 
 
 Even then, that moment, at the thought of this, 
 
 Fainting I fell into a bed of flowers. 
 
 And languish'd there three days. Ye milder bowers, 
 
 Am I not cruelly wrong'd .-' Believe, believe
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 139 
 
 Me, dear Endymion, were I to weave 
 
 With my own fancies garlands of sweet life, 750 
 
 Thou shouldst be one of all. Ah, bitter strife ! 
 
 I may not be thy love : I am forbidden — 
 
 Indeed I am — thwarted, affrighted, chidden, 
 
 By things I trembled at, and gorgon wrath. 
 
 Twice hast thou ask'd whither 1 went : henceforth 
 
 Ask me no more ! I may not utter it, 
 
 Nor may I be thy love. We might commit 
 
 Ourselves at once to vengeance ; we might die ; 
 
 We might embrace and die : voluptuous thought ! 
 
 Enlarge not to my hunger, or I'm caught 760 
 
 In trammels of perverse deliciousness. 
 
 No, no, that shall not be : thee will I bless, 
 
 And bid a long adieu." 
 
 The Carian 
 No word return'd : both lovelorn, silent, wan. 
 Into the vallies green together went. 
 Far wandering, they were perforce content 
 To sit beneath a fair lone beechen tree ; 
 Nor at each other gaz'd, but heavily 
 Por'd on its hazle cirque of shedded leaves. 
 
 Endymion ! unhappy ! it nigh grieves 770 
 
 Me to behold thee thus in last extreme : 
 Ensky'd ere this, but truly that I deem 
 Truth the best music in a first-born song. 
 Thy lute-voic'd brother will I sing ere long, 
 And thou shalt aid — hast thou not aided me .'' 
 Yes, moonlight Emperor ! felicity 
 Has been thy meed for many thousand years ; 
 Yet often have I, on the brink of tears, 
 Mourn'd as if yet thou wert a foi'ester ; — 
 Forgetting the old tale. 
 
 He did not stir 780 
 
 His eyes from the dead leaves, or one small pulse 
 Of joy he might have felt. The spirit culls 
 Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays 
 Through the old garden-ground of boyish days. 
 A little onward ran the very stream 
 By which he took his first soft poppy dream ; 
 And on the very bark 'gainst which he leant 
 A crescent he had carv'd, and round it spent 
 His skill in little stars. The teeming tree 
 Had swollen and green'd the pious charactery, 790
 
 140 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 But not ta'en out. Why, there was not a slope 
 Up which he had not fear'd the antelope ; 
 And not a tree, beneath whose rooty shade 
 He had not with his tamed leopards play'd : 
 Nor could an aiTow light, or javelin. 
 Fly in the air where his had never been — 
 And yet he knew it not. 
 
 O treachery ! 
 Why does his lady smile, pleasing her eye 
 With all his sorrowing .'' He sees her not. 
 
 But who so stares on him ? His sister sure ! Soo 
 
 Peona of the woods ! — Can she endure — 
 Impossible — how dearly they embrace ! 
 His lady smiles ; delight is in her face ; 
 It is no treachery. 
 
 " Dear brother mine ! 
 Endymion, weep not so ! Why shouldst thou pine 
 When all sreat Latmos so exalt will be .'' 
 Thank the great gods, and look not bitterly ; 
 And speak not one pale word, and sigh no more. 
 Sure I will not believe thou hast such store 
 
 Of grief, to last thee to my kiss again. 8io 
 
 Thou surely canst not bear a mind in pain. 
 Come hand in hand with one so beautiful. 
 Be happy both of you ! for I will pull 
 The flowers of autumn for your coronals. 
 Pan's holy priest for young Endymion calls ; 
 And when he is restor'd, thou, fairest dame, 
 Shalt be our queen. Now, is it not a shame 
 To see ye thus, — not very, very sad ? 
 Perhaps ye are too happy to be glad : 
 
 O feel as if it were a common day ; 820 
 
 Free-voic'd as one who never was away. 
 No tongue shall ask, whence come ye } but ye shall 
 Be gods of your own rest imperial. 
 Not even I, for one whole month, will pry 
 Into the hours that have pass'd us by, 
 Since in my arbour I did sing to thee. 
 O Hermes ! on this very night will be 
 A hymning up to Cynthia, queen of light ; 
 For the soothsayers old saw yesternight 
 
 Good visions in the air, — whence will befal, S30 
 
 As say these sages, health perpetual 
 To shepherds and their flocks ; and furthermore. 
 In Dian's tace they read the gentle lore :
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 141 
 
 Therefore for her these vesper-carols are. 
 
 Our friends will all be there from nigh and far. 
 
 Many upon thy death have ditties made ; 
 
 And many, even now, their foreheads shade 
 
 With cypress, on a day of sacrifice. 
 
 New singing for our maids shalt thou devise, 
 
 And pluck the sorrow from our huntsmen's brows. 840 
 
 Tell me, m.y lady-queen, how to espouse 
 
 This wayward brother to his rightful joys ! 
 
 His eyes are on thee bent, as thou didst poise 
 
 His fate most goddess-like. Help me, I pray, 
 
 To lure — Endymion, dear brother, say 
 
 What ails thee .'' " He could bear no more, and so 
 
 Bent his soul fiercely like a spiritual bow, 
 
 And twang'd it inwardly, and calmly said : 
 
 " I would have thee my only friend, sweet maid ! 
 
 My only visitor ! not ignorant though, 850 
 
 That those deceptions which for pleasure go 
 
 'Mong men, are pleasures I'eal as real may be : 
 
 But there are higher ones I may not see. 
 
 If impiously an earthly realm I take. 
 
 Since I saw thee, I have been wide awake 
 
 Night after night, and day by day, until 
 
 Of the empyrean I have drunk my fill. 
 
 Let it content thee, Sister, seeing me 
 
 More happy than betides mortality. 
 
 A hermit young, I'll live in mossy cave, 860 
 
 Where thou alone shalt come to me, and lave 
 
 Thy spirit in the wonders I shall tell. 
 
 Through me the shepherd realm shall prosper well ; 
 
 For to thy tongue will I all health confide. 
 
 And, for my sake, let this young maid abide 
 
 With thee as a dear sister. Thou alone, 
 
 Peona, mayst return to me. I own 
 
 This may sound strangely : but when, dearest girl. 
 
 Thou seest it for my happiness, no pearl 
 
 Will trespass down those cheeks. Companion fair ! 870 
 
 Wilt be content to dwell with her, to share 
 
 This sister's love with me .'' " Like one resign'd 
 
 And bent by circumstance, and thereby blind 
 
 In self-commitment, thus that meek unknown : 
 
 "Aye, but a buzzing by my ears has flown, 
 
 Of jubilee to Dian : — truth I heard ! 
 
 Well then, I see there is no little bird. 
 
 Tender soever, but is Jove's own care. 
 
 Long have I sought for rest, and, unaware, 
 
 Behold I find it ! so exalted too ! 880
 
 142 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 So after my own heart ! I knew, I knew 
 There was a place untenanted in it : 
 In that same void white Chastity shall sit. 
 And monitor me nightly to lone slumber. 
 With sanest lips I vow me to the number 
 Of Dian's sisterhood ; and, kind lady. 
 With thy good help, this very night shall see 
 My future days to her fane consecrate." 
 
 As feels a dreamer what doth most create 
 His own particular fright, so these three felt : S90 
 
 Or like one who, in after ages, knelt 
 To Lucifer or Baal, when he'd pine 
 After a little sleep : or when in mine 
 Far under-ground, a sleeper meets his friends 
 Who know him not. Each diligently bends 
 Towards common thoughts and things for very fear ; 
 Striving their ghastly malady to cheer. 
 By thinking it a thing of yes and no. 
 That housewives talk of. But the spirit-blow 
 Was struck, and all were dreamers. At the last goo 
 
 Endymion said : " Are not our fates all cast ? 
 Why stand we here ? Adieu, ye tender pair ! 
 Adieu ! " Whereat those maidens, with wild stare, 
 Walk'd dizzily away. Pained and hot 
 His eyes went after them, until they got 
 Near to a cypress grove, whose deadly maw. 
 In one swift moment, would what then he saw 
 Engulph for ever. " Stay ! " he cried, " ah, stay ! 
 Turn, damsels ! hist ! one word I have to say. 
 Sweet Indian, I would see thee once again. gio 
 
 It is a thing I dote on : so I'd fain, 
 Peona, ye should hand in hand repair 
 Into those holy groves, that silent are 
 Behind great Dian's temple. I'll be yon, 
 At vesper's earliest twinkle — they are gone — 
 But once, once, once again — " At this he press'd 
 His hands against his face, and then did rest 
 His head upon a mossy hillock green. 
 And so remain' d as he a corpse had been 
 
 All the long day ; save when he scantly lifted 920 
 
 His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted 
 With the slow move of time, — sluggish and weary 
 Until the poplar tops, in journey dreary. 
 Had reach'd the river's brim. Then up he rose. 
 And, slowly as that very river flows, 
 Walk'd towards the temple grove with this lament ;
 
 BOOK IV] ENDYMION 148 
 
 " Why such a golden eve ? The breeze is sent 
 
 Careful and soft, that not a leaf may fall 
 
 Before the serene father of them all 
 
 Bows down his summer head below the west. 930 
 
 Now am I of breath, speech, and speed possest, 
 
 But at the setting I must bid adieu 
 
 To her for the last time. Night will strew 
 
 On the damp grass myriads of lingering leaves, 
 
 And with them shall I die ; nor much it grieves 
 
 To die, when summer dies on the cold sward. 
 
 Why, I have been a butterfly, a lord 
 
 Of flowers, garlands, love-knots, silly posies, 
 
 Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbour roses ; 
 
 My kingdom's at its death, and just it is 940 
 
 That I should die with it : so in all this 
 
 We miscal grief, bale, sorrow, heartbreak, woe, 
 
 What is there to plain of? By Titan's foe 
 
 I am but rightly serv'd." So saying, he 
 
 Tripp'd lightly on, in sort of deathful glee ; 
 
 Laughing at the clear stream and setting sun. 
 
 As though they jests had been : nor had he done 
 
 His laugh at nature's holy countenance. 
 
 Until that grove appear'd, as if perchance. 
 
 And then his tongue with sober seemlihed 950 
 
 Gave utterance as he enter'd : " Ha ! I said. 
 
 King of the butterflies ; but by this gloom. 
 
 And by old Rhadamanthus' tongue of doom, 
 
 This dusk religion, pomp of solitude. 
 
 And the Promethean clay by thief endued. 
 
 By old Saturnus' forelock, by his head 
 
 Shook with eternal palsy, I did wed 
 
 Myself to things of light from infancy ; 
 
 And thus to be cast out, thus lorn to die. 
 
 Is sure enough to make a mortal man 960 
 
 Grow impious." So he inwardly began 
 
 On things for which no wording can be found ; 
 
 Deeper and deeper sinking, until drown'd 
 
 Beyond the reach of music : for the choir 
 
 Of Cynthia he heard not, though rough briar 
 
 Nor muffling thicket interpos'd to dull 
 
 The vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full, 
 
 Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles. 
 
 He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles. 
 
 Wan as primroses gather'd at midnight g^o 
 
 By chilly finger'd spring. " Unhappy wight ! 
 
 Endymion ! " said Peona, "we are here ! 
 
 What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier ? "
 
 144 JOHN KEATS [book iv 
 
 Then he embrac'd her, and his lady's hand 
 
 Press'd, saying : " Sister, I would have command, 
 
 If it were heaven's will, on our sad fate." 
 
 At which that dark-eyed stranger stood elate 
 
 And said, in a new voice, but sweet as love, 
 
 To Endymion's amaze : " By Cupid's dove, 
 
 And so thou shalt ! and by the lily truth 980 
 
 Of my own breast thou shalt, beloved youth ! " 
 
 And as she spake, into her face there came 
 
 Light, as reflected from a silver flame : 
 
 Her long black hair swell'd ampler, in display 
 
 Full golden ; in her eyes a brighter day 
 
 Dawn'd blue and full of love. Aye, he beheld 
 
 Phoel)e, his passion ! joyous she upheld 
 
 Her lucid bow, continuing thus : " Drear, drear 
 
 Has our delaying been ; but foolish fear 
 
 Withheld me first ; and then decrees of fate ; 990 
 
 And then 'twas fit that from this mortal state 
 
 Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlook'd for change 
 
 Be spiritualiz'd. Peona, we shall range 
 
 These forests, and to thee they safe shall be 
 
 As was thy cradle ; hither shalt thou flee 
 
 To meet us many a time." Next Cynthia bright 
 
 Peona kiss'd, and bless'd with fair good night : 
 
 Her brother kiss'd her too, and knelt adown 
 
 Before his goddess, in a blissful swoon. 
 
 She gave her fair hands to him, and behold, 1000 
 
 Before three swiftest kisses he had told. 
 
 They vanish'd far away ! — Peona went 
 
 Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment. 
 
 THE END
 
 LAMIA 
 
 ISABELLA 
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS 
 1820 
 
 lO
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 If any apology be thought necessary for the appearance of the unfinished poem of 
 Hyperion, the publishers beg to state that they alone are responsible, as it was printed 
 at their particular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was in- 
 tended to have been of equal length with Endymion, but the reception given to that 
 work discouraged the author from proceeding. 
 
 Fleet-Street, June 26, 1820.
 
 LAMIA 
 
 PART I 
 
 UPON a time, before the faery broods 
 Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods. 
 Before king Oberon's bright diadem. 
 Sceptre, and mantle, clasp' d with dewy gem, . 
 Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns 
 From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns. 
 The ever-smitten Hermes empty left 
 His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft : 
 From high Olympus had he stolen light, 
 
 On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight lo 
 
 Of his great summoner, and made retreat 
 Into a forest on the shores of Crete. 
 For somewhere in that saci'ed island dwelt 
 A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt ; 
 At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured 
 Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored. 
 Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont. 
 And in those meads where sometime she might haunt, 
 Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse, 
 Though Fancy's casket were unlock'd to choose. 20 
 
 Ah, what a world of love was at her feet I 
 So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat 
 Burnt from his winged heels to either ear. 
 That from a whiteness, as the lily clear, 
 Blush'd into roses 'mid his golden hair. 
 Fallen in jealous curls about his shoulders bare. 
 From vale to vale, from wood to wood, he flew. 
 Breathing upon the flowers his passion new. 
 And wound with many a river to its head. 
 
 To find where this sweet nymph prepar'd her secret bed : 30 
 
 In vain ; the sweet nymph might nowhere be found. 
 And so he rested, on the lonely ground, 
 Pensive, and full of painful jealousies 
 Of the Wood-Gods, and even the very trees.
 
 148 JOHN KEATS 
 
 There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice, 
 
 Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys 
 
 All pain but pity : thus the lone voice spake : 
 
 " When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake ! 
 
 When move in a sweet body fit for life. 
 
 And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife 40 
 
 Of hearts and lips ! Ah, miserable me ! " 
 
 The God, dove-footed, glided silently 
 
 Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed, 
 
 The taller grasses and full-flowering weed. 
 
 Until he found a palpitating snake. 
 
 Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake. 
 
 She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, 
 Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue ; 
 Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, 
 
 Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd ; 50 
 
 And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, 
 Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed 
 Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries — 
 So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries. 
 She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf. 
 Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self. 
 Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire 
 Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar : 
 Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet ! 
 
 She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls complete : 60 
 
 And for her eyes : what could such eyes do there 
 But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair ? 
 As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air. 
 Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake 
 Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love's sake, 
 And thus ; while Hermes on his pinions lay, 
 Like a stoop'd falcon ere he takes his prey. 
 
 " Fair Hermes, crown'd with feathers, fluttering light, 
 I had a splendid dream of thee last night : 
 
 I saw thee sitting, on a throne of gold, 70 
 
 Among the Gods, upon Olympus old, 
 The only sad one ; for thou didst not hear 
 The soft, lute-finger'd Muses chaunting clear. 
 Nor even Apollo when he sang alone, 
 Deaf to his throbbing throat's long, long melodious moaH. 
 I dreamt I saw thee, robed in purple flakes. 
 Break amorous through the clouds, as morning breaks. 
 And, swiftly as a bright Phoebean dart. 
 Strike for the Cretan isle ; and here thou art ! 
 
 ■'I
 
 LAMIA 149 
 
 Too gentle Hermes, hast thou found the maid ? " 80 
 
 Whereat the star of Lethe not delay'd 
 
 His rosy eloquence, and thus inquired : 
 
 " Thou sraooth-lipp'd serpent, surely high inspired ! 
 
 Thou beauteous wreath, with melancholy eyes. 
 
 Possess whatever bliss thou canst devise. 
 
 Telling me only where my nymph is fled, — 
 
 Where she doth breathe ! " " Bright planet, thou hast said," 
 
 Return'd the snake, " but seal with oaths, fair God ! " 
 
 "I swear," said Hermes, "by my serpent rod, 
 
 And by thine eyes, and by thy starry crown ! " 90 
 
 Light flew his earnest words, among the blossoms blown. 
 
 Then thus again the brilliance feminine : 
 
 " Too frail of heart ! for this lost nymph of thine. 
 
 Free as the air, invisibly, she strays 
 
 About these thomless wilds ; her pleasant days 
 
 She tastes unseen ; unseen her nimble feet 
 
 Leave traces in the grass and flowers sweet ; 
 
 From weary tendrils, and bow'd branches green. 
 
 She plucks the fruit unseen, she bathes unseen : 
 
 And by my power is her beauty veil'd 100 
 
 To keep it unaffronted, unassail'd 
 
 By the love-glances of unlovely eyes. 
 
 Of Satyrs, Fauns, and blear'd Silenus' sighs. 
 
 Pale grew her immortality, for woe 
 
 Of all these lovers, and she grieved so 
 
 I took compassion on her, bade her steep 
 
 Her hair in weird syrops, that would keep 
 
 Her loveliness invisible, yet free 
 
 To wander as she loves, in liberty. 
 
 Thou shalt behold her, Hermes, thou alone, no 
 
 If thou wilt, as thou swearest, grant my boon ! " 
 
 Then, once again, the charmed God began 
 
 An oath, and through the serpent's ears it ran 
 
 Warm, tremulous, devout, psalterian. 
 
 Ravishd, she lifted her Circean head, 
 
 Blush'd a live damask, and swift-lisping said, 
 
 " I was a woman, let me have once more 
 
 A woman's shape, and charming as before. 
 
 I love a youth of Corinth — O the bliss ! 
 
 Give me my woman's form, and place me where he is. 120 
 
 Stoop, Hermes, let me breathe upon thy brow. 
 
 And thou shalt see thy sweet nymph even now." 
 
 The God on half-shut feathers sank serene. 
 
 She breath' d upon his eyes, and swift was seen 
 
 Of both the guarded nymph near-smiling on the green. 
 
 It was no dream ; or say a dream it was.
 
 150 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass 
 
 Their pleasures in a long immortal dream. 
 
 One warm, flush'd moment, hovering, it might seem 
 
 Dash'd by the wood-nymph's beauty, so he bum'd ; 130 
 
 Then, lighting on the printless verdure, turn'd 
 
 To the swoon' d serpent, and with languid arm. 
 
 Delicate, put to proof the lythe Caducean charm. 
 
 So done, upon the nymph his eyes he bent 
 
 Full of adoring tears and blandishment, 
 
 And towards her stept : she, like a moon in wane. 
 
 Faded before him, cower' d, nor could restrain 
 
 Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower 
 
 That faints into itself at evening hour : 
 
 But the God fostering her chilled hand, 140 
 
 She felt the warmth, her eyelids open'd bland. 
 
 And, like new flowers at morning song of bees, 
 
 Bloom'd, and gave up her honey to the lees. 
 
 Into the green-recessed woods they flew ; 
 
 Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do. 
 
 Left to herself, the serpent now began 
 To change ; her elfin blood in madness ran. 
 Her mouth foam'd, and the grass, therewith besprent, 
 Wither'd at dew so sweet and virulent ; 
 
 Her eyes in torture fix'd, and anguish drear, 150 
 
 Hot, glaz'd, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear, 
 Flash'd phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear. 
 The colours all inflam'd throughout her train. 
 She writh'd about, convuls'd with scarlet pain : 
 A deep volcanian yellow took the place 
 Of all her milder-mooned body's grace ; 
 And, as the lava ravishes the mead. 
 Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede ; 
 Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks and bars, 
 Eclips'd her crescents, and Uck'd up her stars : 160 
 
 So that, in moments few, she was undrest 
 Of all her sapphires, greens, and amethyst. 
 And rubious-argent : of all these bereft. 
 Nothing but pain and ugliness were left. 
 Still shone her crown ; that vanish'd, also she 
 Melted and disappear' d as suddenly ; 
 And in the air, her new voice luting soft. 
 Cried, " Lycius ! gentle Lycius ! " — Borne aloft 
 With the bright mists about the mountains hoar 
 These words dissolv'd: Crete's forests heard no more. 170 
 
 Whither fled Lamia, now a lady bright, 
 A full-born beauty new and exquisite ?
 
 LAMIA 151 
 
 She fled into that valley they pass o'er 
 
 Who go to Corinth from Cenchreas' shore ; 
 
 And rested at the foot of those wild hills, 
 
 The rugged founts of the Peraean rills, 
 
 And of that other ridge whose barren back 
 
 Stretches, with all its mist and cloudy rack. 
 
 South-westward to Cleone. There she stood 
 
 About a young bird's flutter from a wood, i8o 
 
 Fair, on a sloping green of mossy tread. 
 
 By a clear pool, wherein she passioned 
 
 To see herself escap'd from so sore ills. 
 
 While her robes flaunted with the daffodils. 
 
 Ah, happy Lycius ! — for she was a maid 
 More beautiful than ever twisted braid. 
 Or sigh'd, or blush'd, or on spring-flowered lea 
 Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy : 
 A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore 
 
 Of love deep learned to the red heart's core : igo 
 
 Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain 
 To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain ; 
 Define their pettish limits, and estrange 
 Their points of contact, and swift counterchange ; 
 Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart 
 Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art ; 
 As though in Cupid's college she had spent 
 Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent. 
 And kept his rosy terms in idle languishment. 
 
 Why this fair creature chose so fairily 200 
 
 By the wayside to linger, we shall see ; 
 But first 'tis fit to tell how she could muse 
 And dream, when in the serpent prison-house. 
 Of all she list, strange or magnificent : 
 How, ever, where she will'd, her spirit went ; 
 Whether to faint Elysium, or where 
 Do\vn through tress-lifting waves the Nereids fair 
 Wind into Thetis' bower by many a pearly stair ; 
 Or where God Bacchus drains his cups divine, 
 Stretch'd out, at ease, beneath a glutinous pine ; ^10 
 
 Or where in Pluto's gardens palatine 
 Mulciber's columns gleam in far piazzian line. 
 And sometimes into cities she would send 
 Her di'eam, with feast and rioting to blend ; 
 And once, while among mortals dreaming thus. 
 She saw the young Corinthian Lycius 
 Charioting foremost in the envious race,
 
 152 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Like a young Jove with calm uneager face. 
 
 And fell into a swooning love of him. 
 
 Now on the moth-time of that evening dim 220 
 
 He would return that way, as well she knew. 
 
 To Corinth from the shore ; for freshly blew 
 
 The eastern soft wind, and his galley now 
 
 Grated the quaystones with her brazen prow 
 
 In port Cenchreas, from Egina isle 
 
 Fresh anchor'd ; whither he had been awhile 
 
 To sacrifice to Jove, whose temple there 
 
 Waits with high marble doors for blood and incense rare. 
 
 Jove heard his vows, and better'd his desire ; 
 
 For by some freakful chance he made retire 230 
 
 From his companions, and set forth to walk, 
 
 Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk : 
 
 Over the solitary hills he fared. 
 
 Thoughtless at first, but ere eve's star appeared 
 
 His phantasy was lost, where reason fades. 
 
 In the calm'd twilight of Platonic shades. 
 
 Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near — 
 
 Close to her passing, in indifference drear. 
 
 His silent sandals swept the mossy green ; 
 
 So neighbour'd to him, and yet so unseen 240 
 
 She stood : he pass'd, shut up in mysteries. 
 
 His mind wrapp'd like his mantle, while her eyes 
 
 Follow'd his steps, and her neck regal white 
 
 Turn'd — syllabling thus, " Ah, Lycius bright, 
 
 And will you leave me on the hills alone ? 
 
 Lycius, look back ! and be some pity shown." 
 
 He did ; not with cold wonder fearingly. 
 
 But Orpheus-like at an Eurydice ; 
 
 For so delicious were the words she sung. 
 
 It seem'd he had lov'd them a whole summer long : 250 
 
 And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up. 
 
 Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup. 
 
 And still the cup was full, — while he, afraid 
 
 Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid 
 
 Due adoration, thus began to adore ; 
 
 Her soft look growing coy, she saw his chain so sure : 
 
 " Leave thee alone ! Look back ! Ah, Goddess, see 
 
 Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee ! 
 
 For pity do not this sad heart belie — 
 
 Even as thou vanishest so I shall die. 260 
 
 Stay ! though a Naiad of the rivers, stay ! 
 
 To thy far wishes will thy streams obey : 
 
 Stay ! though the greenest woods be thy domain. 
 
 Alone they can drink up the morning rain :
 
 LAMIA 153 
 
 Though a descended Pleiad, will not one 
 
 Of thine harmonious sisters keep in tune 
 
 Thy spheres, and as thy silver proxy shine ? 
 
 So sweetly to these ravish'd ears of mine 
 
 Came thy sweet greeting, that if thou shouldst fade 
 
 Thy memory will waste me to a shade : — 270 
 
 For pity do not melt ! " — " If I should stay," 
 
 Said Lamia, " here, upon this floor of clay. 
 
 And pain my steps upon these flowers too rough, 
 
 What canst thou say or do of charm enough 
 
 To dull the nice remembrance of my home ? 
 
 Thou canst not ask me with thee here to roam 
 
 Over these hills and vales, where no joy is, — 
 
 Empty of immortality and bliss ! 
 
 Thou art a scholar, Lycius, and must know 
 
 That finer spirits cannot breathe below 280 
 
 In human climes, and live : Alas ! poor youth. 
 
 What taste of purer air hast thou to soothe 
 
 My essence ? What serener palaces. 
 
 Where I may all my many senses please. 
 
 And by mysterious sleights a hundred thirsts appease ? 
 
 It cannot be — Adieu ! " So said, she rose 
 
 Tiptoe with white arms spread. He, sick to lose 
 
 The amorous promise of her lone complain. 
 
 Swoon' d, murmuring of love, and pale with pain. 
 
 The cruel lady, without any show 290 
 
 Of sorrow for her tender favourite's woe. 
 
 But rather, if her eyes could brighter be, 
 
 With brighter eyes and slow amenity. 
 
 Put her new lips to his, and gave afresh 
 
 The life she had so tangled in her mesh : 
 
 And as he from one trance was wakening 
 
 Into another, she began to sing, 
 
 Happy in beauty, life, and love, and every thing, 
 
 A song of love, too sweet for earthly lyres, 
 
 While, like held breath, the stars drew in their panting fires. 
 
 And then she whisper'd in such trembling tone, 301 
 
 As those who, safe together met alone 
 
 For the first time through many anguish'd days. 
 
 Use other speech than looks ; bidding him raise 
 
 His drooping head, and clear his soul of doubt. 
 
 For that she was a woman, and without 
 
 Any more subtle fluid in her veins 
 
 Than thi'obbing blood, and that the self-same pains 
 
 Inhabited her frail-strung heart as his. 
 
 And next she wonder' d how his eyes could miss 310 
 
 Her face so long in Corinth, where, she said,
 
 154 JOHN KEATS 
 
 She dwelt but half retir'd, and there had led 
 
 Days happy as the gold coin could invent 
 
 Without the aid of love ; yet in content 
 
 Till she saw him, as once she pass'd him by. 
 
 Where 'gainst a column he leant thoughtfully 
 
 At Venus' temple porch, 'mid baskets heap'd 
 
 Of amorous herbs and flowers, newly reap'd 
 
 Late on that eve, as 'twas the night before 
 
 The Adonian feast ; whereof she saw no more, 320 
 
 But wept alone those days, for why should she adore ? 
 
 Lycius from death awoke into amaze. 
 
 To see her still, and singing so sweet lays ; 
 
 Then from amaze into delight he fell 
 
 To hear her whisper woman's lore so well ; 
 
 And every word she spake entic'd him on 
 
 To unperplex'd delight and pleasure known. 
 
 Let the mad poets say whate'er they please 
 
 Of the sweets of Fairies, Peris, Goddesses, 
 
 There is not such a treat among them all, 330 
 
 Haunters of cavern, lake, and waterfall. 
 
 As a real woman, lineal indeed 
 
 Fi'om Pyrrha's pebbles or old Adam's seed. 
 
 Thus gentle Lamia judg'd, and judg'd aright. 
 
 That Lycius could not love in half a fright. 
 
 So threw the goddess off, and won his heart 
 
 More pleasantly by playing woman's part. 
 
 With no more awe than what her beauty gave. 
 
 That, while it smote, still guaranteed to save. 
 
 Lycius to all made eloquent reply, 3<j,o 
 
 Marrying to every word a twinborn sigh ; 
 
 And last, pointing to Corinth, ask'd her sweet. 
 
 If 'twas too far that night for her soft feet. 
 
 The way was short, for Lamia's eagerness 
 
 Made, by a spell, the triple league decrease 
 
 To a few paces ; not at all surmised 
 
 By blinded Lycius, so in her comprized. 
 
 They pass'd the city gates, he knew not how. 
 
 So noiseless, and he never thought to know. 
 
 As men talk in a dream, so Corinth all, 350 
 
 Throughout her palaces imperial. 
 And all her populous streets and temples lewd, 
 Mutter' d, like tempest in the distance brew'd. 
 To the wide-spreaded night above her towers. 
 Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours. 
 Shuffled their sandals o'er the pavement white, 
 Companion'd or alone ; while many a light
 
 LAMIA 155 
 
 Flared, here and there, from wealthy festivals. 
 
 And threw their moving shadows on the walls. 
 
 Or found them cluster'd in the corniced shade 360 
 
 Of some arch'd temple door, or dusky colonnade. 
 
 Muffling his face, of greeting friends in fear, 
 Her fingers he press'd hard, as one came near 
 With curl'd gray beard, sharp eyes, and smooth bald crown, 
 Slow-stepp'd, and robed in philosophic gown : 
 Lycius shrank closer, as they met and past. 
 Into his mantle, adding wings to haste. 
 While hurried Lamia trembled : " Ah," said he, 
 "Why do you shudder, love, so ruefully ? 
 
 Why does your tender palm dissolve in dew ? " — 370 
 
 " I'm wearied," said fair Lamia : " tell me who 
 Is that old man ? I cannot bring to mind 
 His features : — Lycius ! wherefore did you blind 
 Yourself from his quick eyes ? " Lycius replied, 
 " 'Tis Apollonius sage, my trusty guide 
 And good instructor ; but to-night he seems 
 The ghost of folly haunting my sweet dreams." 
 
 While yet he spake they had aiTiv'd before 
 A pillar' d porch, with lofty portal door. 
 
 Where hung a silver lamp, whose phosphor glow 380 
 
 Reflected in the slabbed steps below, 
 Mild as a star in water ; for so new. 
 And so unsullied was the marble hue. 
 So through the crystal polish, liquid fine. 
 Ran the dark veins, that none but feet divine 
 Could e'er have touch'd there. Sounds iEolian 
 Breath'd from the hinges, as the ample span 
 Of the wide doors disclos'd a place unknown 
 Some time to any, but those two alone. 
 
 And a few Persian mutes, who that same year 390 
 
 Were seen about the markets : none knew where 
 They could inhabit ; the most curious 
 Were foil'd, who watch'd to trace them to their house : 
 And but the flitter-winged verse must tell. 
 For truth's sake, what woe afterwards befel, 
 'Twould humour many a heart to leave them thus. 
 Shut from the busy world of more incredulous.
 
 156 JOHN KEATS 
 
 LAMIA 
 
 PART II 
 
 LOVE in a hut, with water and a crust, 
 Is — Love, forgive us ! — cinders, ashes, dust ; 
 Love in a palace is perhaps at last 
 More grievous torment than a hermit's fast : — 
 That is a doubtful tale from faery land, 
 Hard for the non-elect to understand. 
 Had Lycius liv'd to hand his story down. 
 He might have given the moral a fi-esh frown. 
 Or clench' d it quite : but too short was their bliss 
 To breed distrust and hate, that make the soft voice hiss. lo 
 
 Besides, there, nightly, with terrific glare. 
 Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair, 
 Hover'd and buzz'd his wings, with fearful roar, 
 Above the lintel of their chamber door. 
 And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor. 
 
 For all this came a ruin : side by side 
 They were enthroned, in the even tide, 
 Upon a couch, near to a curtaining 
 Whose airy texture, from a golden string. 
 
 Floated into the room, and let appear 20 
 
 Unveil'd the summer heaven, blue and clear. 
 Betwixt two marble shafts : — there they reposed, 
 Where use had made it sweet, with eyelids closed. 
 Saving a tythe which love still open kept, 
 That they might see each other while they almost slept ; 
 When from the slope side of a suburb hill. 
 Deafening the swallow's twitter, came a thrill 
 Of trumpets — Lycius started — the sounds fled. 
 But left a thought, a buzzing in his head. 
 
 For the first time, since first he harbour'd in 30 
 
 That purple-lined palace of sweet sin. 
 His spirit pass'd beyond its golden bourn 
 Into the noisy world almost forsworn.
 
 LAMIA 157 
 
 The lady, ever watchful, penetrant. 
 
 Saw this with pain, so arguing a want 
 
 Of something more, more than her empery 
 
 Of joys ; and she began to moan and sigh 
 
 Because he mused beyond her, knowing well 
 
 That but a moment's thought is passion's passing bell. 
 
 ''Why do you sigh, fair creature ? " whisper'd he : 40 
 
 " Why do you think ? " return'd she tenderly : 
 
 " You have deserted me ; — where am I now ? 
 
 Not in your heart while care weighs on your brow : 
 
 No, no, you have dismiss'd me ; and I go 
 
 From your breast houseless : ay, it must be so." 
 
 He answer' d, bending to her open eyes, 
 
 Where he was mirror'd small in paradise, 
 
 " My silver planet, both of eve and morn ! 
 
 Why will you plead yourself so sad forlorn, 
 
 While I am striving how to fill my heart 5° 
 
 With deeper crimson, and a double smart ? 
 
 How to entangle, trammel up and snare 
 
 Your soul in mine, and labyrinth you there 
 
 Like the hid scent in an unbudded rose ? 
 
 Ay, a sweet kiss — you see your mighty woes. 
 
 My thoughts ! shall I unveil them ? Listen then ! 
 
 What mortal hath a prize, that other men 
 
 May be confounded and abash'd withal. 
 
 But lets it sometimes pace abroad majestical. 
 
 And triumph, as in thee I should rejoice 60 
 
 Amid the hoarse alarm of Corinth's voice. 
 
 Let my foes choke, and my friends shout afar, 
 
 While through the thronged streets your bridal car 
 
 Wheels round its dazzling spokes." — The lady's cheek 
 
 Trembled ; she nothing said, but, pale and meek, 
 
 Arose and knelt before him, wept a rain 
 
 Of sorrows at his words ; at last with pain 
 
 Beseeching him, the while his hand she wrung. 
 
 To change his purpose. He thereat was stung. 
 
 Perverse, with stronger fancy to reclaim 70 
 
 Her wild and timid nature to his aim : 
 
 Besides, for all his love, in self despite. 
 
 Against his better self, he took delight 
 
 Luxurious in her sorrows, soft and new. 
 
 His passion, cruel grown, took on a hue 
 
 Fierce and sanguineous as 'twas possible 
 
 In one whose brow had no dark veins to swell. 
 
 Fine was the mitigated fury, like 
 
 Apollo's presence when in act to strike 
 
 The serpent — Ha, the serpent ! certes, she 80
 
 158 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Was none. She burnt, she lov'd the tyranny, 
 
 And, all subdued, consented to the hour 
 
 When to the bridal he should lead his paramour. 
 
 Whispering in midnight silence, said the youth, 
 
 " Sure some sweet name thou hast, though, by my truth, 
 
 I have not ask'd it, ever thinking thee 
 
 Not mortal, but of heavenly progeny, 
 
 As still I do. Hast any mortal name. 
 
 Fit appellation for this dazzling frame ? 
 
 Or friends or kinsfolk on the citied earth, ^ 90 
 
 To share our marriage feast and nuptial mirth ? " 
 
 " I have no friends," said Lamia, "no, not one ; 
 
 My presence in wide Corinth hardly known : 
 
 My parents' bones are in their dusty urns 
 
 Sepulchred, where no kindled incense burns. 
 
 Seeing all their luckless race are dead, save me, 
 
 And I neglect the holy rite for thee. 
 
 Even as you list invite your many guests ; 
 
 But if, as now it seems, your vision rests 
 
 With any pleasure on me, do not bid 100 
 
 Old Apollonius — from him keep me hid." 
 
 Lycius, perplex' d at words so blind and blank. 
 
 Made close inquiry ; from whose touch she shrank. 
 
 Feigning a sleep ; and he to the dull shade 
 
 Of deep sleep in a moment was betray'd. 
 
 It was the custom then to bring away 
 The bride fi-om home at blushing shut of day, 
 Veil'd, in a chariot, heralded along 
 By strewn flowers, torches, and a marriage song, 
 With other pageants : but this fair unknown 
 Had not a friend. So being left alone, 
 (Lycius was gone to summon all his kin) 
 And knowing surely she could never win 
 His foolish heart from its mad pompousness. 
 She set herself, high-thoughted, how to dress 
 The misery in fit magnificence. 
 She did so, but 'tis doubtful how and whence 
 Came, and who were her subtle servitors. 
 About the halls, and to and from the doors, 
 
 There was a noise of wings, till in short space 120 
 
 The glowing banquet-room shone with wide-arched grace. 
 A haunting music, sole perhaps and lone 
 Supportress of the faery-roof, made moan 
 Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might fade. 
 Fresh carved cedar, mimicking a glade 
 Of palm and plantain, met from either side. 
 
 no
 
 LAMIA 159 
 
 High in the midst, in honour of the bride : 
 
 Two palms and then two plantains, and so on. 
 
 From either side their stems branch'd one to one 
 
 All down the aisled place ; and beneath all 130 
 
 There ran a stream of lamps straight on from wall to wall. 
 
 So canopied, lay an untasted feast 
 
 Teeming with odours. Lamia, regal drest. 
 
 Silently paced about, and as she went, 
 
 In pale contented sort of discontent, 
 
 Mission'd her viewless servants to enrich 
 
 The fretted splendour of each nook and niche. 
 
 Between the tree-stems, marbled plain at first. 
 
 Came jasper pannels ; then, anon, there burst 
 
 Forth creeping imagery of slighter trees, 140 
 
 And with the larger wove in small intricacies. 
 
 Approving all, she faded at self-will. 
 
 And shut the chamber up, close, hush'd and still, 
 
 Complete and ready for the revels rude. 
 
 When dreadful guests would come to spoil her solitude. 
 
 The day appear' d, and all the gossip rout. 
 O senseless Lycius ! Madman ! wherefore flout 
 The silent-blessing fate, warm cloister'd hours. 
 And show to common eyes these secret bowers ? 
 The herd approach'd ; each guest, with busy brain, 150 
 
 Arriving at the portal, gaz'd amain. 
 And enter'd marveling : for they knew the street, 
 Remember'd it from childhood all complete 
 Without a gap, yet ne'er before had seen 
 That royal porch, that high-built fair demesne ; 
 So in they hurried all, maz'd, curious and keen : 
 Save one, who look'd thereon with eye severe, 
 And with calm-planted steps walk'd in austere ; 
 'Twas Apollonius : something too he laugh'd, 
 As though some knotty problem, that had daft 160 
 
 His patient thought, had now begun to thaw. 
 And solve and melt : — 'twas just as he foresaw. 
 
 He met within the murmurous vestibule 
 His young disciple. " 'Tis no common rule, 
 Lycius," said he, " for uninvited guest 
 To force himself upon you, and infest 
 With an unbidden presence the bright throng 
 Of younger friends ; yet must I do this wrong. 
 And you forgive me." Lycius blush'd, and led 
 The old man through the inner doors broad-spread ; 170 
 
 With reconciling words and courteous mien 
 Turning into sweet milk the sophist's spleen.
 
 160 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Of wealthy lustre was the banquet-room, 
 Fill'd with pervading brilliance and perfume : 
 Before each lucid pamiel fuming stood 
 A censer fed with myrrh and spiced wood, 
 Each by a sacred tripod held aloft, 
 Whose slender feet wide-swerv'd upon the soft 
 Wool-woofed carpets : fifty wreaths of smoke 
 From fifty censers their light voyage took i8o 
 
 To the hiffh roof, still mimick'd as thev rose 
 Along the miiTor'd walls by twin-clouds odorous. 
 Twelve sphered tables, by silk seats insphered, 
 High as the level of a man's breast rear'd 
 On libbard's paws, upheld the heavy gold 
 Of cups and goblets, and the store thrice told 
 Of Ceres' horn, and, in huge vessels, wine 
 Come from the gloomy tun with merry shine. 
 Thus loaded with a feast the tables stood, 
 Each shrining in the midst the image of a God. 190 
 
 When in an antichamber every guest 
 Had felt the cold full sponge to pleasure press'd. 
 By minist'ring slaves, upon his hands and feet. 
 And fragrant oils with ceremony meet 
 Pour'd on his hair, they all mov'd to the feast 
 In white robes, and themselves in order placed 
 Around the silken couches, wondering 
 Whence all this mighty cost and blaze of wealth could spring. 
 
 Soft went the music the soft air along. 
 While fluent Greek a vowel'd undersong 200 
 
 Kept up among the guests, discoursing low 
 At first, for scarcely was the wine at flow ; 
 But when the happy vintage touch' d their brains, 
 Louder they talk, and louder come the strains 
 Of powerful instruments : — the gorgeous dyes. 
 The space, the splendour of the draperies. 
 The roof of awful richness, nectarous cheer, 
 Beautiful slaves, and Lamia's self, appear. 
 Now, when the wine has done its rosy deed. 
 
 And every soul from human trammels freed, 210 
 
 No more so strange ; for merry wine, sweet wine, 
 Will make Elysian shades not too fair, too divine. 
 Soon was God Bacchus at meridian height ; 
 Flush'd were their cheeks, and bright eyes double bright : 
 Garlands of every green, and every scent 
 From vales deflower' d, or forest-trees branch-rent. 
 In baskets of bright osier' d gold were brought
 
 LAMIA 161 
 
 High as the handles heap'd, to suit the thought 
 
 Of every guest ; that each, as he did please. 
 
 Might fancy-fit his brows, silk-pillowd at his ease. 220 
 
 What wreath for Lamia ? What for Lycius ? 
 What for the sage, old ApoUonius ? 
 Upon her aching forehead be there hung 
 The leaves of willow and of adder's tongue ; 
 And for the youth, quick, let us strip for him 
 The thyrsus, that his watching eyes may swim 
 Into forgetfulness ; and, for the sage, 
 Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage 
 War on his temples. Do not all charms fly 
 
 At the mere touch of cold philosophy .' 230 
 
 There was an awful rainbow once in heaven : 
 We know her woof, her texture ; she is given 
 In the dull catalogue of common things. 
 Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, 
 Conquer all mysteries by rule and line. 
 Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine — 
 Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made 
 The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade. 
 
 By her glad Lycius sitting, in chief place. 
 Scarce saw in all the room another face, 240 
 
 Till, checking his love trance, a cup he took 
 Full brimm'd, and opposite sent forth a look 
 'Cross the broad table, to beseech a glance 
 From his old teacher's wrinkled countenance, 
 And pledge him. The bald-head philosopher 
 Had fix'd his eye, without a twinkle or stir 
 Full on the alarmed beauty of the bride, 
 Brow-beating her fair form, and troubling her sweet pride. 
 Lycius then press'd her hand, with devout touch, 
 As pale it lay upon the rosy couch : 250 
 
 'Twas icy, and the cold ran through his veins ; 
 Then sudden it grew hot, and all the pains 
 Of an unnatural heat shot to his heart. 
 " Lamia, what means this r Wherefore dost thou start f 
 Know'st thou that man.'' " Poor Lamia answer'd not. 
 He gaz'd into her eyes, and not a jot 
 Own'd they the lovelorn piteous appeal : 
 More, more he gaz'd : his human senses reel : 
 Some hungry spell that loveliness absorbs ; 
 
 There was no recognition in those orbs. 260 
 
 " Lamia ! " he cried — and no soft-toned reply. 
 The many heard, and the loud revelry 
 
 II
 
 162 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Grew hush ; the stately music no more breathes ; 
 
 The myrtle sickend in a thousand wreaths. 
 
 By faint degrees, voice, lute, and pleasure ceased ; 
 
 A deadly silence step by step increased, 
 
 Until it seem'd a horrid presence there, 
 
 And not a man but felt the terror in his hair. 
 
 " Lamia ! " he shriek'd ; and nothing but the shriek 
 
 With its sad echo did the silence break. 270 
 
 "Begone, foul dream ! " he cried, gazing again 
 
 In the bride's face, where now no azure vein 
 
 Wander'd on fair-spaced temples ; no soft bloom 
 
 Misted the cheek ; no passion to illume 
 
 The deep-recessed vision : — all was blight ; 
 
 Lamia, no longer fair, there sat a deadly white. 
 
 "Shut, shut those juggling eyes, thou ruthless man ! 
 
 Turn them aside, wretch ! or the righteous ban 
 
 Of all the Gods, whose dreadful images 
 
 Here represent their shadowy presences, 280 
 
 May pierce them on the sudden with the thorn 
 
 Of painful blindness ; leaving thee forlorn. 
 
 In trembling dotage to the feeblest fright 
 
 Of conscience, for their long offended might. 
 
 For all thine impious proud-heart sophistries, 
 
 Unlawful magic, and enticing lies. 
 
 Corinthians ! look upon that gray-beard wretch ! 
 
 Mark how, possess'd, his lashless eyelids stretch 
 
 Around his demon eyes ! Corinthians, see ! 
 
 My sweet bride withers at their potency." 290 
 
 " Fool ! ■' said the sophist, in an under-tone 
 
 Gruff with contempt ; which a death-nighing moan 
 
 From Lycius answer'd, as heart-struck and lost, 
 
 He sank supine beside the aching ghost. 
 
 " Fool ! Fool ! " repeated he, while his eyes still 
 
 Relented not, nor mov'd ; " from every ill 
 
 Of life have I preserv'd thee to this day, 
 
 And shall I see thee made a serpent's prey ? '' 
 
 Then Lamia breath'd death breath ; the sophist's eye, 
 
 Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly, ,00 
 
 Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging : she, as well 
 
 As her weak hand could any meaning tell, 
 
 Motiond him to be silent ; vainly so. 
 
 He look'd and look'd again a level — No ! 
 
 "A serpent ! " echoed he ; no sooner said. 
 
 Than Avith a frightful scream she vanished : 
 
 And Lycius' arms were empty of delight. 
 
 As were his limbs of life, from that same night.
 
 LAMIA 163 
 
 On the high couch he lay ! — his friends came round — 
 Supported him — no pulse, or breath they found, 310 
 
 And, in its marriage robe, the heavy body wound. ^ 
 
 1 " Philostratus, in his fourth book de Vita ApoUonii, hath a memorable instance in 
 this kind, which I may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five 
 years of age, that going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the 
 habit of a fair gentlewoman, which taking him by the hand, carried him home to her 
 house, in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if 
 he would tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as 
 never any drank, and no man should molest him ; but she, being fair and lovely, would 
 live and die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold. The young man, a philo- 
 sopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of 
 love, tarried with her a while to his great content, and at last married her, to whose 
 wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius ; who, by some probable conjectures, 
 found her out to be a serpent, a lamia; and that all her furniture was, like Tantalus' 
 gold, described by Homer, no substance but mere illusions. When she saw herself 
 descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, 
 and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant : many 
 thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the midst of Greece." — Burton's 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, part 3, sect. 2, memb. i, subs, i.
 
 ISABELLA 
 
 OR 
 
 THE POT OF BASIL 
 
 A STORY FROM BOCCACCIO 
 I 
 
 FAIR Isabel, poor simple Isabel ! 
 Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye ! 
 They could not in the self-same mansion dwell 
 
 Without some stir of heart, some malady ; 
 They could not sit at meals but feel how well 
 
 It soothed each to be the other by ; 
 They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep 
 But to each other dream, and nightly weep. 
 
 II 
 
 With eveiy morn their love grew tenderer, 
 With every eve deeper and tenderer still ; 
 
 He might not in house, field, or garden stir. 
 But her full shape would all his seeing fill ; 
 
 And his continual voice was pleasanter 
 
 To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill ; 
 
 Her lute-string gave an echo of his name. 
 
 She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same. 
 
 Ill 
 
 He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch 
 Before the door had given her to his eyes ; 
 
 And from her Chamber-window he would catch 
 Her beauty farther than the falcon spies ; 
 
 And constant as her vespers would he watch, 
 Because her face was turn'd to the same skies ; 
 
 And with sick longing all the night outwear, 
 
 To hear her morning step upon the stair.
 
 ISABELLA 166 
 
 IV 
 
 A whole long month of May in this sad plight 
 Made their cheeks paler by the break of June : 
 
 " To-moiTow will I bow to my delight, 
 To-morrow will I ask my lady's boon." — 
 
 " O may I never see another night, 
 
 Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love's tune." — 
 
 So spake they to their pillows ; but, alas, 
 
 Moneyless days and days did he let pass ; 
 
 / 
 
 Until sweet Isabella's untouch' d cheek 
 Fell sick within the rose's just domain. 
 
 Fell thin as a young mother's, who doth seek 
 By every lull to cool her infant's pain : 
 
 "How ill she is," said he, " I may not speak. 
 And yet I will, and tell my love all plain : 
 
 If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears, 
 
 And at the least 'twill startle off' her cares." 
 
 VI 
 
 So said he one fair morning, and all day 
 His heart beat awfully against his side ; 
 
 And to his heart he inwardly did pray 
 
 For power to speak ; but still the ruddy tide 
 
 Stifled his voice, and puls'd resolve away — 
 Fever'd his high conceit of such a bride. 
 
 Yet brought him to the meekness of a child : 
 
 Alas ! when passion is both meek and wild ! 
 
 VII 
 
 So once more he had wak'd and anguished 
 A dreary night of love and misery. 
 
 If Isabel's quick eye had not been wed 
 To every symbol on his forehead high ; 
 
 She saw it waxing very pale and dead, 
 
 And straight all flush'd ; so, lisped tenderly, 
 
 " Lorenzo ! " — here she ceas'd her timid quest. 
 
 But in her tone and lock he read the rest.
 
 166 JOHN KEATS 
 
 VIII 
 
 " O Isabella, I can half perceive 
 
 That I may speak my grief into thine ear ; 
 
 If thou didst ever anything believe, 
 
 Believe how I love thee, believe how near 
 
 My soul is to its doom : I would not grieve 
 
 Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear 
 
 Thine eyes by gazing ; but I cannot live 
 
 Another night, and not my passion shrive. 
 
 IX 
 
 " Love ! thou art leading me from wintry cold. 
 Lady ! thou leadest me to summer clime. 
 
 And I must taste the blossoms that unfold 
 
 In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time." 
 
 So said, his ere while timid lips grew bold. 
 And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme : 
 
 Great bliss was with them, and great happiness 
 
 Grew, like a lusty flower in June's caress. 
 
 Parting they seem'd to tread upon the air. 
 Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart 
 
 Only to meet again more close, and share 
 The inward fragrance of each other's heart. 
 
 She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair 
 Sang, of delicious love and honey'd dart ; 
 
 He with light steps went up a western hill. 
 
 And bade the sun farewell, and joy'd his fill. 
 
 XI 
 
 All close they met again, before the dusk 
 Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil. 
 
 All close they met, all eves, before the dusk 
 Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil. 
 
 Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk. 
 
 Unknown of any, free from whispering tale. 
 
 Ah ! better had it been for ever so. 
 
 Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe.
 
 ISABELLA 167 
 
 XII 
 
 Were they unhappy then ? — It cannot be — 
 
 Too many tears for lovers have been shed, 
 Too many sighs give we to them in fee. 
 
 Too much of pity after they are dead. 
 Too many doleful stories do we see. 
 
 Whose matter in bright gold were best be read ; 
 Except in such a page where Theseus' spouse 
 Over the pathless waves towards him bows. 
 
 XIII 
 
 But, for the general award of love. 
 
 The little sweet doth kill much bitterness ; 
 
 Though Dido silent is in under-grove. 
 And Isabella's was a great distress. 
 
 Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove 
 Was not embalm'd, this truth is not the less — 
 
 Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers. 
 
 Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers. 
 
 XIV 
 
 With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt. 
 Enriched from ancestral merchandize, 
 
 And for them many a weary hand did swelt 
 In torched mines and noisy factories, 
 
 And many once proud-quiver' d loins did melt 
 In blood from stinging whip ; — with hollow eyes 
 
 Many all day in dazzling river stood. 
 
 To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood. 
 
 XV 
 
 For them the Ceylon diver held his breath. 
 And went all naked to the hungry shark ; 
 
 For them his ears gush'd blood ; for them in death 
 The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark 
 
 Lay full of darts ; for them alone did seethe 
 A thousand men in troubles wide and dark : 
 
 Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel. 
 
 That set sharp racks at «vork, to pinch and peel.
 
 168 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XVI 
 
 Why were they proud ? Because their marble founts 
 Gush'd with more pride than do a wretch's tears ? — 
 
 Why were they proud ? Because fair orange-mounts 
 Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs ? — 
 
 Why were they proud ? Because red-hn'd accounts 
 Were richer than the songs of Grecian years ? — 
 
 Why were they proud ? again we ask aloud, 
 
 Why in the name of Glory were they proud ? 
 
 XVII 
 
 Yet were these Florentines as self-retired 
 In hungry pride and gainful cowardice, 
 
 As two close Hebrews in that land inspired, 
 Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies ; 
 
 The hawks of ship-mast forests — the untired 
 And pannier'd mules for ducats and old lies — 
 
 Quick cat's-paws on the generous stray-away, — 
 
 Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 How was it these same ledger-men could spy 
 
 Fair Isabella in her downy nest ? 
 How could they find out in Lorenzo's eye 
 
 A straying from his toil ? Hot Egypt's pest 
 Into their vision covetous and sly ! 
 
 How could these money-bags see east and west ?- 
 Yet so they did — and every dealer fair 
 Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare. 
 
 XIX 
 
 O eloquent and famed Boccaccio ! 
 
 Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon, 
 And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow. 
 
 And of thy roses amorous of the moon, 
 And of thy lilies, that do paler grow 
 
 Now they can no more hear thy ghittern's tune, 
 For venturing syllables that ill beseem 
 The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme.
 
 ISABELLA 169 
 
 XX 
 
 Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale 
 
 Shall move on soberly, as it is meet ; 
 There is no other crime, no mad assail 
 
 To make old prose in modem rhyme more sweet : 
 But it is done — succeed the verse or fail — 
 
 To honour thee, and thy gone spirit greet ; 
 To stead thee as a verse in English tongue. 
 An echo of thee in the north-wind sung. 
 
 XXI 
 
 These brethren having found by many signs 
 What love Lorenzo for their sister had. 
 
 And how she lov'd him too, each unconfines 
 His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad 
 
 That he, the servant of their trade designs. 
 
 Should in their sister's love be blithe and glad. 
 
 When 'twas their plan to coax her by degrees 
 
 To some high noble and his olive-trees. 
 
 XXII 
 
 And many a jealous conference had they, 
 And many times they bit their lips alone. 
 
 Before they fix'd upon a surest way 
 
 To make the youngster for his crime atone ; 
 
 And at the last, these men of cruel clay 
 Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone ; 
 
 For they resolved in some forest dim 
 
 To kill Lorenzo, and there bury him. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 So on a pleasant morning, as he leant 
 
 Into the sun-rise, o'er the balustrade 
 Of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent 
 
 Their footing through the dews ; and to him said, 
 " You seem there in the quiet of content, 
 
 Lorenzo, and we are most loth to invade 
 Calm speculation ; but if you are wise. 
 Bestride your steed while cold is in the skies.
 
 170 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XXIV 
 
 " To-day we purpose, ay, this hour we mount 
 To spur three leagues towards the Apennine ; 
 
 Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count 
 His dewy rosary on the eglantine." 
 
 Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont, 
 
 Bow'd a fair greeting to these serpents' whine ; 
 
 And went in haste, to get in readiness. 
 
 With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman's dress. 
 
 XXV 
 
 And as he to the court-yard pass'd along, 
 
 Each third step did he pause, and listen'd oft 
 
 If he could hear his lady's matin-song, 
 Or the light whisper of her footstep soft ; 
 
 And as he thus over his passion hung, 
 He heard a laugh full musical aloft ; 
 
 When, looking up, he saw her features bright 
 
 Smile through an in-door lattice, all delight. 
 
 fXXVI 
 
 " Love, Isabel ! " said he, " I was in pain 
 
 Lest I should miss to bid thee a good morrow : 
 
 Ah ! what if I should lose thee, when so fain 
 I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow 
 
 Of a poor three hours' absence ? but we'll gain 
 Out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow. 
 
 Good bye ! I'll soon be back." — "Good bye ! " said she 
 
 And as he went she chanted merrily. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 So the two brothers axid their murder'd man 
 
 Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream 
 
 Gurgles through straiten'd banks, and still doth fan 
 Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream 
 
 Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan 
 The brothers' faces in the ford did seem, 
 
 Lorenzo's flush with love. — They pass'd the water 
 
 Into a forest quiet for the slaughter.
 
 ISABELLA 171 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 There was Lorenzo slain and buried in. 
 
 There in that forest did his great love cease ; 
 Ah ! when a soul doth thus its freedom win. 
 
 It aches in loneliness — is ill at peace 
 As the break-covert blood-hounds of such sin : 
 
 They dipp'd their swords in the water, and did tease 
 Their horses homeward, with convulsed spur, 
 Each richer by his being a murderer. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 They told their sister how, with sudden speed, 
 Lorenzo had ta'en ship for foreign lands. 
 
 Because of some great urgency and need 
 In their affairs, requiring trusty hands. 
 
 Poor Girl ! put on thy stifling widow's weed. 
 
 And 'scape at once from Hope's accursed bands ; 
 
 To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow, 
 
 And the next day will be a day of sorrow. 
 
 XXX 
 
 She weeps alone for pleasures not to be ; 
 
 Sorely she wept until the night came on. 
 And then, instead of love, O misery ! 
 
 She brooded o'er the luxury alone : 
 His image in the dusk she seem'd to see. 
 
 And to the silence made a gentle moan. 
 Spreading her perfect arms upon the air. 
 And on her couch low murmuring " Where .'' O where ? 
 
 XXXI 
 
 But Selfishness, Love's cousin, held not long 
 Its fiery vigil in her single breast ; 
 
 She fretted for the golden hour, and hung 
 Upon the time with feverish unrest — 
 
 Not long — for soon into her heart a throng 
 Of higher occupants, a richer zest. 
 
 Came tragic ; passion not to be subdued. 
 
 And sorrow for her love in travels rude.
 
 172 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XXXII 
 
 In the mid days of autumn, on their eves 
 The breath of Winter comes from far away. 
 
 And the sick west continually bereaves 
 Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay 
 
 Of death among the bushes and the leaves, 
 To make all bare before he dares to stray 
 
 From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel 
 
 By gradual decay from beauty fell. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes 
 She ask'd her brothers, with an eye all pale, 
 
 Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes 
 
 Could keep him off so long ? They spake a tale 
 
 Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes 
 
 Came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom's vale ; 
 
 And every night in dreams they groan'd aloud, 
 
 To see their sister in her snowy shroud. 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 And she had died in drowsy ignorance. 
 
 But for a thing more deadly dark than all ; 
 
 It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance, 
 Which saves a sick man from the feather'd pall 
 
 For some few gasping moments ; like a lance, 
 Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall 
 
 With cruel pierce, and bringing him again 
 
 Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 It was a vision. — In the drowsy gloom. 
 The dull of midnight, at her couch's foot 
 
 Lorenzo stood, and wept : the forest tomb 
 
 Had marr'd his glossy hair which once could shoot 
 
 Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom 
 Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute 
 
 From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears 
 
 Had made a miry channel for his tears.
 
 ISABELLA 173 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake ; 
 
 For there was striving, in its piteous tongue. 
 To speak as when on earth it was awake. 
 
 And Isabella on its music hung : 
 Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake, 
 
 As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung ; 
 And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song. 
 Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among. 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright 
 With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof 
 
 From the poor girl by magic of their light, 
 The while it did unthread the horrid woof 
 
 Of the late darken'd time, — the murderous spite 
 Of pride and avarice, — the dark pine roof 
 
 In the forest, — and the sodden turfed dell. 
 
 Where, without any word, from stabs he fell. 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 Saying moreover, " Isabel, my sweet ! 
 
 Red whortle-berries droop above my head. 
 And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet ; 
 
 Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed 
 Their leaves and pi'ickly nuts ; a sheep-fold bleat 
 
 Comes from beyond the river to my bed : 
 Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom. 
 And it shall comfort me within the tomb. 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 " I am a shadow now, alas ! alas ! 
 
 Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling 
 Alone : I chant alone the holy mass. 
 
 While little sounds of life are round me knelling, 
 And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass. 
 
 And many a chapel bell the hour is telling. 
 Paining me through : those sounds grow strange to me. 
 And thou art distant in Humanity.
 
 174 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XL 
 
 " I know what was, I feel full well what is, 
 And I should rage, if spirits could go mad ; 
 
 Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss. 
 
 That paleness warms my grave, as though I had 
 
 A Seraph chosen from the bright abyss 
 
 To be my spouse : thy paleness makes me glad ; 
 
 Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel 
 
 A greater love through all my essence steal." 
 
 XLI 
 
 The Spirit mourn'd " Adieu ! " — dissolv'd, and left 
 The atom darkness in a slow turmoil ; 
 
 As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft. 
 Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil. 
 
 We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft. 
 
 And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil : 
 
 It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache. 
 
 And in the dawn she started up awake ; 
 
 XLII 
 
 €< 
 
 Ha ! ha ! " said she, " I knew not this hard life, 
 
 I thought the worst was simple misery ; 
 I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife 
 
 Portion'd us — happy days, or else to die ; 
 But there is crime — a brother's bloody knife ! 
 
 Sweet Spirit, thou hast school'd my infancy ; 
 I'll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes. 
 And greet thee mom and even in the skies." 
 
 XLIII 
 
 When the full morning came, she had devised 
 How she might secret to the forest hie ; 
 
 How she might find the clay, so dearly prized. 
 And sing to it one latest lullaby ; 
 
 How her short absence might be unsurmised. 
 While she the inmost of the dream would try, 
 
 Resolv'd, she took with her an aged nurse. 
 
 And went into that dismal forest-hearse.
 
 ISABELLA 175 
 
 XLIV 
 
 See, as they creep along the river side, 
 
 How she doth whisper to that aged Dame, 
 And, after looking round the champaign wide, 
 
 Shows her a knife. — " What feverous hectic flame 
 Bums in thee, child ? — What good can thee betide, 
 
 That thou should'st smile again ? " — The evening came. 
 And they had found Lorenzo's earthy bed ; 
 The flint was there, the berries at his head. 
 
 XLV 
 
 Who hath not loiter'd in a green church-yard. 
 And let his spirit, like a demon-mole. 
 
 Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard. 
 To see scull, coffin'd bones, and funeral stole ; 
 
 Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr'd. 
 And filling it once more with human soul ? 
 
 Ah ! this is holiday to what was felt 
 
 When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt. 
 
 XL VI 
 
 She gaz'd into the fresh-throvra mould, as though 
 One glance did fully all its secrets tell ; 
 
 Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know 
 Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well ; 
 
 Upon the murderous spot she seem'd to grow. 
 Like to a native lily of the dell : 
 
 Then with her knife, all sudden, she began 
 
 To dig more fervently than misers can. 
 
 XL VII 
 
 Soon she turn'd up a soiled glove, whereon 
 Her silk had play'd in purple phantasies, 
 
 She kiss'd it with a lip more chill than stone, 
 And put it in her bosom, where it dries 
 
 And freezes utterly unto the bone 
 
 Those dainties made to still an infant's cries : 
 
 Then 'gan she work again ; nor stay'd her care. 
 
 But to throw back at times her veiling hair.
 
 176 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XLVIII 
 
 That old nurse stood beside her wondering, 
 Until her heart felt pity to the core 
 
 At sight of such a dismal labouring. 
 
 And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar. 
 
 And put her lean hands to the horrid thing : 
 Three hours they labour'd at this travail sore ; 
 
 At last they felt the kernel of the grave, 
 
 And Isabella did not stamp and rave. 
 
 XLIX 
 
 Ah ! wherefore all this wormy circumstance ? 
 
 Why linger at the yawning tomb so long ? 
 O for the gentleness of old Romance, 
 
 The simple plaining of a minstrel's song ! 
 Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance, 
 
 For here, in truth, it doth not well belong 
 To speak : — O turn thee to the very tale, 
 And taste the music of that vision pale. 
 
 With duller steel than the Persean sword 
 They cut away no formless monster's head. 
 
 But one, whose gentleness did well accord 
 
 With death, as life. The ancient Iiarps have said, 
 
 Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord : 
 If Love impersonate was ever dead. 
 
 Pale Isabella kiss'd it, and low moan'd. 
 
 'Twas love ; cold, — dead indeed, but not dethroned. 
 
 LI 
 
 In anxious secrecy they took it home. 
 And then the prize was all for Isabel : 
 
 She calm'd its wild hair with a golden comb. 
 And all around each eye's sepulchral cell 
 
 Pointed each frmged lash ; the smeared loam 
 With tears, as chilly as a dripping well. 
 
 She drench'd away : — and still she comb'd, and kept 
 
 Sighing all day — and still she kiss'd, and wept.
 
 ISABELLA 177 
 
 LII 
 
 Then in a silken scarf, — sweet with the dews 
 Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby, 
 
 And divine liquids come with odorous ooze 
 Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully, — 
 
 She wrapp'd it up ; and for its tomb did choose 
 A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by. 
 
 And cover'd it with mould, and o'er it set 
 
 Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet. 
 
 LIII 
 
 And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, 
 And she forgot the blue above the trees. 
 
 And she forgot the dells where waters run. 
 And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze ; 
 
 She had no knowledge when the day was done, 
 And the new morn she saw not : but in peace 
 
 Hung over her sweet Basil evermore, 
 
 And moisten'd it with tears unto the core. 
 
 LIV 
 
 And so she ever fed it with thin tears. 
 
 Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew, 
 
 So that it smelt more balmy than its peers 
 Of Basil-tufts in Florence ; for it drew 
 
 Nurture besides, and life, from human fears. 
 
 From the fast mouldering head there shut from view 
 
 So that the jewel, safely casketed. 
 
 Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread. 
 
 LV 
 
 O Melancholy, linger here awhile ! 
 
 O Music, Music, breathe despondingly ! 
 O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle, 
 
 Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us — O sigh ! 
 Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile ; 
 
 Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily. 
 And make a pale light in your cypress glooms, 
 Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs. 
 
 12
 
 178 JOHN KEATS 
 
 LVI 
 
 Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe. 
 
 From the deep throat of sad Melpomene !j 
 
 Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go, 
 And touch the strings into a mystery ; 
 
 Sound mournfully upon the winds and low ; 
 For simple Isabel is soon to be 
 
 Among the dead : She withers, like a palm 
 
 Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm. 
 
 LVIl 
 
 O leave the palm to wither by itself; 
 
 Let not quick Winter chill its dying hour ! — 
 It may not be — those Baalites of pelf, 
 
 Her brethren, noted the continual shower 
 From her dead eyes ; and many a curious elf. 
 
 Among her kindred, wonder' d that such dower 
 Of youth and beauty should be thrown aside 
 By one mark'd out to be a Noble's bride. 
 
 LVIII 
 
 And, furthermore, her brethren wonder'd much 
 Why she sat drooping by the Basil green. 
 
 And why it flourish'd, as by magic touch ; 
 
 Greatly they wonder'd what the thing might mean : 
 
 They could not surely give belief, that such 
 A very nothing would have power to wean 
 
 Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay, 
 
 And even remembrance of her love's delay. 
 
 LIX 
 
 Therefore they watch'd a time when they might sift 
 This hidden whim ; and long they watch'd in vain ; 
 
 For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift. 
 And seldom felt she any hunger-pain ; 
 
 And when she left, she hurried back, as swift 
 As bird on wing to breast its eggs again ; 
 
 And, patient as a hen-bird, sat her there 
 
 Beside her Basil, weeping through her hair.
 
 ISABELLA 179 
 
 LX 
 
 Yet they contriv'd to steal the Basil-pot, 
 
 And to examine it in secret place : 
 The thing was vile with green and livid spot, 
 
 And yet they knew it was Lorenzo's face : 
 The guerdon of their murder they had got, 
 
 And so left Florence in a moment's space, 
 Never to turn again. — Away they went. 
 With blood upon their heads, to banishment. 
 
 LXI 
 
 O Melancholy, turn thine eyes away ! 
 
 O Music, Music, breathe despondingly ! 
 O Echo, Echo, on some other day. 
 
 From isles Lethean, sigh to us — O sigh ! 
 Spirits of grief, sing not your " Well-a-way ! " 
 
 For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die ; 
 Will die a death too lone and incomplete. 
 Now they have ta'en away her Basil sweet. 
 
 LXI I 
 
 Piteous she look'd on dead and senseless things. 
 
 Asking for her lost Basil amorously ; 
 And with melodious chuckle in the strings 
 
 Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry 
 After the Pilgrim in his wanderings. 
 
 To ask him where her Basil was ; and why 
 'Twas hid from her : " For cruel 'tis," said she, 
 "To steal my Basil-pot away from me." 
 
 LXIII 
 
 And so she pined, and so she died forlorn, 
 
 Imploring for her Basil to the last. 
 No heart was there in Florence but did mourn 
 
 In pity of her love, so overcast. 
 And a sad ditty of this story bom 
 
 From mouth to mouth through all the country pass'd : 
 Still is the burthen sung — "O cruelty. 
 To steal my Basil-pot away from me ! "
 
 S' 
 
 THE 
 EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 I 
 
 T. AGNES' Eve— Ah, bitter chill it was ! 
 The owl, for all his feathers, was a-eold ; 
 The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass. 
 And silent was the flock in woolly fold .- 
 Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told 
 His rosary, and while his frosted breath, 
 Like pious incense from a censer old, 
 Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death. 
 Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. 
 
 II 
 
 His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man ; 
 Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, 
 And back retumeth, meagre, barefoot, wan. 
 Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees : 
 The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze, 
 Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails : 
 Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries. 
 He passeth by ; and his weak spirit fails 
 To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Northward he tumeth through a little door. 
 And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue 
 Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor ; 
 But no — already had his deathbell rung : 
 The joys of all his life were said and sung : 
 His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve : 
 Another way he went, and soon among 
 Rough ashes sat he for his soul's reprieve. 
 And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve.
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 181 
 
 IV 
 
 That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft ; 
 And so it chanc'd, for many a door was wide. 
 From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft. 
 The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide : 
 The level chambers, ready with their pride, 
 Were glowing to receive a thousand guests : 
 The carved angels, ever eager-eyed, 
 Star'd, where upon their heads the cornice rests, 
 With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts. 
 
 At length burst in the argent revelry, 
 With plume, tiara, and all rich array, 
 Numerous as shadows haunting fairily 
 The brain, new stuff'd, in youth, with triumphs gay 
 Of old romance. These let us wish away, 
 And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there, 
 Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day, 
 On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care. 
 As she had heard old dames full many times declare. 
 
 VI 
 
 They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve, 
 Young virgins might have visions of delight, 
 And soft adorings from their loves receive 
 Upon the honey'd middle of the night. 
 
 If ceremonies due they did aright ; ^ 
 
 As, supperless to bed they must retire. 
 And couch supine their beauties, lily white ; 
 Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require 
 Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire, 
 
 VII 
 
 Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline : 
 The music, yearning like a God in pain, 
 She scarcely heard : her maiden eyes divine, 
 Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train 
 Pass by — she heeded not at all : in vain 
 Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier. 
 And back retir'd ; not cool'd by high disdain. 
 But she saw not : her heart was otherwhere : 
 She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year.
 
 182 JOHN KEATS 
 
 VIII 
 
 She danc'd along with vague, regardless eyes, 
 Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short : 
 The hallow'd hour was near at hand : she sighs 
 Amid the timbrels, and the throng'd resort 
 Of whisperers in anger, or in sport ; 
 'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn. 
 Hoodwink'd with faery fancy ; all amort, 
 Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn. 
 And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn. 
 
 IX 
 
 So, purposing each moment to retire, 
 She linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors, 
 Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire 
 For Madeline. Beside the portal doors, 
 Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores 
 All saints to give him sight of Madeline, 
 But for one moment in the tedious hours, 
 That he might gaze and worship all unseen ; 
 Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss — in sooth such things have 
 been. 
 
 X 
 
 He ventures in : let no buzz'd whisper tell : 
 All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords 
 Will storm his heart. Love's fev'rous citadel : 
 For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes. 
 Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords. 
 Whose very dogs would execrations howl 
 Against his lineage : not one breast affords 
 Him any mercy, in that mansion foul. 
 Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul. 
 
 XI 
 
 Ah, happy chance ! the aged creature came. 
 Shuffling along with ivory- headed wand. 
 To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame, 
 Behind a broad hall-pillar, far beyond 
 The sound of merriment and chorus bland : 
 He startled her ; but soon she knew his face. 
 And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand. 
 Saying, " Mercy, Porphyro ! hie thee from this place ; 
 They are all here- to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race !
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 183 
 
 XII 
 
 " Get hence ! get hence ! there's dwarfish Hildebrand ; 
 He had a fever late, and in the fit 
 He cursed thee and thine, both house and land : 
 Then there's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit 
 More tame for his gray hairs — Alas me ! flit ! 
 Flit Hke a ghost away." — " Ah, Gossip dear, 
 We're safe enough ; here in this arm-chair sit. 
 And tell me how " — " Good Saints ! not here, not here ; 
 Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier." 
 
 XIII 
 
 He follow'd through a lowly arched way, 
 Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume. 
 And as she mutter'd "Well-a — well-a-day ! " 
 He found him in a little moonlight room, 
 Pale, lattic'd, chill, and silent as a tomb. 
 " Now tell me where is Madeline," said he, 
 " O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom 
 Which none but secret sisterhood may see, 
 When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously." 
 
 XIV 
 
 « St. Agnes ! Ah 1 it is St. Agnes' Eve- 
 Yet men will murder upon holy days : 
 Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve, 
 And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays, 
 To venture so : it fills me with amaze 
 To see thee, Porphyro ! — St. Agnes' Eve ! 
 God's help ! my lady fair the conjuror plays 
 This very night : good angels her deceive ! 
 But let me laugh awhile, I've mickle time to grieve." 
 
 XV 
 
 Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon. 
 While Porphyro upon her face doth look, 
 Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone 
 Who keepeth clos'd a wond'rous riddle-book, 
 As spectacled she sits in chimney nook. 
 But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told 
 His lady's purpose ; and he scarce could brook 
 Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold. 
 And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old.
 
 184 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XVI 
 
 Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, 
 Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart 
 Made purple riot : then doth he propose 
 A stratagem, that makes the beldame start : 
 " A cruel man and impious thou art : 
 Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream 
 Alone with her good angels, far apart 
 From wicked men like thee. Go, go ! — I deem 
 Thou canst not surqly be the same that thou didst seem." 
 
 XVII 
 
 " I will not harm her, by all saints I swear," 
 Quoth Porphyro : " O may I ne'er find grace 
 When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer, 
 If one of her soft ringlets I displace. 
 Or look with ruffian passion in her face : 
 Good Angela, believe me by these tears ; 
 Or I will, even in a moment's space, 
 Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen's ears. 
 And beard them, though they be more fang'd than wolves and bears.' 
 
 XVIII 
 
 " Ah ! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul .'' 
 A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing. 
 Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll ; 
 Whose prayers for thee, each mom and evening. 
 Were never miss'd." — Thus plaining, doth she bring 
 A gentler speech from burning Porphyro ; 
 So woful, and of such deep sorrowing. 
 That Angela gives promise she will do 
 Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy, 
 Even to Madeline's chamber, and there hide 
 Him in a closet, of such privacy 
 That he might see her beauty unespied, 
 And win perhaps that night a peerless bride. 
 While legion'd fairies pac'd the coverlet. 
 And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed. 
 Never on such a night have lovers met. 
 Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt.
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 185 
 
 XX 
 
 " It shall be as thou wishest," said the Dame : 
 " All cates and dainties shall be stored there 
 Quickly on this feast-night : by the tambour frame 
 Her own lute thou wilt see : no time to spare. 
 For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare 
 On such a catering trust my dizzy head. 
 Wait here, my child, with patience ; kneel in prayer 
 The while : Ah ! thou must needs the lady wed. 
 Or may I never leave my grave among the dead." 
 
 XXI 
 
 So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear. 
 The lover's endless minutes slowly pass'd ; 
 The dame return'd, and whisper'd in his ear 
 To follow her ; with aged eyes aghast 
 From fright of dim espial. Safe at last, 
 Through many a dusky gallery, they gain 
 The maiden's chamber, silken, hush'd, and chaste ; 
 Where Porphyro took covert, pleas'd amain. 
 His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain. 
 
 XXII 
 
 Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade. 
 Old Angela was feeling for the stair, 
 When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid. 
 Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware : 
 With silver taper's light, and pious care, 
 She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led 
 To a safe level matting. Now prepare. 
 Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed ; 
 She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Out went the taper as she hurried in ; 
 Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died : 
 She clos'd the door, she panted, all akin 
 To spirits of the air, and visions wide : 
 No uttered syllable, or, woe betide ! 
 But to her heart, her heai't was voluble. 
 Paining with eloquence her balmy side ; 
 As though a tongueless nightingale should swell 
 Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.
 
 186 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XXIV 
 
 A casement high and triple-arch'd there was, 
 All garlanded with carven imag'ries 
 Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, 
 And diamonded with panes of quaint device. 
 Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes. 
 As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings ; 
 And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, 
 And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 
 A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings. 
 
 XXV 
 
 Full on this casement shone the wintry moon. 
 And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
 As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon ; 
 Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest. 
 And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
 And on her hair a glory, like a saint : 
 She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, 
 Save wings, for heaven : — Porphyro grew faint : 
 She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 Anon his heart revives : her vespers done. 
 Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees ; 
 Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one ; 
 Loosens her fragrant boddice ; by degrees 
 Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees : 
 Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed. 
 Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees. 
 In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed. 
 But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest. 
 In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay. 
 Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd 
 Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away ; 
 Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day ; 
 Blissfully haven' d both from joy and pain ; 
 Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray ; 
 Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain. 
 As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 187 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 Stol'n to this paradise, and so entranced, 
 Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress, 
 And listen'd to her breathing, if it chanced 
 To wake into a slumberous tenderness ; 
 Which when he heard, that minute did he bless, 
 And breath'd himself: then from the closet crept. 
 Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness. 
 And over the hush'd carpet, silent, stept, 
 And 'tween the curtains peep'd, where, lo ! — how fast she slept. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon 
 Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set 
 A table, and, half anguish'd, threw thereon 
 A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet : — 
 O for some drowsy Morphean amulet ! 
 The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion. 
 The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarinet. 
 Affray his ears, though but in dying tone : — 
 The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone. 
 
 XXX 
 
 And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep. 
 In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender' d, 
 While he from forth the closet brought a heap 
 Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd ; 
 With jellies soother than the creamy curd. 
 And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon ; 
 Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd 
 From Fez ; and spiced dainties, every one, 
 From silken Saraarcand to cedar'd Lebanon. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 These delicates he heap'd with glowing hand 
 On golden dishes and in baskets bright 
 Of wreathed silver : sumptuous they stand 
 In the retired quiet of the night, 
 Filling the chilly room with perfume light. — 
 " And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake ! 
 Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite : 
 Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake. 
 Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache,"
 
 188 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XXXII 
 
 Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm 
 Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream 
 By the dusk curtains : — 'twas a midnight charm 
 Impossible to melt as iced stream : 
 The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam ; 
 Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies : 
 It seem'd he never, never could redeem 
 From such a stedfast spell his lady's eyes ; 
 So mus'd awhile, entoil'd in woofed phantasies. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 Awakening up, he took her hollow lute, — 
 Tumultuous, — and, in chords that tenderest be. 
 He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute. 
 In Provence call'd, " La belle dame sans mercy : " 
 Close to her ear touching the melody ; — 
 Wherewith disturb'd, she utter'd a soft moan : 
 He ceased — she panted quick — and suddenly 
 Her blue alFrayed eyes wide open shone : 
 Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone. 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 Her eyes were open, but she still beheld, 
 Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep : 
 There was a painful change, that nigh expell'd 
 The blisses of her dream so pure and deep 
 At which fair Madeline began to weep, 
 And moan forth witless words with many a sigh ; 
 While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep ; 
 Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye, 
 Fearing to move or speak, she look'd so dreamingly. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 " Ah, Porphyro ! " said she, " but even now 
 Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear, 
 Made tuneable with every sweetest vow ; 
 And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear : 
 How chang'd thou art ! how pallid, chill, and drear ! 
 Give me that voice again, my Porphyro, 
 Those looks immortal, those complainings dear ! 
 O leave me not in this eternal woe. 
 For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go."
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 189 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 Beyond a mortal man irapassion'd far 
 At these voluptuous accents, he arose, 
 Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star 
 Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose ; 
 Into her dream he melted, as the rose 
 Blendeth its odour with the violet, — 
 Solution sweet : meantime the frost- wind blows 
 Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet 
 Against the window-panes ; St, Agnes' moon hath set. 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 'Tis dark : quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet : 
 "This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline ! " 
 'Tis dark : the iced gusts still rave and beat : 
 " No dream, alas ! alas ! and woe is mine ! 
 Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine. — 
 Cruel ! what traitor could thee hither bring ? 
 I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine. 
 Though thou forsakest a deceived thing ; — 
 A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing." 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 " My Madeline ! sweet dreamer ! lovely bride ! 
 Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest } 
 Thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd and vermeil dyed ? 
 Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest 
 After so many hours of toil and quest, 
 A famish'd pilgrim, — saved by miracle. 
 Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest 
 Saving of thy sweet self ; if thou think'st well 
 To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel. 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 " Hark ! 'tis an elfin-storm from faery land, 
 Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed : 
 Arise — arise ! the morning is at hand ; — 
 The bloated wassaillers will never heed : — 
 Let us away, my love, with happy speed ; 
 There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see, — 
 Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead : 
 Awake ! arise ! my love, and fearless be, 
 For o'er the southern moori; I have a home for thee."
 
 190 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XL 
 
 She hurried at his words, beset with fears, 
 For there were sleeping dragons all around, 
 At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears — 
 Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found. — 
 In all the house was heard no human sound. 
 A chain-droop' d lamp was flickering by each door ; 
 The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, 
 Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar ; 
 And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. 
 
 XLI 
 
 They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall ; 
 Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide ; 
 Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl. 
 With a huge empty flaggon by his side : 
 The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, 
 But his sagacious eye an inmate owns : 
 By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide : — 
 The chains he silent on the footworn stones ; — 
 The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans. 
 
 XLI I 
 
 And they are gone : ay, ages long ago 
 These lovers fled away into the storm. 
 That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe. 
 And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form 
 Of witch, and demon, and large coffin- worm. 
 Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old 
 Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform ; 
 The Beadsman, after thousand aves told. 
 For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.
 
 POEMS 
 
 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 
 
 MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
 My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk. 
 Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
 
 One minute past, and Lethe -wards had sunk : 
 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 
 But being too happy in thine happiness, — 
 That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees. 
 In some melodious plot 
 Of beeehen green, and shadows numberless, 
 Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 
 
 O, for a draught of vintage ! that hath been 
 
 Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth. 
 Tasting of Flora and the country green. 
 
 Dance, and Provengal song, and sunburnt mirth ! 
 O for a beaker full of the warm South, 
 Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
 With beaded bubbles winking at the brim. 
 And purple-stained mouth ; 
 That I might drink, and leave the world unseen. 
 And with thee fade away into the forest dim : 
 
 3 
 
 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 pint, at them beyond to-morrow.
 
 192 JOHN KEATS 
 
 4 
 
 Away ! away ! for I will fly to thee, 
 
 Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards. 
 But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 
 
 Though the dull brain perplexes and retards : 
 Already with thee ! tender is the night, 
 
 And haply the Queen- Moon is on her throne, 
 Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays ; 
 But here there is no light. 
 Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 
 
 Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 
 
 I cannot see what flowers are at my feet. 
 
 Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs. 
 But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 
 
 Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild ; 
 White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine ; 
 Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves ; 
 And mid-May's eldest child. 
 The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine. 
 
 The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 
 
 6 
 
 Darkling I listen ; and, for many a time 
 
 I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
 Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme. 
 To take into the air my quiet breath ; 
 
 Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
 To cease upon the midnight with no pain. 
 While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
 In such an ecstasy ! 
 Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain — 
 To thy high requiem become a sod. 
 
 7 
 Thou wast not bom for death, immortal Bird ! 
 
 No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
 The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
 
 In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
 Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
 She stood in tears amid the alien com ; 
 The same that oft-times hath 
 Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
 
 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 193 
 
 8 
 
 Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 
 
 To toll me back from thee to my sole self! 
 Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well 
 As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. 
 Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades 
 Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
 Up the hill-side ; and now 'tis buried deep 
 In the next valley-glades : 
 Was it a vision, or a waking dream ? 
 
 Fled is that music : — Do I wake or sleep ? 
 
 13
 
 194 JOHN KEATS 
 
 ODE ON A GRECIAN URN 
 
 THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness. 
 Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
 Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 
 
 A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 
 What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape 
 Of deities or mortals, or of both. 
 
 In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? 
 What men or gods are these ? What maidens loth ? 
 What mad pursuit ? What struggle to escape ? 
 
 What pipes and timbrels ? What wild ecstasy ? 
 
 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
 
 Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; 
 Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear 'd. 
 
 Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone : 
 Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 
 
 Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; 
 Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss. 
 Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve ; 
 
 She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair ! 
 
 Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that cannot shed 
 
 Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu ; 
 And, happy melodist, unwearied. 
 
 For ever piping songs for ever new ; 
 More happy love ! more happy, happy love ! 
 
 For ever warm and still to be enjoy 'd. 
 For ever panting, and for ever young ; 
 All breathing human passion far above. 
 
 That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, 
 A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
 
 ODE ON A GRECIAN URN 195 
 
 Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 
 
 To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 
 Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 
 
 And all her silken flanks with garlands drest ? 
 What little town by river or sea shore, 
 
 Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel. 
 Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn ? 
 And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
 
 Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 
 Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 
 
 O Attic shape ! Fair attitude ! with brede 
 
 Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 
 With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 
 
 Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 
 As doth eternity : Cold Pastoral ! 
 
 When old age shall this generation waste. 
 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
 
 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," — that is all 
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,
 
 196 JOHN KEATS 
 
 ODE TO PSYCHE 
 
 O GODDESS ! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung 
 By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, 
 And pardon that thy secrets should be sung 
 
 Even into thine own soft-conched ear : 
 Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see 
 
 The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes ? 
 I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly, 
 
 And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise. 
 Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side 
 
 In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof iq 
 
 Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran 
 A brooklet, scarce espied : 
 
 'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, 
 
 Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, 
 They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass ; 
 
 Their arms embraced, and their pinions too ; 
 
 Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu. 
 As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber. 
 And ready still past kisses to outnumber 
 
 At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love : 20 
 
 The winged boy I knew ; 
 
 But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove ? 
 His Psyche true ! 
 
 O latest born and loveliest vision far 
 
 Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy ! 
 Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region' d star. 
 
 Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky ; 
 Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none. 
 
 Nor altar heap'd with flowers ; 
 Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan 30 
 
 Upon the midnight hours ; 
 No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet 
 
 From chain-swung censer teeming ; 
 No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat 
 
 Of pale mouth'd prophet dreaming.
 
 ODE TO PSYCHE 197 
 
 brightest ! though too late for antique vows, 
 Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, 
 
 When holy were the haunted forest boughs, 
 
 Holy the air, the water, and the fire ; 
 Yet even in these days so far retir'd 40 
 
 From happy pieties, thy lucent fans. 
 
 Fluttering among the faint Olympians, 
 
 1 see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired. 
 So let me be thy choir, and make a moan 
 
 Upon the midnight hours ; 
 Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet 
 
 From swinged censer teeming ; 
 Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat 
 
 Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. 
 
 Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane 50 
 
 In some untrodden region of my mind. 
 Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, 
 
 Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind : 
 Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees 
 
 Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep ; 
 And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, 
 
 The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep ; 
 And in the midst of this wide quietness 
 A rosy sanctuary will I dress 
 With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain, 60 
 
 With buds, and bells, and stars without a name. 
 With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign. 
 
 Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same : 
 And there shall be for thee all soft delight 
 
 That shadowy thought can win, 
 A bright torch, and a casement ope at night. 
 
 To let the warm Love in !
 
 198 JOHN KEATS 
 
 FANCY 
 
 EVER let the Fancy roam, 
 Pleasure never is at home : 
 At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, 
 Like to bubbles when rain pelteth ; 
 Then let winged Fancy wander 
 Through the thought still spread beyond her : 
 Open wide the mind's cage-door, 
 She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar. 
 O sweet Fancy ! let her loose ; 
 
 Summer's joys are spoilt by use, lo 
 
 And the enjoying of the Spring 
 Fades as does its blossoming ; 
 Autumn's red-Hpp'd fruitage too. 
 Blushing through the mist and dew, 
 Cloys with tasting : What do then ? 
 Sit thee by the ingle, when 
 The sear faggot blazes bright, 
 Spirit of a winter's night ; 
 When the soundless earth is muffled. 
 
 And the caked snow is shuffled 20 
 
 From the ploughboy's heavy shoon ; 
 When the Night doth meet the Noon 
 In a dark conspiracy 
 To banish Even from her sky. 
 Sit thee there, and send abroad. 
 With a mind self-overaw'd. 
 Fancy, high-commission' d : — send her ! 
 She has vassals to attend her : 
 She will bring, in spite of frost, 
 
 Beauties that the earth hath lost ; 30 
 
 She will bring thee, all together. 
 All delights of summer weather ; 
 All the buds and bells of May, 
 From dewy sward or thorny spray ; 
 All the heaped Autumn's wealth, 
 With a still, mysterious stealth : 
 She will mix these pleasures up 
 Like three fit wines in a cup. 
 And thou shalt quaff it : — thou shall hear 
 Distant harvest-carols clear ; 40 
 
 Rustle of the reaped corn ;
 
 FANCY 199 
 
 Sweet birds antheming the morn : 
 
 And, in the same moment — hark ! 
 
 'Tis the early April lark, 
 
 Or the rooks, with busy caw, 
 
 Foraging for sticks and straw. 
 
 Thou shalt, at one glance, behold 
 
 The daisy and the marigold ; 
 
 White-plum'd lilies, and the first 
 
 Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst ; 50 
 
 Shaded hyacinth, alway 
 
 Sapphire queen of the mid- May ; 
 
 And every leaf, and every flower 
 
 Pearled with the self- same shower. 
 
 Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep 
 
 Meagre from its celled sleep ; 
 
 And the snake all winter-thin 
 
 Cast on sunny bank its skin ; 
 
 Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see 
 
 Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, 60 
 
 When the hen-bird's wing doth rest 
 
 Quiet on her mossy nest ; 
 
 Then the hurry and alarm 
 
 When the bee-hive casts its swarm ; 
 
 Acorns ripe down-pattering. 
 
 While the autumn breezes sing. 
 
 Oh, sweet Fancy ! let her loose ; 
 Every thing is spoilt by use : 
 Where's the cheek that doth not fade. 
 Too much gaz'd at ? Where's the maid 70 
 
 Whose lip mature is ever new ? 
 Where's the eye, however blue, 
 Doth not weary ? Where s the face 
 One would meet in every place ? 
 Where's the voice, however soft. 
 One would hear so very oft .'' 
 At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth 
 Like to bubbles when rain pelteth. 
 Let, then, winged Fancy find 
 
 Thee a mistress to thy mind : 80 
 
 Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter. 
 Ere the God of Torment taught her 
 How to frown and how to chide ; 
 With a waist and with a side 
 White as Hebe's, when her zone 
 Slipt its golden clasp, and down 
 Fell her kirtle to her feet.
 
 200 JOHN KEATS 
 
 While she held the goblet sweet, 
 
 And Jove grew languid. — Break the mesh 
 
 Of the Fancy's silken leash ; go 
 
 Quickly break her prison-string 
 
 And such joys as these she'll bring. — 
 
 Let the winged Fancy roam, 
 
 Pleasure never is at home.
 
 ODE 
 
 BARDS of Passion and of Mirth, 
 Ye have left your souls on earth ! 
 Have ye souls in heaven too, 
 Double-lived in regions new ? 
 Yes, and those of heaven commune 
 With the spheres of sun and moon ; 
 With the noise of fountains wond'rous, 
 And the parle of voices thund'rous ; 
 With the whisper of heaven's trees 
 And one another, in soft ease lo 
 
 Seated on Elysian lawns 
 Brows'd by none but Dian's fawns ; 
 Underneath large blue-bells tented. 
 Where the daisies are rose-scented. 
 And the rose herself has got 
 Perfume which on earth is not ; 
 Where the nightingale doth sing 
 Not a senseless, tranced thing, 
 But divine melodious truth ; 
 
 Philosophic numbers smooth ; 20 
 
 Tales and golden histories 
 Of heaven and its mysteries. 
 
 Thus ye live on high, and then 
 On the earth ye live again ; 
 And the souls ye left behind you 
 Teach us, here, the way to find you, 
 Where your other souls are joying, 
 Never slumber'd, never cloying. 
 Here, your earth-born souls still speak 
 To mortals, of their little week ; 30 
 
 Of their sorrows and delights ; 
 Of their passions and their spites ; 
 Of their glory and their shame ; 
 What doth strengthen and what maim. 
 Thus ye teach us, every day, 
 Wisdom, though fled far away. 
 
 Bards of Passion and of Mirth, 
 Ye have left your souls on earth ! 
 Ye have souls in heaven too, 
 Double-lived in regions new ! 40
 
 202 JOHN KEATS 
 
 LINES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE MERMAID TAVERN 
 
 SOULS of Poets dead and gone, 
 What Elysium have ye known, 
 Happy field or mossy cavern, 
 Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ? 
 Have ye tippled drink more fine 
 Than mine host's Canary wine ? 
 Or are fruits of Paradise 
 Sweeter than those dainty pies 
 Of venison ? O generous food ! 
 
 Drest as though bold Robin Hood lo 
 
 Would, with his maid Marian, 
 Sup and bowse from horn and can, 
 
 I have heard that on a day 
 Mine host's sign-board flew away, 
 Nobody knew whither, till 
 An astrologer's old quill 
 To a sheepskin gave the story. 
 Said he saw you in your glory. 
 Underneath a new old-sign 
 
 Sipping beverage divine, 20 
 
 And pledging with contented smack 
 The Mermaid in the Zodiac. 
 
 Souls of Poets dead and gone, 
 What Elysium have ye known, 
 Happy field or mossy cavern, 
 Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ?
 
 ROBIN HOOD 
 To A Friend 
 
 NO ! those days are gone away. 
 And their hours are old and gray, 
 And their minutes buried all 
 Under the down-trodden pall 
 Of the leaves of many years : 
 Many times have winter's shears. 
 Frozen North, and chilling East, 
 Sounded tempests to the feast 
 Of the forest's whispering fleeces. 
 Since men knew nor rent nor leases. lo 
 
 No, the bugle sounds no more, 
 And the twanging bow no more ; 
 Silent is the ivory shrill 
 Past the heath and up the hill ; 
 There is no mid-forest laugh. 
 Where lone Echo gives the half 
 To some wight, amaz'd to hear 
 Jesting, deep in forest drear. 
 
 On the fairest time of June 
 You may go, with sun or moon, 20 
 
 Or the seven stars to light you, 
 Or the polar ray to right you ; 
 But you never may behold 
 Little John, or Robin bold ; 
 Never one, of all the clan, 
 Thrumming on an empty can 
 Some old hunting ditty, while 
 He doth his green way beguile 
 To fair hostess Merriment, 
 
 Down beside the pasture Trent ; 30 
 
 For he left the merry tale 
 Messenger for spicy ale. 
 
 Gone, the merry morris din ; 
 Gone, the song of Gamelyn ; 
 Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
 
 204 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Idling in the " grene shawe ; " 
 
 All are gone away and past ! 
 
 And if Robin should be cast 
 
 Sudden from his turfed grave, 
 
 And if Marian should have 40 
 
 Once again her forest days. 
 
 She would weep, and he would craze : 
 
 He would swear, for all his oaks, 
 
 Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes. 
 
 Have rotted on the briny seas ; 
 
 She would weep that her wild bees 
 
 Sang not to her — strange ! that honey 
 
 Can't be got without hard money ! 
 
 So it is : yet let us sing, 
 Honour to the old bow-string ! 50 
 
 Honour to the bugle -horn ! 
 Honour to the woods unshorn ! 
 Honour to the Lincoln green ! 
 Honour to the archer keen ! 
 Honour to tight little John, 
 And the horse he rode upon ! 
 Honour to bold Robin Hood, 
 Sleeping in the underwood ! 
 Honour to maid Marian, 
 
 And to all the Sherwood-clun ! 60 
 
 Though their days have huiTied by 
 Let us two a burden try.
 
 TO AUTUMN 
 
 SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
 Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun ; 
 Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
 
 With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run ; 
 To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees. 
 And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ; 
 
 To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
 With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more. 
 And still more, later flowers for the bees. 
 Until they think warm days will never cease. 
 
 For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. 
 
 Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ? 
 
 Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
 Thee sitting careless on a granary floor. 
 
 Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; 
 Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, 
 
 Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
 Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers : 
 And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
 
 Steady thy laden head across a brook ; 
 
 Or by a cyder-press, with patient look. 
 
 Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. 
 
 Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they .'' 
 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, — 
 
 While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day. 
 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ; 
 
 Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
 Among the river sallows, borne aloft 
 
 Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 
 
 And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 
 Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 
 The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft ; 
 And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
 
 a06 JOHN KEATS 
 
 ODE ON MELANCHOLY 
 
 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. 
 
 2 
 
 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.
 
 HYPERION 
 
 A Fragment 
 BOOK I 
 
 DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale 
 Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 
 Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star. 
 Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone. 
 Still as the silence round about his lair ; 
 Forest on forest hung about his head 
 Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there. 
 Not so much life as on a summer's day 
 Robs not one light seed from the feather' d grass, 
 But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. lo 
 
 A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more 
 By reason of his fallen divinity 
 Spreading a shade : the Naiad 'mid her reeds 
 Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips. 
 
 Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went. 
 No further than to where his feet had stray'd, 
 And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground 
 His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
 Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed ; 
 While his bow'd head seem'd list'ning to the Earth, 20 
 
 His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. 
 
 It seem'd no force could wake him from his place ; 
 But there came one, who with a kindred hand 
 Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low 
 With reverence, though to one who knew it not. 
 She was a Goddess of the infant world ; 
 By her in stature the tall Amazon 
 Had stood a pigmy's height : she would have ta'en 
 Achilles by the hair and bent his neck ; 
 Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. 30
 
 208 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, 
 
 Pedestal'd haply in a palace court, 
 
 When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore. 
 
 But oh ! how unlike marble was that face : 
 
 How beautiful, if sorrow had not made 
 
 Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self. 
 
 There was a listening fear in her regard, 
 
 As if calamity had but begun ; 
 
 As if the vanward clouds of evil days 
 
 Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear 40 
 
 Was with its stored thunder labouring up. 
 
 One hand she press' d upon that aching spot 
 
 Where beats the human heart, as if just there. 
 
 Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain : 
 
 The other upon Saturn's bended neck 
 
 She laid, and to the level of his ear 
 
 Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake 
 
 In solemn tenour and deep organ tone : 
 
 Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue 
 
 Would come in these like accents ; O how frail 50 
 
 To that large utterance of the early Gods ! 
 
 " Saturn, look up ! — though wherefore, poor old King .'' 
 
 I have no comfort for thee, no not one : 
 
 I cannot say, * O wherefore sleepest thou ? ' 
 
 For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth 
 
 Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God ; 
 
 And ocean too, with all its solemn noise, 
 
 Has from thy sceptre pass'd ; and all the air 
 
 Is emptied of thine hoary majesty. 
 
 Thy thunder, conscious of the new command, 60 
 
 Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house ; 
 
 And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands 
 
 Scorches and burns our once serene domain. 
 
 O aching time ! O moments big as years ! 
 
 All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth. 
 
 And press it so upon our weary griefs 
 
 That unbelief has not a space to breathe. 
 
 Saturn, sleep on : — O thoughtless, why did I 
 
 Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude ? 
 
 Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes ? 70 
 
 Saturn, sleep on ! while at thy feet I weep." 
 
 As when, upon a tranced summer-night. 
 Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods. 
 Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, 
 Dream, and so dream all night without a stir. 
 Save from one gradual solitary gust
 
 BOOK i] HYPERION 209 
 
 Which comes upon the silence, and dies off. 
 
 As if the ebbing air had but one wave ; 
 
 So came these words and went ; the while in tears 
 
 She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground, 80 
 
 Just where her falling hair might be outspread 
 
 A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet. 
 
 One moon, with alteration slow, had shed 
 
 Her silver seasons four upon the night, 
 
 And still these two were postured motionless. 
 
 Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern ; 
 
 The frozen God still couchant on the earth. 
 
 And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet : 
 
 Until at length old Saturn lifted up 
 
 His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone, 90 
 
 And all the gloom and sorrow of the place, 
 
 And that fair kneeling Goddess ; and then spake. 
 
 As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard 
 
 Shook horrid with such aspen-malady : 
 
 " O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, 
 
 Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face ; 
 
 Look up, and let me see our doom in it ; 
 
 Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape 
 
 Is Saturn's ; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice 
 
 Of Saturn ; tell me, if this wrinkling brow, 100 
 
 Naked and bare of its great diadem. 
 
 Peers like the front of Saturn. Who had power 
 
 To make me desolate ? whence came the strength ? 
 
 How was it nurtur'd to such bursting forth. 
 
 While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp ? 
 
 But it is so ; and I am smother'd up. 
 
 And buried from all godlike exercise 
 
 Of influence benign on planets pale. 
 
 Of admonitions to the winds and seas. 
 
 Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting, no 
 
 And all those acts which Deity supreme 
 
 Doth ease its heart of love in. — I am gone 
 
 Away from my own bosom : I have left 
 
 My strong identity, my real self. 
 
 Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit 
 
 Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search ! 
 
 Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round 
 
 Upon all space : space starr'd, and lorn of light ; 
 
 Space region'd with life-air ; and barren void ; 
 
 Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell. — 120 
 
 Search, Thea, search ! and tell me, if thou seest 
 
 A certain shape or shadow, making way 
 
 With wings or chariot fierce to repossess 
 
 14
 
 210 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 A heaven he lost erewhile : it must — it must 
 
 Be of ripe progress — Saturn must be King. 
 
 Yes, there must be a golden victory ; 
 
 There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown 
 
 Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival 
 
 Upon the gold clouds metropolitan, 
 
 Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir 130 
 
 Of strings in hollow shells : and there shall be 
 
 Beautiful things made new, for the surprise 
 
 Of the sky-children ; I will give command : 
 
 Thea ! Thea ! Thea ! where is Saturn ? " 
 
 This passion lifted him upon his feet. 
 And made his hands to struggle in the air. 
 His Druid locks to shake and ooze with sweat, 
 His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease. 
 He stood, and heard not Thea's sobbing deep ; 
 A little time, and then again he snatch d 140 
 
 Utterance thus. — " But cannot I create ? 
 Cannot I form .'' Cannot I fashion forth 
 Another world, another universe, 
 To overbear and crumble this to nought ? 
 Where is another chaos ? Where ? " — That word 
 Found way unto Olympus, and made quake 
 The rebel three. — Thea was startled up, 
 And in her bearing was a sort of hope. 
 As thus she quick-voic'd spake, yet full of awe. 
 
 " This cheers our fallen house : come to our friends, 150 
 
 Saturn ! come away, and give them heart ; 
 
 1 know the covert, for thence came I hither." 
 Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went 
 With backward footing through the shade a space : 
 He foUow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way 
 Through aged boughs, that yielded like the mist 
 Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest. 
 
 Meanwhile in other realms big tears were shed. 
 More sorrow like to this, and such like woe. 
 Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe : 160 
 
 The Titans fierce, self-hid, or prison-bound, 
 Groan'd for the old allegiance once more. 
 And listen'd in sharp pain for Saturn's voice. 
 But one of the whole mammoth-brood still kept 
 His sov'reignty, and rule, and majesty ; — 
 Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire 
 Still sat, still snuff'd the incense, teeming up 
 From man to the sun's God ; yet unsecure :
 
 BOOK I] HYPERION 211 
 
 For as among us mortals omens drear 
 
 Fright and perplex, so also shuddered he — 170 
 
 Not at dog's howl, or gloom-bird's hated screech. 
 
 Or the familiar visiting ot one 
 
 Upon the first toll of his passing-bell, 
 
 Or prophesj'ings of the midnight lamp ; 
 
 But horrors, portion'd to a giant nerve. 
 
 Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright 
 
 Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold. 
 
 And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks, 
 
 Glar'd a blood-red through all its thousand courts, 
 
 Arches, and domes, and tiery galleries ; 180 
 
 And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds 
 
 Flush'd angerly : while sometimes eagle's wings, 
 
 Unseen before by Gods or wondering men, 
 
 Darken'd the place ; and neighing steeds were heard, 
 
 Not heard before by Gods or wondering men. 
 
 Also, when he would taste the spicy wreaths 
 
 Of incense, breath 'd aloft from sacred hills, 
 
 Instead of sweets, his ample palate took 
 
 Savour of poisonous brass and metal sick : 
 
 And so, when harbour'd in the sleepy west, 190 
 
 After the full completion of fair day, — 
 
 For rest divine upon exalted couch 
 
 And slumber in the arms of melody. 
 
 He pac'd away the pleasant hours of ease 
 
 With stride colossal, on from hall to hall ; 
 
 While far within each aisle and deep recess, 
 
 His winged minions in close clusters stood, 
 
 Amaz'd and full of fear ; like anxious men 
 
 Who on wide plains gather in panting troops. 
 
 When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers. 200 
 
 Even now, while Saturn, rous'd from icy trance, 
 
 Went step for step with Thea through the woods, 
 
 Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear, 
 
 Came slope upon the threshold of the west ; 
 
 Then, as was wont, his palace-door flew ope 
 
 In smoothest silence, save what solemn tubes, 
 
 Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet 
 
 And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies ; 
 
 And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape. 
 
 In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye, 210 
 
 That inlet to severe magnificence 
 
 Stood full blown, for the God to enter in. 
 
 He enter' d, but he enter'd full of wrath ; 
 His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels,
 
 212 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire, 
 
 That scar'd away the meek ethereal Hours 
 
 And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared, 
 
 From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault, 
 
 Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light, 
 
 And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades, 220 
 
 Until he reach'd the great main cupola ; 
 
 There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot. 
 
 And from the basements deep to the high towers 
 
 Jarr'd his own golden region ; and before 
 
 The quavering thunder thereupon had ceas'd, 
 
 His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb. 
 
 To this result : " O dreams of day and night ! 
 
 O monstrous forms ! O effigies of pain ! 
 
 O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom ! 
 
 lank-eared Phantoms of black-weeded pools ! 230 
 Why do I know ye ? why have I seen ye ? why 
 
 Is my eternal essence thus distraught 
 
 To see and to behold these horrors new ? 
 
 Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall ? 
 
 Am I to leave this haven of my rest, 
 
 This cradle of my glory, this soft clime, 
 
 This calm luxuriance of blissful light. 
 
 These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes. 
 
 Of all my lucent empire ? It is left 
 
 Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine. 240 
 
 The blaze, the splendor, and the symmetry, 
 
 1 cannot see — but darkness, death and darkness. 
 Even here, into my centre of repose. 
 
 The shady visions come to domineer. 
 
 Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp. — 
 
 Fall ! — No, by Tellus and her briny robes ! 
 
 Over the fiery frontier of my realms 
 
 I will advance a terrible right arm 
 
 Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove, 
 
 And bid old Saturn take his throne again." — 250 
 
 He spake, and ceas'd, the while a heavier threat 
 
 Held struggle with his throat but came not forth ; 
 
 For as in theatres of crowded men 
 
 Hubbub increases more they call out " Hush ! " 
 
 So at Hyperion's words the Phantoms pale 
 
 Bestirr'd themselves, thrice horrible and cold ; 
 
 And from the mirror'd level where he stood 
 
 A mist arose, as from a scummy marsh. 
 
 At this, through all his bulk an agony 
 
 Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown, 260 
 
 Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular 
 
 Making slow way, with head and neck convuls'd
 
 BOOK I] HYPERION 213 
 
 From over-strained might. Releas'd, he fled 
 
 To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hom*s 
 
 Before the dawn in season due should blush, 
 
 He breath'd fierce breath against the sleepy portals, 
 
 Clear'd them of heavy vapours, burst them wide 
 
 Suddenly on the ocean's chilly streams. 
 
 The planet orb of fire, whereon he rode 
 
 Each day from east to west the heavens through, 270 
 
 Spun round in sable curtaining of clouds ; 
 
 Nor therefore veiled quite, blindfold, and hid, 
 
 But ever and anon the glancing spheres. 
 
 Circles, and arcs, and broad-belting colure, 
 
 Glow'd through, and wrought upon the muffling dark 
 
 Sweet-shaped lightnings from the nadir deep 
 
 Up to the zenith, — hieroglyphics old 
 
 Which sages and keen-ey'd astrologers 
 
 Then living on the earth, with labouring thought 
 
 Won from the gaze of many centuries : 280 
 
 Now lost, save what we find on remnants huge 
 
 Of stone, or marble swart ; their import gone. 
 
 Their wisdom long since fled. — Two wings this orb 
 
 Possess'd for glory, two fair argent wings. 
 
 Ever exalted at the God's approach : 
 
 And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense 
 
 Rose, one by one, till all outspreaded were ; 
 
 While still the dazzling globe maintain'd eclipse, 
 
 Awaiting for Hyperion's command. 
 
 Fain would he have commanded, fain took throne 290 
 
 And bid the day begin, if but for change. 
 
 He might not : — No, though a primeval God : 
 
 The sacred seasons might not be disturb'd. 
 
 Therefore the operations of the dawn 
 
 Stay'd in their birth, even as here 'tis told. 
 
 Those silver wings expanded sisterly, 
 
 Eager to sail their orb ; the porches wide 
 
 Open'd upon the dusk demesnes of night ; 
 
 And the bright Titan, phrenzied with new woes, 
 
 Unus'd to bend, by hard compulsion bent 300 
 
 His spirit to the sorrow of the time ; 
 
 And all along a dismal rack of clouds. 
 
 Upon the boundaries of day and night. 
 
 He stretch'd himself in grief and radiance faint. 
 
 There as he lay, the Heaven with its stars 
 
 Look'd down on him with pity, and the voice 
 
 Of Coelus, from the universal space. 
 
 Thus whisper'd low and solemn in his ear. 
 
 " O brightest of my children dear, earth-born 
 
 And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries 310
 
 214 JOHN KEATS [book i 
 
 All unrevealed even to the powers 
 
 Which met at thy creating ; at whose joys 
 
 And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft, 
 
 I, Ccelus, wonder, how they came and whence ; 
 
 And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be, 
 
 Distinct, and visible ; symbols divine. 
 
 Manifestations of that beauteous life 
 
 Diffus'd unseen throughout eternal space : 
 
 Of these new-form'd art thou, oh brightest child ! 
 
 Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses ! 320 
 
 There is sad feud among ye, and rebellion 
 
 Of son against his sire. I saw him fall, 
 
 I saw my first-born tumbled from his throne ! 
 
 To me his arms were spread, to me his voice 
 
 Found way from forth the thunders round his head ! 
 
 Pale wox I, and in vapours hid my face. 
 
 Art thou, too, near such doom ? vague fear there is : 
 
 For I have seen my sons most unlike Gods. 
 
 Divine ye were created, and divine 
 
 In sad demeanour, solemn, undisturb'd, 330 
 
 Unruffled, like high Gods, ye liv'd and ruled : 
 
 Now I behold in you fear, hope, and wrath ; 
 
 Actions of rage and passion ; even as 
 
 I see them, on the mortal world beneath. 
 
 In men who die. — This is the grief, O Son ! 
 
 Sad sign of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall ! 
 
 Yet do thou strive ; as thou art capable. 
 
 As thou canst move about, an evident God ; 
 
 And canst oppose to each malignant hour 
 
 Ethereal presence : — I am but a voice ; 340 
 
 My life is but the life of winds and tides. 
 
 No more than winds and tides can I avail : — 
 
 But thou canst. — Be thou therefore in the van 
 
 Of circumstance ; yea, seize the arrow's barb 
 
 Before the tense string murmur. — To the earth ! 
 
 For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes. 
 
 Meantime I will keep watch on thy bright sun. 
 
 And of thy seasons be a careful nurse." — 
 
 Ere half this region -whisper had come down, 
 
 Hyperion arose, and on the stars 350 
 
 Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide 
 
 Until it ceas'd ; and still he kept them wide : 
 
 And still they were the same bright, patient stars. 
 
 Then with a slow incline of his broad breast. 
 
 Like to a diver in the pearly seas. 
 
 Forward he stoop'd over the airy shore. 
 
 And plung'd all noiseless into the deep night.
 
 BOOK II] HYPERION 215 
 
 HYPERION 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 IUST at the self-same beat of Time's wide wings 
 Hyperion slid into the rustled air, 
 And Saturn gain'd with Thea that sad place 
 Where Cybele and the bruised Titans raourn'd. 
 It was a den where no insulting light 
 Could glimmer on their tears ; where their own groans 
 They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar 
 Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse. 
 Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where. 
 
 Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem'd lo 
 
 Ever as if just rising from a sleep. 
 Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns ; 
 And thus in thousand hugest phantasies 
 Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe. 
 Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon. 
 Couches of rugged stone, and slaty ridge 
 Stubborn'd with iron. All were not assembled : 
 Some chain'd in torture, and some wandering. 
 Coeus, and Gyges, and Briareiis, 
 
 Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion, 20 
 
 With many more, the brawniest in assault. 
 Were pent in regions of laborious breath ; 
 Dungeon'd in opaque element, to keep 
 Their clenched teeth still clench'd, and all their limbs 
 Lock'd up like veins of metal, crampt and screw'd ; 
 Without a motion, save of their big hearts 
 Heaving in pain, and horribly convuls'd 
 With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse. 
 Mnemosyne was straying in the world ; 
 
 Far from her moon had Phcebe wandered ; 30 
 
 And many else were free to roam abroad. 
 But for the main, here found they covert drear. 
 Scarce images of life, one here, one there. 
 Lay vast and edgeways ; like a dismal cirque
 
 216 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor. 
 
 When the chill rain begins at shut of eve. 
 
 In dull November, and their chancel vault, 
 
 The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night. 
 
 Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave 
 
 Or word, or look, or action of despair. 40 
 
 Creiis was one ; his ponderous iron mace 
 
 Lay by him, and a shatter'd rib of rock 
 
 Told of his rage, ere he thus sank and pined. 
 
 lapetus another ; in his grasp, 
 
 A serpent's plashy neck ; its barbed tongue 
 
 Squeez'd from the gorge, and all its uncurl'd length 
 
 Dead ; and because the creature could not spit 
 
 Its poison in the eyes of conquering Jove. 
 
 Next Cottus : prone he lay, chin uppermost. 
 
 As though in pain ; for still upon the flint 50 
 
 He ground severe his skull, with open mouth 
 
 And eyes in horrid working. Nearest him 
 
 Asia, born of most enormous Caf, 
 
 Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs. 
 
 Though feminine, than any of her sons : 
 
 More thought than woe was in her dusky face. 
 
 For she was prophesying of her glory ; 
 
 And in her wide imagination stood 
 
 Palm-shaded temples, and high rival fanes. 
 
 By Oxus or in Ganges' sacred isles. 60 
 
 Even as Hope upon her anchor leans. 
 
 So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk 
 
 Shed from the broadest of her elephants. 
 
 Above her, on a crag's uneasy shelve, 
 
 Upon his elbow rais'd, all prostrate else, 
 
 Shadow'd Enceladus ; once tame and mild 
 
 As grazing ox unworried in the meads ; 
 
 Now tiger-passion' d, lion-thoughted, wroth. 
 
 He meditated, plotted, and even now 
 
 Was hurling mountains in that second war, 70 
 
 Not long delay'd, that scar'd the younger Gods 
 
 To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird. 
 
 Not far hence Atlas ; and beside him prone 
 
 Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons. Neighbour'd close 
 
 Oceanus, and Tethys, in whose lap 
 
 Sobb'd Clymene among her tangled hair. 
 
 In midst of all lay Themis, at the feet 
 
 Of Ops the queen all clouded round from sight ; 
 
 No shape distinguishable, more than when 
 
 Thick night confounds the pine-tops with the clouds : 80 
 
 And many else whose names may not be told.
 
 BOOK II] HYPERION 217 
 
 For when the Muse's wings are air-ward spread, 
 
 Who shall delay her flight ? And she must chaunt 
 
 Of Saturn, and his guide, who now had climb'd 
 
 With damp and slippery footing from a depth 
 
 More horrid still. Above a sombre cliff 
 
 Their heads appear'd, and up their stature grew 
 
 Till on the level height their steps found ease : 
 
 Then Thea spread abroad her trembling arms 
 
 Upon the precincts of this nest of pain, gu 
 
 And sidelong fix'd her eye on Saturn's face : 
 
 There saw she direst strife ; the supreme God 
 
 At war with all the frailty of grief. 
 
 Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge. 
 
 Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair. 
 
 Against these plagues he strove in vain ; for Fate 
 
 Had pour'd a mortal oil upon his head, 
 
 A disanointing poison : so that Thea, 
 
 Affrighted, kept her still, and let him pass 
 
 First onwards in, among the fallen tribe. loo 
 
 As with us mortal men, the laden heart 
 Is persecuted more, and fever' d more. 
 When it is nighing to the mournful house 
 Where other hearts are sick of the same bruise ; 
 So Saturn, as he walk'd into the midst. 
 Felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest. 
 But that he met Enceladus's eye. 
 Whose mightiness, and awe of him, at once 
 Came like an inspiration ; and he shouted, 
 
 "Titans, behold your God ! " at which some groan'd ; no 
 
 Some started on their feet ; some also shouted ; 
 Some wept, some wail'd, all bow'd with reverence ; 
 And Ops, uplifting her black folded veil, 
 Show'd her pale cheeks, and all her forehead wan, 
 Her eye-brows thin and jet, and hollow eyes. 
 There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines 
 When Winter lifts his voice ; there is a noise 
 Among immortals when a God gives sign. 
 With hushing finger, how he means to load 
 His tongue with the full weight of utterless thought, 120 
 
 With thunder, and with music, and with pomp : 
 Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines : 
 Which, when it ceases in this mountain'd world, 
 No other sound succeeds ; bnt ceasing here. 
 Among these fallen, Saturn's voice therefrom 
 Grew up like organ, that begins anew 
 Its strain, when other harmonies, stopt short,
 
 218 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Leave the dinn'd air vibrating silverly. 
 
 Thus grew it up — " Not in my own sad breast, 
 
 Which is its own great judge and searcher out, 130 
 
 Can I find reason why ye should be thus : 
 
 Not in the legends of the first of days, 
 
 Studied from that old spirit-leaved book 
 
 Which starry Uranus with finger bright 
 
 Sav'd from the shores of darkness, when the waves 
 
 Low-ebb'd still hid it up in shallow gloom ; — 
 
 And the which book ye know I ever kept 
 
 For my firm-based footstool : — Ah, infirm ! 
 
 Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent 
 
 Of element, earth, water, air, and fire, — 140 
 
 At war, at peace, or inter-quarreling 
 
 One against one, or two, or three, or all 
 
 Each several one against the other three. 
 
 As fire with air loud warring when rain-floods 
 
 Drown both, and press them both against earth's face. 
 
 Where, finding sulphur, a quadruple wrath 
 
 Unhinges the poor world ; — not in that strife, 
 
 Wherefrom I take strange lore, and read it deep, 
 
 Can I find reason why ye should be thus : 
 
 No, no-where can unriddle, though I search, 150 
 
 And pore on Nature's universal scroll 
 
 Even to swooning, why ye. Divinities, 
 
 The first-born of all shap'd and palpable Gods, 
 
 Should cower beneath what, in comparison, 
 
 Is untremendous might. Yet ye are here, 
 
 O'erwhelm'd, and spurn'd, and batter'd, ye are here ! 
 
 O Titans, shall I say, ' Arise ! ' — Ye groan : 
 
 Shall I say 'Crouch ! ' — Ye groan. What can I then } , 
 
 O Heaven wide ! O unseen parent dear ! 
 
 What can I } Tell me, all ye brethren Gods, 160 
 
 How we can war, how engine our great wrath ! 
 
 speak your counsel now, for Saturn's ear 
 Is all a-hunger'd. Thou, Oceanus, 
 Ponderest high and deep ; and in thy face 
 
 1 see, astonied, that severe content 
 
 Which comes of thought and musing : give us help ! " 
 
 So ended Saturn ; and the God of the Sea, 
 Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove. 
 But cogitation in his watery shades, 
 
 Arose, with locks not oozy, and began, 170 
 
 In murmurs, which his first-endeavouring tongue 
 Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands. 
 " O ye, whom wrath consumes ! who, passion-stung,
 
 BOOK II] HYPERION 219 
 
 Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies ! 
 
 Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears, 
 
 My voice is not a bellows unto ire. 
 
 Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof 
 
 How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop : 
 
 And in the proof much comfort will I give, 
 
 If ye will take that comfort in its truth. i8o 
 
 We fall by course of Nature's law, not force 
 
 Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou 
 
 Hast sifted well the atom-universe ; 
 
 But for this reason, that thou art the King, 
 
 And only blind from sheer supremacy. 
 
 One avenue was shaded from thine eyes. 
 
 Through which I wandered to eternal truth. 
 
 And first, as thou wast not the first of powers. 
 
 So art thou not the last ; it cannot be : 
 
 Thou art not the beginning nor the end. 190 
 
 From chaos and parental darkness came 
 
 Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil. 
 
 That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends 
 
 Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came. 
 
 And with it light, and light, engendering 
 
 Upon its own producer, forthwith touch'd 
 
 The whole enormous matter into life. 
 
 Upon that very hour, our parentage, 
 
 The Heavens and the Earth, were manifest : 
 
 Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race, 200 
 
 Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms. 
 
 Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain ; 
 
 O folly ! for to bear all naked truths. 
 And to envisage circumstance, all calm. 
 That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well ! 
 
 As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far 
 
 Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs ; 
 
 And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth 
 
 In form and shape compact and beautiful, 
 
 In will, in action free, companionship, 210 
 
 And thousand other signs of purer life ; 
 
 So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, 
 
 A power more strong in beauty, born of us 
 
 And fated to excel us, as we pass 
 
 In glory that old Darkness : nor are we 
 
 Thereby more conquer' d, than by us the rule 
 
 Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil 
 
 Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed, 
 
 And feedeth still, more comely than itself.'' 
 
 Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves ? 220
 
 220 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Or shall the tree be envious of the dove 
 
 Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings 
 
 To wander wherewithal and find its joys ? 
 
 We are such forest-trees, and our fair boughs 
 
 Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves, 
 
 But eagles golden-feather'd, who do tower 
 
 Above us in their beauty, and must reign 
 
 In right thereof; for 'tis the eternal law 
 
 That first in beauty should be first in might : 
 
 Yea, by that law, another race may drive 230 
 
 Our conquerors to moui*n as we do now. 
 
 Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas, 
 
 My dispossessor ? Have ye seen his face ? 
 
 Have ye beheld his chariot, foam'd along 
 
 By noble winged creatures he hath made ? 
 
 I saw him on the calmed waters scud, 
 
 With such a glow of beauty in his eyes. 
 
 That it enforc'd me to bid sad farewell 
 
 To all my empire : farewell sad I took, 
 
 And hither came, to see how dolorous fate 240 
 
 Had wrought upon ye ; and how I might best 
 
 Give consolation in this woe extreme. 
 
 Receive the truth, and let it be your balm." 
 
 Whether through poz'd conviction, or disdain, 
 They guarded silence, when Oceanus 
 Left murmuring, what deepest thought can tell ? 
 But so it was, none answer'd for a space. 
 Save one whom none regarded, Clymene ; 
 And yet she answer'd not, only complain'd. 
 With hectic lips, and eyes up-looking mild, 250 
 
 Thus wording timidly among the fierce : 
 " O Father, I am here the simplest voice, 
 And all my knowledge is that joy is gone. 
 And this thing woe crept in among our hearts. 
 There to remain for ever, as I fear : 
 I would not bode of evil, if I thought 
 So weak a creature could turn off the help 
 Which by just right should come of mighty Gods ; 
 Yet let me tell my sorrow, let me tell 
 
 Of what I heard, and how it made me weep, 260 
 
 And know that we had parted from all hope. 
 I stood upon a shore, a pleasant shore. 
 Where a sweet clime was breathed from a land 
 Of fragrance, quietness, and trees, and flowers. 
 Full of calm joy it was, as I of grief; 
 Too full of joy and soft delicious warmth ;
 
 BOOK II] HYPERION 221 
 
 So that 1 felt a movement in my heart 
 
 To chide, and to reproach that solitude 
 
 With songs of misery, music of our woes ; 
 
 And sat me down, and took a mouthed shell 270 
 
 And murmur' d into it, and made melody — 
 
 melody no more ! for while I sang. 
 And with poor skill let pass into the breeze 
 The dull shell's echo, from a bowery strand 
 Just opposite, an island of the sea. 
 
 There came enchantment with the shifting wind, 
 That did both drown and keep alive my ears. 
 
 1 threw my shell away upon the sand. 
 And a wave fill'd it, as ray sense was fill'd 
 
 With that new blissful golden melody. 280 
 
 A living death was in each gush of sounds. 
 
 Each family of rapturous hurried notes. 
 
 That fell, one after one, yet all at once, 
 
 Like pearl beads dropping sudden from their string : 
 
 And then another, then another strain. 
 
 Each like a dove leaving its olive perch. 
 
 With music wing'd instead of silent plumes, 
 
 To hover round my head, and make me sick 
 
 Of joy and grief at once. Grief overcame. 
 
 And I was stopping up my frantic ears, 290 
 
 When, past all hindrance of my trembling hands, 
 
 A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune. 
 
 And still it cried, ' Apollo ! young Apollo ! 
 
 The morning-bright Apollo ! young Apollo ! ' 
 
 I fled, it follow'd me, and cried 'Apollo ! ' 
 
 O Father, and O Brethren, had ye felt 
 
 Those pains of mine ; O Saturn, hadst thou felt. 
 
 Ye would not call this too indulged tongue 
 
 Presumptuous, in thus venturing to be heard." 
 
 So far her voice flow'd on, like timorous brook 300 
 
 That, lingering along a pebbled coast. 
 Doth fear to meet the sea : but sea it met. 
 And shudder'd ; for the overwhelming voice 
 Of huge Enceladus swallow'd it in wrath : 
 The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves 
 In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks, 
 Came booming thus, while still upon his arm 
 He lean'd ; not rising, from supreme contempt. 
 " Or shall we listen to the over-wise, 
 
 Or to the over-foolish giant, Gods .-* 310 
 
 Not thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all 
 That rebel Jove's whole armoury were spent.
 
 222 JOHN KEATS [book ii 
 
 Not world on world upon these shoulders piled, 
 
 Could agonise me more than baby-words 
 
 In midst of this dethronement horrible. 
 
 Speak ! roar ! shout ! yell ! ye sleepy Titans all. 
 
 Do ye forget the blows, the buffets vile ? 
 
 Are ye not smitten by a youngling arm ? 
 
 Dost thou forget, sham Monarch of the Waves, 
 
 Thy scalding in the seas ? What, have I rous'd 320 
 
 Your spleens with so few simple words as these ? 
 
 O joy ! for now I see ye are not lost : 
 
 O joy ! for now I see a thousand eyes 
 
 Wide glaring for revenge ! " — As this he said. 
 
 He lifted up his stature vast, and stood. 
 
 Still without intermission speaking thus : 
 
 "Now ye are flames, I'll tell you how to bum, 
 
 And purge the ether of our enemies ; 
 
 How to feed fierce the crooked stings of fire, 
 
 And singe away the swollen clouds of Jove, 330 
 
 Stifling that puny essence in its tent. 
 
 O let him feel the evil he hath done ; 
 
 For though I scorn Oceanus's lore, 
 
 Much pain have I for more than loss of realms : 
 
 The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled ; 
 
 Those days, all innocent of scathing war, 
 
 When all the fair Existences of heaven 
 
 Came open-eyed to guess what we would speak : — 
 
 That was before our brows were taught to frown. 
 
 Before our lips knew else but solemn sounds ; 340 
 
 That was before we knew the winged thing, 
 
 Victory, might be lost, or might be won. 
 
 And be ye mindful that Hyperion, 
 
 Our brightest brother, still is undisgraced — 
 
 Hyperion, lo ! his radiance is here ! '' 
 
 All eyes were on Enceladus's face. 
 And they beheld, while still Hyperion's name 
 Flew from his lips up to the vaulted rocks, 
 A pallid gleam across his features stern : 
 
 Not savage, for he saw full many a God 350 
 
 Wroth as himself. He look'd upon them all. 
 And in each face he saw a gleam of light. 
 But splendider in Saturn's, whose hoar locks 
 Shone like the bubbling foam about a keel 
 When the prow sweeps into a midnight cove. 
 In pale and silver silence they remain'd. 
 Till suddenly a splendour, like the morn, 
 Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps,
 
 BOOK II] HYPERION 228 
 
 All the sad spaces of oblivion, 
 
 And every gulf, and every chasm old, 360 
 
 And every height, and every sullen depth. 
 
 Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams : 
 
 And all the everlasting cataracts. 
 
 And all the headlong torrents far and near. 
 
 Mantled before in darkness and huge shade. 
 
 Now saw the light and made it terrible. 
 
 It was Hyperion : — a granite peak 
 
 His bright feet touch'd, and there he stay'd to view 
 
 The misery his brilliance had betray'd 
 
 To the most hateful seeing of itself. 370 
 
 Golden his hair of short Numidian curl. 
 
 Regal his shape majestic, a vast shade 
 
 In midst of his own brightness, like the bulk 
 
 Of Memnon's image at the set of sun 
 
 To one who travels from the dusking East : 
 
 Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon's harp 
 
 He utter' d, while his hands contemplative 
 
 He press'd together, and in silence stood. 
 
 Despondence seiz'd again the fallen Gods 
 
 At sight of the dejected King of Day, 380 
 
 And many hid their faces from the light : 
 
 But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes 
 
 Among the brotherhood ; and, at their glare, 
 
 Uprose Ijipetus, and Creiis too. 
 
 And Phorcus, sea-born, and together strode 
 
 To where he towered on his eminence. 
 
 There those four shouted forth old Saturn's name ; 
 
 Hyperion from the peak loud answered, " Saturn ! " 
 
 Saturn sat near the Mother of the Gods, 
 
 In whose face was no joy, though all the Gods 390 
 
 Gave from their hollow throats the name of " Saturn ! "
 
 224 JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 HYPERION 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 THUS in alternate uproar and sad peace. 
 Amazed were those Titans utterly. 
 O leave them, Muse ! O leave them to their woes ; 
 For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire : 
 A solitary sorrow best befits 
 Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief. 
 Leave them, O Muse ! for thou anon wilt find 
 Many a fallen old Divinity 
 Wandering in vain about bewildered shores. 
 Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp, lo 
 
 And not a wind of heaven but will breathe 
 In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute ; 
 For lo ! 'tis for the Father of all verse. 
 Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue, 
 Let the rose glow intense and warm the air. 
 And let the clouds of even and of morn 
 Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills ; 
 Let the red wine within the goblet boil. 
 Cold as a bubbling well ; let faint-lipp'd shells. 
 On sands, or in great deeps, vermilion turn 20 
 
 Through all their labyrinths ; and let the maid 
 Blush keenly, as with some warm kiss surpris'd. 
 Chief isle of the embowered Cyclades, 
 Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives green, 
 And poplars, and lawn-shading palms, and beech, 
 In which the Zephyr breathes the loudest song. 
 And hazels thick, dark-stemm'd beneath the shade : 
 Apollo is once more the golden theme ! 
 Where was he, when the Giant of the Sun 
 Stood bright, amid the sorrow of his peers ? 30 
 
 Together had he left his mother fair 
 And his twin-sister sleeping in their bower, 
 And in the morning twilight wandered forth 
 Beside the osiers of a rivulet.
 
 BOOK III] HYPERION 225 
 
 Full ankle-deep in lilies of the vale. 
 
 The nightinnjale had ceas'd, and a few stars 
 
 Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush 
 
 Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle 
 
 There was no covert, no retired cave 
 
 Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves, 40 
 
 Though scarcely heard in many a green recess. 
 
 He listen'd, and he wept, and his bright tears 
 
 Went trickling down the golden bow he held. 
 
 Thus with half-shut suffused eyes he stood, 
 
 While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by 
 
 With solemn step an awful Goddess came, 
 
 And there was purport in her looks for him. 
 
 Which he with eager guess began to read 
 
 Perplex' d, the while melodiously he said : 
 
 " How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea ? 50 
 
 Or hath that antique mien and robed form 
 
 Mov'd in these vales invisible till now ? 
 
 Sure I have heard those vestments sweeping o'er 
 
 The fallen leaves, when I have sat alone 
 
 In cool mid-forest. Surely I have traced 
 
 The rustle of those ample skirts about 
 
 These grassy solitudes, and seen the flowers 
 
 Lift up their heads, as still the whisper pass'd. 
 
 Goddess ! I have beheld those eyes before. 
 
 And their eternal calm, and all that face, 60 
 
 Or I have dreamed." — "Yes," said the supreme shape, 
 
 "Thou hast dream'd of me ; and awaking up 
 
 Didst find a lyre all golden by thy side. 
 
 Whose strings touch'd by thy fingers, all the vast 
 
 Unwearied ear of the whole universe 
 
 Listen'd in pain and pleasure at the birth 
 
 Of such new tuneful wonder. Is't not strange 
 
 That thou shouldst weep, so gifted } Tell me, youth, 
 
 What sorrow thou canst feel ; for I am sad 
 
 When thou dost shed a tear : explain thy griefs 70 
 
 To one who in this lonely isle hath been v. 
 
 The watcher of thy sleep and hours of life. 
 
 From the young day when first thy infant hand 
 
 Pluck'd witless the weak flowers, till thine arm 
 
 Could bend that bow heroic to all times. 
 
 Show thy heart's secret to an ancient Power 
 
 Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones 
 
 For prophecies of thee, and for the sake 
 
 Of loveliness new born." — Apollo then. 
 
 With sudden scrutiny and gloomless eyes, 80 
 
 Thus answer' d, while his white melodious throat 
 
 15
 
 226 JOHN KEATS [book hi 
 
 Throbb'd with the syllables. — " Mnemosyne ! 
 
 Thy name is on my tongue, I know not how ; 
 
 Why should I tell thee what thou so well seest ? 
 
 Why should I strive to show what from thy lips 
 
 Would come no mystery ? For me, dark, dark. 
 
 And painful vile oblivion seals my eyes : 
 
 I strive to search wherefore I am so sad. 
 
 Until a melancholy numbs my limbs ; 
 
 And then upon the grass I sit, and moan, go 
 
 Like one who once had wings. — O why should I 
 
 Feel curs'd and thwarted, when the liegeless air 
 
 Yields to my step aspirant ? why should I 
 
 Spuni the gi'een turf as hateful to my feet ? 
 
 Goddess benign, point forth some unknown thing : 
 
 Are there not other regions than this isle ? 
 
 What are the stars ? There is the sun, the sun ! 
 
 And the most patient brilliance of the moon ! 
 
 And stars by thousands ! Point me out the way 
 
 To any one particular beauteous star, loo 
 
 And I will flit into it with my lyre, 
 
 And make its silvery splendour pant with bliss. 
 
 I have heard the cloudy thunder : Where is power ? 
 
 Whose hand, whose essence, what divinity 
 
 Makes this alarum in the elements, 
 
 While 1 here idle listen on the shores 
 
 In fearless yet in aching ignorance ? 
 
 O tell me, lonely Goddess, by thy harp, 
 
 That waileth every mom and eventide, 
 
 Tell me why thus I rave, about these groves ! no 
 
 Mute thou remainest — Mute ! yet I can read 
 
 A wondrous lesson in thy silent face : 
 
 Knowledge enormous makes a God of me. 
 
 Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, 
 
 Majesties, sovran voices, agonies, 
 
 Creations and destroy ings, all at once 
 
 Pour into the wide hollows of my brain. 
 
 And deify me, as if some blithe wine 
 
 Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk. 
 
 And so become immortal." — Thus the God, 120 
 
 While his enkindled eyes, with level glance 
 
 Beneath his white soft temples, stedfast kept 
 
 Trembling with light upon Mnemosyne. 
 
 Soon wild commotions shook him, and made flush 
 
 All the immortal fairness of his limbs ; 3 
 
 Most like the struggle at the gate of death ; 
 
 Or liker still to one who should take leave 
 
 Of pale immortal death, and with a pang 
 
 I
 
 BOOK III] HYPERION 227 
 
 As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse 
 
 Die into life : so young Apollo anguish'd : 130 
 
 His very hair, his golden tresses famed 
 
 Kept undulation round his eager neck. 
 
 During the pain Mnemosyne upheld 
 
 Her arms as one who prophesied. — At length 
 
 Apollo shriek'd ; — and lo ! from all his limbs 
 
 Celestial ****** 
 
 ** ******
 
 POSTHUMOUS 
 
 AND 
 
 FUGITIVE POEMS
 
 THE FALL OF HYPERION 
 
 A Vision 
 [CANTO I] 
 
 FANATICS have their dreams, wherewith they weave 
 A paradise for a sect ; the savage, too. 
 From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep 
 Guesses at heaven ; pity these have not 
 Traced upon vellum or wild Indian leaf 
 The shadows of melodious utterance, 
 But bare of laurel they live, dream, and die ; 
 For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, — 
 With the fine spell of words alone can save 
 Imagination from the sable chain lo 
 
 And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, 
 "Thou art no Poet — mayst not tell thy dreams ? " 
 Since every man whose soul is not a clod 
 Hath visions and would speak, if he had loved. 
 And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. 
 Whether the dream now purposed to rehearse 
 Be poet's or fanatic's will be known 
 When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave. 
 
 Methought I stood where trees of every clime, 
 Palm, myrtle, oak, and sycamore, and beech, 20 
 
 With plantane and spice-blossoms, made a screen. 
 In neighbourhood of fountains (by the noise 
 Soft-showering in mine ears), and (by the touch 
 Of scent) not far from roses. Twining round 
 I saw an arbour with a drooping roof 
 Of trellis vines, and bells, and larger blooms, 
 Like floral censers, swinging light in air ; 
 Before its wreathed doorway, on a mound 
 Of moss, was spread a feast of summer fruits. 
 Which, nearer seen, seem'd refuse of a meal 30 
 
 By angel tasted or oui Mother Eve ;
 
 230 JOHN KEATS 
 
 For empty shells were scatter'd on the grass, 
 
 And grape-stalks but half bare, and remnants more 
 
 Sweet-smelling, whose pure kinds I could not know. 
 
 Still was more plenty than the fabled horn 
 
 Thrice emptied could pour forth at banqueting, 
 
 For Proserpine return' d to her own fields, 
 
 Where the white heifers low. And appetite, 
 
 More yearning than on earth I ever felt, 
 
 Growing within, I ate deliciously, — 40 
 
 And, after not long, thirsted ; for thereby 
 
 Stood a cool vessel of transparent juice 
 
 Sipp'd by the wander' d bee, the which I took. 
 
 And pledging all the mortals of the world. 
 
 And all the dead whose names are in our lips, 
 
 Drank. That full draught is parent of my theme. 
 
 No Asian poppy nor elixir fine 
 
 Of the soon-fading, jealous Caliphat, 
 
 No poison gender'd in close monkish cell. 
 
 To thin the scarlet conclave of old men, 50 
 
 Could so have rapt unwilling life away. 
 
 Among the fragrant husks and berries crush'd 
 
 Upon the grass, I struggled hard against 
 
 The domineering potion, but in vain. 
 
 The cloudy swoon came on, and down I sank. 
 
 Like a Silenus on an antique vase. 
 
 How long I slumber'd 'tis a chance to guess. 
 
 When sense of life return'd, I started up 
 
 As if with wings, but the fair trees were gone, 
 
 The mossy mound and arbour were no more : 60 
 
 I look'd around upon the curved sides 
 
 Of an old sanctuary, with roof august, 
 
 Builded so high, it seem'd that filmed clouds 
 
 Might spread beneath as o'er the stars of heaveru 
 
 So old the place was, I remember'd none 
 
 The like upon the earth : what I had seen 
 
 Of gray cathedrals, buttress'd walls, rent towers. 
 
 The superannuations of sunk realms, 
 
 Or Nature's rocks toil'd hard in waves and winds, 
 
 Seem'd but the faulture of decrepit things 70 
 
 To that eternal domed monument. 
 
 Upon the marble at my feet there lay 
 
 Store of strange vessels and large draperies. 
 
 Which needs had been of dyed asbestos wove, 
 
 Or in that place the moth could not corrupt. 
 
 So white the linen, so, in some, distinct 
 
 Ran imageries from a sombre loom. 
 
 All in a mingled heap confused there lay
 
 THE FALL OF HYPERION 231 
 
 Robes, golden tongs, censer and chafing-dish, 
 
 Girdles, and chains, and holy jewelries. 80 
 
 Turning from these with awe, once more I raised 
 My eyes to fathom the space every way : 
 The embossed roof, the silent massy range 
 Of columns north and south, ending in mist 
 Of nothing ; then to eastward, where black gates 
 Were shut against the sunrise evermore ; 
 Then to the west 1 look'd, and saw far off 
 An image, huge of feature as a cloud, 
 At level of whose feet an altar slept, 
 
 To be approach'd on either side by steps 90 
 
 And marble balustrade, and patient travail 
 To count with toil the innumerable degrees. 
 Towards the altar sober-paced I went, 
 Repressing haste as too unholy there ; 
 And, coming nearer, saw beside the shrine 
 One ministering ; and there arose a flame. 
 As in mid-day the sickening east-wind 
 Shifts sudden to the south, the small warm rain 
 Melts out the frozen incense from all flowers. 
 And fills the air with so much pleasant health 100 
 
 That even the dying man forgets his shroud ; — 
 Even so that lofty sacrificial fire. 
 Sending forth Maian incense, spread around 
 Forgetfulness of everything but bliss. 
 And clouded all the altar with soft smoke ; 
 From whose white fragrant curtains thus I heard 
 Language pronounced : "If thou canst not ascend 
 These steps, die on that marble where thou art. 
 Thy flesh, near cousin to the common dust. 
 Will parch for lack of nutriment ; thy bones no 
 
 Will wither in few years, and vanish so 
 That not the quickest eye could find a grain 
 Of what thou now art on that pavement cold. 
 The sands of thy short life are spent this hour, 
 And no hand in the universe can turn 
 Thy hourglass, if these gummed leaves be burnt 
 Ere thou canst mount up these immortal steps." 
 I heard, I look'd : two senses both at once. 
 So fine, so subtle, felt the tyranny 
 
 Of that fierce threat and the hard task proposed. 120 
 
 Prodigious seem'd the toil ; the leaves were yet 
 Burning, when suddenly a palsied chill 
 Struck from the paved level up my limbs, 
 And was ascending quick to put cold grasp
 
 232 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Upon those streams that pulse beside the throat. 
 
 I shriek'd, and the sharp anguish of my shriek 
 
 Stung my own ears ; I strove hard to escape 
 
 The numbness, strove to gain the lowest step. 
 
 Slow, heavy, deadly was my pace : the cold 
 
 Grew stifling, suffocating at the heart ; 130 
 
 And when 1 clasp'd my hands I felt them not. 
 
 One minute before death my iced foot touch'd 
 
 The lowest stair ; and, as it touch'd, life seem'd 
 
 To pour in at the toes ; I mounted up 
 
 As once fair angels on a ladder flew 
 
 From the green turf to heaven. " Holy Power," 
 
 Cried I, approaching near the horned shrine, 
 
 " What am I that should so be saved from death ? 
 
 What am I that another death come not 
 
 To choke my utterance, sacrilegious, here ? " 140 
 
 Then said the veiled shadow : " Thou hast felt 
 
 What 'tis to die and live again before 
 
 Thy fated hour ; that thou hadst power to do so 
 
 Is thine own safety ; thou hast dated on 
 
 Thy doom." " High Prophetess," said I, " purge off. 
 
 Benign, if so it please thee, my mind's film." 
 
 " None can usurp this height," returned that shade, 
 
 " But those to whom the miseries of the world 
 
 Are misery, and will not let them rest. 
 
 All else who find a haven in the world, 150 
 
 Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days. 
 
 If by a chance into this fane they come, 
 
 Rot on the pavement where thou rottedst half." 
 
 "Are there not thousands in the world," said I, 
 
 Encouraged by the sooth voice of the shade, 
 
 "Who love their fellows even to the death, 
 
 Who feel the giant agony of the world, 
 
 And more, like slaves to poor humanity. 
 
 Labour for mortal good } I sure should see 
 
 Other men here, but I am here alone." 160 
 
 "Those whom thou spakest of are no visionaries," 
 
 Rejoin'd that voice ; " they are no dreamers weak ; 
 
 They seek no wonder but the human face, 
 
 No music but a happy-noted voice : 
 
 They come not here, they have no thought to come ; 
 
 And thou art here, for thou art less than they. 
 
 What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe, 
 
 To the great world ? Thou art a dreaming thing, 
 
 A fever of thyself: think of the earth ; 
 
 What bliss, even in hope, is there for thee .'' 170 
 
 What haven ? every creature hath its home. 

 
 THE FALL OF HYPERION 233 
 
 Every sole man hath days of joy and pain. 
 
 Whether his labours be sublime or low — 
 
 The pain alone, the joy alone, distinct : 
 
 Only the dreamer venoms all his days. 
 
 Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve. 
 
 Therefore, that happiness be somewhat shared. 
 
 Such things as thou art are admitted oft 
 
 Into like gardens thou didst pass erewhile, 
 
 And sufFer'd in these temples : for that cause 180 
 
 Thou standest safe beneath this statue's knees." 
 
 " That I am favour' d for unworthiness, 
 
 By such propitious parley medicined 
 
 In sickness not ignoble, I rejoice, 
 
 Aye, and could weep for love of such award." 
 
 So answer'd I, continuing, " If it please, 
 
 Majestic shadow, tell me where I am. 
 
 Whose altar this, for whom this incense curls ; 
 
 What image this whose face I cannot see 
 
 For the broad marble knees ; and who thou art, igo 
 
 Of accent feminine so courteous .'' " 
 
 Then the tall shade, in drooping linen veil'd, 
 Spoke out, so much more earnest, that her breath 
 Stirr'd the thin folds of gauze that drooping hung 
 About a golden censer from her hand 
 Pendent ; and by her voice I knew she shed 
 Long-treasured tears. "This temple, sad and lone, 
 Is all spared from the thunder of a war 
 Foughten long since by giant hierarchy 
 
 Against rebellion : this old image here, 200 
 
 Whose carved features wrinkled as he fell, 
 Is Saturn's ; I, Moneta, left supreme. 
 Sole goddess of this desolation." 
 I had no words to answer, for my tongue. 
 Useless, could find about its roofed home 
 No syllable of a fit majesty 
 To make rejoinder to Moneta's mourn : 
 There was a silence, while the altar's blaze 
 Was fainting for sweet food. I look'd thereon. 
 And on the paved floor, where nigh were piled 210 
 
 Faggots of cinnamon, and many heaps 
 Of other crisped spicewood : then again 
 I look'd upon the altar, and its horns 
 Whiten'd with ashes, and its languorous flame. 
 And then upon the oflferings again ; 
 And so, by turns, till sad Moneta cried : 
 "The sacrifice is done, but not the less
 
 234 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Will I be kind to thee for thy good will. 
 
 My power, which to me is still a curse, 
 
 Shall be to thee a wonder ; for the scenes 220 
 
 Still swooning vivid through my globed brain, 
 
 With an electral changing misery, 
 
 Thou shalt with these dull mortal eyes behold 
 
 Free from all pain, if wonder pain thee not." 
 
 As near as an immortal's sphered words 
 
 Could to a mother's soften were these last : 
 
 And yet I had a terror of her robes. 
 
 And chiefly of the veils that from her brow 
 
 Hung pale, and curtain'd her in mysteries, 
 
 That made my heart too small to hold its blood. 230 
 
 This saw that Goddess, and with sacred hand 
 
 Parted the veils. Then saw I a wan face, 
 
 Not pined by human sorrows, but bright-blanch'd 
 
 By an immortal sickness which kills not ; 
 
 It works a constant change, which happy death 
 
 Can put no end to ; deathwards progressing 
 
 To no death was that visage ; it had past 
 
 The lily and the snow ; and beyond these 
 
 I must not think now, though I saw that face. 
 
 But for her eyes I should have fled away ; 240 
 
 They held me back with a benignant light. 
 
 Soft, mitigated by divinest lids 
 
 Half-closed, and visionless entire they seem'd 
 
 Of all external things ; they saw me not. 
 
 But in blank splendour beam'd, like the mild moon, 
 
 Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not 
 
 What eyes are upward cast. As I had found 
 
 A grain of gold upon a mountain's side. 
 
 And, twinged with avarice, strain'd out my eyes 
 
 To search its sullen entrails rich with ore, 250 
 
 So, at the view of sad Moneta's brow, 
 
 I asked to see what things the hollow brow 
 
 Behind environed : what high tragedy 
 
 In the dark secret chambers of her skull 
 
 Was acting, that could give so dread a stress 
 
 To her cold lips, and fill with such a light 
 
 Her planetary eyes, and touch her voice 
 
 With such a sorrow ? " Shade of Memory ! " 
 
 Cried I, with act adorant at her feet, 
 
 " By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house, 260 
 
 By this last temple, by the golden age, 
 
 By great Apollo, thy dear foster-child, 
 
 And by thyself, forlorn divinity, 
 
 The pale Omega of a wither'd race.
 
 THE FALL OF HYPERION 235 
 
 Let me behold, according as thou saidst, 
 
 What in thy brain so ferments to and fro ! " 
 
 No sooner had this conjuration past 
 
 My devout lips, than side by side we stood 
 
 (Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine) 
 
 Deep in the shady sadness of a vale 270 
 
 Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 
 
 Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star. 
 
 Onward I look'd beneath the gloomy boughs, 
 
 And saw what first I thought an image huge, 
 
 Like to the image pedestall'd so high 
 
 In Saturn's temple ; then Moneta's voice 
 
 Came brief upon mine ear. " So Saturn sat 
 
 When he had lost his realms ;" whereon there grew 
 
 A power within me of enormous ken 
 
 To see as a god sees, and take the depth 280 
 
 Of things as nimbly as the outward eye 
 
 Can size and shape pervade. The lofty theme 
 
 Of those few words hung vast before my mind 
 
 With half-unravell'd web. I set myself 
 
 Upon an eagle's watch, that I might see. 
 
 And seeing ne'er forget. No stir of life 
 
 Was in this shrouded vale, — not so much air 
 
 As in the zoning of a summer's day 
 
 Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass ; 
 
 But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest. 290 
 
 A stream went noiseless by, still deaden' d more 
 
 By reason of the fallen divinity 
 
 Spreading more shade ; the Naiad 'mid her reeds 
 
 Prest her cold finger closer to her lips. 
 
 Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went 
 No further than to where old Saturn's feet 
 Had rested, and there slept how long a sleep ! 
 Degraded, cold, upon the sodden ground 
 His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
 Unsceptred, and his realmless eyes were closed ; 300 
 
 While his bow'd head seem'd listening to the Earth, 
 His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. 
 
 It seem'd no force could wake him from his place ; 
 But there came one who, with a kindred hand, 
 Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low 
 With reverence, though to one who knew it not. 
 Then came the grieved voice of Mnemosyne, 
 And grieved I hearken'd. "That divinity 
 Whom thou saw'st step from yon forlornest wood,
 
 236 JOHN KEATS 
 
 And with slow pace approach our fallen king, 310 
 
 Is Thea, softest-natured of our brood." 
 
 I mark'd the Goddess, in fair statuary 
 
 Surpassing wan Moneta by the head. 
 
 And in her sorrow nearer woman's tears. 
 
 There was a list'ning fear in her regard, 
 
 As if calamity had but begun ; 
 
 As if the venom'd clouds of evil days 
 
 Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear 
 
 Was with its stored thunder labouring up. 
 
 One hand she press'd upon that aching spot 320 
 
 Where beats the human heart, as if just there. 
 
 Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain ; 
 
 The other upon Saturn's bended neck 
 
 She laid, and to the level of his ear 
 
 Leaning, with parted lips some words she spoke 
 
 In solemn tenour and deep organ-tone ; 
 
 Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue 
 
 Would come in this like accenting; how frail 
 
 To that large utterance of the early gods ! 
 
 "Saturn, look up! and for what, poor lost king? 330 
 
 I have no comfort for thee ; no, not one ; 
 I cannot say, wherefore thus sleepest thou ? 
 For Heaven is parted from thee, and the Earth 
 Knows thee not, so afflicted, for a god. 
 The Ocean, too, with all its solemn noise, 
 Has from thy sceptre pass'd ; and all the air 
 Is emptied of thy hoary majesty. 
 Thy thunder, captious at the new command. 
 Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house ; 
 
 And thy sharp lightning, in unpractised hands, 340 
 
 Scourges and burns our once serene domain. 
 
 " With such remorseless speed still come new woes, 
 That unbelief has not a space to breathe. 
 Saturn ! sleep on : me thoughtless, why should I 
 Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude f 
 Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes .'' 
 Saturn ! sleep on, while at thy feet I weep." 
 
 As when upon a tranced summer-night 
 Forests, branch-charmed by the earnest stars. 
 Dream, and so dream all night without a noise, 350 
 
 Save from one gradual solitary gust 
 Swelling upon the silence, dying off, 
 As if the ebbing air had but one wave,
 
 THE FALL OF HYPERION 237 
 
 So came these words and went ; the while in tears 
 
 She prest her fair large forehead to the earth, 
 
 Just where her fallen hair might spread in curls, 
 
 A soft and silken net for Saturn's feet. 
 
 Long, long these two were postured motionless, 
 
 Like sculpture builded-up upon the grave 
 
 Of their own power. A long awful time 360 
 
 I look'd upon them : still they were the same ; 
 
 The frozen God still bending to the earth, 
 
 And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet ; 
 
 Moneta silent. Without stay or prop 
 
 But my own weak mortality, I bore 
 
 The load of this eternal quietude, 
 
 The unchanging gloom and the three fixed shapes 
 
 Ponderous upon my senses, a whole moon ; 
 
 For by my burning brain I measured sure 
 
 Her silver seasons shedded on the night, 370 
 
 And every day by day methought I grew 
 
 More gaunt and ghostly. Oftentimes I pray'd 
 
 Intense, that death would take me from the vale 
 
 And all its burthens ; gasping with despair 
 
 Of change, hour after hour I cursed myself. 
 
 Until old Saturn raised his faded eyes. 
 
 And look'd around and saw his kingdom gone. 
 
 And all the gloom and sorrow of the place. 
 
 And that fair kneeling Goddess at his feet. 
 
 As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves, 380 
 
 Fills forest-dells with a pervading air. 
 Known to the woodland nostril, so the words 
 Of Saturn fill'd the mossy glooms around. 
 Even to the hollows of time-eaten oaks. 
 And to the windings of the foxes' hole. 
 With sad, low tones, while thus he spoke, and sent 
 Strange moanings to the solitary Pan. 
 " Moan, brethren, moan, for we are swallow'd up 
 And buried from all godlike exercise 
 
 Of influence benign on planets pale, 390 
 
 And peaceful sway upon man's harvesting. 
 And all those acts which Deity supreme 
 Doth ease its heart of love in. Moan and wail ; 
 Moan, brethren, moan ; for lo, the rebel spheres 
 Spin round ; the stars their ancient courses keep ; 
 Clouds still with shadowy moisture haunt the earth, 
 Still suck their fill of light from sun and moon ; 
 Still buds the tree, and still the seashores murmur ; 
 There is no death in all the universe,
 
 238 JOHN KEATS 
 
 No smell of death. — There shall be death. Moan, moan ; 
 
 Moan, Cybele, moan ; tor thy pernicious babes 401 
 
 Have changed a god into an aching palsy. 
 
 Moan, brethren, moan, for I have no strength left ; 
 
 Weak as the reed, weak, feeble as my voice. 
 
 Oh ! Oh ! the pain, the pain of feebleness ; 
 
 Moan, moan, for still I thaw ; or give me help ; 
 
 Throw down those imps, and give me victory. 
 
 Let me hear other groans, and trumpets blown 
 
 Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival. 
 
 From the gold peaks of heaven's high-piled clouds ; 410 
 
 Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir 
 
 Of strings in hollow shells ; and there shall be 
 
 Beautiful things made new, for the surprise 
 
 Of the sky-children." So he feebly ceased, 
 
 With such a poor and sickly-sounding pause, 
 
 Methought I heard some old man of the earth 
 
 Bewailing earthly loss ; nor could my eyes 
 
 And ears act with that unison of sense 
 
 Which marries sweet sound with the grace of form, 
 
 And dolorous accent from a tragic harp 420 
 
 With large-limb'd visions. More I scrutinized. 
 
 Still fixt he sat beneath the sable trees, 
 
 Whose arms spread straggling in wild serpent forms. 
 
 With leaves all hush'd ; his awful presence there 
 
 (Now all was silent) gave a deadly lie 
 
 To what I erewhile heard : only his lips 
 
 Trembled amid the white curls of his beard ; 
 
 They told the truth, though round the snowy locks 
 
 Hung nobly, as upon the face of heaven 
 
 A mid-day fleece of clouds. Thea arose, 430 
 
 And stretcht her white arm through the hollow dark. 
 
 Pointing some whither : whereat he too rose, 
 
 Like a vast giant, seen by men at sea 
 
 To grow pale from the waves at dull midnight. 
 
 They melted from my sight into the woods ; 
 
 Ere I could turn, Moneta cried, " These twain 
 
 Are speeding to the families of grief. 
 
 Where, rooft in by black rocks, they waste in pain 
 
 And darkness, for no hope." And she spake on. 
 
 As ye may read who can unwearied pass 440 
 
 Onward from the antechamber of this dream. 
 
 Where, even at the open doors, awhile 
 
 I must delay, and glean my memory 
 
 Of her high phrase — perhaps no further dare.
 
 THE FALI. OF HYPERION 
 
 [CANTO II] 
 
 " iy yr ORTAL, that thou mayst understand aright, 
 
 J_y J^ I humanize my sayings to thine ear. 
 Making comparisons of earthly things ; 
 Or thou mightst better Hsten to the wind, 
 Whose language is to thee a barren noise. 
 Though it blows legend-laden thro' the trees. 
 In melancholy realms big tears are shed. 
 More sorrow like to this, and such like woe. 
 Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe. 
 The Titans fierce, self-hid or prison-bound, lo 
 
 Groan for the old allegiance once more. 
 Listening in their doom for Saturn's voice. 
 But one of the whole eagle-brood still keeps 
 His sovereignty, and rule, and majesty : 
 Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire 
 Still sits, still snuffs the incense teeming up. 
 From Man to the Sun's God — yet insecure. 
 For as upon the earth dire prodigies 
 Fright and perplex, so also shudders he ; 
 
 Not a dog's howl or gloom-bird's hated screech, 20 
 
 Or the familiar visiting of one 
 Upon the first toll of his passing bell, 
 Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp ; 
 But horrors, portioned to a giant nerve. 
 Make great Hyperion ache. His palace bright, 
 Bastioned with pyramids of shining gold. 
 And touched with shade of bronzed obelisks. 
 Glares a blood-red thro' all the thousand courts. 
 Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries ; 
 
 And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds 30 
 
 Flash angerly ; when he would taste the wreaths 
 Of incense, breathed aloft from sacred hills. 
 Instead of sweets, his ample palate takes 
 Savour of poisonous brass and metals sick ; 
 Wherefore when harbour' d in the sleepy West,
 
 240 JOHN KEATS 
 
 After the full completion of fair day, 
 
 For rest divine upon exalted couch. 
 
 And slumber in the arms of melody, 
 
 He paces through the pleasant hours of ease, 
 
 With strides colossal, on from hall to hall, 40 
 
 While far within each aisle and deep recess 
 
 His winged minions in close clusters stand 
 
 Amazed, and full of fear ; like anxious men. 
 
 Who on a wide plain gather in sad troops, 
 
 When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers. 
 
 Even now where Saturn, roused from icy trance. 
 
 Goes step for step with Thea from yon woods, 
 
 Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear. 
 
 Is sloping to the threshold of the West. 
 
 Thither we tend." Now in clear night I stood, 50 
 
 Reliev'd from the dusk vale. Mnemosyne 
 
 Was sitting on a square -edg'd polish'd stone, 
 
 That in its lucid depth reflected pure 
 
 Her priestess' garments. My quick eyes ran on 
 
 From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault, 
 
 Through bow'rs of fragrant and enwreathed light. 
 
 And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades. 
 
 Anon rush'd by the bright Hyperion ; 
 
 His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels. 
 
 And gave a roar as if of earthly fire, 60 
 
 That scared away the meek ethereal hours. 
 
 And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared.
 
 THE EVE OF SAINT MARK 
 
 UPON a Sabbath-day it fell ; 
 Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell, 
 That call'd the folk to evening prayer ; 
 The city streets were clean and fair 
 From wholesome drench of April rains ; 
 And, on the western window panes, 
 The chilly sunset faintly told 
 Of unmatur'd green vallies cold, 
 Of the green thorny bloomless hedge, 
 Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge, lo 
 
 Of primroses by shelter'd rills, 
 And daisies on the aguish hills. 
 Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell : 
 The silent streets were crowded well 
 With staid and pious companies. 
 Warm from their fire-side orat'ries ; 
 And moving, with demurest air. 
 To even-song, and vesper prayer. 
 Each arched porch, and entry low. 
 
 Was fill'd with patient folk and slow, 20 
 
 With whispers hush, and shuffling feet. 
 While play'd the organ loud and sweet. 
 
 The bells had ceas'd, the prayers begun. 
 And Bertha had not yet half done 
 A curious volume, patch'd and torn, 
 That all day long, from earliest mom. 
 Had taken captive her two eyes. 
 Among its golden broideries ; 
 Perplex'd her with a thousand things, — 
 The stars of Heaven, and angels' wings, 30 
 
 Martyrs in a fiery blaze. 
 Azure saints in silver rays, 
 Moses' breastplate, and the seven 
 Candlesticks John saw in Heaven, 
 The winged Lioa of Saint Mark, 
 16
 
 242 JOHN KEATS 
 
 And the Covenantal Ark, 
 
 With its many mysteries. 
 
 Cherubim and golden mice. 
 
 Bertha was a maiden fair, 
 
 Dwelhng in th' old Minster-square ; 40 
 
 From her fire-side she could see. 
 
 Sidelong, its rich antiquity, 
 
 Far as the Bishop's garden-wall ; 
 
 Where sycamores and elm-trees tall, 
 
 Full-leav'd, the forest had outstript. 
 
 By no sharp north-wind ever nipt. 
 
 So shelter'd by the mighty pile. 
 
 Bertha arose, and read awhile. 
 
 With forehead 'gainst the window-pane. 
 
 Again she tried, and then again, 50 
 
 Until the dusk eve left her dark 
 
 Upon the legend of St. Mark. 
 
 From plaited lawn- frill, fine and thin. 
 
 She lifted up her soft warm chin. 
 
 With aching neck and swimming eyes, 
 
 And daz'd with saintly imageries. 
 
 All was gloom, and silent all, 
 
 Save now and then the still foot-fall 
 
 Of one returning homewards late, 
 
 Past the echoing minster-gate. 60 
 
 The clamorous daws, that all the day 
 
 Above tree-tops and towers play, 
 
 Pair by pair had gone to rest. 
 
 Each in its ancient belfry-nest. 
 
 Where asleep they fall betimes. 
 
 To music of the drowsy chimes. 
 
 All was silent, all was gloom. 
 
 Abroad and in the homely room : 
 
 Down she sat, poor cheated soul ! 70 
 
 And struck a lamp from the dismal coal ; 
 
 Lean'd forward, with bright drooping hair 
 
 And slant book, full against the glare. 
 
 Her shadow, in uneasy guise. 
 
 Hover' d about, a giant size. 
 
 On ceiling-beam and old oak chair. 
 
 The parrot's cage, and panel square ; 
 
 And the warm angled winter screen. 
 
 On which were many monsters seen, 
 
 Call'd doves of Siam, Lima mice. 
 
 And legless birds of Paradise, 80
 
 THE EVE OF ST. MARK 243 
 
 Macaw, and tender Avadavat, 
 
 And silken-ftirr'd Angora cat. 
 
 Untir'd she read, her shadow still 
 
 Glower'd about, as it would fill 
 
 The room with wildest forms and shades, 
 
 As though some ghostly queen of spades 
 
 Had come to mock behind her back. 
 
 And dance, and ruffle her garments black. 
 
 Untir'd she read the legend page. 
 
 Of holy Mark, from youth to age, go 
 
 On land, on sea, in pagan chains. 
 
 Rejoicing for his many pains. 
 
 Sometimes the learned eremite, 
 
 With golden star, or dagger bright, 
 
 Referr'd to pious poesies 
 
 Written in smallest crow-quill size 
 
 Beneath the text ; and thus the rhyme 
 
 Was parcell'd out from time to time : 
 
 " Als writith he of swevenis, 
 
 Men han befome they wake in bliss, loo 
 
 Whanne that hir friendes thinke hem bound 
 
 In crimped shroude farre under grounde ; 
 
 And how a litling child mote be 
 
 A saint er its nativitie, 
 
 Gif that the modre (God her blesse !) 
 
 Kepen in solitarinesse. 
 
 And kissen devoute the holy croce. 
 
 Of Goddes love, and Sathan's force, — 
 
 He writith ; and thinges many mo : 
 
 Of swiche thinges I may not show. no 
 
 Bot I must tellen verilie 
 
 Somdel of Saints Cicilie, 
 
 And chieflie what he auctorethe 
 
 Of Sainte Markis life and dethe : " 
 
 At length her constant eyelids come 
 Upon the fervent martyrdom ; 
 Then lastly to his holy shrine. 
 Exalt amid the tapers' shine 
 At Venice, —
 
 244 JOHN KEATS 
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 (First Version) 
 
 OWH AT can ail thee Knight at arms 
 Alone and palely loitering ? 
 The sedge has withered from the Lake 
 And no birds sing ! 
 
 2 
 
 O what can ail thee Knight at arms 
 So haggard, and so woe begone ? 
 
 The Squirrel's granary is full 
 And the harvest's done. 
 
 3 
 
 I see a lilly on thy brow 
 
 With anguish moist and fever dew. 
 And on thy cheeks a fading rose 
 
 Fast withereth too — 
 
 I met a Lady in the Meads 
 Full beautiful, a faery's child 
 
 Her hair was long, her foot was light 
 And her eyes were wild — 
 
 I made a Garland for her head, 
 
 And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone 
 
 She look'd at me as she did love 
 And made sweet moan —
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 
 {Revised Version) 
 1 
 
 AH, what can ail thee, wretched wight. 
 Alone and palely loitering ; 
 The sedge is wither'd from the lake, 
 And no birds sing. 
 
 2 
 
 Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight. 
 So haggard and so woe-begone ? 
 
 The squirrel's granary is full, 
 And the harvest's done. 
 
 I see a lily on thy brow. 
 
 With anguish moist and fever dew ; 
 And on thy cheek a fading rose 
 
 Fast withereth too. 
 
 I met a Lady in the meads 
 Full beautiful, a fairy's child ; 
 
 Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
 And her eyes were wild. 
 
 I set her on my pacing steed. 
 
 And nothing else saw all day long ; 
 
 For sideways would she lean, and sing 
 A fairy's song.
 
 246 JOHN KEATS 
 
 6 
 
 I set her on my pacing steed 
 
 And nothing else saw all day long 
 
 For sidelong would she bend and sing 
 A faery's song — 
 
 She found me roots of relish sweet 
 And honey wild and manna dew 
 
 And sure in language strange she said 
 I love thee true — 
 
 8 
 
 She took me to her elfin grot 
 
 And there she wept and sigh'd fuU sore, 
 And there I shut her wild wild eyes 
 
 With kisses four. 
 
 And there she lulled me asleep 
 
 And there I dreara'd Ah Woe betide ! 
 
 The latest dream I ever dreamt 
 On the cold hill side 
 
 10 
 
 I saw pale Kings, and Princes too 
 
 Pale warriors death pale were they all 
 
 They cried La belle dame sans merci 
 Thee hath in thrall. 
 
 11 
 
 I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam 
 With horrid warning gaped wide, 
 
 And I awoke, and found me here 
 On the cold hill's side 
 
 12 
 
 And this is why I sojourn here 
 
 Alone and palely loitering ; 
 Though the sedge is withered from the Lake 
 
 And no birds sing — . . .
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 247 
 
 6 
 
 I made a garland for her head, 
 
 And bracelets too, and fragrant zone ; 
 She look'd at me as she did love, 
 
 And made sweet moan. 
 
 She found me roots of relish sweet, 
 And honey wild, and manna dew ; 
 
 And sure in language strange she said, 
 I love thee true. 
 
 8 
 
 She took me to her elfin grot. 
 
 And there she gaz'd and sighed deep. 
 
 And there I shut her wild sad eyes — 
 So kiss'd to sleep. 
 
 9 
 
 And there we slumber'd on the moss, 
 And there I dream' d, ah woe betide. 
 
 The latest dream I ever dream'd 
 On the cold hill side. 
 
 10 
 
 I saw pale kings, and princes too. 
 
 Pale warriors, death-pale were they all ; 
 
 Who cried — " La belle Dame sans mercy 
 Hath thee in thrall ! " 
 
 11 
 
 I saw their starv'd lips in the gloom 
 With horrid warning gaped wide, 
 
 And I awoke, and found me here 
 On the cold hill side. / 
 
 12 
 
 And this is why I sojourn here 
 
 Alone and palely loitering. 
 Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, 
 
 And no birds sing.
 
 248 JOHN KEATS 
 
 ODES 
 
 FRAGMENT OF AN ODE TO MAIA, MAY, 1818 
 
 MOTHER of Hermes ! and still youthful Maia ! 
 May I sing to thee 
 As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baise ? 
 
 Or may I woo thee 
 In earlier Sicilian ? or thy smiles 
 Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles, 
 By bards who died content on pleasant sward, 
 Leaving great verse unto a little clan ? 
 O, give me their old vigour, and unheard 
 Save of the quiet primrose, and the span 
 
 Of heaven and few ears. 
 Rounded by thee, my song should die away 
 
 Content as theirs. 
 Rich in the simple worship of a day.
 
 ON INDOLENCE 
 
 " They toil not, neither do they spin." 
 1 
 
 ONE morn before me were three figures seen. 
 With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced ; 
 And one behind the other stepp'd serene. 
 
 In placid sandals, and in white robes graced ; 
 
 They pass'd, like figures on a marble urn, 
 When shifted round to see the other side ; 
 They came again ; as when the uni once more 
 
 Is shifted round, the first seen shades return ; 
 And they were strange to me, as may betide 
 With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore. 
 
 How is it. Shadows ! that I knew ye not } 
 
 How came ye muffled in so hush a mask .'' 
 Was it a silent deep-disguised plot 
 
 To steal away, and leave without a task 
 
 My idle days ? Ripe was the drowsy hour ; 
 
 The blissful cloud of summer-indolence 
 Benumb'd my eyes ; my pulse grew less and less ; 
 
 Pain had no sting, and pleasure's wreath no flower : 
 
 O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense 
 Unhaunted quite of all but — nothingness ? 
 
 A third time pass'd jthey by, and, passing, turn'd 
 
 Each one the face a moment whiles to me ; 
 Then faded, and to follow them I burn'd 
 
 And ached for wings, because I knew the three ; 
 The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name ; 
 
 The second was Ambition, pale of cheek, 
 And ever watchful with fatigued eye ; 
 
 The last, whom I love more, the more of blame 
 
 Is heap'd upon her, maiden most unmeek, — 
 I knew to be my demon Poesy.
 
 250 JOHN KEATS 
 
 4> 
 
 They faded, and, forsooth ! I wanted wings : 
 
 O folly ! What is Love ? and where is it ? 
 And for that poor Ambition ! it springs 
 
 From a man's little heart's short fever-fit ; 
 For Poesy ! — no, — she has not a joy, — 
 
 At least for me, — so sweet as drowsy noons, 
 And evenings steep'd in honied indolence ; 
 O, for an age so shelter 'd from annoy. 
 
 That I may never know how change the moons. 
 Or hear the voice of busy common-sense ! 
 
 And once more came they by ; — alas ! wherefore ? 
 
 My sleep had been embroider'd with dim dreams ; 
 My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o'er 
 
 With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams 
 The morn was clouded, but no shower fell, 
 
 Tho' in her lids hung the sweet tears of May ; 
 The open casement press'd a new-leaved vine. 
 
 Let in the budding warmth and throstle's lay ; 
 O Shadows ! 'twas a time to bid farewell ! 
 Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine. 
 
 So, ye three Ghosts, adieu ! Ye cannot raise 
 
 My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass ; 
 For I would not be dieted with praise, 
 
 A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce ! 
 
 Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more 
 
 In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn ; 
 Farewell ! I yet have visions for the night, 
 
 And for the day faint visions there is store ; 
 Vanish, ye Phantoms ! from my idle spright. 
 
 Into the clouds, and never more return !
 
 TO FANNY 
 
 PHYSICIAN Nature ! let my spirit blood ! 
 O ease my heart of verse and let me rest ; 
 Throw me upon thy Tripod, till the flood 
 Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast. 
 A theme ! a theme ! great nature ! give a theme ; 
 
 Let me begin my dream. 
 I come — I see thee, as thou standest there, 
 Beckon me not into the wintry air. 
 
 2 
 
 Ah ! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears. 
 And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries, — 
 To-night, if I may guess, thy beauty wears 
 
 A smile of such delight. 
 
 As brilliant and as bright, 
 As when with ravish'd, aching, vassal eyes. 
 
 Lost in soft amaze, 
 I gaze, I gaze ! 
 
 S 
 
 Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast ? 
 What stare outfaces now my silver moon ? 
 Ah ! keep that hand unravish'd at the least ; 
 
 Let, let, the amorous bum — 
 
 But, pr'ythee, do not turn 
 The current of your heart from me so soon. 
 
 O ! save, in charity. 
 
 The quickest pulse for me. 
 
 4 
 
 Save it for me, sweet love ! though music breathe 
 
 Voluptuous visions into the warm air, 
 
 Though swimming through the dance's dangerous wreath ; 
 
 Be like an April day. 
 
 Smiling and cold and gay, 
 A temperate lily, temperate as fair ; 
 
 Then, Heaven ! there will be 
 
 A warmer June for me.
 
 252 JOHN KEATS 
 
 5 
 
 Why, this — you'll say, my Fanny ! is not true : 
 Put your soft hand upon your snowy side. 
 Where the heart beats : confess — 'tis nothing new- 
 Must not a woman be 
 A feather on the sea, 
 Sway'd to and fro by every wind and tide ? 
 Of as uncertain speed 
 As blow-ball from the mead ? 
 
 I know it — and to know it is despair 
 
 To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny ! 
 
 Whose heart goes flutt'ring for you every where. 
 
 Nor, when away you roam. 
 
 Dare keep its wretched home. 
 Love, love alone, his pains severe and many : 
 
 Then, loveliest ! keep me free, 
 
 From torturing jealousy. 
 
 Ah ! if you prize my subdued soul above 
 The poor, the fading, brief pride of an hour ; 
 Let none profane my Holy See of love. 
 
 Or with a rude hand break 
 
 The sacramental cake : 
 Let none else touch the just new-budded flower 
 
 If not — may my eyes close. 
 
 Love ! on their last repose.
 
 TO 
 
 WHAT can I do to drive away 
 Remembrance from my eyes ? for they have seen, 
 Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen ! 
 Touch has a memory. O say, love, say. 
 What can I do to kill it and be free 
 In my old liberty ? 
 
 When every fair one that I saw was fair 
 Enough to catch me in but half a snare. 
 Not keep me there : 
 
 When, howe'er poor or particolour'd things, lo 
 
 My muse had wings. 
 And ever ready was to take her course 
 Whither 1 bent her force, 
 Unintellectual, yet divine to me ; — 
 Divine, I say ! — What sea-bird o'er the sea 
 Is a philosopher the while he goes 
 Winging along where the great water throes ? 
 How shall I do 
 To get anew 
 
 Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more 20 
 
 Above, above 
 
 The reach of fluttering Love, 
 And make him cower lowly while I soar? 
 Shall I gulp wine ? No, that is vulgarism, 
 A heresy and schism. 
 Foisted into the canon-law of love ; — 
 No, — wine is only sweet to happy men ; 
 More dismal cares 
 Seize on me unawares, — 
 
 Where shall I learn to get my peace again ? 30 
 
 To banish thoughts of that most hateful land, 
 Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand 
 Where they were wreck'd and live a wrecked life ; 
 That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour, 
 Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore, 
 Unown'd of any weedy- haired gods ;
 
 254 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods. 
 
 Iced in the great lakes, to afflict mankind ; 
 
 Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind. 
 
 Would fright a Dryad ; whose harsh herbaged meads 40 
 
 Make lean and lank the starv'd ox while he feeds ; 
 
 There bad flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song, 
 
 And great unerring Nature once seems wrong. 
 
 O, for some sunny spell 
 
 To dissipate the shadows of this hell ! 
 
 Say they are gone, — with the new dawning light 
 
 Steps forth my lady bright ! 
 
 O, let me once more rest 
 
 My soul upon that dazzling breast ! 
 
 Let once again these aching arms be placed, 50 
 
 The tender gaolers of thy waist ! 
 
 And let me feel that warm breath here and there 
 
 To spread a rapture in my very hair, — 
 
 O, the sweetness of the pain ! 
 
 Give me those lips again ! 
 
 Enough ! Enough ! it is enough for me 
 
 To dream of thee ! 
 
 Lines supposed to have been addressed to Fanny Brarvne 
 
 THIS living hand, now warm and capable 
 Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold 
 And in the icy silence of the tomb, 
 So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights 
 That thou would [st] wish thine own heart dry of blood 
 So in ray veins red life might stream again. 
 And thou be conscience-calm'd — see here it is — 
 I hold it towards you.
 
 SONGS AND LYRICS 
 
 ON . . . 
 
 THINK not of it, sweet one, so ;- 
 Give it not a tear ; 
 Sigh thou mayst, and bid it go 
 Any — any where. 
 
 Do not look so sad, sweet one, — 
 
 Sad and fadingly ; 
 Shed one drop then, — it is gone — 
 
 O 'twas born to die ! 
 
 Still so pale ? then, dearest, weep ; 
 
 Weep, I'll count the tears. 
 And each one shall be a bliss 
 
 For thee in after years. 
 
 Brighter has it left thine eyes 
 
 Than a sunny rill ; 
 And thy whispering melodies 
 
 Are tenderer still. 
 
 Yet — as all things mourn awhile 
 
 At fleeting blisses ; 
 Let us too ; but be our dirge 
 
 A dirge of kisses. 
 
 LINES 
 
 UN FELT, unheard, unseen, 
 I've left my little queen. 
 Her languid arms in silver slumber lying : 
 Ah ! through their nestling touch. 
 Who — who could tell how much 
 There is for madness — cruel, or complying .''
 
 256 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Those faery lids how sleek ! 
 
 Those lips how moist ! — they speak, 
 In ripest quiet, shadows of sweet sounds : 
 
 Into my fancy's ear lo 
 
 Melting a burden dear, 
 How "Love doth know no fullness, nor no bounds." 
 
 True ! — tender monitors ! 
 
 I bend unto your laws : 
 This sweetest day for dalliance was bom ! 
 
 So, without more ado, 
 
 I'll feel my heaven anew, 
 For all the blushing of the hasty mom. 
 
 Where's the Poet ? 
 
 WHERE'S the Poet ? show him ! show him, 
 Muses nine ! that I may know him. 
 'Tis the man who with a man 
 Is an equal, be he King, 
 Or poorest of the beggar-clan, 
 Or any other wondrous thing 
 A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato ; 
 'Tis the man who with a bird. 
 Wren, or Eagle, finds his way to 
 All its instincts ; he hath heard 
 The Lion's roaring, and can tell 
 What his homy throat expresseth. 
 And to him the Tiger's yell 
 Comes articulate and presseth 
 On his ear like mother-tongue. 
 
 " Under the flag 
 Of each his faction, they to battle bring 
 Their embryo atoms." — MiLTON. 
 
 T T 7 ELCOME joy, and welcome sorrow, 
 
 W Lethe's weed and Hermes' feather ; 
 Come to-day and come to-morrow, 
 I do love you both together ! 
 
 I love to mark sad faces in fair weather ; 
 And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder ; 
 
 Fair and foul I love together : 
 Meadows sweet where flames are under, 
 And a giggle at a wonder ; 
 Visage sage at pantomime ; lo
 
 ON A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR 257 
 
 Funeral, and steeple-chime ; 
 
 Infant playing with a skull ; 
 
 Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull ; 
 
 Nightshade with the woodbine kissing ; 
 
 Serpents in red roses hissing ; 
 
 Cleopatra regal-dress d 
 
 With the aspic at her breast ; 
 
 Dancing music, music sad, 
 
 Both together, sane and mad ; 
 
 Muses bright and muses pale ; 20 
 
 Sombre Saturn, Momus hale ; — 
 
 Laugh and sigh, and laugh again ; 
 
 Oh ! the sweetness of the pain ! 
 
 Muses bright and muses pale. 
 
 Bare your faces of the veil ; 
 Let me see ; and let me write 
 
 Of the day and of the night — 
 Both together : — let me slake 
 
 All my thirst for sweet heart-ache ; 
 Let my bower be of yew, 30 
 
 Interwreath'd with myrtles new ; 
 
 Pines and lime trees full in bloom, 
 And my couch a low grass-tomb. 
 
 On a Lock of Milton's Hair 
 
 CHIEF of organic numbers ! 
 Old Scholar of the Spheres ! 
 Thy spirit never slumbers, 
 But rolls about our ears 
 For ever and for ever ! 
 O what a mad endeavour 
 
 Worketh He, 
 Who to thy sacred and ennobled hearse 
 Would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse 
 
 And melody. 
 
 How heavenward thou soundest ! 
 Live Temple of sweet noise. 
 And Discord unconfoundest. 
 Giving Delight new joys, 
 And Pleasure nobler pinions : 
 O where are thy dominions ? 
 
 17
 
 258 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Lend thine ear 
 To a young Delian oath — ay, by thy soul, 
 By all that from thy mortal lips did roll. 
 And by the kernel of thy earthly love. 
 Beauty in things on earth and things above. 
 
 I swear ! 
 
 When every childish fashion 
 Has vanished from my rhyme. 
 Will I, grey gone in passion. 
 Leave to an after-time 
 Hymning and Harmony 
 
 Of thee and of thy works, and of thy life ; 
 
 But vain is now the burning and the strife ; 
 
 Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife 
 With old Philosophy, 
 
 And mad with glimpses of futurity. 
 
 For many years my offerings must be hush'd ; 
 When I do speak, I'll think upon this hour. 
 Because I feel my forehead hot and flushed. 
 Even at the simplest vassal of thy power. 
 
 A lock of thy bright hair, — 
 
 Sudden it came, 
 And I was startled when I caught thy name 
 
 Coupled so unaware ; 
 Yet at the moment temperate was my blood— 
 I thought I had beheld it from the flood ! 
 
 o 
 
 WHAT THE THRUSH SAID 
 
 To Tleynolds 
 THOU whose face hath felt the Winter's wind, 
 
 Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist 
 And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars ! 
 To thee the spring will be a harvest time. 
 O thou whose only book has been the light 
 Of supreme darkness, which thou feddest on 
 Night after night, when Phoebus was away ! 
 To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn. 
 O fret not after knowledge. I have none. 
 And yet my song comes native with the warmth. j 
 
 O fret not after knowledge ! I have none. 
 And yet the evening listens. He who saddens 
 At thought of idleness cannot be idle. 
 And he's awake who thinks himself asleep. 
 
 I
 
 FAERY SONGS 
 
 I 
 
 SHED no tear ! oh shed no tear ! 
 The flower will bloom another year. 
 Weep no more ! oh weep no more ! 
 Young buds sleep in the root's white core. 
 Dry your eyes ! oh dry your eyes ! 
 For I was taught in Paradise 
 To ease my breast of melodies — 
 Shed no tear. 
 
 Overhead ! look overhead ! 
 
 'Mong the blossoms white and red — lo 
 
 Look up, look up. I flutter now 
 
 On this flush pomegranate bough. 
 
 See me ! 'tis this silvery bill 
 
 Ever cures the good man's ill. 
 
 Shed no tear ! Oh shed no tear ! 
 
 The flower will bloom another year. 
 
 Adieu, adieu ! — I fly, adieu ! 
 
 I vanish in the heaven's blue — 
 
 Adieu ! Adieu 1 
 
 II 
 
 Ah ! woe is me ! poor silver- wing! 
 
 That I must chant thy lady's dirge, 
 And death to this fair haunt of spring. 
 
 Of melody, and streams of flowery verge, — 
 Poor silver-wing ! ah ! woe is me ! 
 
 That I must see 
 These blossoms snow upon thy lady's pall ! 
 
 Go, pretty page ! and in her ear 
 
 Whisper that the hour is near ! 
 
 Softly tell her not to fear lo 
 
 Such calm favonian burial ! 
 
 Go, pi'etty page ! and soothly tell, — 
 
 The blossoms hang by a melting spell, 
 And fall they must, ere a star wink thrice 
 
 Upon her closed eyes. 
 That now in vain are weeping their last tears, 
 
 At sweet life leaving, and these arbours green, — 
 Rich dowry from the Spirit of the Spheres, — 
 Alas ! poor Queen !
 
 260 JOHN KEATS 
 
 DAISY'S SONG 
 
 1 
 
 THE sun, with his great eye, 
 Sees not so much as I ; 
 And the moon, all silver-proud. 
 Might as well be in a cloud. 
 
 2 
 And O the spring — the spring ! 
 I lead the life of a king ! 
 Couch' d in the teeming grass, 
 I spy each pretty lass. 
 
 3 
 I look where no one dares, 
 And I stare where no one stares. 
 And when the night is nigh. 
 Lambs bleat my lullaby. 
 
 SONG 
 
 1 
 
 THE stranger lighted from his steed. 
 And ere he spake a word 
 He seized my lady's lily hand, 
 And kiss'd it all imheard. 
 
 2 
 
 The stranger walk'd into the hall, 
 
 And ere he spake a word 
 He kiss'd my lady's cherry lips. 
 
 And kiss'd 'em all unheard. 
 
 S 
 The stranger walk'd into the bower, — 
 
 But my lady first did go, — 
 Aye hand in hand into the bower 
 
 Where my lord's roses blow. 
 
 4 
 
 My lady's maid had a silken scarf 
 
 And a golden ring had she, 
 And a kiss from the stranger, as off he went 
 
 Again on his fair palfrey. a
 
 Asleep ! sleep a little while 
 
 ASLEEP ! O sleep a little while, white pearl 
 And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee, 
 And let me call Heaven's blessing on thine eyes, 
 And let me breathe into the happy air 
 That doth enfold and touch thee all about. 
 Vows of my slavery, my giving up. 
 My sudden adoration, my great love ! 
 
 Where he ye going, yo\i Devon Maid ? 
 
 1 
 
 WHERE be ye going, you Devon maid ? 
 And what have ye there in the basket ? 
 Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy. 
 Will ye give me some cream if I ask it ? 
 
 2 
 
 I love your Meads, and I love your flowers. 
 
 And I love your junkets mainly. 
 But 'hind the door I love kissing more, 
 
 O look not so disdainly. 
 
 3 
 I love your hills and I love your dales. 
 
 And I love your flocks a-bleating — 
 But O, on the heather to lie together, 
 
 With both our hearts a-beating ! 
 
 4 
 
 I'll put your basket all safe in a nook ; 
 
 Your shawl I'll hang on the willow ; 
 And we will sigh in the daisy's eye. 
 
 And kiss on a grass green pillow. 
 
 MEG MERRILIES 
 
 1 
 
 OLD MEG she was a Gipsy, 
 And liv'd upon the Moors : 
 Her bed it wao the brown heath turf. 
 And her house was out of doors.
 
 262 JOHN KEATS 
 
 2 
 Her apples were swart blackberries. 
 
 Her currants pods o' broom ; 
 Her wine was dew of the Avild Avhite rose. 
 
 Her book a churchyard tomb. 
 
 3 
 Her Brothers were the craggy hills, 
 
 Her Sisters larchen trees — 
 Alone with her great family 
 
 She liv'd as she did please. 
 
 No breakfast had she many a morn. 
 
 No dinner many a noon, 
 And 'stead of supper she would stare 
 
 Full hard against the Moon. 
 
 5 
 
 But every mom of woodbine fresh 
 
 She made her garlanding, 
 And every night the dark glen Yew 
 
 She wove, and she would sing. 
 
 6 
 
 And with her fingers old and brown 
 She plaited Mats o' Rushes, 
 
 And gave them to the Cottagei's 
 She met among the Bushes. 
 
 7 
 Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen 
 
 And tall as Amazon : 
 An old red blanket cloak she wore ; 
 
 A chip hat had she on. 
 God rest her aged bones somewhere — 
 
 She died full long agone ! 
 
 STAFFA 
 
 ^T OT Aladdin magian 
 S Ever such a work began ; 
 Not the wizard of the Dee 
 Ever such a dream could see ; 
 Not St. John, in Patmos' Isle, 
 In the passion of his toil.
 
 STAFFA ^63 
 
 When he saw the churches seven, 
 
 Golden aisled, built up in heaven, 
 
 Gaz'd at such a rugged wonder. 
 
 As I stood its roofing under, lo 
 
 Lo ! 1 saw one sleeping there. 
 
 On the marble cold and bare. 
 
 While the surges wash'd his feet, 
 
 And his garments white did beat 
 
 Drench'd about the sombre rocks. 
 
 On his neck his well-grown locks, 
 
 Lifted dry above the main. 
 
 Were upon the curl again. 
 
 " What is this ? and what art thou ? " 
 
 Whisper'd I, and touch'd his brow ; 20 
 
 " What art thou ? and what is this ? " 
 
 Whisper'd I, and strove to kiss 
 
 The spirit's hand, to wake his eyes ; 
 
 Up he started in a trice : 
 
 "I am Lycidas," said he, 
 
 "Fam'd in funeral minstrelsy ! 
 
 This was architectur'd thus 
 
 By the great Oceanus ! — 
 
 Here his mighty waters play 
 
 Hollow organs all the day ; 30 
 
 Here by turns his dolphins all. 
 
 Finny palmers great and small, 
 
 Come to pay devotion due — 
 
 Each a mouth of pearls must strew. 
 
 Many a mortal of these days. 
 
 Dares to pass our sacred ways. 
 
 Dares to touch audaciously 
 
 This Cathedral of the Sea ! 
 
 I have been the pontiff-priest 
 
 Where the waters never rest, 40 
 
 Where a fledgy sea-bird choir 
 
 Soars for ever ; holy fire 
 
 I have hid from mortal man ; 
 
 Proteus is my Sacristan. 
 
 But the dulled eye of mortal 
 
 Hath pass'd beyond the rocky portal ; 
 
 So for ever will I leave 
 
 Such a taint, and soon unweave 
 
 All the magic of the place." 
 
 So saying, with a Spirit's glance 50 
 
 He dived !
 
 264 JOHN KEATS 
 
 A PROPHECY 
 
 To his brother George i?i America 
 
 ''' I ""IS the witching hour of night, 
 
 ^ Orbed is the moon and bright. 
 And the stars they ghsten, glisten, 
 Seeming with bright eyes to listen — 
 
 For what listen they ? 
 For a song and for a charm. 
 See they glisten in alarm. 
 And the moon is waxing warm 
 
 To hear what I shall say. 
 Moon ! keep wide thy golden ears — lo 
 
 Hearken, stars ! and hearken, spheres ! — 
 Hearken, thou eternal sky ! 
 I sing an infant's lullaby, 
 
 A pretty lullaby. 
 Listen, listen, listen, listen, 
 Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten. 
 
 And hear my lullaby ! 
 Though the rushes that will make 
 Its cradle still are in the lake — 
 
 Though the linen that will be 20 
 
 Its swathe, is on the cotton tree — 
 Though the woollen that will keep 
 It warm, is on the silly sheep — 
 Listen, starlight, listen, listen. 
 Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten. 
 
 And hear my lullaby ! 
 Child, I see thee ! Child, I've found thee 
 Midst of the quiet all around thee ! 
 Child, I see thee ! Child, I spy thee ! 
 And thy mother sweet is nigh thee ! 30 
 
 Child, I know thee ! Child no more. 
 But a Poet evermore ! 
 See, see, the lyre, the lyre. 
 In a flame of fire. 
 Upon the little cradle's top 
 Flaring, flaring, flaring. 
 Past the eyesight's bearing. 
 Awake it from its sleep. 
 And see if it can keep 
 Its eyes upon the blaze — 40 
 
 Amaze, amaze ! 
 It stares, it stares, it stares. 
 It dares what no one dares ! 

 
 A PROPHECY 265 
 
 It lifts its little hand into the flame 
 Unharm'd, and on the strings 
 Paddles a little tune, and sings, 
 With dumb endeavour sweetly — 
 Bard art thou completely ! 
 
 Little child 
 
 O' th' western wild, 50 
 
 Bard art thou completely ! 
 Sweetly with dumb endeavour, 
 A Poet now or never, 
 
 Little child 
 
 O' th' western wild, 
 A Poet now or never ! 
 
 SONG 
 IN A DREAR-NIGHTED DECEMBER 
 
 1 
 
 IN a drear-nighted December, 
 Too happy, happy tree. 
 Thy branches ne'er remember 
 Their green felicity : 
 The north cannot undo them 
 With a sleety whistle through them ; 
 Nor frozen thawings glue them 
 From budding at the prime. 
 
 In a drear-nighted December, 
 
 Too happy, happy brook, 10 
 
 Thy bubblings ne'er remember 
 
 Apollo's summer look ; 
 
 But with a sweet forgetting. 
 
 They stay their crystal fretting, 
 
 Never, never petting 
 
 About the frozen time. 
 
 3 
 
 Ah ! would 'twere so with many 
 
 A gentle girl and boy ! 
 
 But were there ever any 
 
 Writhed not at passed joy ? 20 
 
 To know the change and feel it. 
 
 When there is none to heal it 
 
 Nor numbed sense to steel it, 
 
 Was never said in rhyme.
 
 266 JOHN KEATS 
 
 II 
 
 SONG 
 
 USH, hush ! tread softly ! hush, hush my dear ! 
 All the house is asleep, but we know very well 
 That the jealous, the jealous old bald-pate may hear, 
 Tho' you've padded his night-cap — O sweet Isabel ! 
 Tho' your feet are more light than a Faery's feet, 
 Who dances on bubbles where brooklets meet, — 
 Hush, hush ! soft tiptoe ! hush, hush my dear ! 
 For less than a nothing tho jealous can hear. 
 
 No leaf doth tremble, no ripple is there 
 
 On the river, — all's still, and the night's sleepy eye 
 Closes up, and forgets all its Lethean care, 
 
 Charm'd to death by the drone of the humming May-fly ; 
 And the Moon, whether prudish or complaisant, 
 Has fled to her bower, well knowing I want 
 No light in the dusk, no torch in the gloom, 
 But my Isabel's eyes, and her lips pulp'd with bloom. 
 
 Lift the latch ! ah gently ! ah tenderly — sweet ! 
 
 We are dead if that latchet gives one little clink ! 
 Well done — now those lips, and a flowery seat — 
 The old man may sleep, and the planets may wink ; 
 The shut rose shall dream of our loves, and awake 
 Full blown, and such warmth for the morning take, 
 The stock-dove shall hatch her soft brace and shall coo. 
 While I kiss to the melody, aching all through ! 
 
 SONG 
 
 I HAD a dove and the sweet dove died ; 
 And 1 have thought it died of grieving : 
 O, what could it grieve for ? Its feet were tied, 
 With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving ; 
 Sweet little red feet ! why should you die — 
 Why should you leave me, sweet bird ! why ? 
 You liv'd alone in the forest-tree. 
 Why, pretty thing ! would you not live with me ? 
 1 kiss'd you oft and gave you white peas ; 
 Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees ?
 
 SONG OF FOUR FAIRIES 
 
 Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, 
 
 Salamander, Zephyr, Dusketha, and Breama 
 
 Salamandei' 
 
 HAPPY, happy glowing fire ! 
 Zeph. Fragrant air ! delicious light ! 
 
 Dtis. Let me to my glooms retire ! 
 
 Bre. I to green-weed rivers bright ! 
 
 Sal. Happy, happy glowing fire ! 
 Dazzling bowers of soft retire, 
 Ever let my nourish'd wing, 
 Like a bat's, still wandering, 
 Faintless fan yom* fiery spaces, 
 
 Spirit sole in deadly places. lo 
 
 In unhaimted roar and blaze. 
 Open eyes that never daze. 
 Let me see the myriad shapes 
 Of men, and beasts, and fish, and apes, 
 Portray'd in many a fiery den. 
 And wrought by spumy bitumen 
 On the deep intenser roof, 
 Arched every way aloof. 
 Let me breathe upon their skies, 
 
 And anger their live tapestries ; 20 
 
 Free from cold, and every care 
 Of chilly rain and shivering air. 
 
 Zeph. Spirit of Fire ! away ! away ! 
 Or your very roundelay 
 Will sear my plumage newly budded 
 From its quilled sheath, all studded 
 With the self-same dews that fell 
 On the May-grown Asphodel. 
 Spirit of Fire — away ! away ! 
 
 Bre. Spirit of Fire — away ! away ! 30 
 
 Zephyr, blue- eyed fairy, turn. 
 And see my cool sedge-buried urn. 
 Where it rests its mossy brim 
 'Mid water-mint and cresses dim ; 
 And the flowers, in sweet troubles. 
 Lift their eyes above the bubbles. 
 Like our Queen, when she would please
 
 268 JOHN KEATS 
 
 To sleep and Oberon will tease — 
 Love me, blue-eyed Fairy ! true. 
 Soothly I am sick for you. 40 
 
 Zeph. Gentle Breama ! by the first 
 Violet young nature nurst, 
 I will bathe myself with thee, 
 So you sometimes follow me 
 To my home, far, far in west, 
 Beyond the nimble-wheeled quest 
 Of the golden-browed sun. 
 Come with me, o'er tops of trees. 
 To my fragrant palaces. 
 
 Where they ever floating are 50 
 
 Beneath the cherish of a star 
 Call'd Vesper, who with silver veil 
 Ever hides his brilliance pale. 
 Ever gently-drows'd doth keep 
 Twilight for the Fayes to sleep. 
 Fear not that your watery hair 
 Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there ; 
 Clouds of stored summer rains 
 Thou shalt taste, before the stains 
 
 Of the mountain soil they take, 60 
 
 And too unlucent for thee make. 
 1 love thee, crystal Fairy, true ! 
 Sooth I am as sick for you ! 
 
 Sal. Out, ye aguish Fairies, out ! 
 Chilly lovers, what a rout 
 Keep ye with your frozen breath, 
 Colder than the mortal death ! 
 Adder-eyed Dusketha, speak ! 
 Shall we leave these, and go seek 
 
 In the earth's wide entrails old yo 
 
 Couches warm as theirs are cold ? 
 
 for a fiery gloom and thee, 
 Dusketha, so enchantingly 
 Freckle-wing' d and lizard-sided ! 
 
 Dus. By thee. Sprite, will I be guided ! 
 
 1 care not for cold or heat ; 
 
 Frost and flame, or sparks, or sleet, 
 
 To my essence are the same ; — 
 
 But I honour more the flame. 
 
 Sprite of Fu-e, I follow thee go 
 
 Wheresoever it may be, — 
 
 To the torrid spouts and fountains. 
 
 Underneath earth-quaked mountains ; 
 
 Or, at thy supreme desire,
 
 SONG OF FOUR FAIRIES 269 
 
 Touch the very pulse of fire 
 With my bare unlidded eyes. 
 
 Sal. Sweet Dusketha ! paradise ! 
 Off, ye icy Spirits, fly ! 
 Frosty creatures of the sky ! 
 
 Diis. Breathe upon them, fiery sprite ! go 
 
 T3 ' \ Away ! away to our deHght ! 
 
 Sal. Go, feed on icicles, while we 
 Bedded in tongue-flames will be. 
 
 Dus. Lead me to those feverish glooms, 
 Sprite of Fire ! 
 
 Bre. Me to the blooms, 
 
 Blue -eyed Zephyr, of those flowers 
 Far in the west where the May-cloud lowers ; 
 And the beams of still Vesper, when winds are all wist. 
 Are shed through the rain and the milder mist, 
 And twilight your floating bowers. loo
 
 270 JOHN KEATS 
 
 EPISTLE 
 
 TO 
 
 JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS 
 
 DEAR Reynolds ! as last night I lay in bed, 
 There came before my eyes that wonted thread 
 Of shapes, and shadows, and remembrances. 
 That every other minute vex and please : 
 Things all disjointed come from north and south, — 
 Two Witch's eyes above a Cherub's mouth, 
 Voltaire with casque and shield and habergeon. 
 And Alexander with his nightcap on ; 
 Old Socrates a-tying his cravat, 
 
 And Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth's Cat ; lo 
 
 And Junius Brutus, pretty well so so, 
 Making the best of 's way towards Soho. 
 
 Few are there who escape these visitings, — 
 Perhaps one or two whose lives have patent wings. 
 And thro' whose curtains peeps no hellish nose. 
 No wild-boar tushes, and no Mermaid's toes ; 
 But flowers bursting out with lusty pride, 
 And young iEolian harps personified ; 
 Some Titian colours touch'd into real life, — 
 The sacrifice goes on ; the pontiff knife 30 
 
 Gleams in the Sun, the milk-white heifer lows. 
 The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows : 
 A white sail shows above the green-head cliff. 
 Moves round the point, and throws her anchor stiff; 
 The mariners join hymn with those on land. 
 
 You know the Enchanted Castle, — it doth stand 
 Upon a rock, on the border of a Lake, 
 Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake 
 From some old magic-like Urganda's Sword.
 
 EPISTLE TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS 271 
 
 O Phoebus ! that I had thy sacred word 30 
 
 To show this Castle, in fair dreaming wise, 
 Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies ! 
 
 You know it well enough, where it doth seem 
 A mossy place, a Merlin's Hall, a dream ; 
 You know the clear Lake, and the little Isles, 
 The mountains blue, and cold near neighbour rills, 
 All which elsewhere are but half animate ; 
 There do they look alive to love and hate, 
 To smiles and frowns ; they seem a lifted mound 
 Above some giant, pulsing underground. 40 
 
 Part of the Building was a chosen See, 
 Built by a banished Santon of Chaldee ; 
 The other part, two thousand years from him. 
 Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim ; 
 Then there's a little wing, far from the Sun, 
 Built by a Lapland Witch turn'd maudlin Nun ; 
 And many other juts of aged stone 
 Founded with many a mason-devil's groan. 
 
 The doors all look as if they oped themselves. 
 The windows as if latched by Fays and Elves, 50 
 
 And fi'om them comes a silver flash of light, 
 As from the westward of a Summer's night ; 
 Or like a beauteous woman's large blue eyes 
 Gone mad thro' olden songs and poesies. 
 
 See ! what is coming from the distance dim ! 
 A golden Galley all in silken trim ! 
 Three rows of oars are lightening, moment whiles. 
 Into the verd'rous bosoms of those isles ; 
 Towards the shade, under the Castle wall. 
 It comes in silence, — now 'tis hidden all. 60 
 
 The Clarion sounds, and from a Postern-gate 
 An echo of sweet music doth create 
 A fear in the poor Herdsman, who doth bring 
 His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring, — • 
 He tells of the sweet music, and the spot. 
 To all his friends, and they believe him not. 
 
 O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, 
 Would all their colours from the sunset take : 
 From something of material sublime. 
 
 Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time 70 
 
 In the dark void of night. For in the world
 
 272 JOHN KEATS 
 
 We jostle, — but my flag is not unfurl'd 
 
 On the Admiral-staff, — and so philosophize 
 
 I dare not yet ! Oh, never will the prize. 
 
 High reason, and the love 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 confin'd, 
 
 Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind, go 
 
 Cannot refer to any standard law 
 
 Of either earth or heaven ? It is a flaw 
 
 In happiness, to see beyond our bourn, — 
 
 It forces us in summer skies to mourn. 
 
 It spoils the singing of the Nightingale. 
 
 Dear Reynolds ! I have a mysterious tale. 
 And cannot speak it : the first page I read 
 Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed 
 Among the breakers ; 'twas a quiet eve. 
 
 The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave go 
 
 An untumultous fringe of silver foam 
 Along the flat brown sand ; I was at home 
 And should have been most happy, — but I saw 
 Too far into the sea, where every maw 
 The greater on the less feeds evermore. — 
 But I saw too distinct into the core 
 Of an eternal fierce destruction. 
 And so from happiness I far was gone. 
 Still am I sick of it, and tho', to-day, 
 
 I've gather'd young spring-leaves, and flowers gay loo 
 
 Of periwinkle and wild strawberry. 
 Still do I that most fierce destruction see, — 
 The Shark at savage prey, — the Hawk at pounce, — 
 The gentle Robin, like a Pard or Ounce, 
 Ravening a worm, — Away, ye horrid moods ! 
 Moods of one's mind ! You know I hate them well. 
 You know I'd sooner be a clapping Bell 
 To some Kamtschatcan Missionary Church, 
 Than with these horrid moods be left i' the lurch^ 

 
 SONNETS 
 
 I 
 
 OH ! how I love, on a fair summer's eve. 
 When streams of light pour down the golden west, 
 
 And on the balmy zephyrs tranquil rest 
 The silver clouds, far — far away to leave 
 All meaner thoughts, and take a sweet reprieve 
 
 From little cares ; to find, with easy quest, 
 
 A fragrant wild, with Nature's beauty drest, 
 And there into delight my soul deceive. 
 There warm my breast with patriotic lore. 
 
 Musing on Milton's fate — on Sydney's bier — 
 Till their stern forms before my mind arise : 
 Perhaps on wing of Poesy upsoar, 
 
 Full often dropping a delicious tear, 
 When some melodious sorrow spells mine eyes. 
 
 II 
 
 AFTER dark vapours have oppress'd our plains 
 For a long dreary season, comes a day 
 
 Born of the gentle South, and clears away 
 From the sick heavens all unseemly stains. 
 The anxious month, relieved of its pains, 
 
 Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May, 
 
 The eye-lids with the passing coolness play. 
 Like rose-leaves with the drip of summer rains. 
 And calmest thoughts come round us — as of leaves 
 
 Budding — fruit ripening in stillness — autumn suns 
 Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves, — 
 Sweet Sappho's cheek, — a sleeping infant's breath, — 
 
 The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs,- 
 A woodland rivulet, — a Poet's death. 
 
 i8
 
 274 JOHN KEATS 
 
 III 
 
 Written on the blank space of a leaf at the end oj Chancers tale oj 
 
 The Flowre and the LeJ'e 
 
 THIS pleasant tale is like a little copse : 
 The honied lines so freshly interlace, 
 
 To keep the reader in so sweet a place, 
 So that he here and there full-hearted stops ; 
 And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops 
 
 Come cool and suddenly against his face. 
 
 And, by the wandering melody, may trace 
 Which way the tender-legged linnet hops. 
 Oh ! what a power has white simplicity ! 
 
 What mighty power has this gentle story ! 
 
 I, that do ever feel athirst for glory. 
 Could at this moment be content to lie 
 
 Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings 
 
 Were heard of none beside the mournful robins. 
 
 IV 
 TO HAYDON 
 
 With a Sonnet on seeing the Elgin Marbles 
 
 HAYDON ! forgive me that I cannot speak 
 Definitively of these mighty things ; 
 
 Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings. 
 That what I want I know not where to seek. 
 And think that I would not be over-meek. 
 
 In rolling out upfollow'd thunderings. 
 
 Even to the steep of Heliconian springs. 
 Were I of ample strength for such a freak. 
 Think, too, that all these numbers should be thine ; 
 
 Whose else ? In this who touch thy vesture's hem ? 
 For, when men stared at what was most divine 
 
 With brainless idiotism and o'erwise phlegm, 
 Thou hadst beheld the full Hesperian shrine 
 
 Of their star in the east, and gone to worship them I
 
 SONNETS 275 
 
 On .seeing the Elgin Marh/ex for the ^firat time 
 
 MY spirit is too weak ; mortality 
 Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, 
 
 And each imagined pinnacle and steep 
 Of godlike hardship tells me I must die 
 Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. 
 
 Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep. 
 
 That I have not the cloudy winds to keep 
 Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. 
 Such dim-conceived glories of the brain 
 
 Bring round the heart an indescribable feud ; 
 So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, 
 
 That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude 
 Wasting of old Time — with a billowy main 
 
 A sun, a shadow of a magnitude. 
 
 VI 
 
 On a Picture of Leander 
 
 COME hither all sweet maidens soberly, 
 Down-looking aye, and with a chasten' d light 
 
 Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white. 
 And meekly let your fair hands joined be, 
 As if so gentle that ye could not see, 
 
 Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright. 
 
 Sinking away to his young spirit's night, 
 Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea : 
 'Tis young Leander toiling to his death ; 
 
 Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips 
 For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile. 
 
 O horrid dream ! see how his body dips. 
 Dead-heavy ; arms and shoulders gleam awhile : 
 He's gone ; up bubbles all his amorous breath !
 
 276 JOHN KEATS 
 
 VII 
 
 On the Sea 
 
 IT keeps eternal whisperings around 
 Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell 
 
 Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell 
 Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. 
 Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, 
 
 That scarcely will the very smallest shell 
 
 Be moved for days from where it sometime fell, 
 When last the winds of heaven were unbound. 
 O ye ! who have your eye-balls vex'd and tired. 
 
 Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea ; 
 O ye ! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude. 
 
 Or fed too much with cloying melody, — 
 Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood 
 Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired ! 
 
 VIII 
 
 On Leigh Hunt's Poeniy The Story of Rimini 
 
 WHO loves to peer up at the morning sun. 
 With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek. 
 
 Let him, with this sweet tale, full often seek 
 For meadows where the little rivers run ; 
 Who loves to linger with that brightest one 
 
 Of Heaven — Hesperus — let him lowly speak 
 
 These numbers to the night, and starlight meek, 
 Or moon, if that her hunting be begun. 
 He who knows these delights, and too is prone 
 
 To moralise upon a smile or tear. 
 Will find at once a region of his own, 
 
 A bower for his spirit, and will steer 
 To alleys, where the fir-tree drops its cone, 
 
 Where robins hop, and fallen leaves are sear.
 
 SONNETS 277 
 
 IX 
 
 On sitting down to read King Lear once again 
 
 OGOLDEN-TONGUED Romance with serene lute ! 
 Fair plumed Syren ! Queen of far away ! 
 
 Leave melodizing on this wintry day, 
 Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute : 
 Adieu ! for once again the fierce dispute, 
 
 Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay 
 
 Must I burn through ; once more humbly assay 
 The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit. 
 Chief Poet ! and ye clouds of Albion, 
 
 Begetters of our deep eternal theme. 
 When through the old oak forest I am gone, 
 
 Let me not wander in a barren dream. 
 But when I am consumed in the fire, 
 Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire. 
 
 WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be 
 Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, 
 Before high-piled books, in charact'ry. 
 
 Hold like full garners the full-ripen'd grain ; 
 When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face. 
 
 Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, 
 And think that I may never live to trace 
 
 Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance ; 
 And when I feel, fair creature of an hour ! 
 
 That I shall never look upon thee more. 
 Never have relish in the faery power 
 
 Of unreflecting love ! — then on the shore 
 Of the wide world I stand alone, and think. 
 Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
 
 278 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XI 
 TO THE NILE 
 
 SON of the old moon-mountains African ! 
 Stream of the Pyramid and Crocodile ! 
 We call thee fruitful, and, that very while 
 A desert fills our seeing's inward span. 
 Nurse of swart nations since the world began. 
 Art thou so fruitful ? or dost thou beguile 
 Those men to honour thee, who, worn with toil. 
 Rest them a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan ? 
 O may dark fancies err ! They surely do ; 
 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste 
 Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew 
 Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste 
 The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too, 
 And to the sea as happily dost haste. 
 
 XII 
 
 TO SPENSER 
 
 SPENSER ! a jealous honourer of thine, 
 A forester deep in thy midmost trees. 
 Did, last eve, ask my promise to refine 
 
 Some English, that might strive thine ear to please. 
 
 But, Elfin-poet ! 'tis impossible 
 For an inhabitant of wintry earth 
 
 To rise, like Phoebus, with a golden quill, 
 Fire-wing'd, and make a morning in his mirth. 
 
 It is impossible to 'scape from toil 
 O' the sudden, and receive thy spiriting : 
 
 The flower must drink the natm-e of the soil 
 Before it can put forth its blossoming : 
 
 Be with me in the summer days, and I 
 
 Will for thine honour and his pleasure try.
 
 SONNETS 279 
 
 XIII 
 TO 
 
 TIME'S sea hath been five years at its slow ebb ; 
 Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand ; 
 Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web, 
 
 And snared by the ungloving of thine hand. 
 And yet I never look on midnight sky, 
 
 But I behold thine eyes' well memoried light ; 
 I cannot look upon the rose's dye, 
 
 But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight ; 
 I cannot look on any budding flower, 
 
 But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips, 
 And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour 
 
 Its sweets in the wrong sense : — Thou dost eclipse 
 Every delight with sweet remembering. 
 And grief unto my darling joys dost bring. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Amwer to a Sonnet hy J. H. Reynolds, ending — 
 
 ' ' Dark eyes are dearer far 
 
 Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell." 
 
 BLUE ! 'Tis the life of heaven, — the domain 
 Of Cynthia, — the wide palace of the sun, — 
 The tent of Hesperus, and all his train, — 
 
 The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey, and dun. 
 Blue ! 'Tis the life of waters — ocean 
 
 And all its vassal streams : pools numberless, 
 May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can 
 
 Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness. 
 Blue ! Gentle cousin of the forest-green. 
 
 Married to green in all the sweetest flowers — 
 Forget-me-not, — the blue-bell, — and, that queen 
 
 Of secrecy, the violet : what strange powers 
 Hast thou, as a mere shadow ! But how great. 
 When in an Eye thou art, alive with fate !
 
 280 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XV 
 
 OTHAT a week could be an age, and we 
 Felt parting and warm meeting every week, 
 Then one poor year a thousand years would be, 
 
 The flush of welcome ever on the cheek : 
 So could we live long life in little space, 
 
 So time itself would be annihilate. 
 So a day's journey in oblivious haze 
 
 To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate. 
 O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind ! 
 
 To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant ! 
 In little time a host of joys to bind. 
 
 And keep our souls in one eternal pant ! 
 This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught 
 Me how to harbour such a happy thought. 
 
 XVI 
 THE HUMAN SEASONS 
 
 FOUR Seasons fill the measure of the year ; 
 There are four seasons in the mind of man : 
 He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear 
 
 Takes in all beauty with an easy span : 
 He has his Summer, when luxuriously 
 
 Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves 
 To ruminate, and by such dreaming high 
 
 Is nearest unto Heaven : quiet coves 
 His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings 
 
 He furleth close ; contented so to look 
 On mists in idleness — to let fair things 
 
 Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. 
 He has his Winter too of pale misfeature. 
 Or I else he would forego his mortal nature.
 
 SONNETS 281 
 
 XVII 
 TO HOMER 
 
 STANDING aloof in giant ignorance, 
 Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, 
 As one who sits ashore and longs perchance 
 
 To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. 
 So thou wast blind ! — but then the veil was rent ; 
 
 For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live, 
 And Neptune made for thee a spermy tent. 
 
 And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive ; 
 Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light. 
 
 And precipices show untrodden green ; 
 There is a budding morrow in midnight, — 
 
 There is a triple sight in blindness keen ; 
 Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel 
 To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 On visiting the Tomb of Burns 
 
 THE town, the churchyard, and the setting sun, 
 The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem. 
 Though beautiful, cold — strange — as in a dream, 
 I dreamed long ago, now new begun. 
 The short-lived paly Summer is but won 
 From Winter's ague, for one hour's gleam ; 
 Though sapphire-warm, their stars do never beam : 
 All is cold Beauty ; pain is never done : 
 For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise, 
 The Real of Beauty, free from that dead hue 
 Sickly imagination and sick pride 
 Cast wan upon it ! Burns ! with honour due 
 I oft have honour'd thee. Great shadow ! hide 
 Thy face ; I sin against thy native skies.
 
 282 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XIX 
 
 TO AILSA ROCK 
 
 HEARKEN, thou craggy ocean-pyramid, 
 Give answer by thy voice — the sea-fowls' screams ! 
 
 When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams ? 
 When from the suri was thy broad forehead hid ? 
 How long is't since the mighty Power bid 
 
 Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams — 
 
 Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams — 
 Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid ! 
 Thou answer'st not ; for thou art dead asleep. 
 
 Thy life is but two dead eternities, 
 The last in air, the former in the deep ! 
 
 First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies ! 
 Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, 
 
 Another cannot wake thy giant size ! 
 
 XX 
 
 Written upon Ben Nevis 
 
 READ me a lesson. Muse, and speak it loud 
 Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist ! 
 I look into the chasms, and a shroud 
 Vapourous doth hide them, — ^^just so much I wist 
 Mankind do know of hell ; I look o'erhead. 
 And there is sullen mist, — even so much 
 Mankind can tell of heaven ; mist is spread 
 Before the earth, beneath me, — even such. 
 Even so vague is man's sight of himself! 
 Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet, — 
 Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf, 
 I tread on them, — that all my eye doth meet 
 Is mist and crag, not only on this height. 
 But in the world of thought and mental might !
 
 SONNETS 283 
 
 XXI 
 
 Written in the Cottage where Burm was born 
 
 THIS mortal body of a thousand days 
 Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room, 
 Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays, 
 Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom ! 
 My pulse is warm with thine own Barley-bree, 
 My head is light with pledging a great soul. 
 My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see, 
 Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal ; 
 Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor. 
 Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find 
 The meadow thou hast tramped o'er and o'er, — 
 Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind, — 
 Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name, — 
 O smile among the shades, for this is fame ! 
 
 XXII 
 
 Fragment of a so?met {translated from Ronsard) 
 
 NATURE witheld Cassandra in the skies 
 For more adornment, a full thousand years ; 
 She took their cream of Beauty's fairest dyes, 
 
 And shaped and tinted her above all peers : 
 Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings, 
 
 And underneath their shadow fill'd her eyes 
 With such a richness that the cloudy Kings 
 
 Of high Olympus utter' d slavish sighs. 
 When from the Heavens I saw her first descend. 
 
 My heart took fire, and only burning pains — 
 They were my pleasures — they my Life's sad end ; 
 
 Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins. 
 
 *
 
 284 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XXIII 
 TO SLEEP 
 
 OSOFT embalmer of the still midnight ! 
 Shutting, with careful fingers and benign. 
 Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light, 
 
 Enshaded in forgetfulness divine ; 
 O soothest Sleep ! if so it please thee, close. 
 
 In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes. 
 Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws 
 
 Around my bed its lulling charities ; 
 
 Then save me, or the passed day will shine 
 Upon my pillow, breeding many woes ; 
 
 Save me from curious conscience, that still lords 
 Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole ; 
 
 Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards. 
 And seal the hushed casket of my soul. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 WHY did 1 laugh to-night ? No voice will tell 
 No God, no Demon of severe response. 
 Deigns to reply fi'om Heaven or from Hell. 
 
 Then to my human heart I turn at once. 
 Heart ! Thou and I are hei*e, sad and alone ; 
 
 Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain ! 
 O Darkness ! Darkness ! ever must I moan. 
 
 To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain. 
 Why did I laugh ? I know this Being's lease. 
 
 My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads ; 
 Yet would I on this very midnight cease, 
 
 And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds ; 
 Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed. 
 But Death intenser — Death is Life's high meed.
 
 SONNETS 285 
 
 XXV 
 
 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 grieved a day ; 
 But to that second circle of sad Hell, 
 
 Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw 
 Of rain and hail -stones, lovers need not tell 
 
 Their sorrows, — pale were the sweet lips I saw. 
 Pale were the Hps I kiss'd, and fair the form 
 I floated with, about that melancholy storm. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 On Fame 
 
 FAME, like a wayward girl, will still be coy 
 To those who woo her with too slavish knees. 
 But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy. 
 
 And dotes the more upon a heart at ease ; 
 She is a Gipsy will not speak to those 
 
 Who have not learnt to be content without her ; 
 A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd close. 
 
 Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her ; 
 A very Gipsy is she, Nilus-born, 
 
 Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar ; 
 Ye love-sick Bards ! repay her scorn for scorn ; 
 
 Ye Artists lovelorn ! madmen that ye are ! 
 Make your best bow to her and bid adieu, 
 Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.
 
 286 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XXVII 
 
 On Fame 
 
 " You cannot eat your cake and have it too." — Proverb. 
 
 HOW fever'd is the man, who cannot look 
 Upon his mortal days with temperate blood, 
 Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book. 
 
 And robs his fair name of its maidenhood ; 
 It is as if the rose should pluck herself, 
 
 Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom, 
 As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf. 
 
 Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom ; 
 But the rose leaves herself upon the briar. 
 
 For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed, 
 And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire ; 
 
 The undisturbed lake has crystal space ; 
 
 Why then should man, teasing the world for grace, 
 Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed ? 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 IF by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd. 
 And, like Andromeda, the Somiet sweet 
 Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness ; 
 Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd, 
 
 Sandals more interwoven and complete 
 To fit the naked foot of poesy ; 
 Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress 
 Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd 
 
 By ear industrious, and attention meet ; 
 Misers of sound and syllable, no less 
 Than Midas of his coinage, let us be 
 
 Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown ; 
 So, if we may not let the Muse be free. 
 
 She will be bound with garlands of her own.
 
 SONNETS 287 
 
 XXIX 
 
 THE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone ! 
 Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast. 
 Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone. 
 
 Bright eyes, aecomplish'd shape, and langrous waist ! 
 Faded the flower and all its budded charms, 
 
 Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes. 
 Faded the shape of beauty from my arms. 
 
 Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise — 
 Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve. 
 
 When the dusk holiday — or holinight 
 Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave 
 
 The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight ; 
 But, as I've read love's missal through to-day. 
 He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray. 
 
 XXX 
 
 I CRY your mercy — pity — love ! — aye, love ! 
 Merciful love that tantalises not, 
 One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, 
 
 Unmask'd, and being seen — without a blot ! 
 O ! let me have thee whole, — all — all — be mine ! 
 
 That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest 
 Of love, your kiss, — those hands, those eyes divine. 
 
 That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,- 
 Yourself — your soul — in pity give me all. 
 
 Withhold no atom's atom or I die, 
 Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall. 
 
 Forget, in the mist of idle misery. 
 Life's purposes, — the palate of my mind 
 Losing its gust, and my ambition blind !
 
 288 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XXXI 
 
 Written on a Blatik Page in Shakespeare's Poems, /(icing A Lover's 
 
 Complaint 
 
 BRIGHT star ! Avould I were steadfast as thou art — 
 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, 
 And watching, with eternal lids apart. 
 
 Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, 
 The moving waters at their priestlike task 
 
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores. 
 Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask 
 
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors — 
 No — yet stiU steadfast, still unchangeable, 
 
 Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast. 
 To feel for ever its soft fall and swell. 
 
 Awake for ever in a sweet unrest. 
 Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, 
 And so live ever — or else swoon to death.
 
 OTHO THE GREAT 
 
 A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS 
 
 19 
 
 >v
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 Otho the Great, Emperor of Germany. 
 LuDOLPH, his Son. 
 Conrad, Duke of Franconia. 
 Albert, a Knight, favoured by Otho. 
 SiGlFRED, an Officer, friend of Ludolph. 
 Theodore, > „^ 
 GONFRID, \Officers. 
 
 Ethelbert, an Abbot. 
 
 Gersa, Prince of Hufigary. 
 
 An Hungarian Captain. 
 
 Physician. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Nobles, Knights, Attendants, and Soldiers. 
 
 Erminia, AHece of Otho. 
 Auranthe, Conrad's Sister. 
 Ladies and Attendants. 
 
 Scene. The Castle of Friedburg, its vicinity, and the Hungarian Camp. 
 
 Time. One Day.
 
 OTHO THE GREAT 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Scene I. — An Apartment in the Castle. 
 Enter Conrad. 
 
 SO, I am safe emerged from these broils ! 
 Amid the wreck of thousands I am whole ; 
 For every crime I have a laurel-wreath. 
 For every lie a lordship. Nor yet has 
 My ship of fortune furl'd her silken sails, — 
 Let her glide on ! This danger'd neck is saved, 
 By dexterous policy, from the rebel's axe ; 
 And of my ducal palace not one stone 
 Is bruised by the Hungarian petards. 
 
 Toil hard, ye slaves, and from the miser-eai*th lo 
 
 Bring forth once more my bullion, treasured deep. 
 With all my jewell'd salvers, silver and gold. 
 And precious goblets that make rich the wine. 
 But why do I stand babbling to myself.'' 
 Where is Auranthe .'' I have news for her 
 Shall— 
 
 Enter Auranthe. 
 
 Auranthe. Conrad ! what tidings .'' Good, if I may guess 
 From your alert eyes and high-lifted brows. 
 What tidings of the battle } Albert } Ludolph } Otho ? 
 
 Conrad. You guess aright. And, sister, slurring o'er 
 Our by-gone quarrels, I confess my heart 20 
 
 Is beating with a child's anxiety, 
 To make our golden fortune known to you. 
 
 Auranthe. So serious ? 
 
 Conrad. Yes, so serious, that before 
 
 I utter even the shadow of a hint
 
 292 JOHN KEATS [act i., sc. i 
 
 Concerning what will make that sin-worn cheek 
 Blush joyous blood through every lineament. 
 You must make here a solemn vow to me. 
 
 Auranthe. I pr'ythee, Conrad, do not overact 
 The hypocrite. What vow would you impose ? 
 
 Cofirad. Trust me for once. That you may be assured 30 
 
 'Tis not confiding in a broken reed, 
 A poor court-bankrupt, outwitted and lost, 
 Revolve these facts in your acutest mood, 
 In such a mood as now you listen to me : 
 A few days since, I was an open rebel, — 
 Against the Emperor had suborn'd his son, — 
 Drawn off his nobles to revolt, — and shown 
 Contented fools causes for discontent, 
 Fresh hatch'd in my ambition's eagle-nest ; 
 
 So thrived I as a rebel, — and, behold ! 40 
 
 Now I am Otho's favourite, his dear friend, 
 His right hand, his brave Conrad ! 
 
 Auranthe. I confess 
 
 You have intrigued with these unsteady times 
 To admiration. But to be a favourite ! 
 
 Conrad. I saw my moment. The Hungarians, 
 Collected silently in holes and corners, 
 Appear'd, a sudden host, in the open day. 
 I should have perish'd in our empire's wreck, 
 But, calling interest loyalty, swore faith 
 
 To most believing Otho ; and so help'd 50 
 
 His blood-stain'd ensigns to the victory 
 In yesterday's hard fight, that it has turn'd 
 The edge of his sharp wrath to eager kindness. 
 
 Auranthe. So far yourself. But what is this to me 
 More than that I am glad ? I gratulate you. 
 
 Com-ad. Yes, sister, but it does regard you greatly, 
 Nearly, momentously, — aye, painfully ! 
 Make me this vow — 
 
 Auranthe. Concerning whom or what ? 
 
 Conrad. Albert ! 
 
 Auranthe. I would inquire somewhat of him. 60 
 
 You had a letter from me touching him .'' 
 No treason 'gainst his head in deed or word ! 
 Surely you spared him at my earnest prayer ? 
 Give me the letter — it should not exist ! 
 
 Conrad. At one pernicious charge of the enemy 
 I, for a moment-whiles, was prisoner ta'en 
 And rifled, — stuff! the horses' hoofs have minced it ! 
 
 Auranthe. He is alive .'' 
 
 Conrad. He is ! but here make oath
 
 ACT I., sc. I] OTHO THE GREAT 293 
 
 To alienate him from your scheming brain. 
 
 Divorce him from your solitary thoughts. 
 
 And cloud him in such utter banishment, 70 
 
 That when his person meets again your eye 
 
 Your vision shall quite lose its memory. 
 
 And wander past him as through vacancy. 
 
 Auranlhe. I'll not be perjured. 
 
 Conrad. No, nor great, nor mighty ; 
 
 You would not wear a crown, or rule a kingdom. 
 To you it is indifferent .'' 
 
 Auranthe. What means this .'' 
 
 Conrad. You'll not be perjured ! Go to Albert then. 
 That camp-mushroom — dishonour of our house. 
 Go, page his dusty heels upon a marcli. 
 
 Furbish his jingling baldric while he sleeps, 80 
 
 And share his mouldy ration in a siege. 
 Yet stay, — perhaps a charm may call you back, 
 And make the widening circlets of your eyes 
 Sparkle with healthy fevers. — The Emperor 
 Hath given consent that you should marry Ludolph ! 
 
 Auranthe. Can it be, brother ? For a golden crown 
 With a queen's awful lips I doubly thank you ! 
 This is to wake in Paradise ! Farewell, 
 Thou clod of yesterday ! — 'twas not myself ! 
 
 Not till this moment did I ever feel go 
 
 My spirit's faculties ! I'll flatter you 
 For this, and be you ever proud of it ; 
 Thou, Jove-like, struck'dst thy forehead. 
 And from the teeming marrow of thy brain 
 I spring complete Minerva ! But the prince — 
 His highness Ludolph — where is he .'' 
 
 Conrad. I know not : 
 
 When, lackeying my counsel at a beck. 
 The rebel lords, on bended knees, received 
 The Emperor's pardon, Ludolph kept aloof. 
 
 Sole, in a stiff, fool -hardy, sulky pride ; 100 
 
 Yet, for all this, I never saw a father 
 In such a sickly longing for his son. 
 We shall soon see him ; for the Emperor 
 He will be here this morning. 
 
 Auranthe. That I heard 
 
 Among the midnight rumours from the camp, 
 
 Cotirad. You give up Albert to me .'' 
 
 Auranthe. Harm him not ! 
 
 E'en for his highness Ludolph's sceptry hand, 
 I would not Albert suffer any wrong. 
 
 Conrad. Have I not laboured, plotted — .-'
 
 294 JOHN KEATS [act i., sc. i 
 
 Auranthe. See you spare him : 
 
 Nor be pathetic, my kind benefactor ! no 
 
 On all the many bounties of your hand, 
 'Twas for yourself you laboured — not for me ! 
 Do you not count, when I am queen, to take 
 Advantage of your chance discoveries 
 Of my poor secrets, and so hold a rod 
 Over my life ? 
 
 Conrad. Let not this slave — this villain — 
 
 Be cause of feud between us. See ! he comes ! 
 Look, woman, look, your Albert is quite safe ! 
 In haste it seems. Now shall I be in the way. 
 
 And wish'd with silent curses in my grave, 120 
 
 Or side by side with 'whelmed mariners. 
 
 Enter Albert. 
 
 Albert. Fair on your graces fall this early morrow ! 
 So it is like to do, without my prayers. 
 For your right noble names, like favourite tunes. 
 Have fallen full frequent from our Emperor's lips, 
 High commented with smiles. 
 
 Auranthe. Noble Albert ! 
 
 Conrad {aside). Noble ! 
 
 Auranthe. Such salutation argues a glad heart 
 In our prosperity. We thank you, sir. 
 
 Albert. Lady ! O, would to Heaven your poor servant 
 Could do you better service than mere words ! 130 
 
 But I have other greeting than mine own, — 
 From no less man than Otho, who has sent 
 This ring as pledge of dearest amity ; 
 'Tis chosen, I hear, from Hymen's jewel'ry, 
 And you will prize it, lady, I doubt not. 
 Beyond all pleasures past, and all to come. 
 To you, great duke — 
 
 Conrad. To me ! What of me, ha ? 
 
 Albert. What pleased your grace to say .'' 
 
 Cojirad. Your message, sir ! 
 
 Albert. You mean not this to me ? 
 
 Conrad. Sister, this way ; 
 
 For there shall be no " gentle Alberts " now, [^Aside. 140 
 
 No " sweet Auranthes ! " 
 
 ^Exeunt Conrad ayid Auranthe. 
 
 Albert [sains). The duke is out of temper ; if he knows 
 More than a brother of a sister ought 
 I should not quarrel with his peevishness. 
 Auranthe — Heaven preserve her always fair ! — 
 Is in the heady, proud, ambitious vein ;
 
 ACT I., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT 295 
 
 I bicker not with her, — bid her farewell ; 
 
 She has taken flight from me, then let her soar, — 
 
 He is a fool wlio stands at pining gaze ! 
 
 But for poor Ludolph, he is food for sorrow : 150 
 
 No levelling bluster of my licensed thoughts, 
 
 No military swagger of my mind. 
 
 Can smother from myself the wrong I've done him, — 
 
 Without design, indeed, — yet it is so, — 
 
 And opiate for the conscience have I none ! 
 
 [Exit 
 
 Scene H. — The Court-yard of the Castle. 
 
 Martial Music. Enter, from the outer gate, Otho, Nobles, Knights, and 
 Attendants. The Soldiers halt at the gate, nnth Banners in .sight. 
 
 Otho. Where is my noble herald ? 
 
 Enter Conrad from the Castle, attended by two Knights and Servants. 
 
 Albert follotvi?ig. 
 
 Well, hast told 
 Auranthe our intent imperial ? 
 Lest our rent banners, too o' the sudden shown. 
 Should fright her silken casements, and dismay 
 Her household to our lack of entertainment. 
 A victory ! 
 
 Conrad. God save illustrious Otho ! 
 
 Otho. Aye, Conrad, it will pluck out all grey hairs ; 
 It is the best physician for the spleen ; 
 The courtliest inviter to a feast ; 
 
 The subtlest excuser of small faults ; 10 
 
 And a nice judge in the age and smack of wine. 
 
 Enter, from the Castle, Auranthe, followed by Pages holding up her 
 robes, and a train of Women. She kneels. 
 
 Hail my sweet hostess ! I do thank the stars, 
 
 Or my good soldiei's, or their ladies' eyes, 
 
 That, after such a merry battle fought, 
 
 I can, all safe in body and in soul. 
 
 Kiss your fair hand and lady fortune's too. 
 
 My ring ! now, on ray life, it doth rejoice 
 
 These lips to feel 't on this soft ivory ! 
 
 Keep it, my brightest daughter ; it may prove 
 
 The little prologue to a line of kings. 20 
 
 I strove against thee and my hot-blood sou.
 
 296 JOHN KEATS [act l, sc. il 
 
 Dull blockhead that I was to be so blind ; 
 But now my sight is clear ; forgive me, lady. 
 
 Atiranihe. My lord, I was a vassal to your frown. 
 And now your favour makes me but more humble ; 
 In wintry winds the simple snow is safe, 
 But fadeth at the greeting of the sun : 
 Unto thine anger I might well have spoken. 
 Taking on me a woman's privilege. 
 But this so sudden kindness makes me dumb. 30 
 
 Otho. What need of this } Enough, if you will be 
 A potent tutoress to my wayward boy. 
 And teach him, what it seems his nurse could not, 
 To say, for once, I thank you. Sigifred ! 
 
 Albert. He has not yet returned, ray gracious liege. 
 
 Otho. What then ! No tidings of my friendly Arab .'' 
 
 Conrad. None, mighty Otho. [To one of his Knights, who goes out. 
 
 Send forth instantly 
 An hundred horsemen from my honoured gates. 
 To scour the plains and search the cottages. 
 
 Cry a reward to him who shall first bring 40 
 
 News of that vanished Arabian, — 
 A full- heaped helmet of the purest gold. 
 
 Otho. More thanks, good Conrad ; for, except my son's. 
 There is no face I rather would behold 
 Than that same quick-eyed pagan's. By the saints. 
 This coming night of banquets must not light 
 Her dazzling torches ; nor the music breathe 
 Smooth, without clashing cymbal, tones of peace 
 And indoor melodies ; nor the ruddy wine 
 
 Ebb spouting to the lees ; if I pledge not, 50 
 
 In my first cup, that Arab ! 
 
 Albert. Mighty monarch, 
 
 I wonder not this stranger's victor-deeds 
 
 So hang upon your spirit. Twice in the fight , 
 
 It was my chance to meet his olive brow. 
 Triumphant in the enemy's shatter'd rhomb ; 
 And, to say truth, in any Christian arm 
 I never saw such prowess. 
 
 Otho. Did you ever ? 
 
 O, 'tis a noble boy ! — tut ! — what do I say ? 
 I mean a triple Saladin, whose eyes. 
 
 When in the glorious scuffle they met mine, 60 
 
 Seem'd to say, " Sleep, old man, in safety sleep ; 
 I am the victory ! " 
 
 Conrad. Pity he's not here. 
 
 Otho. And my son too, pity he is not here. 
 Lady Auranthe, I would not make you blush,
 
 ACT I., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT 297 
 
 But can you give a guess where Ludolph is ? 
 Know you not of him ? 
 
 Auranthe. Indeed, my Hege, no secret — 
 
 Otko. Nay, nay, without more words, dost know of hiiu ? 
 
 Auranthe. I would I were so over-fortunate. 
 Both for his sake and mine, and to make glad 
 A father's ears with tidings of his son. 70 
 
 Otho. I see 'tis like to be a tedious day. 
 Were Theodore and Gonfrid and the rest 
 Sent forth with ray commands ? 
 
 Albert. Aye, my lord. 
 
 Othu. And no news ! No news ! ' Faith ! 'tis very strange 
 He thus avoids us. Lady, is 't not strange ? 
 Will he be truant to you too } It is a shame. 
 
 Conrad. Wilt please your highness enter, and accept 
 The unworthy welcome of your servant's house ? 
 Leaving your cares to one whose diligence 
 May in few hours make pleasures of them all. So 
 
 Otho. Not so tedious, Conrad. No, no, no, — 
 I must see Ludolph or the — what's that shout ? 
 
 Voices without. Huzza ! huzza ! Long live the Emperor ! 
 
 Other voices. Fall back I Away there ! 
 
 Otho. Say, what noise is that ? 
 
 [Albert advancing Jroni the back of the Stage, whither he had 
 hastened on hearing the cheers of the soldieri/. 
 
 Albert. It is young Gersa, the Hungarian prince, 
 Pick'd like a red stag from the fallow herd 
 Of prisoners. Poor prince, forlorn he steps. 
 Slow, and demure, and proud in his despair. 
 If I may judge by his so tragic bearing, 
 
 His eye not downcast, and his folded arm, go 
 
 He doth this moment wish himself asleep 
 Among his fallen captains on yon plains. 
 
 Enter Gersa, in chains, and guarded. 
 
 Otho. Well said, Sir Albert. 
 
 Gersa. Not a word of greeting .'' 
 
 No welcome to a princely visitor. 
 Most miglity Otho } Will not my great host 
 Vouchsafe a syllable, before he bids 
 His gentlemen conduct me with all care 
 To some securest lodging — cold perhaps ! 
 
 Otho. What mood is this ? Hath fortune touch'd thy brain } 
 
 Gersa. O kings and princes of this fev'rous world, 100
 
 298 JOHN KEATS [act l, sc. ii 
 
 What abject things, what mockeries must ye be. 
 
 What nerveless minions of safe palaces. 
 
 When here, a monarch, whose proud foot is used 
 
 To fallen princes' necks as to his stii*rup. 
 
 Must needs exclaim that I am mad forsooth, 
 
 Because I cannot flatter with bent knees 
 
 My conqueror ! 
 
 Otho. Gersa, I think you wrong me : 
 
 I think I have a better fame abroad. 
 
 Gersa. I prythee mock me not with gentle speech, 
 But, as a favour, bid me from thy presence ; no 
 
 Let me no longer be the wondering food 
 Of all these eyes ; prythee command me hence ! 
 
 Otho. Do not mistake me, Gersa. That you may not, 
 Come, fair Auranthe, try if your soft hands 
 Can manage those hard rivets, to set free 
 So brave a prince and soldier. 
 
 Auranthe {sets him free). Welcome task ! 
 
 Gersa. I am wound up in deep astonishment ! 
 Thank you, fair lady. Otho ! emperor ! 
 You rob me of myself; my dignity 
 Is now your infant ; I am a weak child. 120 
 
 Otho. Give me your hand, and let this kindly grasp 
 Live in our memories, 
 
 Gersa. In mine it will. 
 
 I blush to think of my unchasten'd tongue ; 
 But I was haunted by the monstrous ghost 
 Of all our slain battalions. Sire, reflect. 
 And pardon you will grant, that, at this hour. 
 The bruised remnants of our stricken camp 
 Are huddling undistinguished my dear friends. 
 With common thousands, into shallow graves. 
 
 Otho. Enough, most noble Gersa. You are free 130 
 
 To cheer the brave remainder of your host 
 By your own healing presence, and that too. 
 Not as their leader merely, but their king ; 
 For, as I hear, the wily enemy 
 Who eas'd the crownet from your infant brows, 
 Bloody Taraxa, is among the dead. 
 
 Gersa. Then I retire, so generous Otho please, 
 Bearing with me a weight of benefits 
 Too heavy to be borne. 
 
 Otho. It is not so ; 
 
 Still understand me, King of Hungary, 140 
 
 Nor judge my open pui'poses awry. 
 Though I did hold you high in my esteem 
 For your self's sake, I do not personate
 
 ACT I., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT 299 
 
 The stage-play emperor to entrap applause, 
 To set the silly sort o' the world agape, 
 And make the politic smile ; no, I have heard 
 How in the Council you condemn'd this war, 
 Urging the perfidy of broken faith, — 
 For that I am your friend, 
 
 Gersa. If ever, sire. 
 
 You are my enemy, I dare here swear 150 
 
 'Twill not be Gersa's fault. Otho, farewell ! 
 
 Otho. Will you return. Prince, to our banqueting ? 
 
 Gersa. As to my father's board I will return. 
 
 Otho. Conrad, with all due ceremony, give 
 The prince a regal escort to his camp ; 
 Albert, go thou and bear him company. 
 Gersa, farewell ! 
 
 Gersa. All happiness attend you ! 
 
 Otho. Return with what good speed you may ; for soon 
 We must consult upon our terms of peace. 
 
 [Exeunt Gersa and Albert with others. 
 And thus a marble column do I build 160 
 
 To prop my empire's dome. Conrad, in thee 
 I have another steadfast one, to uphold 
 The portals of my state ; and, for my own 
 Pre-eminence and safety, I will strive 
 To keep thy strength upon its pedestal. 
 For, without thee, this day 1 might have been 
 A show-monster about the streets of Prague, 
 In chains, as just now stood that noble prince : 
 And then to me no mercy had been shown, 
 
 For when the conquer'd lion is once dungeoned, 170 
 
 Who lets him forth again, or dares to give 
 An old lion sugar-cates of mild reprieve ? 
 Not to thine ear alone I make confession, 
 But to all here, as, by experience, 
 I know how the great basement of all power 
 Is frankness, and a true tongue to the world ; 
 And how intriguing secrecy is proof 
 Of fear and weakness, and a hollow state. 
 Conrad, I owe thee much. 
 
 Conrad. To kiss that hand. 
 
 My Emperor, is ample recompense, 180 
 
 For a mere act of duty. 
 
 Otho. Thou art wrong ; 
 
 For what can any man on earth do more .'' 
 We will make trial of your house's welcome. 
 My bright Auranthe ! 
 
 Conrad. How is Friedburg honoured !
 
 SOO JOHN KEATS [act i., sc. hi 
 
 Enter Ethelbert and six Monks. 
 
 Ethelhert. The benison of heaven on your head, 
 Imperial Otho ! 
 
 Otho. Who stays me ? Speak ! Quick ! 
 
 Ethelbert. Pause but one moment, mighty conqueror ! 
 Upon the threshold of this house of joy. 
 
 Otho. Pray, do not prose, good Ethelbert, but speak 
 What is your purpose. igo 
 
 Ethelbert, The restoration of some captive maids. 
 Devoted to Heaven's pious ministries. 
 Who, driven forth from their i*eligious cells 
 And kept in thraldom by our enemy, 
 When late this province was a lawless spoil, 
 Still weep amid the wild Hungarian camp. 
 Though hemm'd around by thy victorious arms. 
 
 Otho. Demand the holy sisterhood in our name 
 From Gersa's tents. Farewell, old Ethelbert. 
 
 Ethelbert. The saints will bless you for this pious care. 200 
 
 Otho. Daughter, your hand ; Ludolph's would fit it best. 
 
 Conrad. Ho ! let the music sound ! 
 
 [^Music. Ethelbert raises his hands, as in benediction of Otho. 
 Exeunt severally. The scene closes on them. 
 
 SCENE ni. — The Country, ivith the Castle in the distance. 
 Enter Ludolph and Sigifred. 
 
 Ludolph. You have my secret ; let it not be breath'd. 
 
 Sigifred. Still give me leave to wonder that the Prince 
 Ludolph and the swift Arab are the same ; 
 Still to rejoice that 'twas a German arm 
 Death doing in a turban'd masquerade. 
 
 Ludolph. The Emperor must not know it, Sigifred. 
 
 Sigifred. I prythee, why ? What happier hour of time 
 Could thy pleased star point down upon from heaven 
 With silver index, bidding thee make peace ? 
 
 Ludolph. Still it must not be known, good Sigifred ; 10 
 
 The star may point oblique. 
 
 Sigifred. If Otho knew 
 
 His son to be that unknown Mussulman 
 After whose spurring heels he sent me forth. 
 With one of his well-pleased Olympian oaths. 
 The charters of man's greatness, at this hour 
 He would be watching round the castle walls,
 
 ACT L, sc. Ill] OTHO THE GREAT 301 
 
 And, like an anxious warder, strain his sight 
 
 For the first glimpse of such a son return'd — 
 
 Ludolph ! — that blast of the Hungarians, 
 
 That Saracenic meteor of the fight, 20 
 
 That silent fury, whose fell scymitar 
 
 Kept danger all aloof from Otho's head. 
 
 And left him space for wonder. 
 
 Ludolph. Say no more. 
 
 Not as a swordsman would I pardon claim. 
 But as a son. The bronzed centurion, 
 Long toil'd in foreign wars, and whose high deeds 
 Are shaded in a forest of tall spears. 
 Known only to his troop, hath greater plea 
 Of favour with my sire than I can have. 
 
 Sigifred. My lord, forgive me that I cannot see 30 
 
 How this proud temper with clear reason squares. 
 What made you then, with such an anxious love. 
 Hover around that life, whose bitter days 
 You vext with bad revolt ? Was't opium, 
 Or the mad-fumed wine ? Nay, do not frown, 
 I rather would grieve with you than upbraid. 
 
 Ludolph. I do believe you. No, 'twas not to make 
 A father his son's debtor, or to heal 
 His deep heart-sickness for a rebel child. 
 
 'Twas done in memory of my boyish days, 40 
 
 Poor cancel for his kindness to my youth, 
 For all his calming of my childish griefs, 
 And all his smiles upon my merriment. 
 No, not a thousand foughten fields could sponge 
 Those days paternal from my memory. 
 Though now upon my head he heaps disgrace. 
 
 Sigifred. My Prince, you think too harshly — 
 
 Ludolph. Can I so ? 
 
 Hath he not gall'd my spirit to the quick ? 
 And with a sullen rigour obstinate 
 
 Pour'd out a phial of wrath upon my faults, 50 
 
 Hunted me as the Tartar does the boar. 
 Driven me to the very edge o' the world. 
 And almost put a price upon my head ? 
 
 Sigifred. Remember how he spared the rebel lords. 
 
 Ludolph. Yes, yes, I know he hath a noble nature 
 That cannot trample on the fallen. But his 
 Is not the only proud heart in his realm. 
 He hath wrong'd me, and I have done him wrong ; 
 He hath loved me, and I have shown him kindness ; 
 We should.be almost equal. 
 
 Sigifred. Yet, for all this, 60
 
 302 JOHN KEATS [act l, sc. hi 
 
 I would you had appear'd among those lords, 
 And ta'en his favour. 
 
 Ludolph. Ha ! Till now I thought 
 
 My friend had held poor Ludolph's honour dear. 
 What ! Would you have me sue before his throne 
 And kiss the courtier's missal, its silk steps ? 
 Or hug the golden housings^ of his steed. 
 Amid a camp whose steeled swarms I dared 
 But yesterday ? and, at the trumpet sound. 
 Bow, like some unknown mercenary's flag. 
 
 And lick the soiled grass ? No, no, my friend, 70 
 
 I would not, I, be pardon'd in the heap, 
 And bless indemnity with all that scum, — 
 Those men I mean, who on my shoulders propp'd 
 Their weak rebellion, winning me with lies. 
 And pitying forsooth my many Avrongs ; 
 Poor self-deceived wretches, who must think 
 Each one himself a king in embryo. 
 Because some dozen vassals cry'd, My lord ! 
 Cowards, who never knew their little hearts 
 
 Till flurried danger held the miiTor up, 80 
 
 And then they own'd themselves without a blush, 
 Curling, Uke spaniels, round my father's feet. 
 Such things deserted me and are forgiven. 
 While I, least guilty, am an outcast still, — 
 And will be, for I love such fair disgrace. 
 
 Sigifred. I know the clear truth ; so would Otho see, 
 For he is just and noble. Fain would I 
 Be pleader for you — 
 
 Ludolph. He'll hear none of it ; 
 
 You know his temper, hot, proud, obstinate ; 
 
 Endanger not yourself so uselessly. go 
 
 I will encounter his thwart spleen myself, 
 To-day, at the Duke Conrad's, where he keeps 
 His crowded state after the victory. 
 There will I be, a most unwelcome guest. 
 And parley with him, as a son should do 
 Who doubly loathes a father's tyranny ; 
 Tell him how feeble is that tyranny ; 
 How the relationship of father and son 
 Is no more valid than a silken leash 
 
 Where lions tug adverse, if love grow not 100 
 
 From interchanged love through many years. 
 Ay, and those turreted Franconian walls. 
 Like to a jealous casket, hold my pearl — 
 My fair Auranthe ! Yes, I will be there. 
 
 Sigifred. Be not so rash ; wait till his wrath shall pass,
 
 ACT II., sc. I] OTHO THE GREAT 303 
 
 Until his royal spirit softly ebbs. 
 Self-influenced ; then, in his morning dreams 
 He will forgive thee, and awake in grief 
 To have not thy good-morrow. 
 
 Ludolph. Yes, to-day 
 
 I must be there, while her young pulses beat no 
 
 Among the new-plumed minions of the war. 
 Have you seen her of late ? No ? Auranthe, 
 Franconia's fair sister, 'tis I mean. 
 She should be paler for my troublous days — 
 And there it is — my father's iron lips 
 Have sworn divorcement 'twixt me and my right. 
 
 Stgifred (aside). Auranthe ! I had hoped this whim had pass'd. 
 
 Ludolph. And, Sigifred, with all his love of justice. 
 When will he take that grandchild in his arms. 
 
 That, by my love I swear, shall soon be his ? 120 
 
 This reconcilement is impossible. 
 For see — but who are these ? 
 
 Sigifred. They are messengers 
 
 From our great emperor ; to you, I doubt not, 
 For couriers are abroad to seek you out. 
 
 Enter Theodore and Gonfred. 
 
 Theodore. Seeing so many vigilant eyes explore 
 The province to invite your highness back 
 To your high dignities, we are too happy. 
 
 Gonfred. We have no eloquence to colour justly 
 The emperor's anxious wishes. 
 
 Ludolph. Go. I follow you. 
 
 [Exeunt Theodore ajid Gonfred. 
 I play the prude : it is but venturing — 130 
 
 Why should he be so earnest ? Come, my friend. 
 Let us to Friedburg castle. 
 
 ACT n 
 
 Scene I. — An Ante-chamber in the Castle. 
 
 Enter Ludolph and Sigifred, 
 
 Ludolph. 
 
 NO more advices, no more cautioning ; 
 I leave it all to fate — to any thing ! 
 I cannot square my conduct to time, place, 
 Or circumstance ; to me 'tis all a mist !
 
 304 JOHN KEATS [act ii., sc. i 
 
 Sigifred. I say no more. 
 
 Ludolpk. It seems I am to wait 
 
 Here in the ante-room ; — that may be a trifle. 
 You see now how I dance attendance here, 
 Without that tyrant temper, you so blame. 
 Snapping the rein. You have medicin'd me 
 
 With good advices ; and I here remain, lo 
 
 In this most honourable anteroom. 
 Your patient scholar. 
 
 Sigifred. Do not wrong me, Prince. 
 
 By heavens, I'd rather kiss Duke Conrad's slipper, 
 When in the morning he doth yawn with pride. 
 Than see you humbled but a half-degree ! 
 Truth is, the Emperor would fain dismiss 
 The nobles ere he sees you. 
 
 Enter Gonfred, ^roTW the Coimcil-room. 
 
 Ludolph. Well, sir ! what ? 
 
 Gonfred. Great honour to the Prince ! The Emperor, 
 Hearing that his brave son had re-appeared. 
 
 Instant dismiss'd the Council from his sight, 20 
 
 As Jove fans off the clouds. Even now they pass. 
 
 [Exit. 
 
 [Enter the Nobles from the Council-room. They cross the stage, boiving 
 with respect to Ludolph, he frotv?nng ofi them. Conrad follows. 
 Exeunt Nobles. 
 
 Ludolph. Not the discoloured poisons of a fen. 
 Which he who breathes feels warning of his death. 
 Could taste so nauseous to the bodily sense, 
 As these prodigious sycophants disgust 
 The soul's fine palate, 
 
 Conrad. Princely Ludolph, hail ! 
 
 Welcome, thou younger sceptre to the realm ! 
 Strength to thy virgin crownet's golden buds, 
 That they, against the winter of thy sire, 
 
 May burst, and swell, and flourish round thy brows, 30 
 
 Maturing to a weighty diadem ! 
 Yet be that hour far off ; and may he live, 
 Who waits for thee, as the chapp'd earth for rain. 
 Set my life's star ! I have lived long enough. 
 Since under my glad roof, propitiously, 
 Father and son each other repossess. 
 
 Ludolph. Fine wording, Duke ! but words could never ye%, 
 Forestall the fates ; have you not learnt that yet ?
 
 ACT II., sc. I] OTHO THE GREAT 305 
 
 Let me look well : your features are the same ; 
 
 Your gait the same ; your hair of the same shade ; 40 
 
 As one I knew some passed weeks ago, 
 
 Who sung far different notes into mine ears. 
 
 I have mine own particular comments on 't ; 
 
 You have your own, perhaps. 
 
 Conrad. My gracious Prince, 
 
 All men may err. In truth I was deceived 
 In your great father's nature, as you were. 
 Had I known that of him I have since known. 
 And what you soon will learn, I would have tum'd 
 My sword to my own throat, rather than held 
 
 Its threatening edge against a good King's quiet : 50 
 
 Or with one word fever'd you, gentle Prince, 
 Who seem'd to me, as rugged times then went. 
 Indeed too much oppress d. May I be bold 
 To tell the Emperor you will haste to him ? 
 
 Ludolph. Your Dukedom's privilege will grant so much. 
 
 \Exit Conrad. 
 He's very close to Otho, — a tight leech ! 
 Your hand — I go. Ha ! here the thunder comes 
 Sullen against the wind ! If in two angry brows 
 My safety lies, then Sigifred, I'm safe. 
 
 Enter Otho and Conrad. 
 
 Otho. Will you make Titan play the lackey-page 60 
 
 To chattering pigmies ? I would have you know 
 
 That such neglect of our high Majesty 
 
 Annuls all feel of kindred. What is son, — 
 
 Or friend, — or brother. — or all ties of blood, — 
 
 When the whole kingdom, centred in ourself. 
 
 Is rudely slighted ? Who am I to wait ? 
 
 By Peter's chair ! I have upon my tongue 
 
 A word to fright the proudest spirit here ! — 
 
 Death ! — and slow tortures to the hardy fool 
 
 Who dares take such large charter from our smiles ! 70 
 
 Conrad, we would be private. Sigifred, 
 
 Off ! And none pass this way on pain of death ! 
 
 [Exeunt Conrad and Sigifred. 
 Ludolph. This was but half expected, my good sire, 
 
 Yet I am grieved at it, to the full height. 
 
 As though my hopes of favour had been whole. 
 
 Otho. How you indulge yourself ! What can you hope for .'' 
 Ludolph. Nothing, my liege ; I have to hope for nothing. 
 
 I come to greet you as a loving son, 
 
 And then depart, if I may be so free, 
 
 30
 
 306 JOHxN KEATS [act ii., sc. i 
 
 Seeing that blood of yours in my warm veins 80 
 
 Has not yet mitigated into milk. 
 
 Otho. What would you, sir ? 
 
 Ludolph. A lenient banishment. 
 
 So please you, let me unmolested pass 
 This Conrad's gates to the wide air again. 
 I want no more, A rebel wants no more. 
 
 Otho. And shall I let a rebel loose again 
 To muster kites and eagles 'gainst my head ? 
 No, obstinate boy, you shall be kept caged up. 
 Served with harsh food, with scum for Sunday drink. 
 
 Ludolph. Indeed ! 
 
 Otho. And chains too heavy for your life : 90 
 
 I'll choose a gaoler whose swart monstrous face 
 Shall be a hell to look upon, and she — 
 
 Ludolph. Ha ! 
 
 Otho. Shall be your fair Auranthe. 
 
 Ludolph. Amaze ! Amaze ! 
 
 Otho. To-day you marry her. 
 
 Ludolph. This is a sharp jest ! 
 
 Otho. No. None at all. When have I said a lie .'' 
 
 Ludolph. If I sleep not, I am a waking wretch. 
 
 Otho. Not a word more. Let me embrace my child. 
 
 Ludolph. I dare not. 'Twould pollute so good a father ! 
 O heavy crime ! — that your son's blinded eyes 
 
 Could not see all his parent's love aright, 100 
 
 As now I see it ! Be not kind to me — 
 Punish me not with favour. 
 
 Otho. Are you sure, 
 
 Ludolph, you have no saving plea in store ? 
 
 Ludolph. My father, none ! 
 
 Otho. Then you astonish me. 
 
 Ludolph. No, I have no plea. Disobedience, 
 Rebellion, obstinacy, blasphemy, 
 Are all my counsellors. If they can make 
 My ci'ooked deeds show good and plausible. 
 Then grant me loving pardon, but not else, 
 Good gods ! not else, in any way, my liege ! no 
 
 Otho. You are a most perplexing, noble boy. 
 
 Ludolph. You not less a perplexing noble father. 
 
 Otho. Well, you shall have free passport through the gates. 
 Farewell ! 
 
 Ludolph. Farewell ! and by these tears believe. 
 And still remember, I repent in pain 
 All my misdeeds ! 
 
 Otho. Ludolph, I will ! I will ! 
 
 But, Ludolph, ere you go, 1 would enquire
 
 ACT II., sc. I] OTHO THE GREAT 307 
 
 If you, in all your wandering, ever met 
 A certain Arab haunting in these parts. 
 
 Ludolph. No, my good lord, I cannot say I did. 120 
 
 Olho. Make not your father blind before his time ; 
 Nor let these arms paternal hunger more 
 For an embrace, to dull the appetite 
 Of my great love for thee, my supreme child ! 
 Come close, and let me breathe into thine ear. 
 I knew you through disguise. You are the Arab ! 
 You can't deny it. [^Embracing him. 
 
 Ludolph. Happiest of days ! 
 
 Otho. We'll make it so. 
 
 Ludolph. 'Stead of one fatted calf 
 
 Ten hecatombs shall bellow out their last. 
 
 Smote 'twixt the horns by the death-stunning mace 130 
 
 Of Mars, and all the soldiery shall feast 
 Nobly as Nimrod's masons, when the towers 
 Of Nineveh new kiss'd the parted clouds ! 
 
 Otho. Large as a God speak out, where all is thine. 
 
 Ludolph. Ay, father, but the fire in my sad breast 
 Is quench'd with inward tears ! 1 must rejoice 
 For you, whose wings so shadow over me 
 In tender victory, but for myself 
 I still must mourn. The fair Auranthe mine ! 
 
 Too great a boon ! I prythee let me ask 140 
 
 What more than I know of could so have changed 
 Your purpose touching her .'' 
 
 Otho. At a word, this : 
 
 In no deed did you give me more offence 
 Than your rejection of Erminia. 
 To my appalling, I saw too good proof 
 Of your keen-eyed suspicion, — she is naught. 
 
 Ludolph. You are convinc'd .'' 
 
 Otho. Ay, spite of her sweet looks. 
 
 O that my brother's daughter should so fall ! 
 Her fame has pass'd into the grosser lips 
 Of soldiers in their cups. 
 
 Ludolph. 'Tis very sad. 150 
 
 Otho. No more of her. Auranthe — Ludolph, come ! 
 This marriage be the bond of endless peace ! 
 
 [Exeunt.
 
 308 JOHN KEATS [act ii., sc. ii 
 
 Scene II. — The entrance of Gersa's Tent in the Hunganan Camp. 
 
 Elder Erminia. 
 
 Erminia. Where — where — where shall I find a messenger ? 
 A trusty soul — a good man, in the camp ? 
 Shall I go myself? Monstrous wickedness ! 
 O cursed Conrad ! devilish Auranthe ! 
 Here is proof palpable as the bright sun ! 
 O for a voice to reach the Emperor's ears ! 
 
 [Shouts in the Camp. 
 
 Enter an Hungarian Captain. 
 
 Captain. Fair prisoner, you hear these joyous shouts? 
 The King — aye, now our King, — but still your slave. 
 Young Gersa, from a short captivity 
 
 Has just return'd. He bids me say, bright dame, lo 
 
 That even the homage of his ranged chiefs 
 Cures not his keen impatience to behold 
 Such beauty once again. What ails you, lady .'' 
 
 Erminia. Say, is not that a German, yonder .'' There ! 
 
 Captain. Methinks by his stout bearing he should be — 
 Yes — it is Albert ; a brave German knight, 
 And much in the Emperor's favour. 
 
 Erminia. I would fain 
 
 Inquire of friends and kinsfolk, — how they fared 
 In these rough times. Brave soldier, as you pass 
 To royal Gersa with my humble thanks, 30 
 
 Will you send yonder knight to me ? 
 
 Captain. I will. [Exit. 
 
 Erminia. Yes, he was ever known to be a man 
 Frank, open, generous ; Albert I may trust. 
 O proof ! proof! proof! Albert's an honest man ; 
 Not Ethelbert the monk, if he were here. 
 Would I hold more trustworthy. Now ! 
 
 Enter Albert! 
 
 Albert. Good gods ! 
 
 Lady Erminia ! are you prisoner 
 In this beleaguer'd camp ? or are you here 
 Of your own will ? You pleased to send for me. 
 By Venus, 'tis a pity I knew not 30 
 
 Your plight before, and, by her son, I swear
 
 ACT II., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT 309 
 
 To do you every service you can ask. 
 What would the fairest — ? 
 
 Ermi7iia. Albert, will you swear ? 
 
 Albert. I have. Well ? 
 
 Erminia. Albert, you have fame to lose. 
 
 If men, in court and camp, lie not outright, 
 You should be, from a thousand, chosen forth 
 To do an honest deed. Shall I confide — ? 
 
 Albert. Aye, anything to me, fair creature. Do; 
 Dictate my task. Sweet woman, — 
 
 Emiinia. Truce with that. 
 
 You understand me not; and, in your speech, 40 
 
 I see how far the slander is abroad. 
 Without proof could you think me innocent ? 
 
 Albert. Lady, I should rejoice to know you so. 
 
 Erminia. If you have any pity for a maid 
 Suffering a daily death from evil tongues ; 
 Any compassion for that Emperor's niece 
 Who, for your bright sword and clear honesty. 
 Lifted you from the crowd of common men 
 Into the lap of honour, — save me, knight ! 
 
 Albert. How .'' Make it clear ; if it be possible, 50 
 
 I, by the banner of Saint Maurice, swear 
 To right you. 
 
 Erminia. Possible ! — Easy. O my heart ! 
 
 This letter 's not so soil'd but you may read it ; — 
 Possible ! There — that letter ! Read — read it. 
 
 [Gives him a letter. 
 
 Albert {reading). 
 
 " To the Duke Conrad. — Forget the threat you made at parting 
 and I will forget to send the Emperor letters and papers of yours 
 I have become possessed of. His life is no trifle to me ; his death 
 you shall find none to yourself." {Speaks to himself:) 'Tis me 
 — my life that's pleaded for ! {Reads.) " He, for his own 
 sake, will be dumb as the grave. Erminia has my shame fix'd 60 
 upon her, sure as a wen. We are safe. Auranthe." 
 
 A she-devil ! A dragon ! I her imp ! 
 Fire of hell ! Auranthe — lewd demon ! 
 Where got you this ? Where ? when ? 
 
 Erminia. I found it in the tent, among some spoils 
 Which, being noble, fell to Gersa's lot. 
 Come in, and see. [They go in and return. 
 
 Albert. Villainy ! Villainy ! 
 
 Conrad's sword, his corslet and his helm. 
 And his letter. Caitiff, he shall feel — 
 
 Erminia. I see you are thunderstruck. Haste, haste away ! 70
 
 310 JOHN KEATS [act il, sc. ii 
 
 Albert. O I am tortured by this villainy. 
 
 Ermitiia. You needs must be. Carry it swift to Otho ; 
 Tell him, moreover, I am prisoner 
 Here in this camp, where all the sisterhood. 
 Forced from their quiet cells, are parcell'd out 
 For slaves among these Huns. Away ! Away ! 
 
 Albert. I am gone. 
 
 Ermmia. Swift be your steed ! Within this hour 
 The Emperor will see it. 
 
 Albert. Ere I sleep : 
 
 That I can swear. [Hiiriies out. 
 
 Gersa {without). Brave captains ! thanks. Enough 80 
 
 Of loyal homage now ! 
 
 Enter Gersa. 
 
 Erminia. Hail, royal Hun ! 
 
 Gersa. What means this, fair one .'' Why in such alarm ? 
 Who was it hurried by me so distract ? 
 It seem'd you were in deep discourse together ; 
 Your doctrine has not been so harsh to him 
 As to my poor deserts. Come, come, be plain. 
 I am no jealous fool to kill you both. 
 Or, for such trifles, rob th' adorned world 
 Of such a beauteous vestal. 
 
 Erminia. I grieve, my lord, go 
 
 To hear you condescend to ribald-phrase. 
 
 Gersa. This is too much ! Hearken, my lady pui'e ! 
 
 Ermi?iia. Silence ! and hear the magic of a name — 
 Erminia ! I am she, — the Emperor's niece ! 
 Praised be the heavens, I now dare own myself! 
 
 Gersa. Erminia ! Indeed ! I've heard of her. 
 Prythee, fair lady, what chance brought you here .'' 
 
 Erminia. Ask your own soldiers. 
 
 Gersa. And you dare own your name. 
 
 For loveliness you may — and for the rest 
 My vein is not censorious. 
 
 Ermitiia. Alas ! poor me ! 100 
 
 'Tis false indeed. 
 
 Gersa. Indeed you are too fair : 
 
 The swan, soft leaning on her fledgy breast, 
 When to the stream she launches, looks not back 
 With such a tender grace ; nor are her wings 
 So white as your soul is, if that but be 
 Twin picture to your face. Erminia ! 
 To day, for the first time, I am a king. 
 Yet would I give my unworn crown away 
 To know you spotless.
 
 ACT II., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT 311 
 
 Enninia. Trust me one day more, 
 
 Generously, without more certain guarantee no 
 
 Than this poor face you deign to praise so much ; 
 After that, say and do whate'er you please. 
 If I have any knowledge of you, sir, 
 I think, nay I am sure, you will grieve much 
 To hear my story. O be gentle to me. 
 For I am sick and faint with many wrongs. 
 Tired out, and weary-woni with contumelies. 
 
 Gersa. Poor lady ! 
 
 Enter Ethelbert. 
 
 Erminia. Gentle Prince, 'tis false indeed. 
 
 Good morrow, holy father ! I have had 
 Your prayers, though I look'd for you in vain. 120 
 
 Ethelbert. Blessings upon you, daughter ! Sure you look 
 Too cheerful for these foul pernicious days. 
 Young man, you heard this virgin say 'twas false, — 
 'Tis false, I say. What ! can you not employ 
 Your temper elsewhere, 'mong these burly tents. 
 But you must taunt this dove, for she hath lost 
 The Eagle Otho to beat off assault ? 
 Fie ! fie ! But I will be her guard myself; 
 r the Emperor's name. I here demand of you 
 Herself, and all her sisterhood. She false ! 130 
 
 Gersa. Peace ! peace, old man ! I cannot think she is. 
 
 Ethelbert. Whom I have known from her first infancy, 
 Baptized her in the bosom of the Church, 
 Watch'd her, as anxious husbandmen the grain. 
 From the first shoot till the unripe mid- May, 
 Then to the tender ear of her June days. 
 Which, lifting sweet abroad its timid green. 
 Is blighted by the touch of calumny ! 
 You cannot credit such a monstrous tale .'' 
 
 Gersa. I cannot. Take her. Fair Erminia, 140 
 
 I follow you to Friedburg, — is't not so ? 
 
 Erminia. Aye, so we purpose. 
 
 Ethelbert. Daughter, do you so .'' 
 
 How's this ? I marvel ! Yet you look not mad. 
 
 Erminia. I have good news to tell you, Ethelbert. 
 
 Gersa. Ho ! ho, there ! Guards ! 
 Your blessing, father ! Sweet Erminia, 
 Believe me, I am well nigh sure — 
 
 Erminia. Farewell ! 
 
 Short time will show. [Enter Chiefs. 
 
 Yes, father Ethelbert, 
 I have news precious ar we pass along.
 
 312 JOHN KEATS [act iil, sc. i 
 
 EthelbeH. Dear daughter, you shall guide me. 
 
 Erminia. To no ill. 150 
 
 Gersa. Command an escort to the Friedburg lines. 
 
 [Exeunt Chiefs. 
 Pray let me lead. Fair lady, forget not 
 Gersa, how he believed you innocent. 
 I follow you to Friedburg with all speed. 
 
 [Exeiint. 
 
 ACT III 
 
 Scene I. — The Country, 
 
 Enter Albert. 
 
 AlbeH. 
 
 OTHAT the earth were empty, as when Cain 
 Had no perplexity to hide his head ! 
 Or that the sword of some brave enemy 
 Had put a sudden stop to my hot breath. 
 And hurl'd me down the illimitable gulf 
 Of times past, unremember'd ! Better so 
 Than thus fast-limed in a cursed snare, — 
 The white limbs of a wanton. This the end 
 Of an aspiring life ! My boyhood past 
 
 In feud with wolves and bears, when no eye sav/ 10 
 
 The solitary warfare, fought for love 
 Of honour 'mid the growling wilderness ; 
 My sturdier youth, maturing to the sword. 
 Won by the syren-trumpets, and the ring 
 Of shields upon the pavement, when bright-mail'd 
 Henry the Fowler pass'd the streets of Prague. 
 Was 't to this end I louted and became 
 The menial of Mars, and held a spear, 
 Sway'd by command, as corn is by the wind .'' 
 
 Is it for this, I now am lifted up 20 
 
 By Europe's throned Emperor, to see 
 My honour be my executioner, — 
 My love of fame, my prided honesty. 
 Put to the torture for confessional ? 
 Then the damn'd crime of blurting to the world 
 A woman's secret ! — though a fiend she be, 
 Too tender of my ignominious life ; 
 But then to wrong the generous Emperor 
 In such a searching point, were to give up 
 My soul for foot-ball at hell's holiday ! 30
 
 ACT III., sc. I] OTHO THE GREAT 313 
 
 I must confess, — and cut my throat, — to-day ? 
 To-morrow ? Ho ! some wine ! 
 
 Enter Sigifred. 
 
 Sigifred. A fine humour — 
 
 Albert. Who goes there ? Count Sigifred ? Ha ! ha ! 
 Sigifred. What, man, do you mistake the hollow sky 
 For a throng'd tavern, and these stubbed trees 
 For old serge hangings, — me, your humble friend, 
 For a poor waiter ? Why, man, how you stare ! 
 What Gipsies have you been carousing with ? 
 No, no more wine ; methinks you've had enough. 
 
 Albert. You well may laugh and banter. What a fool 40 
 
 An injury may make of a staid man ! 
 You shall know all anon. 
 
 Sigifred. Some tavern brawl ? 
 
 Albert. "Y was with some people out of common reach ; 
 Revenge is difficult. 
 
 Sigifred. I am your friend ; 
 
 We meet again to-day, and can confer 
 Upon it. For the present I'm in haste. 
 
 Albert. Whither.? 
 
 Sigifred. To fetch King Gersa to the feast. 
 
 The Emperor on this marriage is so hot, 
 Pray heaven it end not in apoplexy ! 
 
 The very porters, as I pass'd the doors, 50 
 
 Hear his loud laugh, and answer'd in full choir. 
 I marvel, Albert, you delay so long 
 From these bright revelries ; go, show yourself, 
 You may be made a duke. 
 
 Albert. Ay, very like. 
 
 Pray, what day has his Highness fix'd upon .'' 
 
 Sigifred. For what } 
 
 Albert. The marriage. What else can I mean ? 
 
 Sigifred. To-day. O, I forgot, you could not know ; 
 The news is scarce a minute old with me. 
 
 Albert. Married to-day ! To-day ! You did not say so ? 
 
 Sigifred. Now, while I speak to you, their comely heads 60 
 
 Are bowed before the mitre. 
 
 Albert. O ! monstrous ! 
 
 Sigifred. What is this .'' 
 
 Albert. Nothing, Sigifred. Farewell ! 
 
 We'll meet upon our subject. Farewell, Count ! [Exit, 
 
 Sigifred. To this clear-headed Albert ? He brain-turn'd ! 
 'Tis as portentous as a meteor. [Exit,
 
 314 JOHN KEATS [act hi., sc. ii 
 
 Scene II. — An Apartment in the Castle, 
 
 Enter, as from the Marriage, Otho, Ludolph, Auranthe, Conrad, 
 Nobles, Knights, Ladies, S^c. Music. 
 
 Otho. Now, Ludolph ! Now, Auranthe ! Daughter fair ! 
 What can I find to grace your nuptial day 
 More than my love, and these wide realms in fee ? 
 
 Ludolph. I have too much. 
 
 Auranthe. And I, my liege, by far. 
 
 Ludolph. Auranthe I have ! O, my bride, ray love ! 
 Not all the gaze upon us can restrain 
 My eyes, too long poor exiles from thy face, 
 From adoration, and my foolish tongue 
 From uttering soft responses to the love 
 
 I see in thy mute beauty beaming forth ! lo 
 
 Fair creature, bless me with a single word ! 
 All mine ! 
 
 Auranthe. Spare, spare me, my lord ; I swoon else. 
 
 Ludolph. Soft beauty ! by to-morrow 1 should die, 
 Wert thou not mine. [^^^^ ^«^^ apart. 
 
 1st Lady. How deep she has bewitch'd him ! 
 
 1*/ Knight. Ask you for her recipe for love philtres. 
 
 2nd Lady. They hold the Emperor in admiration. 
 
 Otho. If ever king was happy that am I ! 
 What are the cities 'yond the Alps to me, 
 The provinces about the Danube's mouth. 
 
 The promise of fair soil beyond the Rhone ; 20 
 
 Or routing out of Hyperborean hordes, 
 To these fair children, stars of a new age .'' 
 Unless perchance I might rejoice to win 
 This little ball of earth, and chuck it them 
 To play with ! 
 
 Auranthe. Nay, my lord, I do not know. 
 
 Ludolph. Let me not famish. 
 
 Otho {to Conrad). Good Franconia, 
 
 You heard what oath I sware, as the sun rose. 
 That unless Heaven would send me back my son, 
 My Arab, — no soft music should enrich 
 
 The cool wine, kiss'd off with a soldier's smack ; 30 
 
 Now all my empire, barter'd for one feast, 
 Seems poverty. 
 
 Conrad. Upon the neighbour plain 
 
 The heralds have prepared a royal lists ; 
 Your knights, found war-proof in the bloody field. 
 Speed to the game.
 
 ACT III., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT 315 
 
 Otho. Well, Ludolph, what say you ? 
 
 Ludolph. My lord ! 
 
 Otho. A tourney ? 
 
 Conrad. Or, if 't please you best — 
 
 Ludolph. I want no more ! 
 
 1*/ Ladi/. He soars ! 
 
 2}id Ladi/. Past all reason. 
 
 Ludolph. Though heaven's choir 
 Should in a vast circumference descend 
 
 And sing for my delight, I'd stop my ears ! 40 
 
 Though bright Apollo's car stood burning here, 
 And he put out an arm to bid me mount, 
 His touch an immortality, not I ! 
 This earth, this palace, this room, Auranthe ! 
 
 Otho. This is a little painful ; just too much. 
 Conrad, if he flames longer in this wise 
 I shall believe in wizard-woven loves 
 And old romances ; but I'll break the spell. 
 Ludolph ! 
 
 Conrad. He'll be calm, anon. 
 
 Ludolph. You call'd .'' 
 
 Yes, yes, yes, I offend. You must forgive me ; 50 
 
 Not being quite recover'd from the stun 
 Of your lai'ge bounties. A tourney, is it not .'' 
 
 \_A sennet heard faintly. 
 
 Cotirad. The trumpets reach us. 
 
 Efhelbert (ivithout). On your peril, sirs. 
 
 Detain us ! 
 
 1*^ Voice (withotit). Let not the abbot pass. 
 
 2nd Voice (without). No 
 
 On your lives ! 
 
 1*^ Voice {withotd). Holy father, you must not. 
 
 Ethelhert {without). Otho ! 
 
 Otho. Who calls on Otho ? 
 
 Ethelhert {without). Ethelbert ! 
 
 Otho. Let him come in. 
 
 Enter Ethelbert leading in Erminia. 
 
 Thou cursed abbot, why 
 Hast brought pollution to our holy rites ? 
 Hast thou no fear of hangman, or the faggot .'' 
 
 Ludolph. What portent — what strange prodigy is this .'' 60 
 
 Conrad. Away ! 
 
 Ethelbert. You, Duke ? 
 
 Erminia. Albert has surely fail'd me ! 
 
 Look at the Emperor's brow upon me bent ! 
 
 Ethelhert, A sad delay !
 
 316 JOHN KEATS [act iii., sc. ii 
 
 Conrad. Away, you guilty thing ! 
 
 Ethelhert. You again, Duke ? Justice, most noble Otho ! 
 You — go to your sister there, and plot again, 
 A quick plot, swift as thought to save your heads ; 
 For lo ! the toils are spread around your den. 
 The world is all agape to see dragg'd forth 
 Two ugly monsters. 
 
 Ludolph. What means he, my lord ? 
 
 Conrad. I cannot guess. 
 
 Ethelhert. Best ask your lady sister, 70 
 
 Whether the riddle puzzles her beyond 
 The power of utterance. 
 
 Conrad. Foul barbarian, cease ; 
 
 The Princess faints ! 
 
 Ludolph. Stab him ! O, sweetest wife ! 
 
 ^Attendants bear off Auranthe. 
 Erminia. Alas ! 
 Ethelhert. Your wife } 
 
 Ludolph. Ay, Satan ! does that yerk ye } 
 
 Ethelhert. Wife ! so soon ! 
 
 Ludolph. Ay, wife ! Oh, impudence ! 
 
 Thou bitter mischief ! Venomous mad priest ! 
 How dar'st thou lift those beetle brows at me — 
 Me — the prince Ludolph, in this presence here, 
 Upon my marriage-day, and scandalize 
 
 My joys with such opprobrious surprise .'' 80 
 
 Wife ! Why dost linger on that syllable, 
 As if it were some demon's name pronounc'd 
 To summon harmful lightning, and make yawn 
 The sleepy thunder ? Hast no sense of fear .'' 
 No ounce of man in thy mortality ? 
 Tremble ! for, at my nod, the sharpen'd axe 
 Will make thy bold tongue quiver to the roots, 
 Those grey lids wink, and thou not know it more ! 
 Ethelhert. O, poor deceived Prince ! I pity thee ! 
 Great Otho ! I claim justice — 
 
 Ludolph. Thou shall have't ! go 
 
 Thine arms from forth a pulpit of hot fire 
 Shall sprawl distracted .'' O that that dull cowl 
 Were some most sensitive portion of thy life. 
 That I might give it to my hounds to tear ! 
 Thy girdle some fine zealous-pained nerve 
 To girth my saddle ! And those devil's beads 
 Each one a life, that I might every day 
 Crush one with Vulcan's hammer ! 
 
 Otho. Peace, my son ; 
 
 You far outstrip my spleen in this affair.
 
 ACT III., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT 317 
 
 Let us be calm, and hear the abbot's plea loo 
 
 For this intrusion. 
 
 Ludolpli. I am silent, sire. 
 
 Otho. Conrad, see all depart not wanted here. 
 
 [Exeunt Knights, Ladies, Sfc. 
 Ludolph, be calm. Ethelbert, peace awhile. 
 This mystery demands an audience 
 Of a just judge, and that will Otho be. 
 
 Ludolph. Why has he time to breathe another word } 
 
 Otho. Ludolph, old Ethelbert, be sure, comes not 
 To beard us for no cause ; he's not the man 
 To cry himself up an ambassador 
 Without credentials. 
 
 Ludolph. I'll chain up myself. no 
 
 Otho. Old abbot, stand here forth. Lady Erminia, 
 Sit. And now, abbot ! what have you to say .'' 
 Our ear is open. First we here denounce 
 Hard penalties against thee, if 't be found 
 The cause for which you have disturb'd us here. 
 Making our bright hours muddy, be a thing 
 Of little moment. 
 
 Ethelbert. See this innocent ! 
 
 Otho ! thou father of the people call'd. 
 Is her life nothing .'' Her fair honour nothing ? 
 
 Her tears from matins until even-song 120 
 
 Nothing ? Her burst heart nothing .^ Emperor ! 
 Is this your gentle niece — the simplest flower 
 Of the world's herbal — this fair lily blanch'd 
 Still with the dews of piety, this meek lady 
 Here sitting like an angel newly-shent. 
 Who veils its snowy wings and grows all pale, — 
 Is she nothing .' 
 
 Otho. What more to the purpose, abbot } 
 
 Ludolph. Whither is he winding } 
 
 Conrad. No clue yet ! 
 
 Ethelbert. You have heard, my liege, and so, no doubt, all here. 
 Foul, poisonous, malignant whisperings ; 130 
 
 Nay open speech, rude mockery grown common. 
 Against the spotless nature and clear fame 
 Of the princess Erminia, your niece. 
 I have intruded here thus suddenly. 
 Because I hold those base weeds, with tight hand. 
 Which now disfigure her fair growing stem, 
 Waiting but for your sign to pull them up 
 By the dark roots, and leave her palpable, 
 To all men's sight, a lady innocent. 
 The ignominy of that whisper' d tale 140
 
 318 JOHN KEATS [act hi., sc. ii 
 
 About a midnight gallant, seen to climb 
 
 A window to her chamber neighbour'd near 
 
 I will from her turn ofF, and put the load 
 
 On the right shoulders ; on that wretch's head, 
 
 Who, by close stratagems, did save herself. 
 
 Chiefly by shifting to this lady's room 
 
 A rope-ladder for false witness. 
 
 Liidolph. Most atrocious ! 
 
 Otho. Ethelbert, proceed. 
 
 Ethelbert. With sad lips I shall : 
 
 For, in the healing of one wound, I fear 
 
 To make a greater. His young highness here 150 
 
 To-day was married. 
 
 Liidolph. Good. 
 
 Ethelbert. Would it were good ! 
 
 Yet why do I delay to spread abroad 
 The names of those two vipers, from whose jaw 
 A deadly breath went forth to taint and blast 
 This guileless lady ? 
 
 Otho. Abbot, speak their names. 
 
 Ethelbert. A minute first. It cannot be — but may 
 I ask, great judge, if you to-day have put 
 A letter by unread ? 
 
 Otho. Does 't end in this .'' 
 
 Conrad. Out with their names ! 
 
 EthelbeH. Bold sinner, say you so ? 
 
 Ludolph. Out, tedious monk ! 
 
 Otho. Confess, or by the wheel — iGo 
 
 Ethelbert. My evidence cannot be far away ; 
 And, though it never come, be on my head 
 The crimd of passing an attaint upon 
 The slanderers of this virgin — 
 
 Ludolph. Speak aloud ! 
 
 Ethelbert. Auranthe, and her brother there ! 
 
 Conrad. AiTiaze ! 
 
 Liidolph. Throw them from the windows ! 
 
 Otho. Do what you will ! 
 
 Ludolph. What shall I do with them .'' 
 
 Something of quick dispatch, for should she hear. 
 My soft Auranthe, her sweet mercy would 
 
 Prevail against my fury. Damned priest ! 170 
 
 What swift death wilt thou die ? As to the lady 
 I touch her not. 
 
 Ethelbert. Illustrious Otho, stay ! 
 An ample store of misery thou hast ; 
 Choke not the granary of thy noble mind 
 With more bad bitter grain, too difficult
 
 ACT III., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT 319 
 
 A cud for the repentance of a man 
 
 Grey-growing. To thee only I appeal. 
 
 Not to thy noble son, whose yeasting youth 
 
 Will clear itself, and crystal turn again. 
 
 A young man's heart, by Heaven's blessing, is i8o 
 
 A wide world, where a thousand new-born hopes 
 
 Empurple fresh the melancholy blood : 
 
 But an old man's is narrow, tenantless 
 
 Of hopes, and stuffd with many memories. 
 
 Which, being pleasant, ease the heavy pulse — 
 
 Painful, clog up and stagnate. Weigh this matter 
 
 Even as a miser balances his coin ; 
 
 And, in the name of mercy, give command 
 
 That your knight Albert be brought here before you. 
 
 He will expound this riddle ; he will show igo 
 
 A noon-day proof of bad Auranthe's guilt. 
 
 Otho. Let Albert straight be summon' d. 
 
 [Exit one of the Nobles, 
 
 Ludolph. Impossible ! 
 
 I cannot doubt — I will not — no — to doubt 
 Is to be ashes ! — wither'd up to death ! 
 
 Otho. My gentle Ludolph, harbour not a fear ; 
 You do yourself much wrong. 
 
 Ludolph. O, wretched dolt ! 
 
 Now, when my foot is almost on thy neck. 
 Wilt thou infuriate me .'' Proof ! Thou fool ! 
 Why wilt thou tease impossibility 
 
 With such a thick-skull'd persevering suit .'' 200 
 
 Fanatic obstinacy ! Prodigy ! 
 Monster of folly ! Ghost of a turn'd brain ! 
 You puzzle me, — you haunt me, when I dream 
 Of you my brain will split ! Bold sorcerer ! 
 Juggler ! May I come near you .'' On my soul 
 I know not whether to pity, curse, or laugh. 
 
 Enter Albert and the Nobleman. 
 
 Here, Albert, this old phantom wants a proof ! 
 Give him his proof ! A camel's load of proofs ! 
 
 Otho. Albert, I speak to you as to a man 
 Whose words once utter' d pass like current gold ; a 10 
 
 And therefore fit to calmly put a close 
 To this brief tempest. Do you stand possess'd 
 Of any proof against the honourableness 
 Of Lady Auranthe, our new-spoused daughter ? 
 
 Albert. You chill me with astonishment. How's this .''
 
 320 JOHN KEATS [act hi., sc. ii 
 
 My liege, what proof should I have 'gainst a fame 
 
 Impossible of slur ? [Otho lises. 
 
 Erminia. O wickedness ! 
 
 Ethelbert. Deluded monarch, 'tis a cruel lie. 
 
 Otho. Peace, rebel-priest ! 
 
 Conrad. Insult beyond credence ! 
 
 Erminia. Almost a dream ! 
 
 Ludolph. We have awaked from ! 220 
 
 A foolish dream that from my brow hath wrung 
 A wrathful dew. O folly ! why did I 
 So act the lion with this silly gnat ? 
 Let them depart. Lady Erminia ! 
 I ever grieved for you, as who did not .^ 
 But now you have, with such a brazen front, 
 So most maliciously, so madly, striven 
 To dazzle the soft moon, when tenderest clouds 
 Should be unloop'd around to curtain her, 
 
 I leave you to the desert of the world 230 
 
 Almost with pleasure. Let them be set free 
 For me ! I take no personal revenge 
 More than against a nightmare, which a man 
 Forgets in the new dawn. 
 
 [Exit Ludolph. 
 
 Otho. Still in extremes ! No, they must not be loose. 
 
 Ethelbert. Albert, I must suspect thee of a crime 
 So fiendish — 
 
 Otho. Fear'st thou not my fury, monk } 
 
 Conrad, be they in your safe custody 
 Till we determine some fit punishment. 
 
 It is so mad a deed, I must reflect 240 
 
 And question them in private ; for perhaps. 
 By patient scrutiny, we may discover 
 Whether they merit death, or should be placed 
 In care of the physicians. 
 
 [Exeunt Otho ajid Nobles, Albert follom7ig. 
 Conrad. My guards, ho ! 
 
 Erminia. Albert, wilt thou follow there .'' 
 
 Wilt thou creep dastardly behind his back. 
 And shrink away from a weak woman's eye .'' 
 Turn, thou court-Janus ! thou forget'st thyself; 
 Here is the duke, waiting with open arms 
 
 Enter Guards. 
 
 To thank thee ; here congratulate each other ; 250 
 
 Wring hands ; embrace ; and swear how lucky 'twas 
 That I, by happy chance, hit the right man 
 Of all the world to trust in.
 
 ACT IV., sc. I] OTHO THE GREAT 321 
 
 Albert. Trust ! to me ! 
 
 Conrad (a.sidc). He is the sole one in this mystery. 
 
 Erminia. Well, I give up, and save my prayers for Heaven ! 
 You, who could do this deed, would ne'er relent, 
 Though, at my words, the hollow prison-vaults 
 Would groan for pity. 
 
 Conrad. Manacle them both ! 
 
 Ethelhert. I know it — it must be — 1 see it all ! 
 Albert, thou art the minion ! 
 
 Ennifiia. Ah ! too plain — 2G0 
 
 Conrad. Silence ! Gag up their mouths ! 1 cannot bear 
 More of this brawling. That the Emperor 
 Had placed you in some other custody ! 
 Bring them away. [Exeunt all but Albf.rt. 
 
 Albert. Though my name perish from the book of honour, 
 Almost before the recent ink is dry. 
 And be no more remember'd after death 
 Than any drummer's in the muster-roll ; 
 Yet shall I season high my sudden fall 
 
 With triumph o'er that evil-witted duke ! 270 
 
 He shall feel what it is to have the hand 
 Of a man drowning, on his hateful throat. 
 
 Enter Gersa and Sigifred. 
 
 Gersa. What discord is at ferment in this house ? 
 
 Sigifred. We are without conjecture ; not a soul 
 We met could answer any certainty. 
 
 Ger.sa. Young Ludolph, like a fiery arrow, shot 
 By us. 
 
 Sigifred. The Emperor, with cross'd arms, in thought. 
 
 Gersa. In one room music, in another sadness. 
 Perplexity everywhere ! 
 
 Albert. A trifle more ! 
 
 Follow ; your presences will much avail 280 
 
 To tune our jarred spirits. I'll explain. 
 
 \Exeunt. 
 
 ACT IV 
 
 Scene I. — Auranthe's Aparlmenl. 
 AuRANTHE and Conrad discovered. 
 Co7irad. 
 
 WELL, well, I know what ugly jeopardy 
 We are caged in ; you need not pester that 
 Into my ears. Prythee, let me be spared 
 A foolish tongue, that I may bethink me 
 21
 
 322 JOHN KEATS [act iv., sc. i 
 
 Of remedies with some deliberation. 
 
 You cannot doubt but 'tis in Albert's power 
 
 To crush or save us ? 
 
 Ammithe. No, I cannot doubt. 
 
 He has, assure yourself, by some strange means. 
 My secret ; which I ever hid from him, 
 Knowing his mawkish honesty. 
 
 Conrad. Cursed slave ! lo 
 
 Auranlhe. Ay, I could almost curse him now myself. 
 Wretched impediment ! Evil genius ! 
 A glue upon my wings, that cannot spread. 
 When they should span the provinces ! A snake, 
 A scorpion, sprawling on the first gold step. 
 Conducting to the throne high canopied. 
 
 Conrad. You would not hear my counsel, when his life 
 Might have been trodden out, all sure and hush'd ; 
 Now the dull animal forsooth must be 
 
 Intreated, managed ! When can you contrive 20 
 
 The interview he demands ? 
 
 Attraiithe. As speedily 
 
 It must be done as my bribed woman can 
 Unseen conduct him to me ; but I fear 
 'Twill be impossible, while the broad day 
 Comes through the panes with persecuting glare. 
 Methinks, if 't now were night I could intrigue 
 With darkness, bring the stars to second me. 
 And settle all this trouble. 
 
 Conrad. Nonsense ! Child ! 
 
 See him immediately ; why not now ? 
 
 Auranthe. Do you forget that even the senseless door-posts 30 
 Are on the watch and gape through all the house } 
 How many whisperers there are about, 
 Hungry for evidence to ruin me. — 
 Men I have spurn'd, and women I have taunted .^ 
 Besides, the foolish prince sends, minute whiles. 
 His pages — so they tell me — to inquire 
 After my health, entreating, if I please. 
 To see me. 
 
 Conrad. Well, suppose this Albert here ; 
 What is your power with him ? 
 
 Atu-anthe. He should be 
 
 My echo, my taught parrot ! but I fear 40 
 
 He will be cur enough to bark at me ; 
 Have his own say ; read me some silly creed 
 'Bout shame and pity. 
 
 Conrad. What will you do then } 
 
 Auranthe. What I shall do, I know not : what I would
 
 ACT IV., sc. I] OTHO THE GREAT 323 
 
 Cannot be done ; for see, this chamber-floor 
 Will not yield to the pick -axe and the spade, — 
 Here is no quiet depth of hollow ground. 
 
 Conrad. Sister, you have grown sensible and wise, 
 Seconding, ere I speak it, what is now, 
 I hope, resolved between us. 
 
 Auranthc. Say, what is' t .^ 50 
 
 Conrad. You need not be his sexton too : a man 
 May carry that with him shall make him die 
 Elsewhere, — give that to him ; pretend the while 
 You will to-morrow succumb to his wishes. 
 Be what they may, and send him from the Castle 
 On some fool's errand ; let his latest groan 
 Frighten the wolves ! 
 
 Auranthe. Alas ! he must not die ! 
 
 Conrad. Would you were both hearsed up in stifling lead ! 
 Detested — 
 
 Atiranthe. Conrad, hold ! I would not bear 
 The little thunder of your fretful tongue, 60 
 
 Tho' I alone were taken in these toils, 
 And you could free me ; but remember, sir. 
 You live alone in my security : 
 So keep your wits at work, for your own sake, 
 Not mine, and be more mannerly. 
 
 Conrad. Thou wasp ! 
 
 If my domains were emptied of these folk. 
 And I had thee to starve — 
 
 Auranthe. O, marvellous ! 
 
 But Conrad, now be gone ; the host is look'd for ; 
 Cringe to the Emperor, entertain the lords, 
 
 And, do ye mind, above all things, proclaim 70 
 
 My sickness, with a brother's sadden'd eye. 
 Condoling with Prince Ludolph. In fit time 
 Return to me. 
 
 Conrad. I leave you to your thoughts. 
 
 [Exit. 
 Auranthe {sold). Down, down, proud temper ! down, Auranthe's 
 pride ! 
 Why do I anger him when I should kneel .'' 
 Conrad ! Albert ! help ! help ! What can I do .^ 
 O wretched woman ! lost, wreck'd, swallow'd up. 
 Accursed, blasted ! O, thou golden Crown, 
 Orbing along the serene firmament 
 
 Of a wide empire, like a glowing moon ; 80 
 
 And thou, bright sceptre ! lustrous in my eyes 
 There — as the fabled fair Hesperian tree, 
 Bearing a fruit more precious ! graceful thing.
 
 324 JOHN KEATS [act iv., sc. i 
 
 Delicate, godlike, magic ! must I leave 
 
 Thee to melt in the visionary air. 
 
 Ere, by one grasp, this common hand is made 
 
 Imperial ? I do not know the time 
 
 When I have wept for sorrow ; but methinks 
 
 I could now sit upon the ground, and shed 
 
 Tears, tears of misery, O, the heavy day ! go 
 
 How shall 1 bear my life till Albert comes ? 
 
 Ludolph ! Erminia ! Proofs ! O heavy day ! 
 
 Bring me some mourning weeds, that I may 'tire 
 
 Myself as fits one wailing her own death : 
 
 Cut off these curls, and brand this lily hand. 
 
 And throw these jewels from my loathing sight, — 
 
 Fetch me a missal, and a string of beads, — 
 
 A cup of bitter'd water, and a crust, — 
 
 I will confess, O holy Abbot ! — How ! 
 
 What is this ? Auranthe ! thou fool, dolt, loo 
 
 Whimpering idiot ! up ! up ! and quell ! 
 
 I am safe ! Coward ! why am I in fear ? 
 
 Albert ! he cannot stickle, chew the cud 
 
 In such a fine extreme, — impossible ! 
 
 Who knocks ? [Goes io the Door, ILsLois, and opens it. 
 
 Enter Albert. 
 
 Albert, I have been waiting for you hei*e 
 With such an aching heart, such swooning throbs 
 On my poor brain, such cruel — cruel sorrow. 
 That I should claim your pity ! Art not well ? 
 
 Albert. Yes, lady, well. 
 
 Auranthe. You look not so, alas ! no 
 
 But pale, as if you brought some heavy news. 
 
 Albert. You know full well what makes me look so pale. 
 
 Auranthe. No ! Do I .'' Surely I am still to learn 
 Some horror ; all I know, this present, is 
 I am near hustled to a dangerous gulf, 
 Which you can save me from, — and therefore safe, 
 So trusting in thy love ; that should not make 
 Thee pale, my Albert. 
 
 Albert. It doth make me freeze. 
 
 Auranthe. Why should it, love ? 
 
 Albert. You should not ask me that. 
 
 But make your own heart monitor, and save 120 
 
 Me the great pain of telling. You must know. 
 
 Auranthe. Something has vext you, Albert. There are times 
 When simplest things put on a sombre cast ; 
 A melancholy mood will haunt a man,
 
 ACT TV., sc. I] OTH(> THE GREAT ^25 
 
 Until most easy matters take the shape 
 Of miachievable tasks ; small rivulets 
 Then seem impassable. 
 
 Albert. Do not cheat yourself 
 
 With hope that gloss of words^ or suppliant action, 
 Or tears, or ravings, or self-threaten'd death, 
 Can alter my resolve. 
 
 Auranthe. You make me tremble, 130 
 
 Not so much at your threats, as at your voice, 
 Untuned, and harsh, and barren of all love. 
 
 Albert. You suffocate me ! Stop this devil's parley. 
 And listen to me ; know me once for all, 
 
 Aura/itke. I thought I did. Alas ! I am deceived. 
 
 Albert. No, you are not deceived. You took me for 
 A man detesting all inhuman crime ; 
 And therefore kept from me your demon's plot 
 Against Erminia. Silent ? Be so still ; 
 
 For ever ! Speak no more ; but hear my words, 140 
 
 Thy fate. Your safety I have bought to-day 
 By blazoning a lie, which in the dawn 
 I'll expiate with truth. 
 
 Auranthe. O cruel traitor ! 
 
 Albert. For I would not set eyes upon thy shame ; 
 I would not see thee dragg'd to death by the hair. 
 Penanced, and taunted on a scaffolding I 
 To-night, upon the skirts of the blind wood 
 That blackens northwai'd of these horrid towers, 
 I wait for you with horses. Choose your fate. 
 Farewell ! 
 
 Auranthe. Albert, you jest ; I'm sure you must. 150 
 
 You, an ambitious Soldier ! I, a Queen, 
 One who could say, — Here, rule these Provinces ! 
 Take tribute from those cities for thyself! 
 Empty these armouries, these ti'easuries, 
 Muster thy warlike thousands at a nod ! 
 Go ! conquer Italy ! 
 
 Albert. Auranthe, you have made 
 
 The whole world chaff to me. Your doom is fix'd. 
 
 Auranthe. Out, villain ! dastard ! 
 
 Albert. Look there to the door ! 
 
 Who is it ? 
 
 Auranthe. Conrad, traitor ! 
 
 Albert. Let him in. 
 
 Enter Conrad. 
 
 Do not affect amazement, hypocrite, 160 
 
 At seeing me in this chamber.
 
 326 JOHN KEATS [act iv., sc. ii 
 
 Conrad. Auranthe ? 
 
 Albert. Talk not with eyes, but speak your curses out 
 Against me, who would sooner crush and grind 
 A brace of toads, than league with them t' oppress 
 An innocent lady, gull an Emperor, 
 More generous to me than autumn sun 
 To ripening harvests. 
 
 Auranthe. No more insult, sir ! 
 
 Albert. Ay, clutch your scabbard ; but, for prudence sake. 
 Draw not the sword ; 'twould make an uproar, Duke, 
 You would not hear the end of. At nightfall 170 
 
 Your lady sister, if I guess aright. 
 Will leave this busy castle. You had best 
 Take farewell too of worldly vanities. 
 
 Coiirad. Vassal ! 
 
 Albert. To-morrow, when the Emperor sends 
 For loving Conrad, see you fawn on him. 
 Good even ! 
 
 Auranthe. You'll be seen ! 
 
 Albert. See the coast clear then. 
 
 Auranthe (as he goes). Remorseless Albert ! Cruel, cruel 
 
 wretch ! [She lets him out. 
 
 Cojirad. So, we must lick the dust .'' 
 
 Au7-anthe. I follow him. 
 
 Conrad. How .'' Where .'' The plan of your escape } 
 
 Auranthe. He waits 
 
 For me with horses by the forest-side, iSo 
 
 Northward. 
 
 Conrad. Good, good ! he dies. You go, say you ? 
 
 Auranthe. Perforce. 
 
 Co7irad. Be speedy, darkness ! Till that comes, 
 Fiends keep you company ! [Exit. 
 
 Auranthe. And you ! and you ! 
 
 And all men ! Vanish ! 
 
 [Retires to an inner Apartment. 
 
 Scene H. — An Apartment in the Castle. 
 Enter Ludolph and Page. 
 
 Page. Still very sick, my lord ; but now I went, 
 And there her women, in a mournful throng. 
 Stood in the passage whispering ; if any 
 Moved 'twas with careful steps, and hush'd as death. 
 They bade me stop. 
 
 Ludolph. Good fellow, once again 
 
 Make soft inquiry ; pry thee, be not stay'd
 
 ACT IV., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT 327 
 
 By any hindrance, but with gentlest force 
 
 Break through lier weeping servants, till thou com'st 
 
 E'en to her chamber-door, and there, fair boy, — 
 
 If with thy mother's milk thou hast suck'd in lo 
 
 Any divine eloquence, — woo her ears 
 
 With plaints for me, more tender than the voice 
 
 Of dying Echo, echoed. 
 
 Page. Kindest master ! 
 
 To know thee sad thus, will unloose my tongue 
 In mournful syllables. Let but my words reach 
 Her ears, and she shall take them coupled with 
 Moans from my heart, and sighs not counterfeit. 
 May I speed better ! [^E.vil Page. 
 
 Ludolph {solus). Auranthe ! My life ! 
 
 Long have I loved thee, yet till now not loved : 
 Remembering, as I do, hard-hearted times 20 
 
 When I had heard e'en of thy death perhaps, 
 And — thoughtless ! — suffer 'd thee to pass alone 
 Into Elysium ! — now I follow thee, 
 A substance or a shadow, wheresoe'er 
 Thou leadest me, — whether thy white feet press. 
 With pleasant weight, the amorous-aching earth, 
 Or thro' the air thou pioneerest me, 
 A shade ! Yet sadly I predestinate ! 
 O, unbenignest Love, why wilt thou let 
 
 Darkness steal out upon the sleepy world 30 
 
 So wearily, as if Night's chariot-wheels 
 Were clogg'd in some thick cloud ? O, changeful Love, 
 Let not her steeds with drowsy-footed pace 
 Pass the high stars, before sweet embassage 
 Comes from the pillow'd beauty of that fair 
 Completion of all-delicate Nature's wit ! 
 Pout her faint lips anew with rubious health ; 
 And, with thine infant fingers, lift the fringe 
 Of her sick eye-lids ; that those eyes may glow 
 
 With wooing light upon me, ere the morn 40 
 
 Peers with disrelish, grey, barren, and cold ! 
 
 Enter Gersa and Conrliers. 
 
 Otho calls me his Lion, — should I blush 
 To be so tamed ? so — 
 
 Gersa. Do me the courtesy. 
 
 Gentlemen, to pass on. 
 
 l.sf. Knight. We are your servants. 
 
 [ Exeun t Con rtiers. 
 
 Ludolph. It seems then, sir, you have found out the man 
 You would confer with ; — me .-*
 
 328 JOHN KEATS [act iv., sc. ii 
 
 Gersa. It' I break not 
 
 Too much upon your thoughtful mood, I will 
 Claim a brief while your patience. 
 
 Ludolph. For what cause 
 
 Soe'er, I shall be honour'd. 
 
 Gersa. I not less. 
 
 Ludolph. What may it be ? No trifle can take place 50 
 
 Of such deliberate prologue, serious 'haviour. 
 But, be it what it may, I cannot fail 
 To listen with no common interest ; 
 For though so new your presence is to me, 
 I have a soldier's friendship for your fame. 
 Please you explain. 
 
 Gersa. As thus : — for, pardon me, 
 
 I cannot, in plain terms, grossly assault 
 A noble nature ; and would faintly sketch 
 What your quick apprehension will fill up ; 
 So finely I esteem you. 
 
 Ludolph. I attend. 60 
 
 Gersa. Your generous father, most illustrious Otho, 
 Sits in the banquet-room among his chiefs ; 
 His wine is bitter, for you are not there ; 
 His eyes are fix'd still on the open doors. 
 And ev'ry passer in he frowns upon. 
 Seeing no Ludolph comes. 
 
 Ludolph. I do neglect. 
 
 Gersa. And for your absence may I guess the cause ? 
 
 Ludolph. Stay there ! No — guess ? More princely you must 
 be 
 Than to make guesses at me. 'Tis enough. 
 I'm sorry I can hear no more. 
 
 Gersa. And I 70 
 
 As grieved to force it on you so abrupt ; 
 Yet, one day, you must know a griet^ whose sting 
 Will sharpen more the longer 'tis conceal'd. 
 
 Ludolph. Say it at once, sir ! Dead — dead ? — is she dead ? 
 
 Gersa. Mine is a cruel task : she is not dead. 
 And would, for your sake, she were innocent. 
 
 Ludolph. Hungarian ! Thou amazest me beyond 
 All scope of thought, convulsest my heart's blood 
 To deadly churning ! Gersa, you are young. 
 
 As I am ; let me observe you, face to face : 80 
 
 Not grey-brow'd like the poisonous Ethelbert, 
 No rheumed eyes, no furrowing of age. 
 No wrinkles, where all vices nestle in 
 Like crannied vermin, — no ! but fresh, and young. 
 And hopeful featured. Ha ! by heaven you weep ! 
 
 '
 
 ACT IV., sc. II] OTHO THE GREAT :i29 
 
 Tears, human tears ! Do you repent you then 
 Of a curs'd torturer's office ? Why shouldst join — 
 Tell me, — the league of devils ? Confess — confess — 
 The lie ! 
 
 Gersa. Lie ! — but begone all ceremonious points 
 Of honour battailous ! I could not turn go 
 
 My wrath against thee for the orbed world. 
 
 Ludolph. Your wrath, weak boy .'' Tremble at mine, unless 
 Retraction follow close upon the lieels 
 Of that late 'stounding insult ! Why has my sword 
 Not done already a sheer judgment on thee .'' 
 Despair, or eat thy words ! Why, thou wast nigh 
 Whimpering away my reason ! Hark ye, sir. 
 It is no secret, that Erminia, 
 Erminia, sir, was hidden in your tent, — 
 
 bless'd asylum ! Comfortable home ! loo 
 Begone ! I pity thee; thou art a gull, 
 
 Erminia's last new puppet ! 
 
 Gersa. Furious fire ! 
 
 Thou mak'st me boil as hot as thou canst flame ! 
 And in thy teeth I give thee back the lie ! 
 Thou liest ! Thou, Auranthe's fool ! A wittol ! 
 
 Ludolph. Look ! look at this bright sword ; 
 There is no part of it, to the very hilt. 
 But shall indulge itself about thine heart ! 
 Draw ! but remember thou must cower thy plumes, 
 As yesterday the Arab made thee stoop. no 
 
 Gersa. Patience ! Not here ; I would not spill thy blood 
 Here, underneath this roof where Otho breathes, — 
 Thy father, — almost mine. 
 
 Ludolph. O faltering coward ! 
 
 Enter Page. 
 
 Stay, stay ; here is one I have half a word with. 
 Well } What ails thee, child } 
 
 Page. My lord ! 
 
 Ludolph, What wouldst say .^ 
 
 Page. They are fled ! 
 
 Ludolph. They ! Who .'' 
 
 Page. When anxiously 
 
 1 hasten'd back, your grieving messenger, 
 
 I found the stairs all dark, the lamps extinct, 
 
 And not a foot or whisper to be heard. 
 
 I thought her dead, and on the lowest step 120 
 
 Sat listening ; when presently came by 
 
 Two muffled up, — one sighing heavily.
 
 330 JOHN KEATS [act v., sc. i 
 
 The other curshig low, whose voice J knew 
 For the Duke Conrad's. Close I follow'd them 
 Thro' the dark ways they chose to the open air. 
 And, as I follow'd, heard my lady speak. 
 
 Ludolp/i. Thy life answers the truth ! 
 
 Page. The chamber's empty ! 
 
 Liidolph. As I will be of mercy ! So, at last. 
 This nail is in my temples ! 
 
 Gersa. Be calm in this. 
 
 Ludolph. 1 am. 
 
 Gersa. And Albert too has disappear'd ; 130 
 
 Ere I met you, I sought him everywhere ; 
 You would not hearken. 
 
 Lndulph. Which way went they, boy ? 
 
 Gersa. I'll hunt with you. 
 
 Ludolph. No, no, no. My senses are 
 
 Still whole. I have survived. My arm is strong — 
 My appetite sharp — for revenge ! I'll no sharer 
 In my feast ; my injury is all my own. 
 And so is my revenge, my lawful chattels ! 
 Terrier, ferret them out ! Burn — burn the witch ! 
 Trace me their footsteps ! Away ! [Exeiml 
 
 ACT V 
 
 Scene I. — A part of the Forest. 
 
 Enter Conrad and Auranthe. 
 A uranthe. 
 
 GO no further ; not a step more. Thou art 
 A master-plague in the midst of miseries. 
 Go, — I fear thee ! I tremble, every limb. 
 Who never shook before. There's moody death 
 In thy resolved looks ! Yes, I could kneel 
 To pray thee far away ! Conrad, go ! go ! — 
 There ! yonder, underneath the boughs I see 
 Our horses ! 
 
 Conrad. Ay, and the man. 
 
 Auranthe. Yes, he is there ! 
 
 Go, go, — no blood ! no blood ! — go, gentle Conrad ! 
 
 Conrad. Farewell ! 
 
 Auranthe. Farewell ! For this Heaven pardon you ! 10 
 
 [Exit Auranthe. 
 
 Conrad. If he survive one hour, then may I die
 
 ACT v., sc. II ! OTHO THE GREAT 331 
 
 In unimagiued tortures, or breathe through 
 
 A long Hfe in the foulest sink o' the world ! 
 
 He dies ! 'Tis well she do not advertise 
 
 The caitiff of the cold steel at his back, [Exit Conrad. 
 
 Enter Ludolph and Page. 
 
 Ludolph. Miss'd the way, boy ? Say not that on your peril ! 
 
 Page. Indeed, indeed, I cannot trace them further. 
 
 Liidolph. Must I stop here ? Here solitary die 
 Stifled beneath the thick oppressive shade 
 
 Of these dull boughs— this even of dark thickets — 20 
 
 Silent, — without revenge ? — pshaw ! bitter end, — 
 A bitter death — a suffocating death, — 
 A gnawing — silent — deadly, quiet death ! 
 Escaped ? — fled ? — vanish'd ? melted into air ? 
 She's gone ! I cannot clutch her ! no revenge ! 
 A muffled death, ensnared in horrid silence ! 
 Suck'd to my grave amid a dreamy calm ! 
 O, where is that illustrious noise of war, 
 To smother up this sound of labouring breath. 
 This rustle of the trees ! 
 
 [AuRANTHE shrieks at a distance. 
 
 Page. My lord, a noise ! 30 
 
 This way — hark ! 
 
 Ludolph. Yes, yes ! A hope ! A music ! 
 
 A glorious clamour ! How I live again ! \Exennt. 
 
 Scene II. — Another part of the Forest. 
 
 Enter Albert {ivounded). 
 
 Albert. Oh ! for enough life to support me on 
 To Otho's feet ! 
 
 Eiiter Ludolph. 
 
 Ludolph. Thrice villainous, stay there ! 
 Tell me where that detested woman is. 
 Or this is through thee ! 
 
 Albert. My good Prince, with me 
 
 The sword has done its worst ; not without worst 
 Done to another, — Conrad has it home ! 
 I see you know it all i 
 
 Ludolph. Where is his sister ?
 
 332 JOHN KEATS [act v., sc. ii 
 
 Enter Auranthe. 
 
 Atimnihe. Albert ! 
 
 Ludolph. Ha ! There ! there ! He is the paramour ! — 
 There — hug him — dying ! O, thou innocence, 
 
 Shrine him and comfort him at his last gasp ; lo 
 
 Kiss down his eyelids ! Was he not thy love ? 
 Wilt thou forsake him at his latest hour ? 
 Keep fearful and aloof from his last gaze, 
 His most uneasy moments, when cold death 
 Stands with the door ajar to let him in ? 
 
 Albert. O that that door with hollow slam would close 
 Upon me sudden ! for I cannot meet. 
 In all the unknown chambers of the dead. 
 Such horrors ! 
 
 Ludolph. Aui'anthe ! Avhat can he mean ? 
 
 What horrors ? Is it not a joyous time ? 20 
 
 Am I not married to a paragon 
 " Of personal beauty and untainted soul ? " 
 A blushing fair-eyed purity ? A sylph. 
 Whose snowy timid hand has never sinn'd 
 Beyond a flower pluck'd, white as itself? 
 Albert, you do insult my bride — your mistress — 
 To talk of horrors on our wedding-night ! 
 
 Albert. Alas ! poor Prince, I would you knew my heart ! 
 'Tis not so guilty — 
 
 Ludolph. Hear ! he pleads not guilty ! 
 
 You are not ? or, if so, what matters it ? 30 
 
 You have escaped me, free as the dusk air, 
 Hid in the forest, safe from my revenge ; 
 I cannot catch you ! You should laugh at me, 
 Poor cheated Ludolph ! Make the forest hiss 
 With jeers at me ! You tremble — faint at once, 
 You will come to again. O cockatrice, 
 I have you ! Whither wander those fair eyes 
 To entice the devil to your help, that he 
 May change you to a spider, so to crawl 
 Into some cranny to escape my wrath ? ^o 
 
 Albeii. Sometimes the counsel of a dying man 
 Doth operate quietly when his breath is gone : 
 Disjoin those hands — part— part — do not destroy 
 Each other — forget her ! — Our miseries 
 Are equal shared, and mercy is — 
 
 Ludolph. A boon 
 
 When one can compass it. Auranthe, try 
 Your oratory ; your breath is not so hitch 'd. 
 Ay, stare for help ! [Albert dies.
 
 ACT v., sc. Ill] OTHO THE GREAT 333 
 
 There goes a spotted soul 
 Howling in vain along the hollow night ! 
 Hear him ! He calls you — sweet Auranthe, come ! 50 
 
 Auranthe. Kill me ! 
 
 Ludulph. No ! What ? Upon our marriage-night ? 
 The earth would shudder at so foul a deed ! 
 A fair bride ! A sweet bride ! An innocent bride ! 
 No ! we must revel it, as 'tis in use 
 In times of delicate brilliant ceremony : 
 Come, let me lead you to our halls again ! 
 Nay, linger not ; make no resistance, sweet ; — 
 Will you ? Ah, wretch, thou canst not, for I have 
 The strength of twenty lions 'gainst a lamb ! 
 Now — one adieu for Albert ! — Come away ! 60 
 
 Scene HI. — An inner Court of the Castle. 
 Enter Sigifred, Gonfred, a7id Theodore, meeting. 
 
 1st Knight. Was ever such a night ? 
 
 Sigifred. What horrors more ? 
 
 Things unbelieved one hour, so strange they are. 
 The next hour stamps with credit. 
 
 1*/ Knight. Your last news ? 
 
 Gonfred. After the page's story of the death 
 Of Albert and Duke Conrad ? 
 
 Sigifred. And the return 
 
 Of Ludolph with the Princess. 
 
 Go7ifred. No more, save 
 
 Prince Gersa's freeing Abbot Ethelbert, 
 And the sweet lady, fair Erminia, 
 From prison. 
 
 l.s'^ Knight. Where are they now ? Hast yet heard } 
 
 Gonfred. With the sad Emperor they are closeted ; 10 
 
 I saw the three pass slowly up the stairs, 
 The lady weeping, the old abbot cowl'd. 
 
 Sigifred. What next ? 
 
 \st Knight. I ache to think on't. 
 
 Gonfred. 'Tis with fate. 
 
 \st Knight. One while these proud towers are hush'd as death. 
 
 Gonfred. The next our poor Prince fills the arched rooms 
 With ghastly ravings. 
 
 Sigifred. I do fear his brain. 
 
 Gonfred. I will see more. Bear you so stout a heart .-' 
 
 ^Exeunt into the Castle.
 
 334 JOHN KEATS [act v., sc. iv 
 
 Scene IV*. — A Cabinet, opening towards a Terrace. 
 
 Otho, Erminia, Ethelbert, and a Phi/sician, discovered. 
 
 Olho. O, my poor boy ! My son I My son ! My Ludolph ! 
 Have ye no comfort for me, ye physicians 
 Of the weak body and soul ? 
 
 Ethelbert. 'Tis not in medicine. 
 
 Either of heaven or earth, to cure, unless 
 Fit time be chosen to administer. 
 
 Otho. A kind forbearance, holy abbot. Gsme, 
 Erminia : here, sit by me, gentle girl ; 
 Give me thy hand ; hast thou forgiven me ? 
 
 Erminia. Would I were with the saints to pray for you ! 
 Otho. Why will ye keep me from my darling child ? lo 
 
 Physician. Forgive me, but he must not see thy face, 
 Otho. Is then a father's countenance a Gorgon ? 
 Hath it not comfort in it ? Would it not 
 Console my poor boy, cheer him, heal his spirits ? 
 Let me embrace him ; let me speak to him ; 
 I will ! Who hinders me ? Who 's Emperor ? 
 
 Physician. You may not. Sire ; 'twould overwhelm him quite, 
 He is so full of grief and passionate wrath ; 
 Too heavy a sigh would kill him, or do worse. 
 
 He must be saved by fine contrivances ; 20 
 
 And, most especially, we must keep clear 
 Out of his sight a father whom he loves ; 
 His heart is full, it can contain no more. 
 And do its ruddy office. 
 
 Ethelbert. Sage advice ; 
 
 W^e must endeavour how to ease and slacken 
 The tight-wound energies of his despair. 
 Not make them tenser. 
 
 Otho. Enough ! I hear, I hear. 
 
 Yet you were about to advise more, — I listen. 
 
 Ethelbert. This learned doctor will agree with me. 
 That not in the smallest point should he be thwarted, 30 
 
 Or gainsaid by one word ; his very motions, 
 Nods, becks, and hints, should be obey'd with care, 
 Even on the moment ; so his troubled mind 
 May cure itself. 
 
 Physician. There are no other means. 
 Otho. Open the door ; let's hear if all is quiet. 
 Physician. Beseech you. Sire, forbear. 
 Erminia. Do, do,
 
 ACT v., sc. V] OTHO THE GREAT 335 
 
 Otho. I command ! 
 
 Open it straight ; — hush ! — quiet ! — my lost boy ! 
 My miserable child ! 
 
 Ludolph {indistinctly ivithoiit). Fill, fill my goblet, — here's a health ! 
 
 Erminia. O, close the door ! 
 
 Otho. Let, let me hear his voice ; this cannot last ; 40 
 
 And fain would I catch up his dying words. 
 Though my own knell they be ! This cannot last ! 
 O let me catch his voice — for lo ! I hear 
 A whisper in this silence that he's dead ! 
 It is so ! Gersa ? 
 
 Enter Gersa. 
 
 Physician. Say, how fares the Prince ? 
 
 Gersa. More calm ; his features are less wild and flush'd ; 
 Once he complain'd of weariness. 
 
 Physician. Indeed ! 
 
 'Tis good, — 'tis good ; let him but fall asleep, 
 That saves him. 
 
 Otho. Gersa, watch him like a child ; 
 
 Ward him from harm, — and bring me better news ! 50 
 
 Physician. Humour him to the height. I fear to go ; 
 For should he catch a glimpse of my dull garb. 
 It might affright him, fill him with suspicion 
 That we believe him sick, which must not be. 
 
 Gersa. I will invent what soothing means I can. 
 
 [^Exit Gersa. 
 
 Physician. This should cheer up your Highness ; weariness 
 Is a good symptom, and most favourable ; 
 It gives me pleasant hopes. Please you, walk forth 
 Upon the terrace ; the refreshing air 
 
 Will blow one half of your sad doubts away. 60 
 
 [Exeunt. 
 
 Scene V. — A Banqueting Hall, Imlliantly illnminated, and set forth 
 with all costly magnijicence, with Supper-tables laden with Services oj 
 Gold and Silver. A door in the hack scene, guarded by two Soldiers. 
 Lords, Ladies, Knights, Gentlemen, Sfc, whispering sadly, and rang- 
 ing themselves ; part entering and pa?i discovered. 
 
 1st Knight. Grievously are we tantalised, one and all ; 
 Sway'd here and there, commanded to and fro. 
 As though we were the shadows of a sleep. 
 And link'd to a dreaming fancy. What do we here .-* 
 
 Gonfred. I am no seer ; you know we must obey 
 The Prince from A to Z, though it should be
 
 336 JOHN KEATS [act v., sc. v 
 
 To set the place in flames. I pray, hast heard 
 Where the most wicked Princess is ? 
 
 l.y/ Knight. There, sir, 
 
 In the next room ; have you remark'd those two 
 Stout soldiers posted at the door ? 
 
 Gonfred. For what ? lo 
 
 \They whisper. 
 
 1st Lady. How ghast a train ! 
 
 Ind Lady. Sure this should be some splendid burial. 
 
 1a/ Lady. What fearful whispering ! See, see, — Gersa there ! 
 
 Enter Gersa. 
 
 Gersa. Put on your brightest looks ; smile if you can ; 
 Behave as all were happy ; keep your eyes 
 From the least watch upon him ; if he speaks 
 To any one, answer, collectedly. 
 Without surprise, his questions, howe'er strange. 
 Do thisto the utmost, — though, alas ! with me 
 
 The remedy grows hopeless ! Here he comes, — 20 
 
 Observe what I have said, — show no surprise. 
 
 Enter Ludolph, followed by Sigifred and Page. 
 
 Ludolph. A splendid company ! rare beauties here ! 
 I should have Orphean lips, and Plato's fancy, 
 Amphion's utterance, toned with his lyre. 
 Or the deep key of Jove's sonorous mouth. 
 To give fit salutation. Methought I heard, 
 As I came in, some whispers,- — what of that .'' 
 'Tis natural men should whisper ; at the kiss 
 Of Psyche given by Love, there was a buzz 
 
 Among the gods ! — and silence is as natural. 30 
 
 These draperies are fine, and, being a mortal, 
 I should desire no better ; yet, in truth, 
 There must be some superior costliness. 
 Some wider-domed high magnificence ! 
 I would have, as a mortal I may not. 
 Hangings of heaven's clouds, purple and gold. 
 Slung from the spheres ; gauzes of silver mist, 
 Loop'd up with cords of twisted wreathed light. 
 And tassell'd round with weeping meteors ! 
 
 These pendent lamps and chandeliers are bright 40 
 
 As earthly fires from dull dross can be cleansed ; 
 Yet could my eyes drink up intenser beams 
 Undazzled ; — this is darkness, — when I close 
 These lids, I see far fiercer brilliances, — 
 Skies full of splendid moons, and shooting stars.
 
 ACT v., sc. V] OTHO THE GREAT 337 
 
 And spouting exhalations, diamond fires, 
 
 And panting fountains quivering with deep glows. 
 
 Yes — this is dark — is it not dark ? 
 
 Sigifred. My lord, 
 
 'Tis late ; the lights of festival are ever 
 Quench'd in the morn. 
 
 Ludolph. 'Tis not to-morrow then .'' 50 
 
 Sigifred. 'Tis early dawn. 
 
 Gersa. Indeed full time we slept ; 
 
 Say you so. Prince ? 
 
 Ludolph. I say 1 quarrell'd with you ; 
 
 We did not tilt each other, — that's a blessing, — 
 Good gods ! no innocent blood upon my head ! 
 
 Sigifred. Retire, Gersa ! 
 
 Ludolph. There should be three more here : 
 
 For two of them, they stay away perhaps. 
 Being gloomy-minded, haters of fair revels, — 
 They know their own thoughts best. 
 
 As for the third. 
 Deep blue eyes, semi-shaded in white lids, 
 
 Finish'd with lashes fine for more soft shade, 60 
 
 Completed by her twin-arch'd ebon-brows ; 
 White temples, of exactest elegance. 
 Of even mould, felicitous and smooth ; 
 Cheeks fashion'd tenderly on either side. 
 So perfect, so divine, that our poor eyes 
 Are dazzled with the sweet proportioning. 
 And wonder that 'tis so,— the magic chance ! 
 Her nostrils, small, fragrant, fairy-delicate ; 
 Her lips — I swear no human bones e'er wore 
 
 So taking a disguise ; — you shall behold her ! 70 
 
 We'll have her presently ; ay, you shall see her. 
 And wonder at her, friends, she is so fair ; 
 She is the world's chief jewel, and, by heaven! 
 She's mine by right of marriage ! — she is mine 1 
 Patience, good people, in fit time I send 
 A summoner, — she will obey my call. 
 Being a wife most mild and dutiful. 
 First I would hear what music is prepared 
 To herald and receive her ; let me hear ! 
 
 Sigifred. Bid the musicians soothe him tenderly. 80 
 
 \_A soft strain of Mu.nc. 
 
 Ludolph. Ye have none better ? No, I am content ; 
 'Tis a rich sobbing melody, with reliefs 
 Full and majestic ; it is well enough. 
 And will be sweeter, when ye see her pace 
 Sweeping into this prerence, glisten'd o'er 
 
 23
 
 338 JOHN KEATS [act v., sc. v 
 
 With emptied caskets, and her train upheld 
 
 By ladies habited in robes of lawn. 
 
 Sprinkled with golden crescents, others bright 
 
 In silks, with spangles shower' d, and bow'd to 
 
 By Duchesses and pearled Margravines ! 90 
 
 Sad ! that the fairest creature of the earth — 
 
 I pray you mind me not — 'tis sad, I say. 
 
 That the extremest beauty of the world 
 
 Should so entrench herself away from me. 
 
 Behind a barrier of engender'd guilt ! 
 
 2nd Lady. Ah ! what a moan ! 
 
 1*^ Knight. Most piteous indeed ! 
 
 Ludolph. She shall be brought before this company, 
 And then — then — 
 
 \st Lady. He muses. 
 
 Germ. O, Fortune ! where will this end ? 
 
 Sigifred. I guess his purpose ! Indeed he must not have 
 That pestilence brought in, — that cannot be, 100 
 
 There we must stop him. 
 
 Gei-m. I am lost ! Hush, hush ! 
 
 He is about to rave again. 
 
 Ludolph. A barrier of guilt ! I was the fool. 
 She was the cheater ! Who 's the cheater now. 
 And who the fool } The entrapp'd, the caged fool. 
 The bird-limed raven } She shall croak to death 
 Secure ! Methinks I have her in my fist, 
 To crush her with my heel ! Wait, wait ! I marvel 
 My father keeps away. Good friend — ah ! Sigifred ? 
 Do bring him to me, — and Erminia, no 
 
 I fain would see before I sleep — and Ethelbert 
 That he may bless me, as I know he will. 
 Though I have cursed him. 
 
 Sigifred. Rather suffer me 
 
 To lead you to them. 
 
 Ludolph. No, excuse me, — no ! 
 
 The day is not quite done. Go, bring them hither. 
 
 [Exit Sigifred. 
 
 Certes, a father's smile should, like sunlight. 
 
 Slant on my sheaved harvest of ripe bliss. 
 
 Besides, I thirst to pledge my lovely bride 
 
 In a deep goblet : let me see — what wine .'' 
 
 The strong Iberian juice, or mellow Greek ? 120 
 
 Or pale Calabrian ? Or the Tuscan grape .'' 
 
 Or of old jEtna's pulpy wine-presses. 
 
 Black stain'd with the fat vintage, as it were 
 
 The purple slaughter-house, where Bacchus' self 
 
 Prick'd his own swollen veins ! Where is my page ?
 
 ACT v., sc. V] OTHO THE GREAT 339 
 
 Page. Here, here ! 
 
 Ltidolph. Be ready to obey me ; anon thou shalt 
 Bear a soft message for me ; for the hour 
 Draws near when I must make a winding up 
 Of bridal mysteries — a fine-spun vengeance ! 
 
 Carve it on my tomb, that, when 1 rest beneath 130 
 
 Men shall confess, this Prince was guU'd and cheated. 
 But from the ashes of disgrace he rose 
 More than a fiery dragon, and did burn 
 His ignominy up in purging fires ! 
 Did I not send, sir, but a moment past, 
 For my father ? 
 
 Gersa. You did, 
 
 Ludolph. Perhaps 'twould be 
 
 Much better he came not. 
 
 Gersa. He enters now ! 
 
 Enter Otho, Erminia, Ethelbert, Sigifred and Physician. 
 
 Ludolph. O ! thou good man, against whose sacred head 
 I was a mad conspirator, chiefly too 
 
 For the sake of my fair newly wedded wife, 140 
 
 Now to be punish'd ! — do not look so sad ! 
 Those charitable eyes will thaw my heart, 
 Those teai"s will wash away a just resolve, 
 A verdict ten times sworn ! Awake — awake — 
 Put on a judge's brow, and use a tongue 
 Made iron-stern by habit ! Thou shalt see 
 A deed to be applauded, 'scribed in gold ! 
 Join a loud voice to mine, and so denounce 
 What I alone will execute ! 
 
 Otho. Dear son, 
 
 What is it ? By your father's love, I sue 150 
 
 That it be nothing merciless ! 
 
 Ludolph. To that demon ? 
 
 Not so ! No ! She is in temple-stall. 
 Being garnish'd for the sacrifice, and I, 
 The Priest of Justice, will immolate her 
 Upon the altar of wrath ! She stings me through ! — 
 Even as the worm doth feed upon the nut, 
 So she, a scorpion, preys upon my brain ! 
 I feel her gnawing here ! Let her but vanish. 
 Then, father, I will lead your legions forth, 
 
 Compact in steeled squares and speared files, 160 
 
 And bid our trumpets speak a fell rebuke 
 To nations drowsed in peace ! 
 
 Otho. To-morrow, son, 
 
 Be your word law ; forget to-day —
 
 340 JOHN KEATS [act v., sc. v 
 
 Ludo/ph. I will. 
 
 When I have finish'd it ! Now, — now, I'm pight, 
 Tight-footed for the deed ! 
 
 Enninia. Alas ! Alas ! 
 
 Ludolph. What angel's voice is that ? Erminia 
 Ah ! gentlest creature, whose sweet innocence 
 Was almost murder' d ; I am penitent. 
 Wilt thou forgive me ? And thou holy man. 
 Good Ethelbert, shall I die in peace with you ? 170 
 
 Ei-viinia. Die, my lord ? 
 
 Ludolph. I feel it possible. 
 
 Otho. Physician .'' 
 
 Physiciayi. I fear, he is past my skill. 
 
 Oiho. Not so ! 
 
 Litdolph. I see it — I see it — I have been wandering ! 
 Half mad — not right here — I forget my purpose. 
 Bestir — bestir — Auranthe ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! 
 Youngster ! page ! go bid them drag her to me ■ 
 Obey ! This shall finish it ! [Draws a dagger. 
 
 Of ho. Oh, my son ! my son ! 
 
 Sigifred. This must not be — stop there ! 
 
 Ludolph. Am I obey'd ? 
 
 A little talk with her — no harm — haste ! haste ! 
 
 [Exit Page. 
 Set her before me — never fear I can strike. 180 
 
 Several voices. My lord ! My lord ! 
 
 Gersa. Good Prince ! 
 
 Ludolph. Why do ye trouble me ? out — out — away ! 
 There she is ! take that ! and that ! no, no, 
 That's not well done — where is she ? 
 
 [The Doors open. Enter Page. Several Women are seefi grouped 
 about Auranthe i?i the inner Room. 
 
 Page. Alas ! My lord, ray lord ! they cannot move her ! 
 Her arms are stiff — her fingers clench'd and cold. 
 
 Ludolph. She's dead ! 
 
 [Staggers and falls into their arms. 
 
 Ethelbert. Take away the dagger. 
 
 Gersa. Softly ; so ! 
 
 Otho. Thank God for that ! 
 
 Sigifred. It could not harm him now. 
 
 Gersa. No !— brief be his anguish ! 
 
 Liulolph. She's gone ! I am content. Nobles, good night ! 190 
 We are all weary — faint — set ope the doors — 
 I will to bed ! To-morrow — 
 
 [Dies. 
 
 THE CURTAIN FALLS.
 
 KING STEPHEN 
 
 A DRAMATIC FRAGMENT 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Scene I. — Field of Battle. 
 Alarum. Enter King Stephen, Knights, and Soldiers. 
 
 Stephen, 
 
 IF shame can on a soldier's vein-swoll'n front 
 Spread deeper crimson than the battle's toil, 
 Blush in your casing helmets ! for see, see ! 
 Yonder my chivalry, my pride of war. 
 Wrench 'd with an iron hand from firm array, 
 Are routed loose about the plashy meads. 
 Of honour forfeit, O that my known voice 
 Could reach your dastard ears, and fright you more ! 
 Fly, cowards, fly ! Glocester is at your backs ! 
 Throw your slack bridles o'er the flurried manes, lo 
 
 Ply well the rowel with faint trembling heels. 
 Scampering to death at last ! 
 
 \st Kniglit. The enemy 
 
 Bears his flaunt standard close upon their rear. 
 
 2nd Knight. Sure of a bloody prey, seeing the fens 
 Will swamp them girth-deep. 
 
 Stephen. Over head and ears. 
 
 No matter ! 'Tis a gallant enemy ; 
 How like a comet he goes streaming on. 
 But we must plague him in the flank, — hey, friends .'' 
 We are well breath' d, — follow ! 
 
 Enter Earl Baldwin and soldieis, as defeated. 
 
 Stephen. De Redvers ! 
 
 What is the monstrous bugbear that can fright 20 
 
 Baldwin .''
 
 S¥2 JOHN KEATS [act l, sc. ii 
 
 Baldwin. No scarecrow, but the fortunate star 
 Of boisterous Chester, whose fell truncheon now 
 Points level to the goal of victory. 
 This way he comes, and if you would maintain 
 Your person unafFronted by vile odds. 
 Take horse, my Lord. 
 
 Siephen. And which way spur for life ? 
 
 Now I thank heaven I am in the toils. 
 That soldiers may bear witness how my arm 
 Can burst the meshes. Not the eagle more 
 Loves to beat up against a tyrannous blast, 30 
 
 Than I to meet the torrent of my foes. 
 This is a brag, — be't so, — but if I fall. 
 Carve it upon my 'scutcheon'd sepulchre. 
 On, fellow soldiers ! Earl of Redvers, back ! 
 Not twenty Earls of Chester shall brow-beat 
 The diadem. [Exeunt. Alarum, 
 
 Scene IL — Ayiother part of the Field. 
 Trumpets sounding a Victory. Enter Glocester, Knights, and Forces 
 
 Glocester. Now may we lift our bruised vizors up 
 And take the flattering freshness of the air. 
 While the wide din of battle dies away 
 Into times past, yet to be echoed sure 
 In the silent pages of our chroniclers. 
 
 1*/ Knight. Will Stephen's death be mark'd thei'e, my good 
 Lord, 
 Or that we give him lodging in yon towers ? 
 
 Glocester. Fain would I know the great usurper's fate. 
 
 Filter two Captains severally. 
 
 1st Captain. My Lord ! 
 
 2nd Captain. Most noble Earl ! 
 
 1st Captain. The King — 
 
 27id Captain. The Empress greets — 
 
 Glocester. What of the King ? 
 
 1st Captain. He sole and lone maintains 10 
 
 A hopeless bustle "mid our swarming arms. 
 And with a nimble savageness attacks. 
 Escapes, makes fiercer onset, then anew 
 Eludes death, giving death to most that dare 
 Trespass within the circuit of his sword ! 
 He must by this have fallen. Baldwin is taken ; 
 
 I
 
 ACT I., sc. II] KING STEPHEN 343 
 
 And for the Duke of Bretagne, like a stag 
 He flies, for the Welsh beagles to hunt down. 
 God save the Empress ! 
 
 Glocester. Now our dreaded Queen : 
 
 What message from her Highness ? 
 
 2nd Captain. Royal Maud 20 
 
 From the throng'd towers of Lincoln hath look'd down, 
 Like Pallas from the walls of I lion, 
 And seen her enemies havock'd at her feet. 
 She greets most noble Glocester from her heart, 
 Intreating him, his captains, and brave knights. 
 To grace a banquet. The high city gates 
 Are envious which shall see your triumph pass ; 
 The streets are full of music. 
 
 E?iter 2nd Knight. 
 
 Glocester. Whence come you .'' 
 
 'Znd Knight. From Stephen, my good Prince — Stephen ! 
 Stephen ! 
 
 Glocester. Why do you make such echoing of his name ? 30 
 
 2nd Knight. Because I think, my lord, he is no man, 
 But a fierce demon, 'nointed safe from wounds. 
 And misbaptized with a Christian name. 
 
 Glocester. A mighty soldier ! — Does he still hold out ? 
 
 2nd Knight. He shames our victory. His valour still 
 Keeps elbow-room amid our eager swords. 
 And holds our bladed falchions all aloof. 
 His gleaming battle-axe, being slaughter-sick. 
 Smote on the morion of a Flemish knight. 
 
 Broke short in his hand ; upon the which he flung 40 
 
 The heft away with such a vengeful force 
 It paunch'd the Earl of Chester's horse, who then 
 Spleen-hearted came in full career at him. 
 
 Glocester. Did no one take him at a vantage then ? 
 
 2nd Knight. Three then with tiger leap upon him flew. 
 Whom, with his sword swift drawn and nimbly held. 
 He stung away again, and stood to breathe. 
 Smiling. Anon upon him rush'd once more 
 A throng of foes, and in this renew'd strife. 
 My sword met his and snapp'd off at the hilt. 50 
 
 Glocester. Come, lead me to this Mars and let us move 
 In silence, not insulting his sad doom 
 With clamorous trumpets. To the Empress bear 
 My salutation as befits the time. 
 
 [Exeunt Glocester and Forces,
 
 344 JOHN KEATS [act i., sc. hi 
 
 Scene III. — The Field of Battle. Enter Stephen unarmed. 
 
 Stephen. Another sword ! And what if I could seize 
 One from Bellona's gleaming armoury. 
 Or choose the fairest of her sheaved spears ! 
 Where are my enemies ? Here, close at hand. 
 Here come the testy brood. O, for a sword ! 
 I'm faint — a biting sword ! A noble sword ! 
 A hedge-stake — or a ponderous stone to hurl 
 With brawny vengeance, like the labourer Cain. 
 Come on ! Farewell my kingdom, and all hail 
 Thou superb, plumed, and helmeted renown ! lo 
 
 All hail ! I would not truck this brilliant day 
 To rule in Pylos with a Nestor's beard — 
 Come on ! 
 
 Enter De Kaims and Knights, Sfc. 
 
 De Kaims. Is 't madness, or a hunger after death. 
 That makes thee thus unarm'd throw taunts at us .'' 
 Yield, Stephen, or my sword's point dips in 
 The gloomy current of a traitor's heart. 
 
 Stephen. Do it, De Kaims, I will not budge an inch. 
 
 De Kai7ns. Yes, of thy madness thou shalt take the 
 meed. 
 
 Stephefi. Darest thou ? 
 
 De Kaims. How, dare, against a man disarm'd ? 
 
 Stephen. What weapons has the lion but himself? 20 
 
 Come not near me, De Kaims, for by the price 
 Of all the glory I have won this day. 
 Being a king, I will not yield alive 
 To any but the second man of the realm, 
 Robert of Glocester. 
 
 De Kaims. Thou shalt vail to me. 
 
 Stephen. Shall I, when I have sworn against it, sir .'' 
 Thou think'st it brave to take a breathing king, 
 That, on a court-day bow'd to haughty Maud, 
 The awed presence-chamber may be bold 
 
 To whisper. There's the man who took alive 30 
 
 Stephen— me — prisoner. Certes, De Kaims, 
 The ambition is a noble one. 
 
 De Kaims. 'Tis true. 
 
 And, Stephen, I must compass it. 
 
 Stephen. No, no. 
 
 Do not tempt me to throttle you on the gorge, 
 Or with my gauntlet crush your hollow breast,
 
 ACT I., sc. IV] KING STEPHEN 345 
 
 Just when your knighthood is grown ripe and full 
 For lordship. 
 
 A Soldier. Is an honest yeoman's spear 
 Of no use at a need ? Take that. 
 
 Stephen. Ah, dastard ! 
 
 Dc KaimM. What, you are vulnerable ! my prisoner ! 
 
 Stephen. No, not yet. I disclaim it, and demand 
 Death as a sovereign right unto a king 40 
 
 Who 'sdains to yield to any but his peer, 
 If not in title, yet in noble deeds, 
 I'he Earl of Glocester. Stab to the hilt, De Kaims, 
 For I will never by mean hands be led 
 From this so famous field. Do you hear ! Be quick ! 
 
 [Trumpets. Enter the Earl of Chester aud 
 Knights. 
 
 Scene IV. — A Presence Chamber. Queen Maud in a Chair 
 of State, the Earls of Glocester and Chester, Lords, At- 
 tendants. 
 
 Maud. Glocester, no more. 1 will behold that Bou- 
 logne : 
 Set him before me. Not for the poor sake 
 Of regal pomp and a vain-glorious hour, 
 As thou with wary speech, yet near enough. 
 Hast hinted. 
 
 Glocester. Faithful counsel have I given ; 
 If wary, for your Highness' benefit. 
 
 Maud. The Heavens forbid that I should not think so. 
 For by thy valour have I won this realm. 
 
 Which by thy wisdom I will ever keep. 10 
 
 To sage advisers let me ever bend 
 A meek attentive ear, so that they treat 
 Of the wide kingdom's rule and government, 
 Not trenching on our actions personal. 
 Advised, not school'd, I would be ; and henceforth 
 Spoken to in clear, plain, and open terms. 
 Not side-ways sermon'd at. 
 
 Glocester. Then, in plain terms, 
 
 Once more for the fallen king — 
 
 Maud. Your pardon, brother, 
 
 I would no more of that ; for, as I said, 
 Tis not for worldly pomp I wish to see 
 
 The rebel, but as dooming judge to give 20 
 
 A sentence something worthy of his guilt.
 
 346 JOHN KEATS [act l, sc. iv 
 
 Glocester. If't must be so, I'll bring him to your 
 
 presence. \_Exit Glocester. 
 
 Maud. A meaner summoner might do as well. 
 My Lord of Chester, is 't true what I hear 
 Of Stephen of Boulogne, our prisoner. 
 That he, as a fit penance for his crimes. 
 Eats wholesome, sweet, and palatable food 
 Off Glocester's golden dishes — drinks pure wine. 
 Lodges soft .'' 
 
 Chester. More than that, my gracious Queen, 
 Has anger'd me. The noble Earl, methinks, 30 
 
 Full soldier as he is, and without peer 
 In counsel, dreams too much among his books. 
 It may read well, but sure 'tis out of date 
 To play the Alexander with Darius. 
 
 Maud. Truth ! I think so. By Heavens, it shall not last ! 
 
 Chester. It would amaze your Highness now to mark 
 How Glocester overstrains his courtesy 
 To that crime-loving rebel, that Boulogne — 
 
 Maud. That ingrate ! 
 
 Chester. For whose vast ingratitude 
 
 To our late sovereign lord, your noble sire, 40 
 
 The generous Earl condoles in his mishaps. 
 And with a sort of lackeying friendliness 
 Talks off the mighty frowning from his brow, 
 Woos him to hold a duet in a smile. 
 Or, if it please him, play an hour at chess — 
 
 Maud. A perjured slave ! 
 
 Chester. And for his perjury, 
 
 Glocester has fit rewards — nay, I believe. 
 He sets his bustling household's wits at work 
 For flatteries to ease this Stephen's hours. 
 
 And make a heaven of his purgatory ; 50 
 
 Adorning bondage with the pleasant gloss 
 Of feasts and music, and all idle shows 
 Of indoor pageantry ; while syren whispers. 
 Predestined for his ear, 'scape as half-check'd 
 From lips the courtliest and the rubiest 
 Of all the realm, admiring of his deeds, 
 
 Maud. A frost upon his summer ! 
 
 Chester. A queen's nod 
 
 Can mak«^ his June December. Here he comes. 
 
 * a- if- * *
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS (II) 
 ON DEATH 
 
 CAN death be sleep, when life is but a dream. 
 And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by ? 
 The transient pleasures as a vision seem. 
 And yet we think the greatest pain's to die. 
 
 How strange it is that man on earth should roam, 
 And lead a life of woe, but not forsake 
 
 His rugged path ; nor dare he view alone 
 His future doom which is but to awake. 
 
 SONNET 
 To Byron 
 
 BYRON ! how sweetly sad thy melody ! 
 Attuning still the soul to tenderness, 
 
 As if soft Pity, with unusual stress. 
 Had touch'd her plaintive lute, and thou, being by, 
 Hadst caught the tones, nor suffer'd them to die. 
 
 O'ershadowing sorrow doth not make thee less 
 
 Delightful : thou thy griefs dost dress 
 With a bright halo, shining beamily. 
 As when a cloud the golden moon doth veil. 
 
 Its sides are ting'd with a resplendent glow. 
 Through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail, 
 
 And like fair veins in sable marble flow ; 
 Still warble, dying swan ! still tell the tale, 
 
 The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe.
 
 348 JOHN KEATS 
 
 SONNET 
 To Chattebton 
 
 OCHATTERTON ! how very sad thy fate ! 
 Dear child of sorrow — son of misery ! 
 
 How soon the film of death obscur'd that eye, 
 Whence Genius mildly flash'd, and high debate. 
 How soon that voice, majestic and elate. 
 
 Melted in dying numbers ! Oh ! how nigh 
 
 Was night to thy fair morning. Thou didst die 
 A half-blown flow'ret which cold blasts amate. 
 But this is past : thou art among the stars 
 
 Of highest Heaven : to the rolling spheres 
 Tliou sweetly singest : nought thy hymning mars. 
 
 Above the ingrate world and human fears. 
 On earth the good man base detraction bars 
 
 From thy fair name, and waters it with tears. 
 
 ODE TO APOLLO 
 
 IN thy western halls of gold 
 When thou sittest in thy state. 
 Bards, that erst sublimely told 
 
 Heroic deeds, and sang of fate, 
 With fervour seize their adamantine lyres. 
 Whose chords are solid i*ays, and twinkle radiant fires. 
 
 2 
 
 Here Homer with his nervous arms 
 
 Strikes the twanging harp of war, 
 And even the western splendour warms. 
 
 While the trumpets sound afar : 
 But, what creates the most intense surprise. 
 His soul looks out through renovated eyes. 
 
 3 
 
 Then, through thy Temple wide, melodious swells 
 The sweet majestic tone of Maro's lyre : 
 
 The soul delighted on each accent dwells, — 
 Enraptur'd dwells, — not daring to respire. 
 The while he tells of grief around a funeral pyre. 
 
 'Tis awful silence then again ; 
 
 Expectant stand the spheres ; 
 
 Breathless the laurell'd peers. 
 Nor move, till ends the lofty strain. 
 Nor move till Milton's tuneful thunders cease, 
 And leave once more the ravish'd heavens in peace.
 
 ODE TO APOLLO 349 
 
 Thou biddest Shakspeare wave his hand, 
 
 And quickly forward spring 
 The Passions — a terrific band — 
 
 And each vibrates the string 
 That with its tyrant temper best accords. 
 While from their Master's lips pour forth the inspiring words. 
 
 6 
 
 A silver trumpet Spenser blows. 
 
 And, as its martial notes to silence flee, 
 From a virgin chorus flows 
 
 A hymn in praise of spotless Chastity. 
 'Tis still ! Wild warblings from the ^olian lyre 
 Enchantment softly breathe, and tremblingly expire. 
 
 Next thy Tasso's ardent numbers 
 
 Float along the pleased air. 
 Calling youth from idle slumbers, 
 
 Rousing them from Pleasure's lair : — 
 Then o'er the strings his fingers gently move, 
 And melt the soul to pity and to love. 
 
 But when Thou joinest with the Nine, 
 And all the powers of song combine. 
 
 We listen here on earth : 
 The dying tones that fill the air. 
 And charm the ear of evening fair, 
 From thee, great God of Bards, receive their heavenly birth. 
 
 SONNF/r 
 
 To a Young Lady who sent me a Laurel Crown 
 
 FRESH morning gusts have blown away all fear 
 From my glad bosom, — now from gloominess 
 
 I mount for ever — not an atom less 
 Than the proud laurel shall contentimy bier. 
 No ! by the eternal stars ! or why sit here 
 
 In the Sun's eye, and 'gainst my temples press 
 
 Apollo's very leaves, woven to bless 
 By thy white fingers and thy spirit clear. 
 Lo ! who dares say, " Do this ? " Who dares call down 
 
 My will from its high purpose ? Who say, " Stand," 
 Or "Go?" This mighty moment I would frown 
 
 On abject Csesars — not the stoutest band 
 Of mailed heroes should tear ofl' my crown : 
 
 Yet would I kneel and kiss thy gentle hand !
 
 350 JOHN KEATS 
 
 HYMN TO APOLLO 
 
 G 
 
 ' OD of the golden bow, 
 .J And of the golden lyre, 
 And of the golden hair. 
 And of the golden fire. 
 Charioteer 
 Of the patient year, 
 Where — where slept thine ire. 
 When like a blank idiot I put on thy wreath, 
 Thy laurel, thy glory. 
 The light of thy story. 
 Or was I a worm — too low crawling, for death ? 
 O Delphic Apollo ! 
 
 The Thunderer grasp'd and grasp'd,' 
 
 The Thunderer frown'd and frown'd ; 
 The eagle's feathery mane 
 
 For wrath became stiflFen'd— the sound 
 Of breeding thunder 
 Went drowsily under. 
 Muttering to be unbound. 
 O why didst thou pity, and for a worm 
 Why touch thy soft lute 
 Till the thunder was mute. 
 Why was not I crush'd — such a pitiful germ ? 
 O Delphic Apollo ! 
 
 The Pleiades were up. 
 
 Watching the silent air ; 
 The seeds and roots in the Earth 
 Were swelling for summer fare ; 
 The Ocean, its neighbour. 
 Was at its old labour. 
 When, who — who did dare 
 To tie, like a madman, thy plant round his brow. 
 And grin and look proudly, 
 And blaspheme so loudly. 
 And live for that honour, to stoop to thee now ? 
 O Delphic Apollo !
 
 ON OXFORD 351 
 
 SONNET 
 
 AS from the darkening gloom a silver dove 
 Upsoars, and darts into the Eastern light, 
 
 On pinions that nought moves but pure delight, 
 So fled thy soul into the realms above, 
 Regions of peace and everlasting love ; 
 
 Where happy spirits, crown'd with circlets bright 
 
 Of starry beam, and gloriously bedight, 
 Taste the high joy none but the blest can prove. 
 There thou or joinest the immortal quire 
 
 In melodies that even Heaven fair 
 Fill with superior bliss, or, at desire 
 
 Of the omnipotent Father, cleavest the air 
 On holy message sent — What pleasures higher ? 
 
 Wherefore does any grief our joy impair ? 
 
 SONNET 
 
 Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition 
 
 THE church bells toll a melancholy round, 
 Calling the people to some other prayers. 
 Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares. 
 
 More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound. 
 
 Surely the mind of man is closely bound 
 
 In some black spell ; seeing that each one tears 
 Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs. 
 
 And converse high of those with glory crown'd. 
 
 Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp, — 
 A chill as from a tomb, did I not know 
 
 That they are dying like an outburnt lamp ; 
 That 'tis their sighing, wailing ere they go 
 Into oblivion ; — that fresh flowers will grow. 
 
 And many glories of immortal stamp. 
 
 ON OXFORD 
 
 A Parody 
 
 1 
 
 THE Gothic looks solemn, 
 The plain Doric column 
 Supports an old Bishop and Crosier ; 
 The mouldering arch. 
 Shaded o'er by a larch 
 Stands next door to Wilson the Hosier. 
 
 21 
 
 Vice — that is, by turns, — 
 
 O'er pale faces mourns 
 The black tassell'd trencher and common hat ; 
 
 Tlie Chantry boy sings, 
 
 The Steeple-bell rings, 
 And as for the Chancellor — dominat.
 
 352 JOHN KEATS 
 
 There are plenty of trees, 
 
 And plenty of ease, 
 And plenty of fat deer for Parsons ; 
 
 And when it is venison. 
 
 Short is the benison, — 
 Then each on a leg or thigh fastens. 
 
 MODERN LOVE 
 
 AND what is love ? It is a doll dress'd up 
 For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle ; 
 A thing of soft misnomers, so divine 
 That silly youth doth think to make itself 
 Divine by loving, and so goes on 
 Yawning and doting a whole summer long. 
 Till Miss's comb is made a pearl tiara. 
 And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots ; 
 Then Cleopatra lives at number seven. 
 
 And Antony resides in Brunswick Square. lo 
 
 Fools ! if some passions high have warm'd the world, 
 If Queens and Soldiers have play'd deep for hearts. 
 It is no reason why such agonies 
 Should be more common than the growth of weeds. 
 Fools ! make me whole again that weighty pearl 
 The Queen of Egypt melted, and I'll say 
 That ye may love in spite of beaver hats. 
 
 Fragment of " The Castle Builder " 
 
 TO-NIGHT I'll have my friar— let me think 
 About my room, — I'll have it in the pink ; 
 It should be rich and sombre, and the moon, 
 Just in its mid-life in the midst of June, 
 Should look thro' four large windows and display 
 Clear, but for gold-fish vases in the way. 
 Their glassy diamonding on Turkish floor ; 
 The tapers keep aside, an hour and more. 
 To see what else the moon alone can show ; 
 While the night-breeze doth softly let us know lo 
 
 My terrace is well bower'd with oranges. 
 Upon the floor the dullest spirit sees 
 A guitar-ribband and a lady's glove 
 Beside a crumple-leaved tale of love ; 
 A tambour-frame, with Venus sleeping there, 
 All finish'd but some ringlets of her hair ; 
 A viol-bow, strings torn, cross-wise upon 
 A glorious folio of Anacreon ; 
 A skull upon a mat of roses lying, 
 Ink'd purple with a song concerning dying ; 20 
 
 '
 
 THE CASTLE BUILDER 353 
 
 An hour-glass on the turn, amid the trails 
 
 Of passion-flower ; — just in time there sails 
 
 A cloud across the moon, — the lights bring in ! 
 
 And see what more my phantasy can win. 
 
 It is a gorgeous room, but somewhat sad ; 
 
 The draperies are so, as tho' they had 
 
 Been made for Cleopatra's winding-sheet ; 
 
 And opposite the steadfast eye doth meet 
 
 A spacious looking-glass, upon whose face, 
 
 In letters raven-sombre, you may trace 30 
 
 Old " Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin." 
 
 Greek busts and statuary have ever been 
 
 Held, by the finest spirits, fitter far 
 
 Than vase grotesque and Siamesian jar ; 
 
 Therefore 'tis sure a want of Attic taste 
 
 That I should rather love a Gothic waste 
 
 Of eyesight on cinque-coloured potter's clay. 
 
 Than on the marble fairness of old Greece. 
 
 My table-coverlets of Jason's fleece 
 
 And black Numidian sheep-wool should be wrought, 40 
 
 Gold, black, and heavy, from the Lama brought. 
 
 My ebon sofas should delicious be 
 
 With down from Leda's cygnet progeny. 
 
 My pictures all Salvator's, save a few 
 
 Of Titian's portraiture, and one, though new, 
 
 Of Haydon's in its fresh magnificence. 
 
 My wine — O good ! 'tis here at my desire, 
 
 And I must sit to supper with my friar. 
 
 SONNET 
 
 To A Cat 
 
 CAT ! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric. 
 How many mice and rats hast in thy days 
 
 Destroy'd ? — How many tit bits stolen ? Gaze 
 With those bright languid segments green, and prick 
 Those velvet ears — but pr'ythee do not stick 
 
 Thy latent talons in me — and upraise 
 
 Thy gentle mew — and tell me all thy frays 
 Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick. 
 Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists — 
 
 For all the wheezy asthma, — and for all 
 Thy tail's tip is nick'd ofi" — and though the fists 
 
 Of many a maid have given thee many a maul. 
 Still is that fur as soft as when the lists 
 
 In youth thou enter'dst on glass bottled wall. 
 
 A DRAUGHT OF SUNSHINE 
 
 HENCE Burgundy, Claret, and Port, 
 Away with old Hock and Madeira, 
 Too earthly ye are for my sport ; 
 
 There's a beverage brighter and clearer, 
 23
 
 354 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Instead of a pitiful rummer. 
 
 My wine overbrims a whole summer ; 
 
 My bowl is the sky. 
 
 And I dx-ink at my eye. 
 
 Till I feel in the brain 
 
 A Delphian pain — lo 
 
 Tlien follow, my Caius ! then follow : 
 
 On the green of the hill 
 
 We will drink our fill 
 
 Of golden sunshine, 
 
 Till our brains intertwine 
 With the gloi-y and grace of Apollo ! 
 God of the Meridian, 
 
 And of the East and West, 
 To thee my soul is flown, 
 
 And my body is earthward press'd. — 30 
 
 It is an awful mission, 
 A terrible division ; 
 And leaves a gulph austere 
 To be fiU'd with worldly fear. 
 Aye, when the soul is fled 
 To high above our head, 
 AiFrighted do we gaze 
 After its airy maze. 
 As doth a mother wild, 
 
 WTien her young infant child 30 
 
 Is in an eagle's claws — 
 And is not this the cause 
 Of madness ? — God of Song, 
 Thou bearest me along 
 Through sights I scarce can bear : 
 O let me, let me share 
 With the hot lyre and thee. 
 The staid Philosophy. 
 Temper my lonely hours. 
 
 And let me see thy bowers 40 
 
 More unalarm'd ! 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM AN OPERA 
 
 O! WERE I one of the Olympian twelve. 
 Their godships should pass this into a law, — 
 That when a man doth set himself in toil 
 After some beauty veiled far away, 
 Each step he took should make his lady's hand 
 More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair 
 And for each briar-berry he might eat, 
 A kiss should bud upon the tree of love. 
 And pulp and ripen richer every hour. 
 To melt away upon the traveller's lips.
 
 FOLLY'S SONG 355 
 
 FOLI.Y'S SONG 
 
 WHEN wedding fiddles are a-playiug', 
 Huzza for folly O ! 
 And when maidens go a-Maying, 
 
 Huzza, &c. 
 When a milk-pail is upset, 
 
 Huzza, &c.. 
 And the clothes left in the wet, 
 
 Huzza, &c. 
 When the barrel's set abroach, 
 
 Huzza, &c. 
 When Kate Eyebrow keeps a coach. 
 
 Huzza, &c. 
 When the pig is over-roasted, 
 
 Huzza, &c. 
 And the cheese is over-toasted, 
 
 Huzza, &c. 
 When Sir Snap is with his lawyer. 
 
 Huzza, &c. 
 And Miss Chip has kiss'd the sawyer, 
 
 Huzza, &c. 
 
 OH, 1 am frighten'd with most hateful thoughts ! 
 Perhaps her voice is not a nightingale's, 
 Perhaps her teeth are not the fairest pearl ; 
 Her eye-lashes may be, for aught I know, 
 Not longer than the May-fly's small fan-horns ; 
 There may not be one dimple on her hand ; 
 And freckles many ; ah ! a careless nurse. 
 In haste to teach the little thing to walk, 
 May have crumpt up a pair of Dian's legs, 
 And warpt the ivory of a Juno's neck. 
 
 SONG 
 
 {Written on a blank page in Beaumont and Fletcher) 
 
 SPIRIT here that reignest ! 
 Spirit here that painest ! 
 Spirit here that burnest ! 
 Spirit here that mournest ! 
 Spirit, I bow 
 My forehead low, 
 Enshaded with thy pinions. 
 Spirit, I look 
 All passion-struck 
 Into thy pale dominions.
 
 356 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Spirit here that laughest ! 
 Spirit here that quafFest ! 
 Spirit here that dancest ! 
 Noble soul that praucest ! 
 
 Spirit, with thee 
 
 I join in the glee 
 A-nudging the elbow of Momus. 
 
 Spirit, J flush 
 
 With a Bacchanal blusli 
 Just fresh from the Banquet of Comus. 
 
 Here all the Summer 
 
 (In a letter to Haydon) 
 
 1 
 
 HERE all the summer could I stay, 
 For there's a Bishop's Teign, 
 And King's Teign, 
 And Coomb at the clear Teign 's head ; 
 Where, close by the stream, 
 You may have your cream. 
 All spread upon barley bread. 
 
 There's Arch Brook, 
 
 And there's Larch Brook, — 
 
 Both turning many a mill ; 
 And cooling the drouth 
 Of the salmon's mouth, 
 
 And fattening his silver gill. 
 
 3 
 
 There's a wild wood, 
 
 A mild hood, 
 To the sheep on the lea o' the down, 
 
 Where the golden furze, 
 
 With its green, thin spurs, 
 Doth catch at the maiden's gown. 
 
 There's Newton Marsh, 
 With its spear-grass harsh, — 
 
 A pleasant summer level ; 
 
 Where the maidens sweet 
 Of the Market street, 
 
 Do meet in the dark to revel.
 
 ACROSTIC 357 
 
 5 
 
 There's the Barton rich 
 
 With dyke and ditch 
 And hedge for the thrush to live in. 
 
 And the hollow tree 
 
 For the buzzing bee 
 And a bank for tlie wasp to hive in. 
 
 G 
 
 And O, and O 
 
 The daisies blow 
 And the primroses are waken'd, 
 
 And violets white 
 
 Sit in silver plight. 
 And tlie green bud's as long as the spike end. 
 
 Then who would go 
 
 Into dark Solio, 
 And chatter with dack'd hair'd critics. 
 
 When he can stay 
 
 For the new-mown hay, 
 And startle the dappled Prickets .'' 
 
 Over the Hill and over the Dale 
 
 OVER the Hill and over the Dale, 
 And over the Bourne to Dawlish, 
 AVhere ginger-bread wives have a scanty sale, 
 And ginger-bread nuts are smallish. 
 
 ACROSTIC 
 
 Georgiana Augusta Keats 
 
 GIVE me your patience Sister while I frame 
 Exact in Capitals your golden name 
 Or sue the fair Apollo and he will 
 Rouse from his heavy slumber and instil 
 Great love in me for thee and Poesy. 
 Imagine not that greatest mastery 
 And kingdom over all the Realms of verse 
 Nears more to Heaven in aught than when we nurse 
 And surety give to love and Brotherhood. 
 
 Anthropophagi in Othello's mood, lo 
 
 Ulysses stormed, and his enchanted belt 
 
 Glow with the Muse, but they are never felt 
 
 Unbosom'd so and so eternal made. 
 
 Such tender incense in their Laurel shade 
 
 To all the regent sisters of tlie Nine, 
 
 As this poor offering to you sister mine.
 
 358 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Kind sister ! aye, this third name says you are ; 
 
 Enchanted has it been the Lord knows where. 
 
 And may it taste to you like good old wine, 
 
 Take you to real happiness and give 20 
 
 Sons, daughters and a home like honied hive. 
 
 Linen written in the Highlands after a Visit to Burns^s Country 
 
 THERE is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain, 
 Where patriot battle has been fought, where glory had the gain ; 
 There is a pleasure on the heatli where Druids old have been, 
 Where mantles grey have rustled by and swept the nettles green ; 
 There is a joy in every spot made known by times of old. 
 New to the feet, although each tale a hundred times be told ; 
 There is a deeper joy than all, more solemn in the heart. 
 More parcliing to the tongue than all, of more di^dne a smart. 
 When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf, 
 Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or sea-shore iron scurf, 10 
 
 Toward the castle or the cot, whei-e long ago was born 
 One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn. 
 Light heather-bells may tremble then, but they are far away ; 
 Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern, — the Sun may hear his lay ; 
 Runnels may kiss the grass on slielves and shallows clear. 
 But their low A'oices are not heard, though come on travels drear ; 
 Blood-red the Sun may set behind black mountain peaks ; 
 Blue tides may sluice and drench their time in caves and weedy creeks ; 
 Eagles may seem to sleep wing-wide upon the air ; 
 
 Ring-doves may fly convuls'd across to some high-cedar'd lair ; 20 
 
 But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground. 
 As Palmer's, that with weariness, mid-desert shrine hath found. 
 At such a time the soul's a child, in childhood is the brain ; 
 Forgotten is the worldly heart — alone, it beats in vain. — 
 Aye, if a madman could have leave to pass a healthful day 
 To tell his forehead's swoon and faint when flrst began decay. 
 He might make tremble many a one whose spirit had gone foiili 
 To find a Bard's low cradle-place about the silent North ! 
 Scanty the lioin- and few the steps beyond tlie bourn of care. 
 Beyond the sweet and bitter world, — beyond it unaware ! 30 
 
 Scanty the hour and few the steps,because a longer stay 
 Would bar return, and make a man forget his mortal way : 
 O horrible ! to lose the sight of well remember'd face. 
 Of Brother's eyes, of Sister's brow — constant to every place ; 
 Filling the air, as on we move, with portraiture intense ; 
 More warm than those heroic tints tliat pain a painter's sense, 
 When shapes of old come striding by, and visages of old. 
 Locks shining black, hair scanty grey, and passions manifold. 
 No, no, that horror cannot be, for at the cable's length 
 Man feels the gentle anchor pull and gladdens in its strength : — 40 
 
 One hour, half-idiot, he stands by mossy waterfall. 
 But in the very next he reads his soul's memorial :— 
 He reads it on the mountain's height, where chance he may sit down
 
 AN EXTEMPORE 359 
 
 Upon rougli marble diadem — that hill's eternal crown. 
 
 Yet be his anchor e'er so fast, room is there for a prayer 
 
 That man may never lose his mind on mountains black and bare ; 
 
 That he may stray league after league some great birth-place to find 
 
 And keep his vision clear from speck, his inward sight unblind. 
 
 SPENSERIAN STANZA 
 
 Wiitten at the close of Canto II., Book V., of The Faerie Queene 
 
 I 
 
 N after-time, a sage of mickle lore 
 Yclep'd Typographus, the Giant took, 
 And did refit his limbs as heretofore. 
 And made him read in many a learned book. 
 And into many a lively legend look ; 
 Thereby in goodly themes so training him. 
 That all his brutishness he (juite forsook. 
 When, meeting Artegall and Talus grim. 
 The one he struck stone-blind, the other's eyes wox dim. 
 
 AN EXTEMPORE 
 
 WHEN they were come into the Faery's Court 
 They rang — no one at home — all gone to sport 
 And dance and kiss and love as faeries do 
 For Faeries be as humans lovers true — 
 Amid the woods they were so lone and wild 
 Where even the Robin feels himself exil'd 
 And where the very brooks as if afraid 
 Hurry along to some less magic shade. 
 " No one at home " ! the fretful princess cry'd 
 " And all for nothing such a dreary ride lo 
 
 And all for nothing my new diamond cross 
 No one to see my Persian feathers toss 
 No one to see my Ape, my Dwarf, my Fool 
 Or how I pace my Otaheitan mule. 
 Ape, Dwarf and Fool why stand you gaping there .'' 
 Burst the door open, quick — or I declare 
 I'll switch you soundly and in pieces tear." 
 The Dwarf began to tremble and the Ape 
 Star'd at the Fool, the Fool was all agape 
 
 The Princess grasp'd her switch but just in time 20 
 
 The dwarf with piteous face began to rhyme. 
 "O mighty Princess did you ne'er hear tell 
 What your poor servants know but too too well 
 Know you the three great crimes in faery land 
 The first alas ! poor Dwarf I understand 
 I made a whipstock of a faery's wand 
 The ne.xt is snoring in their company 
 The next the last the direst of the three 
 Is making free when they are not at home. 
 I was a Prince — a baby prince — my doom 30
 
 360 JOHN KEATS 
 
 You see, 1 made a whipstock of a wand 
 My top has henceforth slept in faery land. 
 He was a Prince the Fool, a grown up Prince 
 But he has never been a King's son since 
 He fell a snoring at a faery Ball — 
 Your poor Ape was a prince and he poor thing 
 Picklock'd a faery's boudoir — now no king 
 But ape — so pray your highness stay awhile 
 'Tis sooth indeed we know it to our sorrow — 
 Persist and you may be an ape tomorrow " — 40 
 
 While the Dwarf spake the Princess all for spite 
 Peal'd the brown hazel twig to lilly white 
 Clench'd her small teeth, and held her lips apart 
 Try'd to look unconcern'd with beating heart. 
 They saw her highness had made up her mind 
 And quaver'd lilce the reeds before the wind 
 And they had had it, but O happy chance 
 The Ape for very fear began to dance ^ 
 
 And grin'd as all his ugliness did ache — 
 
 She staid her vixen fingers for his sake 50 
 
 He was so very ugly : then she took 
 Her pocket mirror and began to look 
 First at herself and then at him and then 
 She smil'd at her own beauteous face again. 
 Yet for all this — for all her pretty face 
 She took it in her head to see the place. 
 Women gain little from experience 
 Either in Lovers, husbands or expense. 
 The more the beauty the more fortune too 
 
 Beauty before the wide world never knew. 60 
 
 So each fair reasons — tho' it oft miscarries. 
 She thought her pretty face would please the faeries. 
 " My darling Ape I wont whip you today 
 Give me the Picklock sirrah and go play." 
 They all three wept— but counsel was as vain 
 As crying cup biddy to drops of rain. 
 Yet lingeringly did the sad Ape fortli draw 
 The Picklock from the Pocket in his Jaw. 
 The Princess took it and dismounting straight 
 Trip'd in blue silver'd slippers to the gate 70 
 
 And touch'd the wards, the Door full courteously 
 Opened — she enter'd with her servants three. 
 Again it clos'd and there was nothing seen 
 But the Mule grasing on the herbage green. 
 End of Canto xii. 
 Canto the xiii. 
 The Mule no sooner saw himself alone 
 Than he prick'd up his Ears — and said " well done 
 At least unhappy Prince I may be free — 
 No more a Princess shall side saddle me 
 O King of Othaiete — tho' a Mule 
 
 ' Aye every inch a King ' — tho ' Fortune's fool ' 80 
 
 Well done — for by what Mr Dwarfy said
 
 SPENSERIAN STANZAS 361 
 
 I would not give a sixpenoe lor her head ". 
 
 Even as he spake he trotted in high glee 
 
 To the knotty side of an old Pollard tree 
 
 And rubbed his sides against the mossed bark 
 
 Till his Girths burst and left him naked stark 
 
 Except his Bridle — how get rid of that 
 
 Buckled and tied with many a twist and plait. 
 
 At last it struck him to pretend to sleep 
 
 And then the thievish Monkies down would creep 90 
 
 And filch the unpleasant trammels quite away. 
 
 No sooner thought of than adown he lay 
 
 Sham'd a good snore — the Monkey-men descended 
 
 And whom they thought to injure they befriended. 
 
 They hung his Bridle on a topmost bough 
 
 And off he went run, trot, or anyhow — 
 
 SPENSERIAN STANZAS ON CHARLES ARMITAGE BROWN 
 
 HE is to weet a melancholy carle : 
 Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair, 
 As hath the seeded thistle when in parle 
 It holds the Zephyr, ere it sendeth fair 
 Its light balloons into the summer air ; 
 Therto his beard had not begun to bloom. 
 No brush had touch'd his chin or razor sheer ; 
 No care had touch'd his cheek with mortal doom, 
 But new he was and bright as scarf from Persian loom. 
 
 Ne cared he for wine, or half-and-half 
 Ne cared he for fish or flesh or fowl, 
 And sauces held he worthless as the chaff ; 
 He 'sdeigned the swine-head at the wassail-bowl ; 
 Ne with lewd ribbalds sat he cheek by jowl ; 
 Ne with sly Lemans in the scorner's chair ; 
 But after water-brooks this Pilgrim's soul 
 Panted, and all his food was woodland air 
 Though he would oft-times feast on gilliflowers rare. 
 
 The slang of cities in no wise he knew, 
 Tipping the wink to him was heathen Greek ; 
 He sipp'd no olden Tom or ruin blue, 
 Or nantz or cherry-brandy drank full meek 
 By many a damsel hoarse and rouge of cheek ; 
 Nor did he know each aged watchman's beat, 
 Nor in obscured purlieus would he seek 
 For curled Jewesses, with ankles neat. 
 Who as they walk abroad make tinkling with their feet.
 
 362 JOHN KEATS 
 
 A PARTY OF LOVERS 
 
 PENSIVE they sit, and roll their languid eyes. 
 Nibble their toast and cool their tea with sighs ; 
 Or else forget the purpose of the night. 
 Forget their tea, forget their appetite. 
 See, with cross'd arms they sit — Ah ! happy crew. 
 The fire is going out and no one rings 
 For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings. 
 A fly is in the milk-pot. Must he die 
 Circled by a humane society ? 
 
 No, no ; there, Mr. Werter takes his spoon, lo 
 
 Inserts it, dips the handle, and lo ! soon 
 The little straggler, sav'd from perils dark. 
 Across the teaboard draws a long wet mark. 
 
 Romeo ! Arise, take snuffers by the handle, 
 There's a large cauliflower in each candle. 
 A winding sheet — ah, me ! I must away 
 To No. 7, just beyond the circus gay. 
 Alas, my friend, your coat sits very well ; 
 Where may your Tailor live? I may not tell. 
 
 pardon me. I'm absent now and then. 20 
 Where might my Tailor live .'' I say again 
 
 1 cannot tell, let me no more be teazed ; 
 
 He lives in Wapping, might live where he pleased. 
 
 I
 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 
 
 OR, THE JEALOUSIES 
 A Faery Tale. Unfinished 
 
 I 
 
 IN midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool, 
 There stood, or hover'd, tremulous in the air, 
 A faery city, 'neath the potent rule 
 Of Emperor Elfinan ; famed ev'rywhere 
 For love of mortal women, maidens fair. 
 Whose lips were solid, whose soft hands were made 
 Of a fit mould and beauty, ripe and rare. 
 To pamper his slight wooing, warm yet staid : 
 He lov'd girls smooth as shades, but hated a mere shade. 
 
 n 
 
 This was a crime forbidden by the law ; 
 And all the priesthood of his city wept, 
 For ruin and dismay they well foresaw 
 If impious prince no bound or limit kept, 
 And faery Zendervester overstept ; 
 They wept, he sinn'd, and still he would sin on, 
 They dreamt of sin, and he sinn'd while they slept ; 
 In vain the pulpit thunder'd at the throne. 
 Caricature was vain, and vain the tart lampoon. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Which seeing, his high court of parliament 
 Laid a remonstrance at his Highness' feet. 
 Praying his royal senses to content 
 Themselves with what in faery land was sweet, 
 Befitting best that sliade with shade should meet : 
 Whereat, to calm their fears, he promised soon 
 From mortal tempters all to make retreat, — 
 Aye, even on the first of the new moon 
 An immaterial wife to espouse as heaven's boon. 
 
 IV 
 
 Meantime he sent a fluttering embassy 
 To Pigmio, of Imaus sovereign. 
 To half beg, and half demand, respectfully, 
 The hand of his fair daugliter Bellanaine ; 
 An audience had, and speeching done, they gain 
 Their point, and bring the weeping bride away ; 
 Whom, with but one attendant, safely lain 
 Upon tlieir wings, they bore in bright array. 
 While little harps wert touch'd by many a lyric fay.
 
 364 JOHN KEATS 
 
 As in old pictures teuder cherubim 
 A child's soul thro' the sapphired canvas bear. 
 So, thro' a real heaven, on they swim 
 With the sweet princess on her plumaged lair. 
 Speed giving to the winds her lustrous hair ; 
 And so she journey'd, sleeping or awake. 
 Save when, for healthful exercise and air, 
 She chose to promener a I'aile or take 
 A pigeon's somerset, for sport or change's sake. 
 
 VI 
 
 " Dear Princess, do not whisper me so loud," 
 Quoth Corallina, nurse and confidant, 
 " Do not you see there, lurking in a cloud. 
 Close at your back, that sly old Crafticant ? 
 He hears a whisper plainer than a rant : 
 Dry up your tears, and do not look so blue ; 
 He's Elfinan's great state-spy militant. 
 His running, lying, flying footman too, — 
 Dear mistress, let him have no handle against you ! 
 
 vn 
 
 " Show him a mouse's tail, and he will guess, 
 With metaphysic swiftness, at the mouse ; 
 Show him a garden, and with speed no less 
 He'll surmise sagely of a dwelling-house, 
 And plot, in the same minute, how to chouse 
 The owner out of it ; show him a " — " Peace ! 
 Peace ! nor contrive thy mistress' ire to rouse ! " 
 Return'd the Princess, " my tongue shall not cease 
 Till from this hated match I get a free release. 
 
 vni 
 
 " Ah, beauteous mortal ! " " Hush ! " quoth Coralline, 
 " Really you must not talk of him, indeed." 
 " You hush ! " replied the mistress, with a shine 
 Of anger in her eyes, enough to breed 
 In stouter hearts than nurse's fear and dread : 
 'Twas not the glance itself made Nursey flinch. 
 But of its threat she took the utmost heed ; 
 Not liking in her heart an hour-long pinch. 
 Or a sharp needle run into her back an inch. 
 
 IX 
 
 So she was silenced, and fair Bellanaine, 
 W^rithing her little body with ennui. 
 Continued to lament and to complain, 
 That Fate, cross-purposing, should let her be 
 Ravish' d away far from her dear countree ; 
 
 r
 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 365 
 
 That all her feelings should be set at nought, 
 In trumping up this match so hastily, 
 With lowland blood ; and lowland blood she thought 
 Poison, as every stanch true-born Imaian ought. 
 
 Sorely she grieved, and wetted three or four 
 White Provence rose-leaves with her faery tears, 
 But not for this cause ; — alas ! she had more 
 Bad reasons for her sorrow, as appears 
 In the famed memoirs of a thousand years, 
 Written by Crafticant, and published 
 By Parpaglion and Co., (those sly compeers 
 Who raked up ev'ry fact against the dead,) 
 In Scarab Street, Panthea, at the Jubal's Head. 
 
 XI 
 
 Where, after a long hypercritic howl 
 Against the vicious manners of the age. 
 He goes on to expose, with heart and soul, 
 What vice in this or that year was the rage. 
 Backbiting all the world in ev'ry page ; 
 With special strictures on the horrid crime, 
 (Section'd and subsection'd with learning sage,) 
 Of faeries stooping on their wings sublime 
 To kiss a mortal's lips, when such were in their prime. 
 
 XII 
 
 Turn to the copious index, you will find 
 Somewhere in the column, headed letter B., 
 The name of Bellanaine, if you 're not blind ; 
 Then pray refer to the text, and you will see 
 An article made up of calumny 
 Against this highland princess, rating her 
 For giving way, so over fashionably. 
 To this new-fangled vice, which seems a burr 
 Stuck in his moral throat, no coughing e'er could stir. 
 
 XIII 
 
 There he says plainly that she loved a man ! 
 That she around him flutter'd, flirted, toy'd. 
 Before her marriage with great Elfinan ; 
 That after marriage too, she never joy'd 
 In husband's company, but still employ'd 
 Her wits to 'scape away to Angle-land ; 
 Where liv'd the youth, who worried and anuoy'd 
 Her tender heart, and its warm ardours fann'd 
 To such a dreadful blaze her side would scorch her hand.
 
 366 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XIV 
 
 But let us leave this idle tittle-tattle 
 To waiting-maids, and bed-room coteries. 
 Nor till fit time against her fame wage battle. 
 Poor Elfinan is very ill at ease ; 
 Let us resume his subject if you please : 
 For it may comfort and console him much 
 To rliyme and syllable his miseries ; 
 Poor Elfinan ! whose cruel fate was such, 
 He sat and cursed a bride he knew he could not touch. 
 
 XV 
 
 Soon as (according to his promises) 
 The bridal embassy had taken wing, 
 And vanish'd, bird-like, o'er the suburb trees. 
 The Emperor, empierced with the sharp sting 
 Of love, retired, vex'd and murmuring 
 Like any drone sliut from the fair bee-queen. 
 Into his cabinet, and there did fling 
 His limbs upon a sofa, full of spleen, 
 ^And damn'd his House of Commons, in complete chagrin. 
 
 XVI 
 
 " I 'II trounce some of the members," cried the Prince, 
 " I '11 put a mark against some rebel names, 
 I '11 make the Opposition-benches wince, 
 I '11 show them very soon, to all their shames. 
 What 'tis to smother up a Prince's flames. 
 That ministers should join in it, I own. 
 Surprises me ! — they too at these high games ! 
 Am I an Emperor ? Do I wear a crown .'' 
 Imperial Elfinan, go hang thyself or drown ! 
 
 XVII 
 
 " I '11 trounce 'em ! — there's the square-cut chancellor, 
 His son shall never touch that bishopric ; 
 And for the nephew of old Palfior, 
 I'll show him that his speeches made me sick, 
 And give the colonelcy to Phalaric ; 
 The tiptoe marquis, moral and gallant. 
 Shall lodge in shabby taverns upon tick ; 
 And for the Speaker's second cousin's aunt, 
 She shan't be maid of honour, — by heaven that she shan't ! 
 
 XVIII 
 
 " I'll shirk the Duke of A. ; I'll cut his brother 
 I'll give no garter to his eldest son ; 
 I won't speak to his sister or his mother. 
 The Viscount B. shall live at cut-and-run ; 
 But how in the world can I contrive to stun 
 
 1
 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 367 
 
 That fellow's voice, which plagues me worse than any, 
 That stubborn fool, that impudent state-dun, 
 Who sets down ev'ry sovereign as a zany, — 
 That vulgar commoner, Esquire Biancopany? 
 
 XIX 
 
 " Monstrous affair ! Pshaw ! pah ! what ugly minx 
 Will they fetch from Imaus for my bride ? 
 Alas ! my wearied heart within me sinks, 
 To think that I must be so near allied 
 To a cold dullard fay, — ah, woe betide ! 
 Ah, fairest of all human loveliness ! 
 Sweet Bertha ! what crime can it be to glide 
 About the fragrant plaitings of thy dress, 
 Or kiss thine eyes, or count thy locks, tress after tress? " 
 
 XX 
 
 So said, one minute's while his eyes remain'd 
 Half lidded, piteous, languid, innocent ; 
 But, in a wink, their splendour they regain'd, 
 Sparkling revenge with amorous fury blent. 
 Love thwarted in bad temper oft has vent : 
 He rose, he stampt his foot, he rang the bell. 
 And order'd some death-warrants to be sent 
 For signature : — somewhere the tempest fell, 
 As many a poor fellow does not live to tell. 
 
 XXI 
 
 " At the same time, Eban," — (this was his page, 
 A fay of colour, slave from top to toe. 
 Sent as a present, while yet under age. 
 From the Viceroy of Zanguebar, — wise, slow 
 His speech, his only words were " yes " and ''no," 
 But swift of look and foot and wing was he,) — 
 " At the same time, Eban, this instant go 
 To Hum the soothsayer, whose name I see 
 Among the fresh arrivals in our empery. 
 
 XXII 
 
 " Bring Hum to me ! But stay — here, take my ring, 
 The pledge of favour, that he not suspect 
 Any foul play, or awkward murdering, 
 Tho' I have bowstrung many of his sect ; 
 Throw in a hint, that if he should neglect 
 One hour the next shall see him in my grasp, 
 And the next after that shall see him neck'd, 
 Or swallow'd by my hunger-starved asp, — 
 And mention ('tis as well) the torture of the wasp. "
 
 368 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XXIIf 
 
 These orders given, the Prince, in half a pet, 
 Let o'er the silk his propping elbow slide. 
 Caught up his little legs, and, in a fret. 
 Fell on the sofa on his royal side. 
 The slave retreated backwards, humble-eyed, 
 And with a slave-like silence closed the door, 
 And to old Hum thro' street and alley hied ; 
 He " knew the city," as we say, of yore. 
 And for short cuts and turn.s, was nobody knew m,ore. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 It was the time when wholesale dealers close 
 Their shutters with a moody sense of wealth. 
 But retail dealers, diligent, let loose 
 The gas (objected to on score of health), 
 Convey'd in little solder'd pipes by stealth, 
 And make it flare in many a brilliant form. 
 That all the powers of darkness it repell'th. 
 Which to the oil-trade doth great scaith and harm, 
 And supersedeth quite the use of the glow-worm. 
 
 XXV 
 
 Eban, untempted by the pastrycooks, 
 (Of pastry he got store within the palace,) 
 With hasty steps, wrapp'd cloak, and solemn looks. 
 Incognito upon his errand sallies. 
 His smelling-bottle ready for the allies ; 
 He pass'd the hurdygurdies with disdain. 
 Vowing he'd have them sent on board the galleys ; 
 Just as he made his vow it 'gan to rain. 
 Therefore he call'd a coach, and bade it drive amain. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 "I '11 pull the string," said he, and further said, 
 " Polluted jarvey ! Ah, thou filthy hack ! 
 Whose springs of life are all dried up and dead. 
 Whose linsey-woolsey lining hangs all slack. 
 Whose rug is sti'aw, whose wholeness is a crack ; 
 And evermore thy steps go clatter-clitter ; 
 Whose glass once up can never be got back. 
 Who prov'st, with jolting arguments and bitter, 
 Tliat 'tis of modern use to travel in a litter. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 " Thou inconvenience ! thou hungry crop 
 For all corn ! thou snail-creeper to and fro. 
 Who while thou goest ever seem'st to stop 
 And fiddle-faddle standest while you go ; 
 r the morning, freighted with a weight of woe,
 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 369 
 
 Unto some lazar-house thou jourueyest. 
 And in the evening tak'st a double row 
 Of dowdies, for some dance or party drest, 
 Besides the goods meanwhile thou movest east and west. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 " By thy ungallant bearing and sad mien, 
 An inch appears the utmost thou couldst budge ; 
 Yet at the slightest nod, or hint, or sign. 
 Round to the curb-stone patient dost thou trudge, 
 School'd in a beckon, learned in a nudge, 
 A dull-eyed Argus watching for a fare ; 
 Quiet and plodding, thou dost bear no grudge 
 To whisking tilburies or phaetons rare. 
 Curricles, or mail-coaches, swift beyond compare." 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Philosophizing thus, he pull'd the check 
 And bade the coachman wheel to such a street. 
 Who, turning much his body, more his neck, 
 Louted full low, and hoarsely did him greet : 
 " Certes, monsieur were best take to his feet, 
 Seeing his servant can no further drive 
 For press of coaches, that to-night here meet. 
 Many as bees about a straw-capp'd hive. 
 When first for April honey into faint flowers they dive 
 
 XXX 
 
 Eban then paid his fare, and tiptoe went 
 To Hum's hotel ; and, as he on did pass 
 With head inclined, each dusky lineament 
 Show'd in the pearl-paved street, as in a glass, 
 His purple vest, that ever peeping was 
 Rich from the fluttering crimson of his cloak. 
 His silvery trowsers, and his silken sash, 
 Tied in a burnish'd knot, their semblance took 
 Upon the mirror'd walls, wherever he might look. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 He smiled at self, and, smiling, show'd his teeth. 
 And seeing his white teeth, he smiled the more ; 
 Lifted his eye-brows, spurn' d the path beneath, 
 Show'd teeth again, and smiled as heretofore. 
 Until he knock'd at the magician's door ; 
 Where, till the porter auswer'd, might be seen. 
 In the clear panel more he could adore, — 
 His turban wreath'd of gold, and white, and green, 
 Mustachios, ear-ring, nose-ring, and his sabre keen. 
 24
 
 S70 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XXXII 
 
 " Does not your master give a rout to-night ? " 
 Quoth the dark page. ''Oh, no ! " return'd the Swiss, 
 ''Next door but one to us, upon the right, 
 The Magazm des Modes now open is 
 Against the Emperor's wedding ; — and, sir, this 
 My master finds a monstrous horrid bore ; 
 As he retired, an hour ago I wis. 
 With his best beard and brimstone, to explore 
 And cast a quiet figure in his second floor. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 " Gad ! he 's obliged to stick to business ! 
 For chalk, I hear, stands at a pretty price ; 
 And as for aqua vitae — there 's a mess ! 
 The denies sapientiw of mice. 
 Our barber tells me too, are on the rise, — 
 Tinder 's a lighter article, — nitre pure 
 Goes ofl^ like lightning, — grains of Paradise 
 At an enormous figure ! — stars not sure ! — 
 Zodiac will not move without a slight douceur ! 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 " Venus won't stir a peg without a fee. 
 And master is too partial, entre nous, 
 To "— " Hush— hush ! " cried Eban, " sure that is he 
 Coming downstairs, — by St. Bartholomew ! 
 As backwards as he can, — is 't something new } 
 Or is 't his custom, in the name of fun ? " 
 " He always comes down backward, with one shoe " — 
 Return'd the porter — "otF, and one shoe on. 
 Like, saving shoe for sock or stocking, my man John ! " 
 
 XXXV 
 
 It was indeed the great Magician, 
 Feeling, with careful toe, for every stair, 
 And retrograding careful as he can. 
 Backwards and downwards from his own two pair : 
 "Salpietro ! " exclaim'd Hum, "is the dog there.'' 
 He 's always in my way upon the mat ! " 
 " He 's in the kitchen, or the Lord knows where," — 
 Replied the Swiss, — "the nasty, whelping brat ! " 
 *' Don't beat him ! " return'd Hum, and on the floor came pat. 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 Then facing right about, he saw the page, 
 
 And said : " Don't tell me what you want, Eban ; 
 
 The Emperor is now in a huge rage, — 
 
 'Tis nine to one he'll give you the rattan ! 
 
 Let us away ! " Away together ran
 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 371 
 
 The plain-dress'd sage and spangled blackamoor. 
 Nor rested till they stood to cool, and fan, 
 And breathe themselves at th' Emperor's chamber door, 
 When Eban thought he heard a soft imperial snore. 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 " I thought you guess'd, foretold, or prophesied, 
 That's Majesty was in a raving fit ? " 
 "He dreams," said Hum, "or 1 have ever lied. 
 That he is tearing you, sir, bit by bit." 
 " He 's not asleep, and you have little wit," 
 Replied the page ; "that little buzzing noise, 
 Whate'er your palmistry may make of it. 
 Comes from a plaything of the Emperor's choice. 
 From a Man-Tiger-Organ, prettiest of his toys." 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 Eban then usher'd in the learned Seer : 
 Elfinan's back was turn'd, but, ne'ertheless. 
 Both, prostrate on the carpet, ear by ear, 
 Crept silently, and waited in distress, 
 Knowing the Emperor's moody bitterness ; 
 Eban especially, who on the floor 'gan 
 Tremble and quake to death, — he feared less 
 A dose of senna-tea or nightmare Gorgon 
 Than the Emperor when he play'd on his Man-Tiger-Organ. 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 They kiss'd nine times the carpet's velvet face 
 Of glossy silk, soft, smooth, and meadow-green. 
 Where the close eye in deep rich fur might trace 
 A silver tissue, scantly to be seen, 
 As daisies lurk'd in June grass, buds in green ; 
 Sudden the music ceased, sudden the hand 
 Of majesty, by dint of passion keen, 
 Doubled into a common fist, went grand, 
 And knock'd down three cut glasses and his best ink-stand. 
 
 XL 
 
 Then turning round, he saw those trembling two : 
 " Eban," said he, " as slaves should taste the fruits 
 Of diligence, I shall remember you 
 To-morrow, or the next day, as time suits. 
 In a finger conversation with ray mutes, — 
 Begone ! — for you, Chaldean ! here remain ; 
 Fear not, quake not, and as good wine recruits 
 A conjurer's spirits, what cup will you drain ? 
 Sherry in silver, hock in gold, or glass'd champagne.'''
 
 372 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XLI 
 
 " Commander of the Faithful ! " answer'd Hum, 
 " In preference to these, I'll merely taste 
 A thimble-full of old Jamaica rum." 
 " A simple boon ! " said Elfinan ; " thou mayst 
 Have Nantz, with which my morning-coffee 's laced." ' 
 " I'll have a glass of Nantz, then," — said the seer, — 
 " Made racy — (sure my boldness is misplaced !) — 
 With the third part — (yet that is drinking dear !) — 
 Of the least drop of creme de citron,, crystal clear." 
 
 XLII 
 
 " I pledge you, Hum ! and pledge my dearest love. 
 My Bertha ! " " Bertha ! Bertha ! " cried the sage, 
 " I know a many Berthas ! " " Mine 's above 
 All Berthas ! " sighed the Emperor. " I engage," 
 Said Hum, '^ in duty, and in vassalage. 
 To mention all the Berthas in the earth ; — 
 There's Bertha Watson, — and Miss Beilha Page, — 
 This famed for languid eyes, and that for mirth, — 
 There 's Bertha Blount of York,— and Bertha Knox of Perth. 
 
 XLIII 
 
 "You seem to know" — "I do know," answer'd Hum, 
 " Your Majesty 's in love with some fine girl 
 Named Bertha ; but her surname will not come. 
 Without a little conjuring." "'Tis Pearl, 
 'Tis Bertha Pearl ! What makes my brains so whirl .'' 
 And she is softer, fairer than her name ! " 
 "Where does she live.^" ask'd Hum. "Her fair locks curl 
 So brightly, they put all our fays to shame ! — 
 Live? — O ! at Canterbury, with her old granddame." 
 
 XLIV 
 
 "Good ! good ! " cried Hum, " I've known her from a child ! 
 She is a changeling of my management ; 
 She was born at midnight in an Indian wild ; 
 Her mother's screams with the striped tiger's blent. 
 While the torch-bearing slaves a halloo sent 
 Into the jungles ; and her palanquin, 
 Rested amid the desert's dreariment. 
 Shook with her agony, till fair were seen 
 The little Bertlia's eyes ope on the stars serene." 
 
 XLV 
 
 " I can't say," said the monarch ; " that may be. 
 Just as it happen'd, true or else a bam ! 
 Drink up your brandy, and sit down by me. 
 Feel, feel my pulse — how much in love I am ! 
 And if your science is not all a sham 
 
 1 " Mr. Nisby is of opinion that laced coffee is bad for the head." — Spectator. 
 
 ■'J
 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 373 
 
 Tell me some means to get the lady here." 
 " Upon my honour ! " said the son of Cham,' 
 " She is my dainty changeling, near and dear, 
 Although her story sounds at first a little queer." 
 
 XLVI 
 
 " Convey her to me. Hum, or hy my crown. 
 My sceptre, and my cross-surmounted glohe, 
 I'll knock you " — " Does your majesty mean — dovm ? 
 No, no, you never could my feelings probe 
 To such a depth ! " The Emperor took his robe, 
 And wept upon its purple palatine. 
 While Hum continued, shamming half a sob, — 
 " In Canterbury doth your lady shine ? 
 But let me cool your brandy with a little wine." 
 
 XLvn 
 
 Whereat a narrow Flemish glass he took. 
 That since belong'd to Admiral De Witt. 
 Admired it with a connoisseuring look. 
 And with the ripest claret crowned it ; 
 And, ere the lively bead could burst and flit. 
 He turned it quickly, nimbly upside down. 
 His mouth being held conveniently fit 
 To catch the ti-easure : " Best in all the town ! " 
 He said, smack'd his moist lips, and gave a pleasant frown. 
 
 XLvni 
 
 " Ah ! good my Prince, weep not ! " And then again 
 He fiU'd a bumper. " Great Sire, do not weep ! 
 Your pulse is shocking, but I'll ease your pain." 
 " Fetch me that ottoman, and prithee keep 
 Your voice low," said the Emperor ; " and steep 
 Some lady's-fingers nice in Candy wine ; 
 And prithee. Hum, behind the screen do peep 
 For the rose-water vase, magician mine ! 
 And sponge my forehead, — so my love doth make me pine. 
 
 XLIX 
 
 " Ah, cursed Bellanaine ! " " Don't think of her," 
 Rejoin'd the Mago, " but on Bertha muse ; 
 For, by my choicest best barometer. 
 You shall not throttled be in marriage noose ; 
 I 've said it. Sire ; you only have to choose — 
 Bertha or Bellanaine." So saying, he drew 
 From the left pocket of his threadbare hose 
 A sampler, hoarded slyly, good as new. 
 Holding it by his thumb and finger full in view. 
 
 ' Cham is said to have been the inventor of magic. Lucy learnt this from Bayle's 
 Dictionary, and had copied a long Latin note from that work.
 
 374 JOHN KEATS 
 
 " Sire, this is Bertha Pearl's neat handy-work ; 
 Her name, see here. Midsummer, imuty-one" 
 Elfinan snatch'd it with a sudden jerk. 
 And wept as if" he never would have done, 
 Honouring with royal tears the poor homespun ; 
 Whereon were broider'd tigers with black eyes, 
 And long-tail'd pheasants, and a rising sun. 
 Plenty of posies, great stags, butterflies 
 Bigger than stags, — a moon, — with other mysteries. 
 
 LI 
 
 The monarch handled o'er and o'er again 
 These day-school hieroglyphics with a sigh ; 
 Somewhat in sadness, but pleas'd in the main, 
 Till this oracular couplet met his eye 
 Astounded : Cupid I, do thee defy ! 
 It was too much. He shrunk back in his chair. 
 Grew pale as death, and fainted — very nigh. 
 " Pho ! nonsense ! " exclaim'd Hum, " now don't despair 
 She does not mean it really. Cheer up, hearty — there ! 
 
 LIT 
 
 " And listen to my words. You say you won't. 
 On any terms, marry Miss Bellanaine ; 
 It goes against your conscience — good ! Well, don't. 
 You say you love a mortal. I would fain 
 Persuade your honour's highness to refrain 
 From peccadilloes. But, sire, as I say, 
 What good would that do .'' And, to be more plain, 
 You would do me a mischief some odd day. 
 Cut off my ears and hands, or head too, by my fay ! 
 
 LIII 
 
 " Besides, manners forbid that I should pass any 
 Vile strictures on the conduct of a prince 
 Who should indulge his genius, if he has any, 
 Not, like a subject, foolish matters mince. 
 Now I think on 't, perhaps I could convince 
 Your Majesty there is no crime at all 
 In loving pretty little Bertha, since 
 She 's very delicate, — not over tall, — 
 A fairy's hand, and in the waist why — very small." 
 
 LIV 
 
 " Ring the repeater, gentle Hum ! " " 'Tis five," 
 Said gentle Hum ; " the nights draw in apace ; 
 Tlie little birds, I hear, are all alive ; 
 I see the dawning touch'd upon your face ; 
 Shall I put out the candles, please your Grace ? " 

 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 375 
 
 " Do put them out, and, without more ado. 
 Tell me how I may that sweet girl embrace, — 
 How you can bring her to me." '^'That 's for you. 
 Great Emperor ! to adventure, like a lover true." 
 
 LV 
 
 ''I fetch her?"—" Yes, an 't like your Majesty ; 
 And as she would be frighten'd wide awake 
 To travel such a distance through the sky. 
 Use of some soft manoeuvre you must make. 
 For your convenience and her dear nerves sake ; 
 Nice way would be to bring her in a swoon. 
 Anon, I'll tell what course were best to take ; 
 You must away this morning." ''Hum! so soon .^" 
 " Sire, you must be in Kent by twelve o'clock at noon." 
 
 LVI 
 
 At this great Caesar started on his feet. 
 Lifted his wings, and stood attentive-wise. 
 "Those wings to Canterbury you must beat. 
 If you hold Bertha as a worthy prize. 
 Look in the Almanack — Moore never lies — 
 April the twenty-fourth, — this coming day. 
 Now breathing its new bloom upon the skies. 
 Will end in St. Mark's Eve ; — you must away. 
 For on that eve alone can you the maid convey." 
 
 LVII 
 
 Then the magician solemnly 'gan frown. 
 So that his frost-white eyebrows, beetling low. 
 Shaded his deep green eyes, and wrinkles brown 
 Plaited upon his furnace-scorched brow : 
 Forth from his hood that hung his neck below. 
 He lifted a bright casket of pure gold, 
 Touch'd a spring-lock, and there in wool or snow, 
 Charm'd into ever freezing, lay an old 
 And legend-leaved book, mysterious to behold. 
 
 LVIII 
 
 " Take this same book, — it will not bite you, sire ; 
 There, put it underneath your royal arm ; 
 Though it 's a pretty weight it will not tire. 
 But rather on your journey keep you warm : 
 Tliis is the magic, this the potent charm, 
 That shall drive Bertha to a fainting fit ! 
 When the time comes don't feel the least alarm, 
 But lift her from the ground, and swiftly flit 
 Back to your palace, where I wait for guerdon fit."
 
 376 JOHN KEATS 
 
 LIX 
 
 " What shall 1 do with that same book ?" " Why, merely 
 Lay it on Bertha's table, close beside 
 Her work-box, and 'twill help your purpose dearly ; 
 I say no more." " Or good or ill betide, 
 Through the wide air to Kent this morn I glide ! " 
 Exclaim'd the Emperor. " When I return, 
 Ask what you will, — I'll give you my new bride ! 
 And take some more wine. Hum ; — O heavens ! I burn 
 To be upon the wing ! Now, now, that minx I spurn ! " 
 
 LX 
 
 " Leave her to me," rejoin'd the magian : 
 " But how shall I account, illustrious fay ! 
 For thine imperial absence .'' Pho ! I can 
 Say you are very sick, and bar the way 
 To your so loving courtiers for one day ; 
 If either of their two archbishops' graces 
 Should talk of extreme unction, I shall say 
 You do not like cold pig with Latin phrases. 
 Which never should be used but in alarming cases." 
 
 LXI 
 
 " Open the window. Hum ; I 'm ready now ! " 
 '^ Zooks ! " exclaim'd Hum, as up the sash he drew, 
 " Behold, your Majesty, upon the brow 
 Of yonder hill, what crowds of people ! " " Whew ! 
 The monster's always after something new," 
 Return'd his Highness, " they are piping hot 
 To see my pigsney Ballanaine. Hum ! do 
 Tighten my belt a little, — so, so, — not 
 Too tight, — the book ! — my wand ! — so, nothing is forgot." 
 
 LXI I 
 
 " Wounds ! how they shout ! " said Hum, " and there, — see, see ! 
 Th' ambassador 's return'd from Pigmio ! 
 The morning's very fine, — uncommonly ! 
 See, past the skirts of yon white cloud they go. 
 Tinging it with soft crimsons ! Now below 
 The sable-pointed heads of firs and pines 
 They dip, move on, and with them moves a glow 
 Along the forest side ! Now amber lines 
 p.each the hill top, and now throughout the valley shines." 
 
 LXIII 
 
 " Why, Hum, you 're getting quite poetical I 
 Those nows you managed in a special style." 
 " If ever you have leisure, Sire, you shall 
 See scraps of mine will make it worth your while, 
 Tit-bits for Phoebus ! — yes, you well may smile.
 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 377 
 
 Hark ! hark ! the bells ! " "A little further yet, 
 (jood Hum, aud let me view this mighty coil." 
 Then the great Emperor full graceful set 
 His elbow for a prop, and siiuff'd his mignonnette. 
 
 LXIV 
 
 The morn is full of holiday ; lou<l bells 
 With rival clamours ring from every spire ; 
 Cunningly-station'd music dies and swells 
 In echoing places ; when the winds respire, 
 Light flags stream out like gauzy tongues of fire ; 
 A metropolitan murmur, lifeful, warm. 
 Comes from the northern suburbs ; rich attire 
 Freckles with red and gold the moving swarm ; 
 While here and there clear trumpets blow a keen alarm. 
 
 LXV 
 
 And now the fairy escort was seen clear. 
 Like the old pageant of Aurora's train. 
 Above a pearl-built minster, hovering near ; 
 First wily Crafticant, the chamberlain. 
 Balanced upon his grey-grown pinions twain. 
 His slender wand officially reveal'd ; 
 Then black gnomes scattering sixpences like rain ; 
 Then pages three and three ; and next, slave-held, 
 The Imaian 'scutcheon briglit, — one mouse in argent field. 
 
 LXVl 
 
 Gentlemen pensioners next ; and after them, 
 A troop of winged Janizaries flew ; 
 Then slaves, as presents bearing many a gem ; 
 Then twelve physicians fluttering two and two ; 
 And next a chaplain in a cassock new ; 
 Then Lords in waiting ; then (what head not reels 
 For pleasure ?) — the fair Princess in full view. 
 Borne upon wings, — and very pleased she feels 
 To have such splendour dance attendance at her heels. 
 
 Lxvn 
 
 For there was more magnificence behind : 
 She waved her handkerchief. " Ah, very grand ! " 
 Cried Elfinan, and closed the window-blind : 
 *' And, Hum, we must not shilly-shally stand, — 
 Adieu ! adieu ! I'm off for Angle-land ! 
 I say, old Hocus, have you such a thing 
 About you, — feel your pockets, I command, — 
 I want, this instant, an invisible ring, — 
 Thank you, old mummy ! — now securely I take wing,"
 
 378 JOHN KEATS 
 
 LXVIII 
 
 Then Ellinan swift vaulted from the floor. 
 And lighted graceful on the window-sill ; 
 Under one arm the magic book he bore, 
 The other he could wave about at will ; 
 Pale was his face, he still look'd very ill : 
 He bow'd at Bellanaine, and said — " Poor Bell ! 
 Farewell ! farewell ! and if for ever ! still 
 For ever fare thee well ! "—and then he fell 
 A laughing ! — snapp'd his fingers !— shame it is to tell ! 
 
 LXIX 
 
 " By r Lady ! he is gone ! " cries Hum, " and I — 
 (I own it) — have made too free with his wine ; 
 Old Crafticant will smoke me. By-the-bye ! 
 This room is full of jewels as a mine. 
 Dear valuable creatures, how ye shine ! 
 Sometime to-daj' I must contrive a minute, 
 If Mercury propitiously incline. 
 To examine his scrutoire, and see what 's in it. 
 For of superfluous diamonds I as well may thin it. 
 
 LXX 
 
 " The Emperor's horrid bad ; j^es, that 's my cue ! " 
 Some histories say that this was Hum's last speech ; 
 That, being fuddled, he went reeling through 
 The corridor, and scarce upright could reach 
 The stair-head ; that being glutted as a leech, 
 And used, as we ourselves have just now said. 
 To manage stairs reversely, like a peach 
 Too ripe, he fell, being puzzled in his head 
 With liquor and the staircase : verdict — found stone dead. 
 
 LXXI 
 
 This as a falsehood Craiticauto treats ; 
 And as his style is of strange elegance. 
 Gentle and tender, full of soft conceits, 
 (Much like our Boswell's), we vvill take a glance 
 At his sweet prose, and, if we can, make dance 
 His woven periods into careless rhyme ; 
 O, little faery Pegasus ! rear — prance — 
 Trot round the quarto — ordinary time ! 
 March, little Pegasus, with pawing hoof sublime ! 
 
 LXXH 
 
 Well, let us see, — tenth hook and chapter nine, — 
 
 Thus Crafticant pursues his diary : — 
 
 " 'Twas twelve o'clock at night, the weather fine, 
 
 Latitude thirty-six ; our scouts descry 
 
 A flight of starlings making rapidly
 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 379 
 
 Tow'rds Thibet. Mem. : — birds fly in the night ; 
 From twelve to half-past — wings not fit to fly 
 For a thick fog — the Princess sulky quite ; 
 Call'd for an extra shawl, and gave her nurse a bite. 
 
 LXXIII 
 
 " Five minutes before one — -brought down a moth 
 With my new double-barrel — stew'd the thighs 
 And made a very tolerable broth — 
 Princess turn'd dainty, to our great surprise, 
 Alter'd her mind, and thought it very nice : 
 Seeing her pleasant, tried her with a pun. 
 She frown 'd ; a monstrous owl across us flies 
 About this time, — a sad old figure of fun ; 
 Bad omen — this new match can't be a happy one. 
 
 LXXIV 
 
 " From two to half-past, dusky way we made. 
 Above the plains of Gobi, — desert, bleak ; 
 Beheld afar ofi", in the hooded shade 
 Of darkness, a great mountain (strange to speak), 
 Spitting, from forth its sulphur-baken peak, 
 A fan-shaped burst of blood-red, arrowy fire, 
 Turban'd with smoke, wliich still away did reek. 
 Solid and black from that eternal pyre, 
 Upon the laden winds that scantly could respire. 
 
 LXXV 
 
 " Just upon three o'clock a falling star 
 Created an alarm among our troop, 
 Kill'd a man-cook, a page, and broke a jar, 
 A tureen, and three dishes, at one swoop, 
 Then passing by the Princess, singed her hoop : 
 Could not conceive what Coralline was at. 
 She clapp'd her hands three times and cried out ' Whoop ! ' 
 Some strange Imaian custom. A large bat 
 Came sudden 'fore my face, and brush'd against my hat. 
 
 LXXVI 
 
 " Five minutes thirteen seconds after three 
 
 Far in the west a mighty fire broke out. 
 Conjectured, on the instant, it might be, 
 The city of Balk — 'twas Balk beyond all doubt : 
 A griffin, wheeling here and there about. 
 Kept reconnoitring us — doubled our guard — 
 Lighted our torches, and kept up a shout, 
 Till he sheer'd off — the Princess very scared — 
 And many on their marrowbones for death prepared.
 
 380 JOHN KEATS 
 
 LXXVII 
 
 " At half-past three ai-ose the cheerful moon — 
 Bivouack'd for four minutes on a cloud — 
 Where from the earth we heard a lively tune 
 Of tambourines and pipes, serene and loud. 
 While on a flowery lawn a brilliant crowd 
 Cinque-parted danced, some half asleep reposed 
 Beneath the green-fan'd cedars, some did shroud 
 In silken tents, and 'mid light fragrance dozed. 
 Or on the open turf their soothed eyelids closed. 
 
 LXXVIII 
 
 " Dropp'd my gold watch, and kill'd a kettle-drum — 
 It went for apoplexy — foolish folks !— 
 Left it to pay the piper — a good sum— 
 (I've got a conscience, maugre people's jokes ;) 
 To scrape a little favour 'gan to coax 
 Her Highness' pug-dog — got a sharp rebuff — 
 She wish'd a game at whist — made three revokes — 
 Turn'd from myself, her partner, in a huff ; 
 His Majesty will know her temper time enough. 
 
 LXXIX 
 
 " She cried for chess — I play'd a game with her — 
 Castled her King with such a vixen look. 
 It bodes ill to his Majesty — (refer 
 To the second chapter of my fortieth book. 
 And see what hoity-toity airs she took). 
 At half-past four the morn essay'd to beam — 
 Saluted, as we pass'd, an early rook — 
 The Princess fell asleep, and, in her dream, 
 Talk'd of one Master Hubert, deep in her esteem. 
 
 LXXX 
 
 "About this time, — making delightful way, — 
 Shed a quill-feather from my larboard wing — 
 Wish'd, trusted, hoped 'twas no sign of decay — 
 Thank Heaven, I'm hearty yet ! — 'twas no such thing : 
 At five the golden light began to spring, 
 With fiery shudder through the bloomed east ; 
 At six we heard Panthea's churches ring — 
 The city all his unhived swarms had cast. 
 To watch our grand approach, and hail us as we pass'd. 
 
 LXXXI 
 
 "As flowers turn their faces to the sun. 
 So on our flight with hungry eyes they gaze. 
 And, as we shaped our course, this, that way run. 
 With mad-cap pleasure, or hand-clasp'd amaze ; 
 Sweet in the air a mild-toned music plays,
 
 THE CAP AND BELLS 381 
 
 And progresses through its own labyrinth ; 
 Buds gather'd from the green spring's middle-days, 
 They scatter'd, — daisy, primrose, hyacinth, — 
 Or round white columns wreath'd from capital to plinth. 
 
 LXXXII 
 
 " Onward we floated o'er the panting streets. 
 That seem'd throughout with upheld faces paved ; 
 Look where we will, our bird's-eye vision meets 
 Legions of holiday ; bright standards waved, 
 And fluttering ensigns emulously craved 
 Our minute's glance ; a busy thunderous roar, 
 From square to square, among the buildings raved. 
 As when the sea, at flow, gluts up once more 
 The craggy hollo wness of a wild reefed shore. 
 
 LXXXII I 
 
 *' And ' Bellanaine for ever ! ' shouted they ; 
 While that fair Princess, from her winged chair, 
 Bovv'd low with high demeanour, and, to pay 
 Their new-blown loyalty with guerdon fair. 
 Still emptied, at meet distance, here and there, 
 A plenty horn of jewels. And here I 
 (Who wish to give the devil her due) declare 
 Against that ugly piece of calumny, 
 Which calls them Highland pebble-stones, not worth a fly. 
 
 LXXXIV 
 
 ''Still ' Bellanaine ! ' they shouted, while we glide 
 'Slant to a light Ionic portico. 
 The city's delicacy, and the pride 
 Of our Imperial Basilic ; a row 
 Of lords and ladies, on each hand, make show 
 Submissive of knee-bent obeisance, 
 All down the steps ; and as we enter'd, lo ! 
 The strangest sight — the most unlook'd-for chance — 
 All things turn'd topsy-turvy in a devil's dance. 
 
 LXXXV 
 
 "'Stead of his anxious Majesty and court 
 At the open doors, with wide saluting eyes. 
 Congees and scrape-graces of every sort, 
 And all the smooth routine of gallantries, 
 Was seen, to our immoderate surprise, 
 A motley crowd thick gather'd in the hall. 
 Lords, scullions, deputy-scullions, with wild cries 
 Stunning the vestibule from wall to wall. 
 Where the Chief Justice on his knees and hands doth crawl.
 
 382 JOHN KEATS 
 
 LXXXVI 
 
 "Counts of the palace^ and the state purveyor 
 Of moth's-down, to make soft the loyal beds, 
 The Common Council and my fool Lord Mayor 
 Marching a-row, each other slipshod treads ; 
 Powder'd bag-wigs and ruffy-tuffy heads 
 Of cinder wenches meet and soil each other ; 
 Toe crush'd with heel ill-natured fighting breeds, 
 Frill-rumpling elbows brew up many a bother. 
 And fists in the short ribs keep up the yell and pother. 
 
 LXXXVII 
 
 " A Poet, mounted on the Court-Clown's back. 
 Rode to the Princess swift with spurring heels. 
 And close into her face, with rhyming clack. 
 Began a Prothalamion ; — she reels. 
 She falls, she faints ! while laughter peals 
 Over her woman's weakness. ' Where,' cried I, 
 ' Where is his Majesty ? ' No person feels 
 Inclined to answer ; wherefore instantly 
 I plunged into the crowd to find him or to die. 
 
 LXXXVIII 
 
 " Jostling my way I gain'd the stairs, and ran 
 To the first lauding, where, incredible ! 
 I met, far gone in liquor, that old man, 
 
 That vile impostor Hum, " 
 
 So far so well, — 
 For we have proved the Mago never fell 
 Down stairs on Crafticanto's evidence ; 
 And therefore duly shall proceed to tell. 
 Plain in our own original mood and tense. 
 The sequel of this day, though labour 'tis immense 
 
 No more xoas written.
 
 ADDENDA 
 
 POEMS FOUND IN THE WOODHOUSE TRANSCRIPT OF 
 THE FALL OF HYPERION AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 FILL FOR ME A BRIMMING BOWL 
 
 FILL for me a brimming bowl 
 And let me in it drown my soul : 
 But put therein some drug, designed 
 To banish Women from my mind : 
 For I want not the stream inspiring 
 That fills the mind with — fond desiring, 
 But I want as deep a draught 
 As ere from Lethe's wave was quaif'd ; 
 From my despairing heart to charm 
 The Image of the fairest form 
 That e'er my reveling eyes beheld 
 That e'er my wandering fancy spell'd. 
 In vain ! away I cannot chace 
 The melting softness of that face 
 The beaminess of those bright eyes 
 That breast — earth's only Paradise. 
 My sight will never more be blest ; 
 For all I see has lost its zest : 
 Nor witb delight can I explore 
 The Classic page, or Muse's lore 
 Had she but known how beat my heart, 
 And with one smile reliev'd its smart 
 I should have felt a sweet relief 
 I should have felt "the joy of grief," 
 Yet as the Tuscan mid the snow 
 Of Lapland thinks on sweet Aruo, 
 Even so for ever shall she be 
 The Halo of my Memory. 
 
 Aug., 1814
 
 384 JOHN KEATS 
 
 SONG 
 Tune — Julia to the. Wood-Robin 
 
 STAY, ruby-breasted Warbler, stay, 
 And let me see thy sparkling eye : 
 O brush not yet the pearl-strung spray. 
 Nor bow thy pretty head to fly. 
 
 Stay, while I tell thee, fluttering thing, 
 That thou of love an emblem art ; 
 
 Yes — patient plume thy little wing. 
 While I my thought to thee impart. 
 
 When summer nights the dews bestow. 
 And summer suns enrich the day. 
 
 Thy notes the blossoms charm to blow. 
 Each opes delighted at thy lay. 
 
 So when in youth the Eye's dark glance 
 Speaks pleasure from its circle bright. 
 
 The Tones of love our joys enhance. 
 And make superior each delight. 
 
 And when bleak storms resistless rove. 
 And every rural bliss destroy. 
 
 Nought comforts then the leafless grove 
 But thy sweet note — its only joy. 
 
 Even so the words of love beguile 
 When pleasure's tree no flower bears. 
 
 And draw a soft endearing smile 
 Amid the gloom of grief and tears. 
 
 ON PEACE 
 
 O PEACE ! and dost thou with thy presence bless 
 The dwellings of this war-surrounded Isle ; 
 Soothing with placid brow our late distress. 
 Making the triple kingdom brightly smile .'' 
 Joyful I hail thy presence ; and I hail 
 The sweet companions that await on thee ; 
 Complete my joy — let not my first wish fail, 
 Let the sweet mountain nymph thy favourite be. 
 With England's happiness proclaim Europa's Liberty. 
 O Europe ! let not sceptred tyrants see 
 That thou must shelter in thy former state ; 
 Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free ; 
 Give thy kings law — leave not uncurbed the (great .'') 
 So with the honours past thou'lt win thy happier fate !
 
 ADDENDA 385 
 
 TO EMMA 
 1 
 
 OCOME my dear Emma ! the rose is full blown. 
 The riches of Flora are lavishly strown, 
 The air is all softness, and crystal the streams, 
 The West is resplendently clothed in beams. 
 
 O come ! let us haste to the freshening shades, 
 The quaintly carv'd seats, and the opening glades ; 
 Where the fairies are chanting- tlieir evening hymns, 
 And in the last sun-beam the sylph lightly swims. 
 
 And when thou art weary I'll find thee a bed. 
 Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head : 
 There, beauteous, Emma I'll sit at thy feet, 
 While my story of love I enraptur'd repeat. 
 
 So fondly I'll breathe, and so softly I'll sigh. 
 
 Thou wilt think that some amorous Zephyr is nigh : 
 
 Yet no — as I breathe I will press thy fair knee. 
 
 And then thou wilt know that the sigh comes from me. 
 
 Ah ! why dearest girl should we lose all these blisses .'' 
 That mortal's a fool who such happiness misses : 
 So smile acquiescence, and give me thy hand. 
 With love-looking eyes, and with voice sweetly bland. 
 
 25
 
 NOTES 
 
 [The following principal editions of the Works of Keats are thus referred to in the 
 Notes : — 
 
 H 1848. Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats, edited by Richard 
 Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton). 2 vols. 1848. 
 
 WTA. The Poetical Works of John Keats, edited by William T. Arnold. 1883. 
 
 HBF. Tlie Complete Works of John Keats, edited by H. Buxton Forman. 1900. 
 
 Mr. Sidney Colvin's Life of Keats (English Men of Letters Series, Macmillan, 1887) 
 is referred to as EML. References to the Letters of Keats are made under their dates, 
 that they may be traced either in the edition of Mr. Forman, above mentioned, or in 
 that of Mr. Colvin (Macmillan, 1891).] 
 
 THE POEMS OF 1817 
 
 Keats's first collection of poems appeared in March, 1817, and was 
 favourably reviewed by Leigh Hunt in the Examiner of 1st June and 
 6th and 13th July. All his friends seem to have been anxious for him 
 to bring out the volume, and Shelley alone advised him not to publish at 
 present, though when Keats had decided to do so he helped to find him 
 a publisher and introduced him to the Olliers. The volume attracted 
 little attention. As Keats remarked in the rejected preface to Endymion 
 " it was read by some dozen of my friends who lik'd it ; and some dozen 
 whom I was unacquainted with, who did not " ; and when on 29th April, 
 George Keats, evidently thinking that the publishers were not pressing 
 it properly upon the public, wrote to inquire about its sale, he received a 
 heated reply : "We regret that your brother ever requested us to publish 
 his book, or that our opinion of its talent should have led us to acquiesce 
 in undertaking it. We are, however, obliged to you for relieving us of 
 the unpleasant necessity of declining any further connection with it, 
 which we must have done, as we think the curiosity is satisfied, and the 
 sale has dropped." They added with bitterness that one of their customers 
 had described it, a few days before, as " no better than a take in " (Letter 
 of the Olliers to George Keats quoted in EML, p. 66). 
 
 The motto with its characteristic phrase " delight with liberty " is to 
 be found in Spenser's Muiopotmos, 209, 210. 
 
 Dedication. — Charles Cowden Clarke in his Recollections of Keats 
 refers to this sonnet as an ejcample of Kea.ts's facility in composition.
 
 388 JOHN KEATS 
 
 noting that it was written extempore " amid the buzz of a mixed conver- 
 sation " upon the request from the printer that "if a dedication to the 
 book was intended, it must be sent forthwith ". It is essentially character- 
 istic in tone and diction of the volume it serves to introduce. 
 
 After the Dedication stood a note in the first edition to the effect that 
 "The Short Pieces in the middle of the Book, as well as some of the 
 Sonnets, were written at an earlier period than the rest of the Poems ". 
 It is difficult to understand what principle guided Keats in their selection, 
 for several of them, as Hunt noticed, are of little value, and poems quite 
 as good, written also before 1817, were omitted. 
 
 / Stood Tip-toe . . . :^sliows the influence of Hunt at its height both 
 in subject, treatment (v. Introduction) and versification. The double 
 rhymes are about one in four and a half, and there is constant use of 
 enjambement. The poem was originally called Endyniion, and is referred 
 to under that title in a letter to Clarke of December, 1816, where Keats 
 speaks of it as almost finished. But the earlier part of the poem at least 
 reads more like a summer rhapsody than a mere winter's reminiscence (on 
 the date cf. p. 568, note). Lord Houghton states that it was suggested to 
 Keats by a delightful summer's day, as he stood beside the gate that leads 
 from the battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood. The 
 characteristic motto of the poem is taken from Hunt's Story of Rimini, 
 iii. 68. 
 
 48. Ye ardent marigolds! : — "The introduction of the short line may 
 have been caught either from Spenser's nuptial Odes or Milton's Lycidas " 
 (Colvin). The latter is much more probable. Spenser's use of the short 
 line is at once more frequent and more regular than Milton's or Keats's. 
 Moreover, in the poems of this date the influence of Milton's early poems 
 is as marked as that of Spenser. 
 
 52. 7nany harps ivhich he has lately strung : — Keats, who has just decided 
 to devote his life to art, is at the time full of enthusiasm for the immediate 
 future of English poetry. Cf. Sleep and Poetry, 220-230, and Sonnet XIV., 
 9-12. 
 
 61. Linger awhile, etc. H supplies this variant : — 
 Linger awhile among some bending planks 
 That lean against a streamlet's daisied banks. 
 And watch intently Nature's gentle doings ; 
 That will be found as soft as ringdoves' cooings. 
 The inward ear will hear her and be blest. 
 And tingle with a joy too light for rest. 
 
 The whole passage (61-80) is, says Clarke, " a recollection of our having 
 frequently loitered over the rail of a footbridge that spanned a little brook 
 in the last field upon entering Edmonton ". 
 
 71. A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds : — A crude reminiscence of 
 As You Like It, ii. 1. 17.
 
 I STOOD TIP-TOE— NOTES 389 
 
 87. Sometimes goldfinches, etc. : — Woodhouse compares this passage 
 with the Chaucerian poem of The Flowre and the Leafe, stanza 88 : — 
 Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile 
 Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet 
 Here and there of buds and floures sweet. 
 
 115. Coming into the blue, etc. : — H supplies this variant : — 
 Floating through space with ever-living eye 
 The crowned queen of ocean and the sky. 
 
 125-242. For what has made the sage or poet write 
 
 But the fair paradise of Nature's light ? etc. : — 
 
 This whole passage, crude and formless as it is, is an attempt of Keats 
 to express the ideas floating through his mind on what might be called 
 the metaphysics of poetry. — How can we explain the hold which poetry 
 has upon the human mind and the manner in which it affects us .'* Man, 
 Keats would imply, is himself a part of Nature, only to be distinguished 
 from Nature in his self-consciousness, and in his definite recognition of 
 that beauty which is implicit in Nature, whilst poetry is the expression 
 of his sense of kingship ; i-hythm, an essential constituent of all poetry, 
 being itself the unconscious reproduction of the rhythm or order in 
 Nature herself. It is on this relationship with Nature that the universal 
 appeal of poetry ultimately rests, whilst the similar eflfect produced upon 
 us by certain aspects of Nature and certain types or forms of poetry is 
 not mere arbitrary coincidence, but is due to the fact that each is a 
 diflfereut manifestation of the same idea {cf. 11. 128-32). The true poet, 
 therefore, is instinctively guided by Nature to the only adequate form 
 in which to clothe his conception, as much as he is inspired by Nature 
 with the conception which he desires to clothe. On this his success 
 as an artist is based, just as true taste in readers of poetry is based 
 upon an intuitive perception of this essential propriety. A similar atti- 
 tude with regard to the fundamental basis of poetry and the poetic 
 instinct in man is to be found in Coleridge's Essays on the Fine Arts, 
 and in Shelley's Defence of Poetry, and these works form, perhaps, the best 
 commentary upon Keats's lines. It will be sufficient for our purpose to 
 quote Shelley. " Man," says Shelley, " is an instrument over which a 
 series of external and internal impressions are driven like the alternations 
 of an ever-changing wind over an J^olian lyre, which move it by their 
 motion to ever-changing melody. . . . To be a poet is to apprehend the 
 true and the beautiful, in a word, the good, which exists in the relation 
 subsisting first between existence and perception, and secondly between 
 perception and expression. . . . Sounds as well as thoughts have relation 
 between each other and towards that which they represent, and a per- 
 ception of the order of their relations has always been found connected 
 with a perception of the order of the relations of thought. . . . Hence 
 poetic harmony." Shelley shows that poetry is essentially natural 
 rather than artificial by an appeal to the instincts of the child and of the
 
 390 JOHN KEATS 
 
 savage (i.e., the child in his relation with the development of the human 
 race), and seems to suggest that the poet of civilisation can only satisfy the 
 artistic impulse within him by an attempt to regain by conscious artistic 
 effort something of the poetic instinct of the child, in his spontaneous 
 expression of his relations with the Nature around him ; to become as a little 
 child being, of course, a very different thing from remaining as one. 
 
 From the same fundamental conception of poetry springs Keats's 
 interpretation of the significance of Greek legend, to which he devotes 
 the remainder of his poem {cf. also Endytnion, ii. 828-54). These myths 
 are not mere fancy. The poet is instinctively impelled to give voice to 
 his feelings of kinship with Natui-e and his aspirations after a completer 
 union. But, as man, he has a finite intellect which can only fully re- 
 alise human relationships, and a language, dependent on that intellect, 
 which is primarily adapted to their expression. As an inevitable result 
 his emotions with regard to Nature take human shape, and Nature, ac- 
 commodating herself to the finite capacities of human intellect and human 
 language, consents to the incarnation of her spirit in forms capable of 
 human apprehension ; whilst language, itself essentially metaphorical, 
 aids substantially in the process of incarnation. It is interesting to 
 observe that Hunt, reviewing the 1817 volume in the Examiner, speaks 
 of this poem as " ending with an allusion to the story of Endymion, and 
 to the origin of other lovely tales of mythology, on the ground suggested 
 by Wordsworth in a beautiful passage of his Excursion ". Hunt is alluding 
 to bk. iv. 717-62, 846-87 — passages which, doubtless, had a deep and 
 permanent influence upon Keats, in that they fortified him in a belief 
 which was essentially characteristic of his whole attitude to poetry. 
 
 129, 130. hawthorn glade :—Cf. Milton, V Allegro, 67, 68 :— 
 And every shepherd tells his tale 
 Under the Hawthorn in the dale. 
 
 141. The legend of Psyche, first known to Keats, perhaps, in Lempri^re 
 and the illustrations of Spence's Polymetis, was familiar to him also in Mrs. 
 Tighe {To Some Ladies, 20, note). Cf. also the exquisite allusion iu 
 Spenser, Faerie Queene, iii. 6. 50. Keats reverted to the theme in his Ode 
 to Psyche {q.v.). 
 
 163. Fawns, 1817 : altered by most editors to " Fauns " ; but it is a 
 characteristic reminiscence of the spelling of Milton and Fletcher, whom 
 the passage itself suggests. 
 
 157. The story of Syrinx, a nymph of Arcadia, who fled from Pan to 
 the river Ladon and was there changed into a reed from which Pan made 
 his flute, is told at length in Ovid, Met., i., whence probably Keats took 
 the story. It is constantly referred to in Elizabethan poetry, e.g., in 
 Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess ; where we also find the famous lines on 
 Endymion , and two delicate references to Narcissus : — 
 
 Narcissus, he 
 That wept himself away, in memory 
 Of his own beauty. — Faithful Shepherdess, Act I,
 
 SPECIMEN OF AN INDUCTION, ETC.— NOTES 391 
 
 And in Act IV. :— 
 
 That swan who now is made a flow'r 
 
 For whose dear sake Eccho weeps many a show'r. 
 
 The story of Narcissus was also known to Keats in Ovid, Met., iii., where 
 it is told in full. Woodhouse, in his manuscript notes to the poem, refers 
 to p. 50 of Sandys's Ovid — an extremely interesting reference, as it proves 
 beyond a doubt that the edition of Sandys in the use of Keats and his friends 
 was the folio with full commentaries, in which the tale of Narcissus duly 
 appears on p. 50. This is important, as in the notes to Endymion much 
 illustrative matter has been drawn from Sandys's commentaries with which, 
 before I read Woodhouse's note, I was convinced upon internal evidence 
 that Keats was familiar. For Narcissus cf. also Spenser, Faerie Quecne, 
 iii. 6. 45. On Endymion, v. Introduction to that poem. The whole passage 
 suggesting the source of these legends should be compared with Endymion, 
 iii. 829-63. 
 
 233. Other's H, HBF ; others' 1817. 
 
 Specimen of an Induction and Calidore have been described as an 
 attempt " to embody the spirit of Spenser in the metre of Rimini " (Colvin). 
 But there is a good deal of the spirit of Rimini, too, especially in the 
 treatment of women {e.g., Calidore, 145-51); for after all the elaborate 
 preparation for a "tale of chivalry" and a description of the "ambitious 
 heat of the aspiring boy," Calidore succeeds in doing nothing but help 
 two ladies to descend from their palfreys. It is worth noticing that Hunt 
 ("thy lov'd Libertas") is to intercede with Spenser for Keats, and it is 
 only as Hunt's follower that he dares to call on Spenser for inspiration 
 {Spec, of Induction, 55-65). Sir Calidore, the Knight of Courtesy {Faerie 
 Queene, vi.), was a favourite hero of Keats's. Cf. Woman ! ivhen I behold 
 thee, 12. The spelling of " ballancing " (30), and the use of " banneral " (38), 
 are the only signs of Spenserian vocabulary, though one should add that 
 Woodhouse for the phrase " her own pure self " (17) compares the Faerie 
 Queene, "her sad self with careful hand constraining". The rest is 
 Huntian. 
 
 Induction. 6. Archimago : — The wizard of Faerie Queene, ii. Cf. Ep. 
 to Clarke, 37. 
 
 46. steed : — HBF, following transcript and a corrected copy belonging 
 to Keats ; knight, 1817- 
 
 51, 52. my heart with pleasure dance : — An obvious reminiscence of 
 Wordsworth's poem, "I wandered lonely as a cloud". 
 
 Calidore. 93. a dimpled hand, Fair as some wonder, etc. : — Woodhouse 
 compares Romeo and Juliet, iii. 3. 36 : — 
 
 they may seize 
 On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand.
 
 392 JOHN KEATS 
 
 To Some Ladies : — This aud the followiug poem are written in imitation 
 of Tom Moore, for whose work the young Keats had a passing affection. 
 It is worth noting that Moore had a great attraction for Hunt, and was 
 one of the poets who fared best at the Feast of the Poets, Hunt's earlier 
 criticism of contemporary poetry. Mr. Forman (Athencsum, l<jth April, 
 1904) has identified the ladies with the Misses Mathew, after examination 
 of a MS. of the poem headed "To the Misses M.," and this view is corro- 
 borated by a note, in Woodhouse's copy of the 1817 volume, to the second 
 poem : — " These lines appear to be addressed to the friend to whom the 
 author addressed one of the Epistles in this volume. The friend sent 
 some lines in reply which have an allusion to several passages in these 
 verses." Notice in this second poem the characteristic introduction of 
 allusions to Spenser, Tasso and A Midsummer -Night's Dream. 
 
 6. rove : — The MS., says Mr. Forman, reads '' muse," thus supplying 
 the necessary rhyme to " bedews ". 
 
 20. The blessings of Tighe : — Mrs. Tighe, authoress of Psyche or The 
 Legend of Love, a poem in six cantos in the Spenserian stanza. It begins 
 in simple narrative, though not untouched in places with characteristic 
 eighteenth-century phraseology, but develops into a weak allegory, fuU 
 of idle personification, devoid of reality or imaginative richness. 
 
 To : —Written in February, 1816, aud addressed to Georgiana 
 
 Augusta Wylie, who afterwards became the wife of George Keats. Keats 
 wrote the poem for his brother to send as a valentine. It is one of the 
 happiest of his early works (despite the rhyme in lines 37, 38), and far 
 more Spenserian in spirit than his other early love verses. Read (Keats 
 and Spenser Dissertation) points out that lines 39 and 40 are a reminiscence 
 of the Shepherd's Calendar for April : — 
 
 Wants not a fourth grace, to make the daunce even .'' 
 Let that roume to my Lady be geven ; 
 She shal be a grace 
 To fyll the fourth place 
 Aud reign with the rest in heaven. 
 He also suggests that lines 25-34 and 41-50 are a recollection of Faerie 
 Queene, ii. 12. 63-67. The picture of the little loves (29, 30) recalls the 
 angels in the Epithalamium, 232, 233, which continually 
 forget their service and about her fly 
 Ofte peeping in her face, that seemes more fayre 
 The more on it they stare. 
 It was the Epithalamium which first kindled Keats's enthusiasm for 
 Spenser, and Clarke in his Recollections of the poet refers to this particular 
 passage with the comment : " How often, in after times, have 1 heard him 
 quote these lines!". It is more than likely that the "peeping and 
 staring" which is so offensive a characteristic of the early Keatsian lover 
 has no less spiritual and delicate an origin than this, though as a rule
 
 TO HOPE, ETC.— NOTES 393 
 
 Keats travesties it into a sickly sentimentality. So in Calidore (145-50), 
 and Woman I when I behold thee. 
 
 58. Servant of. Woodhouse compares the Faerie Queene : — 
 This trusty sword the servant of his might. 
 Mr. Colvin (EML, p. 226) quotes from Woodhouse MS. the following as 
 the original form of the poem :— 
 
 Hadst thou lived in days of old, 
 
 Oh what wonders had been told 
 
 Of thy lively dimpled face, 
 
 And thy footsteps full of grace. 
 
 Of thy hair's luxurious darkling, 
 
 Of thine eyes' expressive sparkling. 
 
 And thy voice's swelling rapture. 
 
 Taking hearts a ready capture. 
 
 Oh ! if thou hadst breathed then. 
 
 Thou hadst made the Muses ten. 
 Then followed lines 37 to 68 as in text, with this quotation in con- 
 clusion : — 
 
 Ah me ! whither shall I flee ? 
 
 Thou hast metamorphosed me. 
 
 Do not let me sigh and pine, 
 
 Prythee be my Valentine. 
 
 To Hope : — is chiefly interesting as an example of the eighteenth-cen- 
 tury .style of composition which Keats was to denounce in Sleep and Poetry. 
 Notice " Disappointment, parent of Despair," " that fiend Despondence," 
 " relentless fair," etc. 
 
 Imitation of Spenser : — " On the authority of Mr. Brown I have stated 
 this to be the earliest known composition of Keats, and to have been 
 written during his residence at Edmonton " (Houghton). As Mr. Colvin 
 points out, there is little in it that takes us back farther than the eighteenth- 
 century Spenserians, and the use of the word romantic (24) suggests coun- 
 terfeit romance, as much as Collins's use of eastern suggests that his Persian 
 Eclogues are pseudo-oriental. The reference to Dido is interesting as one 
 of the very few cases in which Keats drew upon Vergil, probably the only 
 classical writer he had studied in the original. 
 
 14. the SKian his neck of arched snow, And oar'd himself, etc. Wood- 
 house aptly compares Paradise Lost, vii., 438-40 : — 
 
 the swan with arched neck 
 Between her white wings mantling proudly, rowes 
 Her state with Oarie feet. 
 
 Woman! When I Behold Thee, etc. : — This series of early sonnets has 
 all the characteristics already noticed in Keats's youthful love poems, where- 
 in a perfectly genuine and chivalrous emotion is often travestied by the
 
 394 JOHN KEATS 
 
 bad taste of its expression. Palgrave {Golden Treasury Keats, notes) com- 
 pares with their dominant sentiment a passage in a letter to Bailey, written 
 on 23rd January, 1818: "One saying of yours 1 shall never forget — you 
 may not recollect it — it being perhaps said when you were looking on the 
 surface and seeming of Humanity alone, without a thought of the past or 
 the future, or the deeps of good and evil . . . merely you said, ' Why 
 should woman suffer?' Ay, why should she? ^By heavens, I'd coin my 
 very soul and drop my blood for Drachmas.' These things are, and he, 
 who feels how incompetent the most skyey Knight-errantry is to heal 
 this bruised fairness, is like a sensitive leaf on the hot hand of thought." 
 
 EPISTLES 
 
 These Epistles are important as the first example of Keats's employ- 
 ment of the heroic couplet. It is noticeable that the first, written before 
 the appearance of the Story of Rimini, has all the characteristics of Keats's 
 early versification, many of which are associated with the influence of 
 Leigh Hunt. But, as has been pointed out in the Introduction, Keats 
 already knew Hunt's principles and had already studied for himself those 
 authors who illustrated both the advantages and the dangers of the laxity 
 which he favoured — Chapman's Odyssey ^ and, probably, Browne and 
 Fletcher. 
 
 The familiar Epistle is a form of composition which presents obvious 
 diflBculties ; and the unwary writer is likely to fall either into an elabora- 
 tion of poetic ornament in which it loses its character as an Epistle, or 
 into a triviality and baldness of phrase in which it loses its right to be re- 
 garded as a literary composition. It was thus a particularly dangerous 
 form of composition for Keats at this period, for its intimacy of treatment 
 seemed to him to justify all his worst faults, whilst he had as yet no com- 
 mand over its peculiar excellences of polish, neatness and elegance by 
 means of which alone it can be written with any measure of success. 
 
 The motto is taken from Browne's Britannia's Pastorals (ii. 3. 748-5U), 
 which Keats read with some care. It does not follow from this, however, 
 though it is probable, that he had read Browne at the time of writing the 
 Epistle to Mathew. 
 
 I. To George Felton Mathew : — George Felton Mathew was a friend 
 with whom Keats in his early London days used to read poetry. He has 
 left an interesting record of Keats at this period. "He enjoyed good 
 health and a fine flow of animal spirits — was fond of company and could 
 amuse himself admirably with the frivolities of life — and had great con- 
 
 1 In Chapman's Odyssey, read by Keats early in 1815, we find continual enjambe- 
 raent and double rhymes, and a use of language at times bold and at times descending 
 to a familiarity which borders upon the vulgar. The difficulties of rapid translation 
 naturally encouraged in Chapman a looseness of phrase to which he was always prone 
 (v. Appendix C.)
 
 EPISTLES— NOTES 395 
 
 fideiice in himself. . . . He was of the sceptical and republican school — an 
 advocate for the innovations which were making progress in his time — a 
 fault-finder with everything established " {Houghton MSS. quoted by Colvin, 
 EML, p. 20). At the same time it is Mathew who tells us that Keats 
 " delighted in leading you through the mazes of elaborate description, but 
 was less conscious of the sublime and the pathetic ". The Epistle is 
 interesting as suggesting the poets read by the two friends at the period — 
 Beaumont and Fletcher (5-10), Milton's early poems (18, L' Allegro), Pope, 
 Essay on Man (24, rapt seraph), Chatterton (66), Shakespeare (57), A 
 Midsummer-Night' s Dream (26-29), Burns (71), Spenser (75, Faerie Queene, 
 i. 3. 4) ; lines 65-70 shew Keats to be already the pupil of the Examiner. 
 
 II. To MY Brother George : — written from Margate where Keats was 
 enjoying his first visit to the sea {cf. II. 123-38). Notice the association of 
 Leigh Hunt with Spenser, 24. {cf. Induction, 61). 
 
 54. poetic lore : — Cf. Sonnet To My Brothers, 6, 7. 
 
 81. Lays have I left, etc. Woodhouse compares Spenser, Colin Clout's 
 come home againe, 642, etc. : — 
 
 And long while after I am dead and rotten : 
 Amongst the shepherds daughters dancing round. 
 My layes made of her shall not be forgotten 
 But sung by them with flowry gyrlands crowned. 
 
 III. To Charles Cowden Clarke: — This Epistle is particularly valuable 
 as addressed to the friend who had first interested Keats in poetry 
 {v. Inti-oduction), and as Hunt remarked in the Examiner ''is equally 
 honourable to both parties, to the young writer who can be so grateful 
 towards his teacher and to the teacher who had the sense to perceive his 
 genius and the qualities to call forth his affection ". 
 
 16-18. shatter' d boat . . . intent: — Recalls both in phrase and cadence, 
 though with an essential difference of feeling, Cowper's famous lines On 
 the Receipt of my Mother's Picture : — 
 
 But me scarce hoping to attain that rest . . . 
 Sails rent, seams opening wide and compass-tossed. 
 
 The chief poets referred to are, as before, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare 
 {A Midsummer-Night's Dream). 
 
 38-37. Mnlla : — The stream that ran not far from Kilcolman, Spenser's 
 first home ; cf. Faerie Queene, iv. 11. 41 : — 
 
 Mulla mine whose waves I whilom taught to weepe. 
 Cf. also Faerie Queene, vii. 6. 40, Colin Clout's come home againe, 62, 63, 
 Epithalamium, 58, 59. Line 34 seems a reminiscence of Epithalamium, 175, 
 " Her brest like to a bowl of cream uncrudded ". Una and Belphoebe are 
 the heroines, and Archimago the magician of the first two books of the 
 Faerie Queene. 
 
 44. Libertas : — With this reference to Leigh Hunt cf. Epistle to George 
 Keats, 24, etc.
 
 396 JOHN KEATS 
 
 57. Already Keats shows that he has understood the secret of Spenser's 
 melodyj and that he appreciates with a fine poetic instinct the essential 
 qualities of the different forms of poetry. It is significant of his early 
 taste that he had not yet learnt to appreciate the majestic side of Milton. 
 The patriotism of lines 69-73, with its stock examples {cf. Epistle to Mathew, 
 67, Sonnet XVI., Sleep and Poetry, 386), shows that Clarke was chiefly 
 instrumental in preparing Keats, in this as in other ways, for his disciple- 
 ship to Leigh Hunt. 
 
 63. A tlas : — A favourite allusion in Elizabethan poetry. Cf. e.g., " ease 
 strong Atlas of his load," Browne, Brit. Pastorals, ii. 1. 742 ; Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, Philaster, i. 1, " ease me of a load would bow strong Atlas ". 
 
 82. Misspent .— Mispent 1817. 
 
 94. Cloudlets .—Cloudlet's 1817- 
 
 110. Clarke was a good piano-player and was the first to stimulate 
 Keats's love for music. For the poet's susceptibility to music, cf. Endy- 
 mion, ii. 364-72 and St. Agnes' Eve, xxix. 9, a line, as Keats told Clarke 
 on reading him the manuscript of the poem ''that came into my head 
 when I remembered how I used to listen in bed to your music at school ". 
 The word " music" was used vaguely at this time in the sense of " musical 
 instrument ". 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 I. To MY Brother George : — Obviously from lines 5-8 written from 
 Margate, and thus contemporary with the Epistle to George Keats. Cf. 
 especially 124-38 with their record of the manner in which the sea im- 
 pressed his imagination. Woodhouse notes that the laurel'd peers (3) are 
 the " poets in Heaven " and compares with the Ode to Apollo : — 
 
 'Tis awful silence then again ; 
 Expectant stand the spheres ; 
 Breathless the laurell'd peers. 
 
 II. To . . . : — The person to whom this sonnet is addressed is unknown. 
 
 HI. Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison : — For circum- 
 stances of composition, etc., vide Introduction, p. xxiv. The Hunts were 
 liberated from prison on 2nd February, 1815, and Clarke records how, 
 returning from a visit to Hunt to congratulate him on his release, he met 
 Keats who gave him the sonnet. "This I felt to be the first proof I had 
 received of his having committed himself in verse ; and how clearly do I 
 recollect the conscious look and hesitation with which he offered it ! " 
 
 5. Minion of grandeur : — The editor of the Morning Post, who had pub- 
 lished the laudatory article describing the Prince Regent as " the glory of 
 his People and Exciter of Desire " — " Adonis in loveliness " and more in 
 the same strain. Hunt had burlesqued the article in the Examiner. The 
 inclusion of this sonnet together with No. XIV. was largely responsible
 
 SONNETS— NOTES 397 
 
 for the association of Keats's poetry and politics with Hunt in the mind of 
 the Tory reviewers. 
 
 IV. How many bards gild the lapses of time ! — A sonnet particularly 
 interesting, not only in its expression of the influence that Keats felt to 
 be exercised over him by the beauties of his predecessors, which often 
 adorned his own work, but also in its suggestion, by the comparison with 
 nature, of the essential character of that influence. Hunt, reviewing the 
 volume in the Examiner, criticised the first line for its metrical irregular- 
 ity, saying tliat " by no contrivance of any sort can we prevent tliis from 
 jumping out of tlie heroic measure into mere rhythmicality ". Mr. Robert 
 Bridges, on the other hand, regards ''the inversion of the third and fourth 
 stresses as very musical and suitable to the exclamatory form of the sent- 
 ence" {Keats, p. Ixxxix.). The fine 13th line (explained, perhaps un- 
 necessarily, by Woodhouse, " which distance prevents from being distinctly 
 recognised ") was well praised by Horace Smith, who remarked when Clarke 
 first showed the poem to him and Leigh Hunt, " What a well-condensed 
 expression for one so young ! " 
 
 V. The " Friend " is Charles Wells (1799 P-1879), a schoolfellow of Keats's 
 younger brother Tom. He was a member of the literary circle in which 
 the most prominent figures were Hunt, Hazlitt and Reynolds, and was on 
 intimate terms with Hazlitt. A little later Keats was estranged from him 
 by anger at a vulgar practical joke which he played upon Tom. In 1822 
 he wrote Stories after Nature, "the nearest ap|)roach to an Italian novel- 
 ette that our literature can show," in 1823 his drama Joseph and his 
 Brethren was published. This sonnet illustrates the chief reading which 
 influenced Keats at the period : " What time the sky-lark " suggests 
 " what time the grayfly " (Lycidas), line 4 suggests the Faerie Qiieene, and 
 in 8 we have A Midsummer-Nighi's Dream. 
 
 VI. To G. A. W. : — Georgiana Augusta Wylie. Cf. Hadst thou liv'd in 
 days of old, p. 16 and notes. 
 
 VII. O Solitude ! if I must with thee dwell : — First published in the 
 Examiner, 6th May, 1816, said by Clarke to be Keats's first published 
 poem. It was shortly after this that Clarke took Keats's MSS. to Hunt 
 and so brought about their friendship. 
 
 8. Startles the wild bee, etc. : — Cf. Wordsworth, Miscelluneous Sonnets, 
 i. 1:— 
 
 bees that soar for bloom 
 High as the highest Peak of Furness fells. 
 Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells. 
 
 9, 10. But though I'll gladly, etc. :— 
 
 Ah ! fain would I frequent such scenes with thee 
 
 But . . . — Examiner, 6th May, 1816.
 
 398 JOHN KEATS 
 
 VIII. To MY Brothers : — This sonaet, like the last, is not without a 
 suggestion ofWords worth. Cf. the series of sonnets beginning I am not 
 one who much or oft delights, etc. The scene in both is the same ; cf. the 
 references to the fire, and the contrast expressed in Wordsworth and 
 suggested in Keats between the delights of the ordinary world and those 
 of the meditative poetic life. The use of the word voluble, applied by- 
 Wordsworth to his own eloquence on poetic themes, and by Keats to the 
 themes themselves, is itself significant. Keats uses the word again in 
 St. Agnes' Eve with an exquisite suggestiveness — " and to her heart, her 
 heart was voluble ". He draws upon lines 25, 26, of these same poems 
 by Wordsworth in the Ode on a Grecian Urn (cf. note). 
 
 5. While, for rhymes, I search: — A line which suggests the origin of 
 much of the weakness of Keats's early poetry, that the sense is often led 
 by the rhyme. 
 
 IX. Keen, fitful gusts are whisp\ing here and there : — For date and 
 circumstances of composition vide Appendix B, p. 568. Notice the sub- 
 jects of conversation with Hunt and the tone of the whole sonnet. 
 
 X. To one who has been long in city pent : — Mr. Buxton Forman speaks 
 of a transcript by George Keats, subscribed, "written in the fields, June 
 1816". He calls attention to the obvious debt to Paradise Lost (ix. 445), 
 also noticed by Woodhouse : — 
 
 As one who long in populous city pent. 
 5. Heart's H, HBF ; hearts 1817. 
 
 XI. On first looking into Chapman^s Homer: — This sonnet stands out 
 from the 1817 volume as the one poem which may rank in conception and 
 execution with Keats's later work. Its date is therefore very important, 
 particularly as it involves the date from which the seventeenth-century 
 poets began to exert an influence over his style. Mr. Buxton Forman, 
 quoting from Tom Keats's copy-book, gives 1816, but it is almost certainly 
 the spring of the previous year. The " symposium " at which Keats and 
 Clarke made the acquaintance of Chapman was preceded by an iu\atation 
 from Keats at 8 Dean Street to Clarke who had lodgings in Clerkenwell ; 
 and Keats left Dean Street in the summer of 1815. " It was," says Clarke, 
 ''in the teeming wonderment of this his first introduction, that, when I came 
 down to breakfast the next morning, I found on my table a letter with no 
 other enclosure than this famous sonnet On first looking into Chapman's 
 Homer. We had parted at dayspring, yet he contrived that I should receive 
 the poem from a distance of, may be, two miles by ten o'clock." Clarke 
 adds that the happy alteration of line 7 was due to the poet's conviction 
 that the first reading was " bald and too simply wondering ". The magnifi- 
 cent simile with which the poem closes was a reminiscence of Robertson's 
 History of America, one of the books, Clarke tells us, in the school library 
 at Enfield. As Tennyson pointed out to Palgrave (Golden Treasury of
 
 SONNETS— NOTES 399 
 
 Songs and Lyrics, notes), " History requires here Balboa," of whom the 
 incident is told by Robertson. Keats either consciously or unconsciously 
 transferred the story to Cortez, whose portrait by Titian had much im- 
 pressed him. ''His ' eagle eyes,' " says Hunt {Imagination v. Fancy, last 
 page) ''are from life, as may be seen by Titian's portrait of him." 
 
 Chapman's Homer exercised a considerable influence on the style and 
 matter of Keats's subsequent poetry (c/. notes, pp. 394, 409, 420, 499, 618). 
 
 It is interesting to notice that on 14th July, 1818, when Keats was 
 meditating upon the subject of H^/'^noM (c/. notes and Introduction, p. xlvi), 
 Haydon writes to him asking him to return his copy of Chapman's Homer. 
 In August, 1820, he received another letter to the same purpose. An 
 intermittent study of Chapman seems therefore to have lasted the whole 
 of Keats's literary life. The sonnet was first published in the Examiner 
 for 1st December, 1816. 
 
 7. Yet did I . . . serene : — Originally written " Yet could I never 
 tell what men could mean ". 
 
 XII. On leaving some friends at an early hour: — Written, says Clarke, 
 shortly after Sonnet IX,, i.e., Autumn, 1816. 
 
 XIII., XrV. Addressed to Haydon : — Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786- 
 1846), the friend of Hunt, Wordsworth, Reynolds, Keats and other 
 literary men of the time, was an historical painter, who exhibited his first 
 picture at the Royal Academy in 1806. He would have been elected an 
 R.A. in 1810 had he not previously quarrelled with the authorities as to 
 the hanging of one of his works. From this time began his war with the 
 Academy carried on in the Examiner of 1812 and never really abandoned 
 during his whole life. He was a man of boundless ambition and pas- 
 sionate confidence in his own abilities. "Nothing," he wrote, "can 
 exceed my enthusiasm, my devotion, my fury of work ; solitary, high- 
 minded, trusting in God and glorying in my country's honour." He 
 had a firm belief in the educative value to a nation of historical painting, 
 and spent his life in filling huge canvases which no one would buy, 
 harassed with debt, but never doubting the greatness of his own genius. 
 Finally he found himself unequal to the battle of life, and committed 
 suicide. His chief paintings were on the subject of "Dentatus," "The 
 Judgment of Solomon," "The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem" (interest- 
 ing because it contains portraits of both Wordsworth and Keats), "The 
 Raising of Lazarus," " The Crucifixion," and " Napoleon at St. Helena ". 
 His work was much admired by some of his contemporaries. Wordsworth 
 wrote a sonnet in his praise, Reynolds compared him with Raphael, Keats 
 {Castle Builder, 44-48) mentions him in the same breath with Salvator and 
 Titian ; and their admiration finds an echo among some of the most 
 enlightened critics of the time. But in spite of this it must be admitted 
 that his work lacks both delicacy of treatment and real sympathy with 
 his subjects. His chief claim to the recollection of posterity lies in his
 
 400 JOHN KEATS 
 
 immediate recognition of the supreme value of the Elgin Marbles. 
 Taken by Wilkie to see them soon after their arrival in England, he 
 studied them in detail for three months, called attention to their essential 
 qualities, which no one else seems to have realised, and pressed their 
 claims upon students of art with such energy and success that he prevailed 
 upon the nation to purchase them. lu his lectures on art, which he 
 delivered at intervals during his life, he took the Elgin Marbles as his 
 text, and in particular set himself to controvert by their means the teach- 
 ing of Reynolds in his Discourses on the Grand Style in Painting. "Rey- 
 nolds says that ' it is better to diversify on particulars from the broad 
 and general idea of things than vainly attempt to ascend from particulars 
 to this great general idea '. Now it is really the reverse, you must first 
 ascertain the particulars before you can discover the essentials. . . . 
 The combination of Nature with idea was the glory and the greatness of 
 Phidias and the Greeks of that time. . . ." He further illustrated his 
 point by showing how the sculpture of Phidias exhibits the most accurate 
 knowledge of anatomy, and yet is eminently an example of a true " Grand 
 Style " (vide Haydon's Lectures on Painting and Design, 1844). 
 
 Haydon was introduced to Keats by Hunt in November, 1816, and 
 this sonnet was probably the outcome of their first meeting. Keats 
 ventured to send it to Haydon prefaced with the words : " My Dear Sir, — 
 Last evening wrought me up, and I cannot forbear sending you the 
 following," and signed, " Yours unfeignedly, John Keats." He received 
 an immediate reply, evidently in Haydon's usual grandiloquent vein, for 
 on the same afternoon (20th November, 1816), he penned another letter 
 to Haydon : " My Dear Sir, — Your letter has filled me with a proud 
 pleasure, and shall be kept by me as a stimulus to exertion — I begin to 
 fix my eye upon one horizon. My feelings entirely fall in with yours in 
 regard to the ellipsis and I glory in it. The idea of your sending it to 
 Wordsworth put me out of breath — you know with what Reverence I 
 would send my Well-wishes to him. Yours sincerely, John Keats." 
 
 After this the friendship ripened rapidly and Haydon gained a pro- 
 found influence over the young poet. His impassioned devotion to art, 
 none the less sincere because of the absurd bombast in which he expressed 
 it, presented a striking contrast with the easy and somewhat superficial 
 enthusiasm of Hunt, and appealed strongly to Keats in the ardour of his 
 poetic novitiate. Haydon, on the other hand, recognised the genius of 
 Keats, and set himself definitely to wean him from undue subservience to 
 Hunt. There can be no doubt that he stimulated Keats in the highest 
 degree, and gave him valuable advice as to the development of his powers. 
 It was chiefly due to him that Keats retired to the country for careful 
 study, and turned especially to Shakespeare, and it was Haydon, as we 
 should expect, who interpreted to him the Elgin Marbles (vide Sonnets, 
 pp. 274, 275, and note). Keats responded by confiding in Haydon both his 
 own poetic aspirations and the diflRculties of temperament with which he 
 had to struggle. The following passage from a letter of Haydon's written
 
 SONNETS— NOTES 401 
 
 to Keats in May, 1817, illustrates the relations in which they stood at the 
 time. " Do not give way to any forebodings. They are nothing more 
 than the over-eager anxieties of a great spirit stretched beyond its strength, 
 and then relapsing for a time to languid inefficiency. Every man of great 
 views is thus tormented, but begin again where you left off without hesi- 
 tation or fear. Trust in God with all your might, my dear Keats. From 
 my soul I declare to you that I never applied for help, or for consolation, 
 or for strength, but I found it. I always rose up from my knees with a 
 refreshed fury, an iron-clenched firmness, a crystal piety of feeling that 
 sent me streaming on with a repulsive power against the troubles of life. 
 ... I love you like my own brother : Beware, for God's sake, of the 
 delusions and sophistications that are ripping up the talent and morality 
 of our friend {i.e., of course, Hunt). He will go out of the world the 
 victim of his own weakness and the dupe of his own self-delusions, with 
 the contempt of his enemies and the sorrow of his friends, and the cause 
 he undertook to support injured by his own neglect of character. . . . 
 God bless you, my dear Keats ! Do not despair, collect incident, study 
 character, read Shakespeare, and trust in Providence and you will do, 
 you must." 
 
 About a year later we find Keats lending Haydon money which he 
 could ill afford to lose, and he remained his friend all his life, though his 
 admiration for him became less marked when he realised that absorbing 
 egoism which was no less patent in him than his fervent religion, his 
 devotion to art, and his passionate patriotism. But Haydon, unfortun- 
 ately, could never really understand the more complex and more delicately 
 moulded character of his friend, and later, when Keats was more inde- 
 pendent of his influence, he completely misjudged him. Revelling in his 
 own defiant Christianity, he liked to persuade himself that those who did 
 not share his proud egoistical religious feeling were on the road to 
 inevitable self-destruction ; and just as his predictions with regard to 
 Hunt, in the letter quoted above, were completely belied by the facts, so 
 the statements in his A utobiography as to the self-indulgence and dissipa- 
 tion of Keats's last years are contradicted by friends whose knowledge of 
 Keats, their especial opportunities of judging, and their general character 
 for veracity are alike superior to Haydon's {vide EML, pp. 193-232). 
 Yet the popular estimate of Keats's character, and with it the opinion 
 as to the prevailing tenor of his poetry, is still chiefly based upon the 
 mistakes of SheUey as to Keats's attitude to criticism {vide notes to 
 Endymion, pp. 413, 414) and the libels of Haydon upon his private life. 
 
 XHI, 11. What when a, etc. : — Woodhouse punctuates his copy 
 "what, when a" and adds a note "i.e., what happens when a, etc.". 
 
 12. Native sty : — The idea probably suggested by the followers of 
 
 Comus's troop who their 
 
 native home forget 
 
 To roll in pleasure in a sensual sty, 
 26
 
 402 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XIV. The great spirits are Wordsworth, Hunt and Haydon. Wood- 
 house adds a note on Hunt that " he is introduced here to much better 
 company than his merits entitle him to keep ". He points out also the 
 parallel to line 10 of Lycidas, 171, "Flames in the forehead of the morning 
 sky," though perhaps a closer parallel is to be found in Tro. <&• Cress. 
 ii. 2. 206. Keats's confidence as to the future, lines 9, 10, was regarded by 
 the critics as a piece of personal conceit. Line 18, which originally con- 
 cluded " in some distant Mart? " was curtailed upon the advice of Haydon. 
 
 XV. On the Grasshopper and Cricket : — •Of the composition of this sonnet 
 Clarke gives an interesting account in his Recollections of Keats : " Some 
 observations having been made upon the character, habits and pleasant 
 associations with that reverend denizen of the hearth, the cheerful little 
 grasshopper of the fireside — Hunt proposed to Keats the challenge of 
 writing then, there, and to time, a sonnet 'on the Grasshopper and 
 Cricket'. No one was present but myself, and they accordingly set to. 
 ... I cannot say how long the trial lasted. . . . The time however was 
 short, for such a performance, and Keats won as to time. But the event 
 of the afler scrutiny was one of many such occurrences which have riveted 
 the memory of Leigh Hunt in my affectionate regard and admiration for 
 unaffected generosity and perfectly unpretentious encouragement. His 
 sincere look of pleasure at the fii-st line — ' The poetry of earth is never 
 dead '. ' Such a prosperous opening ! ' he said, and when he came to 
 the tenth and eleventh lines : — 
 
 On a lone winter evening, when the frost 
 
 Has wrought a silence — 
 * Ah ! that's perfect ! Bravo Keats ! ' And then he went on in a dilatation 
 upon the dumbness of Nature during the season's suspension and torpidity. 
 With all the kind and gratifying things that were said to him, Keats 
 protested to me, as we were afterwards walking home, that he preferred 
 Hunt's treatment of the subject to his own." 
 
 XVL To KosKiusKO : — Kosciusko (.'' — 1817) a Polish patriot, who served 
 in the Polish army, fought for America in the War of Independence, and 
 then for the freedom of his own country against Russia. At Dubjenka 
 (1792) with only 4,000 men, he kept 16,000 Russians at bay for five days. 
 On the submission of Poland to Catherine of Russia, he resigned his com- 
 mand and left the country ; but in 1794 he headed another national 
 movement, resisting against tremendous odds the combined Prussian and 
 Russian armies. In October of that year, however, he was defeated, 
 wounded and taken prisoner. On his release he lived in London and 
 afterwards at Paris. In 1807, Napoleon, who was meditating an invasion 
 of Poland, begged him to resume his command, but he saw through the 
 designs of Napoleon and declined to re-enter public life. He died in 
 1817, the great hero of the English Liberals and all lovers of liberty. 
 
 The best presentation of his character in English literature is to be
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY— NOTES 403 
 
 found in the Imaginary Conversations of Landor, who had an intense 
 admiration for him. 
 
 Hunt printed this sonnet in the Examiner of 16th February^ 1817. 
 
 7. Change ; changed 1817, which makes no sense. H altered " and " 
 to " are ". The reading of the text is supported by an alteration in Wood- 
 house's copy of the volume, made, presumably, after consultation with 
 Keats. Mr. Forman has suggested the emendation independently. 
 
 XVII. Happy is England : — The romance of the forest (1. 4) was always 
 deeply felt by Keats. Cf. Hyperion, i. 72-74 and note. 
 
 7. Alp: — This use of "Alp" in the singular is probably due to 
 Milton's many a fiery Alp {Paradise Lost, ii. 620). 
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY 
 
 '*It was in the library of Hunt's cottage, where an extempore bed 
 had been made up for Keats on the sofa, that he composed the framework 
 and many lines of this poem, the last sixty or seventy being an inventory 
 of the art-garniture of the room " (Clarke, quoted by H). The poem cannot 
 have been finished (as S. C. in Diet. Nat. Biog.) during the summer of 1816, 
 as Keats was not a frequent inmate of the cottage till October at the 
 earliest (vide note, p. 568), and, moreover, the beautiful lines on the sea- 
 weed (vide 376-80) could hardly have been written before Keats 's stay at 
 Margate. 
 
 On the general character and importance of the poem vide Introduction, 
 p. xxxix. It is indeed Keats's first ambitious composition and is at once the 
 expression of his own poetic aspirations and a declaration of war against 
 the poetic ideals of the eighteenth century. Naturally, then, it was 
 approved by the literary coterie to which he belonged. Haydon's criticism 
 of it is characteristic. ..." It is a flash of lightning that will rouse 
 men from their occupations, and keep them trembling for the crash of 
 thunder that will follow." Hunt praised it at length in the Examiner 
 (June and July, 1817), as " a striking specimen of the restlessness of the 
 young poetical appetite, obtaining its food by the very desire of it, and 
 glancing for fit subjects of creation ' from earth to heaven ' ". Nor, he adds, 
 " do we like it the less for an impatient, and as may be thought by some, 
 irreverent assault upon the late French school of criticism and monotony, 
 which has held poetry chained long enough to render it somewhat in- 
 dignant when it has got free." But it was this passage (11. 181-206) on 
 the poetry of the eighteenth century and its debt to French criticism that 
 roused, as would be expected, the greatest indignation among hostile 
 critics. Byron acknowledges this to be true of himself. In a reply to 
 an attack upon himself in Blackwood's Magazine (August, 1819) he quotes 
 lines 193-206 of Sleep and Poetry, " from the volume of a young person 
 learning to write poetry, and beginning by teaching the art ". He adds : 
 "The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of the
 
 404 JOHN KEATS 
 
 six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such lines and 
 such sentiments as the above. He says, ' easy was the task of imitating 
 Pope,' or it may be of equalling him, I presume. I recommend him to 
 try before he is so positive on the subject, and then compare what he 
 will have then written and what he has now written with the humblest 
 and earliest compositions of Pope, produced in years still more youthful 
 than those of Mr. Keats when he invented his new Essay in Criticism 
 entitled, Sleep and Poetry (an ominous title)." In a manuscript note on 
 this passage, dated November, 1821, Byron admits that " my indignation 
 at Mr. Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice 
 to his own genius which malgre all the fantastic fopperies of his style was 
 undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually 
 inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as ^Eschylus. He is a loss to our 
 literature, and the more so as he himself before his death is said to have 
 been persuaded that he had not taken the right line and was reforming 
 his style in the more classical models of the language." A passage on 
 Keats in the famous controversy between Byron and Bowles {Byron Letters, 
 ed. Prothero, vi. 588, 589), was suppressed on account of Keats's death, 
 " A Mr. John Ketch has written lines against him (Pope) of which it were 
 better to be the subject than the author." He quotes lines 319-27 and 
 asks, " Now what does this mean ? " then lines 331, 332 and asks, " Where 
 did these 'forms of elegance ' learn to ride — ' with stooping shoulders ' ? 
 Again : — 
 
 * yet I must not forget 
 Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet : 
 For what there may be worthy in these rhymes 
 I partly owe to him,' etc. 
 This obligation is likely to be mutual. It may appear harsh to accumu- 
 late passages of this kind from the work of a young man at the outset 
 of his career. But, if he will set out with assailing the Poet whom of all 
 others a young aspirant ought to respect and honour and study — if he 
 will hold forth in such lines his notions on poetry, and endeavour to 
 recommend them by terming such men as Pope, Swift, Addison, Congreve, 
 Young, Gay, Goldsmith, Johnson, etc., etc., a School of dolts, he must 
 abide by the consequences of his unfortunate distortion of intellect. But 
 like Milbourne, he is 'the fairest of critics' by enabling us to compare 
 his own compositions with those of Pope at the same age, and on a similar 
 subject, viz., Poetry. As Mr. Keats does not want imagination or industry, 
 let those who have led him astray look to what they have done. Surely 
 they must feel no little remorse in having so perverted the taste and 
 feelings of this young man, and will be satisfied with one such victim to 
 their Moloch of Absurdity." 
 
 Byron was perhaps justly annoyed at the wholesale denunciation of 
 Pope from the mouth of one who had much to learn from the most finished 
 artist of the preceding age, but he faUs to recognise that Keats is not
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY— NOTES 405 
 
 prompted by mere youthful conceit at his own powers, — for the young 
 poet's aspirations are couched in terms of humility and expressed with a 
 consciousness of his own immaturity, — but rather by his instinctive per- 
 ception of the significance of the change which had come over the whole 
 face of literature since the Lyrical Ballads of 1798. Byron never under- 
 stood the spirit of the literature of his own time as fully as the young 
 Kents shows himself to have done, nor did he realise, in his idolatry for 
 Pope, to what extent he was him>!elf forwarding the movement. 
 
 The versification and much of the style of the poem are equally 
 characteristic of Keats's immaturity. It is written with all the laxity 
 advocated by Hunt and supposed to give an air of ease and grace to the 
 verse. Its 404 lines are divided into eighteen paragraphs and in no less 
 than eight cases the pause occurs either in the middle of the line, or 
 between the two rhyming lines. The sense is continued beyond the 
 couplet at the least 111 times (i.e., more than 1 in 2) and there are as 
 many as thirty double rhymes (i.e., 1 in 3^). The weakness of versifica- 
 tion together with other faults of style, e.g., the continual use of abstracts 
 for concretes, the awkward defectiveness of lines 274, 367, the unfortunate 
 nonce-word boundly (209), the misuse of doubtless (230), the cockney 
 vulgarity of " the very pleasant rout " (322) and of the pronunciation of 
 perhaps as a monosyllable (324), tend to mar the eflFect of a work which 
 is in many places highly poetic in feeling and felicitous in expression. 
 
 The motto of the poem is taken from the pseudo-Chaucerian The 
 Flowre and the Leafe (11. 17-21), in Keats's day universally attributed to 
 Chaucer. The poem was a favourite with Keats. Cf. his sonnet to 
 Clarke upon it (vide p. 274). 
 
 1-40. These first two paragraphs serve as an explanation of the title 
 Sleep and Poetry, and develop the contrast between the experiences of the 
 unawakened and of the awakened mind. 
 
 66. about the playing Of nymphs in woods, and fountains. Cf. Comus, 
 118 :— 
 
 By dimpled Brook and Fountain brim 
 The Wood-Nymphes deckt with Daisies trim, 
 Their merry walks atid pastimes keep. 
 But Keats's whole passage savours rather of Leigh Hunt. 
 
 71-73. imaginings will hover Round my fire-side, etc. : — For the idea, 
 with its obvious debt to Wordsworth, cf. Sonnet VIII. To My Brothers, and 
 note. In the Woodhouse copy of the volume is quoted, against the three 
 previous lines, Wordsworth's poem To the Daisy, lines 70-72 : — 
 A happy, genial influence, 
 Coming one knows not how nor whence 
 Nor whither going. 
 
 To the Daisy first appeared in the 1807 volumes with which Keats was 
 especially familiar. 
 
 74. Meander ; meander 1817.
 
 406 JOHN KEATS 
 
 85-162. Stop and consider ! etc. : — In these lines Keats sketches the 
 progress of poetry in liis own mind. Mr. Robert Bridges {Introd. to 
 Muses Library, Keats, xxxv.) draws a just parallel between the stages of 
 development through which Keats conceives that he must pass, and those 
 described in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, comparing them at the same 
 time with the famous letter to Reynolds written by Keats more than a year 
 afterwards : — 
 
 " I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two 
 of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon 
 me — the first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in 
 which we remain as long as we do not think — we remain there a long 
 while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide 
 open, sliowing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it ; but are 
 at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking prin- 
 ciple within us — we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall 
 call the Chamber of Maiden -Thought, than we become intoxicated with the 
 light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think 
 of delaying there for ever in delight. However among the effects this 
 breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision 
 into the heart and nature of Man — of convincing one's nerves that the 
 world is full of Misery, and Heart-break, Pain, Sickness and Oppression — 
 whereby this Chamber of Maiden-Thought becomes gradually darkened, 
 and at the same time, on all sides of it, many doors are set open — but all 
 dai-k — all leading to dark passages — we see not the balance of good and evil 
 — we are in a mist — we are now in that state — we feel the ' burden of the 
 mystery '. To this point was Wordsworth come as far as I can conceive, 
 when he wrote Tintern Abbey, and it seems to me that his genius is ex- 
 plorative of those dark passages. Now if we live, and go on thinking, 
 we too shall explore them. He is a genius and superior to us, in so far as 
 he can, more than we, make discoveries and shed a light in them " (Letter 
 to Reynolds, 3rd May, 1818). 
 Wordsworth's 
 
 The coarser pleasures of my boyish days 
 And their glad animal movements 
 Mr. Bridges compares with Keats's " infant or thoughtless Chamber," 
 or as Keats puts it in the poem : — 
 
 A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air ; 
 A laughing school-boy, without grief or care, 
 Riding the springy branches of an elm. 
 Wordsworth's second stage, the second Chamber as Keats calls it in 
 the letter, is illustrated by the lines : — 
 
 The sounding cataract 
 Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood. 
 Their colours and their forms, were then to me
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY— NOTES 407 
 
 An appetite ; a feeling and a love. 
 
 That had no need of a remoter charm, 
 
 By thought supplied. 
 Upon this stage Keats dwells in lines 96-121, and the startling differ- 
 ence between the two conceptions gives us in part the reason why Keats 
 found it more difficult both to understand and to attain the final stage. 
 What in Wordsworth is a " deep but inexplicable passion " to Keats is 
 chiefly an ecstasy, and whilst Wordsworth's spirit runs its whole course 
 in relation with the pure forms of Nature, Keats is in a measure with- 
 drawn from ''the fair paradise of Nature's light," which he himself 
 recognises as his inspiration, by his love of luxuriating in trivial fancies 
 in no way connected with his essential poetic development. From the 
 influence of these, which we are obliged to associate with Leigh Hunt, 
 he was not completely disengaged even at the time that he was vouch- 
 safed this vision of the progress of poetry in his own soul. 
 The final stage of which Wordsworth tells us : — 
 
 I have felt 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 
 Of something far more deeply interfused. 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. 
 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 
 And rolls through all things, 
 is illustrated by lines 122-56 oi Sleep and Poetry. Keats's picture, seeing 
 that it is not, as with Wordsworth, an expression of conscious realisation, 
 but rather a piece of prophetic insight into his future development, is of 
 necessity blurred and indistinct — less distinct, indeed, than his treatment 
 of the same theme in the letter to Reynolds, written when he had already 
 gained a fuller self-consciousness ; but it is by no means less impassioned 
 or less deeply felt than Wordsworth's. It is obvious that Keats is here 
 (122-62) striving to express two ideas essentially related the one to the 
 other ; (1) that a full communion with Nature and an understanding of 
 her mysterious beauty is only possible after a sympathetic study of human 
 nature to which indeed it inevitably leads, the one in a manner reacting 
 upon the other, and (2) that after a contemplation of the ideal as revealed 
 by Nature the sordid realities of life are felt all the more keenly, and 
 would be intolerable, were it not for the sustaining power of the im- 
 agination which keeps alive the ideal within the poet's heart and saves 
 him from despair. Shelley gives beautiful expression to the same thought 
 in Adonais where he recounts the necessary qualities in a true mourner 
 for the dead poet : —
 
 408 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Clasp with thy parting soul the pendulous Earth . 
 As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light 
 Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
 Satiate the void circumference ; then shrink 
 Even to a point within one day and night : 
 And keep thy heart light, lest it make thee sink 
 When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. 
 171-180. Chaucer and the Elizabethans. 
 181. schism; seism 1817. 
 
 181-206. The poets of the eighteenth century (vide introductory re- 
 marks on the poem). Notice the debt to Wordsworth's famous sonnet 
 The world is too much with us. Not only is line 191 a reminiscence of 
 Wordsworth's : — 
 
 The sea that bares her bosom to the moon 
 
 It moves us not. 
 But the spirit of both passages is intensely similar. It is noticeable 
 however that Wordsworth, the pioneer of the new literary movement, 
 gives his words a far more universal significance and contrasts the im- 
 asiuative temper with the trivial worldliness always with us, whilst Keats 
 contrasts the imaginative qualities of two succeeding ages as illustrative 
 of their general character, having Wordsworth himself to look to as 
 evidence of the imaginative life of his own time. 
 
 198. the . . . wands of Jacob's wit : — Cf. Genesis, xxx. 37-42. Keats 
 suggests by this passage that the verses of the eighteenth century are the 
 result of a mere clever trick by which they are made to tally with certain 
 preconceived artificial rules. 
 
 Boileau (1636-1711), whose Art of Poetry sums up the ideals aimed at 
 by Pope and the poetry of the eighteenth century. Keats, of course, 
 exaggerates its influence though he can hardly be said to overstate the 
 admiration in which it was held. Dryden translated Boileau's Art of 
 Poetry and says in his Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of 
 Satire, "li I could only cross the seas, 1 might find in France a living 
 Horace and a Juvenal in the person of the admirable Boileau " ; Pope 
 in his Essay on Criticism, 714, asserts that " Boileau still in right of 
 Horace sways"; and Warton speaks of his work as '"^the best Art of 
 Poetry extant," adding that " he who has digested it cannot be said to 
 be ignorant of any important rule of poetry ", 
 
 217-19. Keats is here thinking of Chatterton. Woodhouse also sug- 
 gests Kirke White. 
 
 220-29. The joys of the present; 226, 226 Wordsworth ; 226-228 Leigh 
 Hunt. 
 
 234, etc. cluhs . . . Poets 1817 ; cubs . . . Poets' H ; cubs . . . Poets 
 HBF. 
 
 These lines seem to have given some difficulty to editors of Keats, who
 
 SLEEP AND POETRY— NOTES 409 
 
 have in turn altered the text (even Mr. Forman not recording the change 
 he has introduced) to make it fit in with their conception. But it is a 
 reminiscence of the Odyssey, bk. ix., where Homer tells of the escape 
 of Odysseus from Polyphemus, and the passage, though awkward, needs 
 no emendation. The poets, says Keats, are giants like Polyphemus and 
 his brethren, of superhuman power, but like the eyeless Polyphemus 
 without ability to direct their energies fitly, so that with their clubs (the 
 themes they write upon and the manner in which they deal with them) 
 they only succeed in disturbing the grand sea (of poetry? or life.^) It is 
 true that rocks and not clubs were hurled by the Cyclops into the sea 
 after his escaped enemy, but the club is mentioned in Homer as his natural 
 weapon. Keats is only writing from his recollection of the story. 
 
 Keats is here thinking chiefly of Byron, and the contrast which his 
 stormy poetry affords with the serenity of Wordsworth or the cheerful 
 chirping of Hunt. Woodhouse thought that there was also a reference to 
 the Christabel of Coleridge, though it is difficult to understand why. In 
 his youth Keats shared the almost universal passion for Byron's poetry and 
 one of his earliest compositions is a very weak sonnet in his praise (vide 
 p. 347). But as he matured, his genius developed in a very different direc- 
 tion, and the work of Byron became more and more distasteful to him. 
 Whilst recognising Byron's literary supremacy (Letter to George Keats, 
 Dec-Jan., 1818-19) he came to regard his work as lacking in the greatest 
 imaginative qualities. " A man's life of any worth," he writes (Letter to 
 George Keats, Feb. 1819), " is a continual allegory and very few eyes can see 
 the Mystery of his Life — a life like the scriptures, figurative — which such 
 people can no more make out than they can the Hebrew Bible. Lord 
 Byron cuts a figure but he is not figurative — Shakespeare led a life of 
 Allegory ; his works are the comments on it." And again in September 
 of the same year, after his brother had been instituting a comparison 
 between himself and Byron — "There is this great difference between us. 
 He describes what he sees : I describe what I imagine. Mine is the harder 
 task." And what Byron saw seemed to Keats less and less worth seeing. 
 In the Cap and Bells, a social satire in some measure imitative of the style 
 of Don Juan, he does not scruple to burlesque Byron's most passionate 
 lyric Fare thee well — and Lord Houghton, on the authority of Severn, tells 
 how Keats, reading, in the Bay of Biscay, the description of the storm in 
 Don Juan, cast the book on the floor in a transport of indignation. 
 " How horrible an example of human nature," he cried, " is this man, who 
 has no pleasure left him but to gloat over and jeer at the most awful incid- 
 ents of life ! Oh ! this is a paltry originality, which consists in making 
 solemn things gay and gay things solemn, and yet it will fascinate 
 thousands, by the very diabolical outrage of their sympathies. Byron's 
 perverted education makes him assume to feel, and try to impart to others, 
 those depraved sensations which the want of any education excites in 
 many."
 
 410 JOHN KEATS 
 
 237. 'Tis might half slumb'ring on Us own right arm : — Against this 
 line, so characteristic of Keats's power of presenting in his poetry the 
 effects of sculpture, Woodhouse has written "Elgin Marbles". 
 
 252. all tender est birds, etc. : — With this passage Woodhouse again 
 compares those lines from The Flowre and the Leafe which he had quoted 
 to illustrate / stood tip-toe, 87. 
 
 303. my Dedalian wings : — The well-known story of Daedalus and 
 Icarus is told at length in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, bk. viii. Daedalus, 
 wearied by a long exile in Crete, made wings of feathers and wax. His 
 son Icarus put them on, and neglecting his father's warning soared too 
 near the sun so that the wax melted and he was drowned. 
 
 In Bndymion, iv. 442 Keats compares his hero to him who died 
 For soaring too audacious in the sun, 
 Where that same treacherous wax began to run. 
 
 It is interesting to notice that in the same passage {Met. viii.) Ovid 
 tells the story of Bacchus and Ariadne of which Keats make use in line 335. 
 
 835. the swift bound Of Bacchus from his chariot, etc. : — This allusion 
 to the story of Bacchus and Ariadne is no doubt in part suggested also by 
 the picture of Titian, now in the National Gallery, which Keats made 
 use of in his great " Ode to Sorrow " {Bndymion, iv. 193-250). 
 
 355-95. The description of "the art-garniture of Hunt's study" where 
 a bed was made up for Keats. It is thoroughly characteristic of Hunt's 
 taste. Notice especially the introduction of Alfred and Kosciusko, and cf. 
 Sonnet XVI., p. 38 and note. The exquisite lines on the sea, 376-80, 
 stand out oddly in their context. 
 
 377. smoothness ; smoothiness 1817. 
 
 ENDYMION 
 
 Endymion was definitely begun early in May 1817. In a letter to 
 Reynolds, written from Carisbrook on I7th April, Keats says, "I shall 
 forthwith begin my Bndymion," and to Haydon he writes from Margate 
 on 10th May, "I read and write about eight hours a day. There is an 
 old saying ' well begun is half done ' — 'tis a bad one. I would use instead, 
 ' Not begun at all till half done ' ; so according to that I have not begun 
 my Poem, consequently {^ priori) can say nothing about it. Thank 
 God ! I do begin arduously where I leave off, notwithstanding occasional 
 depression ; and I hope for the support of a High Power while I climb this 
 little eminence, and especially in the years of more momentous Labour. 
 I remember your saying that you had notions of a good genius presiding 
 over you. I have of late had the same thought, for things which I do half 
 at Random are afterwards confirmed by my judgment in a dozen features 
 of Propriety. Is it too daring to imagine Shakespeare this Presider ? " 
 
 Keats must have worked steadily at the poem both at Margate and on 
 his return to London, for we find him in Book III. when he is on a visit
 
 ENDYMION— NOTES 411 
 
 to Bailey at Oxford in September ; " I have been writing very liard lately," 
 he tells his sister, '' even till an utter incapacity came on, and I feel it now 
 about my head. ... I shall stop here till I have finished the third Book 
 of my Story which I hope will be finished in at most three Weeks from to- 
 day " (10th Sept., 1817). On 21st September he is '"'getting on famous 
 with my third book — have finished 800 lines and hope to finish it next 
 week " {to Reynolds). On 28th September he tells Haydon '' within the 
 last three weeks I have written 1,000 lines — which are the third Book of 
 my Poem ". He adds " My ideas with respect to it I assure you are very 
 low — and I would write the subject thoroughly again but I am tired of it 
 and think the time would be better spent in writing a new Romance which 
 I have in my eye for next summer — Rome was not built in a Day — and all 
 the good I expect from my employment this summer is the fruit of experi- 
 ence which I hope to gather in my next poem ". 
 
 The Fourth Book was finished at Burford Bridge in November. During 
 the early part of 1818 Keats was busy making corrections and copying out 
 the poem for the press. There was some idea, apparently, of publishing 
 it in quarto form, if Haydon would draw a picture for the frontispiece, 
 and Haydon went so far as to promise to " make with all his might, a 
 finished chalk of my head, to be engraved in the first style and put at the 
 head of my Poem, saying at the same time he had never done the thing 
 for any human being, and that it must have considerable effect as he will 
 put his name to it" (Letter to George and Thos. Keats, 23rd Jan., 1818). 
 But Haydon did not keep his word, and the poem appeared in the following 
 April without the portrait, and in octavo form. It was published by Messrs. 
 Taylor and Hessey, with both of whom Keats was in friendly correspond- 
 ence. 
 
 In style and versification Endymion has all the characteristics of the 
 1817 volume, and exhibits, in an exaggerated form, the joint influence 
 of Leigh Hunt and the seventeenth-century Spenserians upon a genius 
 delicate and exuberant but at the same time untrained and ill-bred. The 
 versification is still almost wholly independent of the sentence structure 
 and over weighted with double endings, there is the same laxity in the 
 use of language, and even more noticeable than before is the manner in 
 which lines of exquisite beauty and penetrating observation are interspersed 
 in passages of which both sentiment and expression are commonplace. No 
 one was readier to point this out than Hunt himself, whose practice, if 
 not his theory, was in a great measure responsible for it. But the rapid 
 progress which Keats was making in his art is nowhere more evident than 
 in a study of Endymion itself. As the poem proceeds, the eccentricities 
 of style and versification become markedly less exaggerated, and a com- 
 parison of the earlier draft and its rejected passages with the printed 
 version of the poem shows Keats to be fast emancipating himself from his 
 worst offences against good taste. But even as he wrote Keats realised 
 how much still called for alteration or rejection, and it was this feeling
 
 412 JOHN KEATS 
 
 which prompted his desire to publish Endymion as soon as possible and 
 leave all thoughts of it behind him. 
 
 The ambitious and elaborate scheme on which Endymion is composed 
 shows the influence of Haydon's lofty and pretentious artistic ideals, and 
 Keats's correspondence affords ample evidence that Haydon's influence, 
 paramount with him at this time, was largely instrumental in opening his 
 eyes to Leigh Hunt's obvious limitations as an artist. As early as the 
 beginning of 1817 Hunt had attempted to dissuade him from engaging 
 upon a long poem ; he repeated his advice throughout the year, taking 
 credit to himself that Endymion did not consist of 7000 lines instead of 
 4000 {Letter to Bailey, 8th Oct., 1817), and never approved of it as a 
 whole. But Keats thought differently. " K long poem," he writes, 
 '' is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as 
 Fancy is the Sails — and Imagination the rudder. Did our great Poets 
 ever write short pieces } I mean in the Shape of Tales. This same in- 
 vention seems indeed of late years to have been forgotten as a poetical 
 excellence" {ibid.). It was naturally, therefore, galling to Keats (though 
 in certain respects none the less true), that after all he should have the 
 '' reputation of Hunt's eleve" {ibid.). It was upon this ground that the 
 violent attacks of the Quarterly Review (Sept., 1818) and Blackwood's 
 Magazine (Aug.) were made upon him. The article in Blackwood "On 
 the Cockney School of Poetry " (probably a joint production of the edi- 
 torial staff to which Maginn,i Wilson and Lockhart all contributed), had 
 no pretensions to be regarded as literary criticism, but dealt almost 
 entirely in vulgar banter upon the occupations of Keats's early life. The 
 Quarterly Reviewer (now admitted to have been Croker) treated Keats as 
 the " simple neophyte " of Leigh Hunt. He burlesqued the preface in 
 which Keats apologises for the immaturity of the poem, confessed that 
 he had only read the first book, and selected a large number of passages 
 for ridicule. Two anonymous champions, however, appeared, who under 
 the initials JS and RB addressed letters to the Morning Chronicle of 
 3rd and 8th October, pointing out the gross injustice and uncritical 
 venom of the Quarterly article. JS admits that there are many passages 
 indicating haste and carelessness, and that a real friend of the author 
 would have dissuaded him from immediate publication, but asserts ''that 
 beauties of the highest order may be found in almost every page". RB 
 supports his letter by the quotation of such beauties, and concludes by 
 asking whether the " Critic who could pass all this unnoticed, and con- 
 demn the whole poem as ' consisting of the most incongruous ideas in the 
 most uncouth language ' is very implicitly to be relied on ". The just 
 and discriminating criticism of Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review did not 
 appear till August, 1820, when he took the poem with the 1820 volume, 
 
 iMaginn often signed himself Ralph Tuckett Scott (RTS.). Hence perhaps the 
 rumour, firmly believed by Hunt, Keats and others, that Sir Walter Scott had written 
 the article.
 
 ENDYMION— NOTES 413 
 
 and Keats thus refers to its silence in his letter to George Keats, Septem- 
 ber, 1819, " The Edinburgh Review are afraid to touch upon my poem. 
 They don't know what to make of it : they do not like to condemn it, and 
 they will not praise it for fear. They are as shy of it as I should be of 
 wearing a Quaker's hat. The fact is they have not real taste. They 
 dare not compromise their judgment on so puzzling a question. If on my 
 next publication they should praise me, and so lug in Endymion, I will 
 address them in a manner they will not at all relish. The cowardliness 
 of the Edinburgh is worse than the abuse of the Quarterly." But in the 
 meantime Keats's friends had done their best for the poem. Bailey had 
 written a sympathetic review for the Oxford Herald in June, and Reynolds 
 in the Alfred, The West of England Journal and General Advertiser, com- 
 bined an attack upon the critical methods of the Quarterly with a fine ap- 
 preciation of the best qualities in Keats's genius. This was republished, 
 with a short introduction by Leigli Hunt, in the Exajniner of 11th October. 
 
 Shelley recognised at once the genius of the poem, though its faults 
 were of a kind particularly distasteful to him. He told Oilier that in 
 spite of its long-winded rambling " it was full of some of the highest 
 and finest gleams of poetry " and in particular the Hymn to Pan in the 
 first Book "afi'orded the surest promise of ultimate excellence". On his 
 second reading of the poem he was convinced with a new "sense of the 
 treasures of poetry it contains, though treasures poured forth with 
 indistinct profusion " (Dowden, Life of Shelley, ii. 408). On 14th May, 
 1820, thinking again of Endymion, he wrote to Oilier in words of the 
 finest criticism : " Keats, I hope, is going to show himself a great poet : 
 like the sun, to burst through the clouds, which, though dyed in the 
 finest colours of the air, obscured his rising". This is, perhaps, the 
 place to show how far from the truth is the common conception of Keats's 
 attitude to his Reviewers, which owes its vogue to Byron's Letters and Don 
 Juan, and to Shelley's Adonais. Keats's letter to Hessey, one of his 
 publishers, dated 9th October, 1818, expresses the actual effect of criticism 
 upon him at this period, and what is far more valuable, his own criticisms 
 upon himself: — 
 
 "I cannot but feel indebted to those Gentlemen who have taken my 
 part — as for the rest, I begin to get a little acquainted with my own 
 strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on 
 the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on 
 his own Works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without 
 comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly could possibly inflict 
 — and also when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such 
 a glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. 
 JS is perfectly right in regard to the slip-shod Endymion. That it is so 
 is no fault of mine. No ! though it may sound a little paradoxical. It 
 is as good as I had power to make it — by myself. Had I been nervous 
 about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice, and
 
 414 JOHN KEATS 
 
 trembled ovei* every pag'e, it would not have been written ; for it is not 
 in my nature to fumble — I will write independently. I have written 
 independently without Judgment and I may write independently and with 
 Judgment hereafter. The genius of Poetry must work out its own salva- 
 tion in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensa- 
 tion and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create 
 itself. In Endymion I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have 
 become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the 
 rocks, than if I h^d stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe 
 and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure ; for 
 I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest." 
 
 There is no reason to believe that as long as Keats retained his health 
 and with his health his poetic vitality, i.e., till the autumn of 1819, his 
 general attitude to criticism was at variance with his expression in this 
 letter. At the same time there can be no doubt that after his health had 
 given way, and when other troubles were pressing hard u])on him, he 
 would complain bitterly to his friends of the injustice with which his 
 poetry had been i-eceived, and his statement to Brown in June, 1820, 
 with regard to the 1820 volume: "This shall be my la^t trial: not 
 succeeding, I shall try what I can do in the apothecary line," is probably 
 characteristic of his feeling at this period. Moreover his indignant repudi- 
 ation of the Advertisement to Lamia, etc. {vide introduction to Hyperion, 
 p. 487), whilst undoubtedly true to fact of the time to which it refers, 
 suggests by its tone an extreme sensitiveness which had grown upon him 
 during his illness. It was doubtless from expressions wliich escaped him 
 during the last months of his life and were repeated and somewhat mis- 
 interpreted by those who heard them, that the fiction arose as to his 
 habitual attitude to criticism and its fatal effect upon him ; a fiction 
 turned to so different an account by Byron and by Shelley. For even of his 
 last days at Rome, Severn writes : " Certainly the Blackwood's attack was 
 one of the least of his miseries" {Life and Letters of Joseph Severn, p. 66). 
 
 The story of Endymion had for some time been a favourite of Keats' s, 
 and he had already made use of it in / stood tip-toe {q.v., 11. 181-93). His 
 intense passion for the beauty of the moon and his delight in the legends 
 of ancient mythology could here naturally coalesce, and in his Elizabethan 
 reading he would find plenty of references to the story which could not 
 fail to arrest his attention. From the Endimion of Lyly onwards, there is 
 hardly a poet who does not allude to the tale. The words of Portia, e.g., 
 in Merchant of Venice, v. 1. 109 : — 
 
 Peace ho ! the moon sleeps with Endymion 
 And would not be awaked, 
 occur in a scene which from its blending of the magic of nature and of 
 classical legend would be peculiarly dear to Keats ; and the love poems 
 of Drummond harp continually upon the same graceful theme. Cf. especi- 
 ally Poems, pt. i., Sonnet VIII. : —
 
 ENDYMION— NOTES 415 
 
 While Cynthia, in purest cypress clad, 
 The Latmiaii shepherd in a trance descries, 
 And whiles looks pale from height of all the skies. 
 Whiles dyes her beauties in a bashful red. 
 Or Sonnet X. : — 
 
 Fair Moon, who with thy cold and silver shine 
 Makes sweet the horror of the dreadful night, 
 Delighting the weak eye with smiles divine. 
 Which Phoebus dazzles with his too much light ; 
 Bright Queen of the first Heaven, if in thy shrine, 
 By turning oft, and Heaven's eternal night. 
 Thou hast not yet that once sweet fire of thine, 
 Endymion, forgot, and lover's plight. . . . 
 Cf. also Sonnet XXXVI. and Sextain II. 
 
 Mr. Colvin in an elaborate treatment of the source of the story (ft^ML, 
 pp. 92-99) suggests as Keats's two most direct sources Fletcher's Faithful 
 Shepherdess, a poem Keats is known to have studied, and Drayton's Man 
 in the Moon. The passage in the Faithful Shepherdess, Act I., tells 
 How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove. 
 First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes 
 She took eternal fire that never dies ; 
 How she convey'd him softly in a sleep. 
 His temples bound with poppy, to a steep 
 Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night, 
 Gilding the mountain with her brother's light. 
 To kiss her sweetest. 
 Cf. also The Masque in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy, i. 1. 
 Drayton's Man in the Moon gives the story thus ^ : — 
 
 She that gently lends us light. 
 Shall be our subject, and her love alone, 
 Borne to a shepherd, wise Endymion, 
 Sometime on Latmus that his flock did keep, 
 Rapted that was in admiration deep 
 Of her perfections that, he us'd to lie. 
 All the long night contemplating the sky. 
 At her high beauties : often of his store. 
 As to the god he only did adore. 
 And sacrific'd : she perfect in his love. 
 For the high gods enthronized above 
 
 1 It may be worth noticing that this passage suggests the concern of the gods at the 
 absence of Cynthia from heaven, of which Keats makes some capital in rather question- 
 able taste {cf. ii. 782-96). Drayton's style and vocabulary, too, have certain qualities 
 in common with Endymion, e.g., such phrases as " dampy mist in fashion of a ring," 
 " saily wings," the words " enthronized" and " rapted," and the spelling " Eolus ". 
 
 Certain critics have attempted to trace in Endymion the influence of Chamberlayne's 
 Pharonnida, but I share with Mr. Colvin an inability to see any resemblance sufficient 
 to justify the assumption.
 
 416 JOHN KEATS 
 
 From their clear mansions plainly do behold 
 All that frail man doth in this grosser mould : 
 For whom bright Cynthia gliding from her sphere, 
 Used oft times to recreate her there : 
 That oft her want unto the world was strange. 
 Fearing that Heaven the wonted course would change. 
 And Phoebus, her oft missing did inquire, 
 If that elsewhere she borrowed other lire : 
 But let them do to cross her what they could, 
 Down into Latmus every month she would. 
 So that in Heaven about it there was odds, 
 And as a question troubled all the gods. 
 Whether without their general consent, 
 She might depart ; but nath'less to prevent 
 Her lawless course, they labour'd all in vain, 
 Nor could their laws her liberty restrain. 
 Mr. Colviu calls attention to the fact that Drayton begins his poem, 
 as does Keats, with a festival of Pan, and that in a later passage he ''gives 
 hints for the wanderings on which Keats sends his hero (for which antiquity 
 affords no warrant) through earth, sea and air " (EML, p. 94). But the hints 
 are vague, and I think that he owed his plan of the poem to another work. 
 In Sandys's Ovid, where Keats found not only a version of the main story, 
 but also many of the episodes with which he embellishes and at times 
 overloads it, was an introductory poem, which to Sandys expressed " the 
 minde of the frontispiece and the argumente of this worke ". It reads into 
 Ovid a high moral purpose of which Ovid was quite innocent, and the 
 commentary which Sandys adds to each book of the Metamorphoses in- 
 terprets the poem throughout in the same spirit. There can be little 
 doubt that the strong appeal which Ovid made to Keats was due, in part 
 at least, to this allegorising vein which was entirely in accord with Keats's 
 own temper at the time, and seemed at once to interpret and to justify his 
 own attitude to Greek legend. With the subject of Endymion in his mind, 
 and as yet no definite scheme on which to treat it, he opened his Sandys and 
 read on the second page the following lines, some of which at least have a 
 distinct relation with the development of Endymion : — 
 Fire, Aire, Earth, Water, all the Opposites 
 That strove in Chaos, powrefull Love unites ; 
 And from their discord drew this Harmonie, 
 Which smiles in Nature : who, with ravisht eye. 
 Affects his own made Beauties. But our Will, 
 Desire, and Powres Irascible, the skill 
 Of Pallas orders ; who the Minde attires 
 With all Heroick Vertues : This aspires 
 To Fame and Glorie ; by her noble Guide 
 Eternized, and well-nigh Deified.
 
 ENDYMION— NOTES 417 
 
 But who forsake that faire hitelligmce, 
 To follow Passion and voluptuous Sence ; 
 That shun the Path and Toyles of Hercules ; 
 Such, charm'd by Circe's luxurie, and ease, 
 Themselves deforme : 'twixt whom, so great an ods ; 
 That these are held for Beasts, and those for Gods. 
 There are many ideas here which have their parallel in the adventures 
 of Endymion and the progress of his soul towards its ideal ; and it is 
 difficult to believe that Keats was not largely indebted to it. 
 
 The motto, chosen by Keats from Shakespeare's seventeenth sonnet, 
 occurred to him quite by chance. Writing to Reynolds, 22nd November, 
 1817, he is discussing Shakespeare's poems, in which, at the time, he was 
 much engrossed. Then he says, "He {i.e., Shakespeare) overwhelms a 
 genuine Lover of poesy with all manner of abuse, talking about — 
 
 ' a poet's rage 
 And stretched metre of an antique song'. 
 Which, by-the-by, will be a capital motto for my poem, won't it ? " 
 The original Dedication and Preface to Endymion ran as follows : — 
 
 INSCRIBED, 
 
 WITH EVERV FEKLINO OF PRIDK AND REGRET 
 
 AND WITH "a bowed MIND," 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 THE MOST ENGLISH OF POETS EXCEPT 8HAKSPEARE, 
 
 THOMAS CHATTERTON 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 " In a great nation, the work of an individual is of so little importance ; 
 his pleadings and excuses are so uninteresting ; his ' way of life ' such a 
 nothing, that a Preface seems a sort of impertinent bow to strangers who 
 care nothing about it. 
 
 " A Preface, however, should be down in so many words ; and such a 
 one that by an eye-glance over the type the Reader may catch an idea of 
 an Author's modesty, and non-opinion of himself — which I sincerely hope 
 may be seen in the few lines I have to write, notwithstanding many pro- 
 verbs of many ages old which men find a great pleasure in receiving as 
 gospel. 
 
 " About a twelvemonth since, I published a little book of verses ; it 
 was read by some dozen of my friends who lik'd it ; and some dozen 
 whom I was unacquainted with, who did not. 
 
 " Now, when a dozen human beings are at words with another dozen, 
 it becomes a matter of anxiety to side with one's friends — more especially 
 when excited thereto by a great Love of Poetry. I fought under disad- 
 vantages. Before I began I had no inward feel of being able to finish ; 
 
 27
 
 418 JOHN KEATS 
 
 and as I proceeded my steps were all uncertain. So this Poem must rather 
 be considered as an endeavour than a thing accomplished ; a poor prologue 
 to whatj if I live, I humbly hope to do. In duty to the Public I should 
 have kept it back for a year or two, knowing it to be so faulty ; but I 
 really cannot do so, — by repetition my favourite passages sound vapid in 
 my ears, and I would rather redeem myself with a new Poem should this 
 one be found of any interest. 
 
 " I have to apologise to the lovers of simplicity for touching the spell 
 of loneliness that hung about Endymion ; if any of my lines plead for me 
 with such people I shall be proud. 
 
 " It has been too much the fashion of late to consider men bigoted and 
 addicted to every word that may chance to escape their lips ; now I here 
 declare that I have not any particular affection for any particular phrase, 
 word, or letter in the whole affair. I have written to please myself, and 
 in hopes to please others, and for a love of fame ; if I neither please my- 
 self, nor others, nor get fame, of what consequence is Phraseology .'' 
 
 " I would fain escape the bickerings that all Works not exactly in 
 chime brin? upon their begetters — but this is not fair to expect, there 
 must be conversation of some sort and to object shows a man's consequence. 
 In case of a London drizzle or a Scotch mist, the following quotation from 
 Marston may perhaps stead me as an umbrella for an hour or so : 'let it 
 be the curtesy of my peruser rather to pity my self-hindering labours than 
 to malice me' .^ 
 
 " One word more — for we cannot help seeing our own affairs in every 
 point of view — should any one call my dedication to Chatterton affected I 
 answer as followeth : 'Were I dead. Sir, I should like a book dedicated to 
 me'." 
 
 "Teignmouth, 
 19th March, 1818." 
 
 This was rejected because of the criticisms of Reynolds, and as Lord 
 Houghton remarks, "many as were the intellectual obligations the poet 
 owed to his friend, the suppression of this faulty composition was perhaps 
 the greatest". Keats replied to Reynolds as follows : — 
 
 "Teionmouth, 
 9th April, 1818. 
 " My Dear Reynolds, 
 
 " Since you all agree that the thing is had, it must be so — 
 though I am not aware there is anything like Hunt in it (and if there is, 
 it is my natural way, and I have something in common with Hunt). Look 
 it over again, and examine into the motives, the seeds, from which any one 
 sentence sprung. 
 
 1 The quotation is from Marston's Preface to The Fawn, addressed " to the Equal 
 Reader". There is some evidence in Keats's vocabulary that he had been reading 
 Marston and certainly the " undersong of disrespect to the public," of which he speaks 
 in the letter to Reynolds {infra) would receive in Marston ample encouragement.
 
 ENDYMION— NOTES 419 
 
 " I have not the slightest feel of humility towards the public, or to 
 anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the Principle of Beauty, 
 and the Memory of great Men. When I am writing for my>elf, for the 
 mere sake of the moment's enjoyment, perhaps nature has its course with 
 me ; but a Preface is written to the public — a thing I cannot help looking 
 upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility. 
 If I write a Preface in a supple or subdued style, it will not be in character 
 with me as a public speaker. 
 
 " I would be subdued before my friends, and thaiik them for subduing 
 me ; but among multitudes of men I have no feel of stooping ; I hate the 
 idea of humility to them. 
 
 " I never wrote one single line of poetry with the least shadow of 
 public thought. 
 
 " Forgive me for vexing you, and making a Trojan horse of such a 
 trifle, both with respect to the matter in question, and myself; but it 
 eases me to tell you : I could not live without the love of my friends ; I 
 would jump down Mtna for any great public good — -but I h;ite a mawkish 
 popularity. I cannot be subdued before them. My glory would be to daunt 
 and dazzle the thousand jabberers about pictures and books. I see swarms 
 of porcupines with their quills erect ' like lime-twigs set to catch my winged 
 book,' and I would fright them away with a torch. You will say my Pre- 
 face is not much of a torch. It would have been too insulting 'to begin 
 from Jove,' and I could not (set) a golden head upon a thing of clay. If 
 there is any fault in the Preface it is not affectation, but an undersong of 
 disrespect to the public. If I write another Preface it must be done with- 
 out a thought of those people. I will think about it. If it should not 
 reach you in four or five days, tell Taylor to publish it without a Preface, 
 and let the dedication simply stand — 
 
 "* Inscribed to the Memory of Thomas Chatterton '.^ 
 
 " I am ever 
 
 " Your affectionate friend, 
 ''John Keats." 
 
 The variant readings, as supplied in the notes, are selected by Mr. 
 Forman's courteous permission from his transcript of them given in his 
 1900 edition of Keats's complete works. Of bk. i., says Mr. Forman, only 
 one MS. survives, a quarto written out for press, but containing numerous 
 rejected readings. Of bks. ii.-iv. there is (1) a MS. book into which 
 Keats wrote the poem ; (2) the quarto foolscap copy written out for press 
 (as of bk. i.). 
 
 ' Chatterton was a poet for whom Keats always had a deep admiration, though the 
 influence which he exerted upon his style was never very great. C/. however sonnet To 
 Chatterton, p. 348, general introduction, pp. li, Iv, notes to Eve of St. Agnes, Eve 
 of St. Mark, and Where be ye going, you Devon Maid, and Appendix C, p. 584.
 
 420 JOHN KEATS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 13. From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon. HBF supplies 
 the following reading : — 
 
 From our dark Spirits^ and before us dances 
 Like glitter on the points of Arthur's Lances. 
 Of these bright powers are the Sun, and Moon, 
 which is noticeable in its suggestion of Keats's interest in mediaeval themes, 
 with which he showed later such vital sympathy. For its rejection here 
 we may compare the rejection in Hyperion, i. 205 of the delicate but in- 
 appropriate line which tells how Hyperion's palace door flew open " most 
 like a rosebud to a faery's lute ". 
 
 21. the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead : — Cf. Thomson's 
 Seasons, Winter, 432, " and hold high converse with the mighty dead " 
 (HBF). There is some evidence that Keats knew Thomson well (cf. 
 Appendix C). This line in particular was a favourite with him, for he 
 makes use of it elsewhere. Cf. Sonnet written in Disgust of Vulgar Super- 
 stition, 8 : — 
 
 And converse high of those with glory crown'd. 
 
 39-57. The wish here expressed was actually fulfilled (vide Introduction 
 to poem). 
 
 63. The idea of introducing his story by a festival of Pan was probably 
 suggested to Keats, as Mr, Colvin has pointed out, by his reading of 
 Drayton's Man in the Moon (vide Introduction to Endy^nion), with certain 
 borrowed touches from Chapman's Homeric Hymn to Pan, and from the 
 sacrifice to Pan in Browne's Britannia' s Pastorals (bk. i. song 4). Mr. 
 Colvin also suggests as a source Ben Jonson's Masque, Pan's Anniversary, 
 but I have been unable to trace any definite resemblance, though it is 
 highly probable that Keats had read it. In nearly all Elizabethan pastoral 
 poetry the figure of Pan plays a large part, and in Fletcher's Faithful 
 Shepherdess, to which Keats was obviously indebted in Endymion {vide 
 Introduction), the priest of Pan is a leading character. 
 
 85, 86. edg'd round with dark tree tops : — Cf. Ode to Psyche, 54, 55, and 
 note. 
 
 142-44. The story of Apollo's exile is referred to in Ovid, Met. ii. and 
 thus rendered in Sandys : — 
 
 thee (i.e. Apollo) from thy selfe expeld 
 Then Elis, and Messenian pastures held 
 It was the time, when, cloth'd in Neat-herds weeds 
 Thou play'dst upon unequal sevenfold Reeds, 
 on which Sandys comments ''(he) was then banished heaven for a yeere, 
 for killing the Cyclops who made the lightning which slew his son 
 Phaeton, who liable to humane necessities, was enforced to keep the 
 cattell of Admetus, King of Thessaly, or rather kept them for love of his
 
 ENDYMION, BK. I.— NOTES 421 
 
 daughter". C/. also Ovid, Met. vi. 124. Keats was also familiar with 
 the story in Spenser, Faerie Queene, iii. 11. 39: — 
 He loved Isse for his dearest Dame, 
 And for her sake her cattell fedd awhile, 
 And for her sake a cowheard vile became : 
 The servant of Admetus cowheard vile, 
 Whiles that from heaven he suffered exile. 
 It is referred to by Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, iv. 4. 30. 
 153, 154. From his right hand, etc. : — 
 
 From his right hand there swung a milk-white vase 
 Of mingled wines, outsparkling like the Stars. — MS. 
 
 157, 158. Wild thyme . . . from the rill : — 
 
 Wild thyme, and valley lillies white as Leda's 
 Bosom, and choicest strips from mountain Cedars. — MS. 
 Both this and the previous alteration are obvious improvements in 
 sound and sense. 
 
 158. Leda's love. Cf. Spensei-, Faerie Qtieene, iii. 11. 32: — 
 
 Then was he turn'd into a snowy swan 
 To win fair Leda to his lovely trade : 
 O wondrous skill, and sweet wit of the man 
 That her in daffadillies sleeping made 
 From scorching heat her daintie limbes to shade ! 
 Whiles the pioud bird, ruffing his fethers wyde. 
 And brushing his faire brest, did her invade 
 She slept, yet twixt her eielids closely spyde 
 How towards her he rusht, and smiled at his pryde. 
 Or Prothalamium, 43 : — 
 
 The snow whicli doth the top of Pindus strew, 
 Did never whiter show. 
 
 Nor Jove himselfe when he a swan should be. 
 For love of Leda, whiter did appeare. 
 Yet Leda was they say as white as he. 
 The story is taken by Spenser from Ovid, Met. vi. which Keats also 
 knew. 
 
 170. Ganymede : — The love of Jove for his cupbearer Ganymede is alluded 
 to by Chaucer and by almost all of the Elizabethans. The story is told in 
 Ovid, Met. x., and expounded at some length in Sandys's commentary. 
 
 205, 206. sounds forlorn . . . Triton's horn : — An obvious reminiscence 
 of Wordsworth's famous sonnet The world is too much with us, which 
 Keats had already used in Sleep and Poetry, 189, 190. Both Keats and 
 Wordsworth, moreover, must have been acquainted with Spenser's Colin 
 Clout's come home againe, where the poet says of the fishes : — 
 Of them the shepheard which hath charge in chief. 
 Is Triton, blowing loud his wreathed horn :
 
 422 JOHN KEATS 
 
 And Proteus eke with him does drive his heard 
 Of stinking Seales and Porcpisces together 
 With hoary head and deawy dropping beard — 244-60. 
 And a little further on in the poem, Spenser says of " a headland thrust 
 far into the sea" that it "seemed to be a goodly pleasant lea". — 283. 
 
 230. Keats had already made use of the story of Syrinx and Pan iu 
 / stood tip-toe, 156-62 (q.v. note). 
 
 293. the unimaginable lodge 
 
 For solitary thinkings ; such as dodge 
 Conception to the very bourne of heaven : — 
 There can be little doubt that this passage, which has been selected for 
 admiration by more than one critic, owes something to Marston, with 
 whom we know Keats to have been familiar. Cf. Antonio and Mellida 
 (1st part), iv. 1. 18-22 :— 
 
 for when discursive powers fly out 
 And roam in progress through the bounds of heaven. 
 The soul itself gallops along with them. 
 As chieftain of this winged troop of thought. 
 Whilst the dull lodge of spirit standeth waste. . . . 
 The word lodge is used again by Marston, in a somewhat strange meta- 
 phorical sense, in Ant. and Mell. (2nd part), v. 2. 148. 
 
 Both here (1. 293) and in 306 the quotation marks were omitted in the 
 first edition of the poem. 
 
 319. But in old marbles ever beautiful : — " Doubtless meant to refer to the 
 Elgin Marbles " (HBF). On Keats's appreciation of the Elgin Marbles, 
 vide Sonnets, pp. 274, 276, and note. This passage shows clearly Keats's 
 instinctive feeling for the spirit of sculpture (cf. also bk. ii. 197, 198, and 
 the opening of Hyperion). 
 
 328. Hyacinthus, a Spartan youth beloved of Apollo, who slew him 
 accidentally when playing at quoits. Apollo in great grief at his loss 
 turned him into a flower on whose petals are inscribed the letters ai ai 
 (alas !). The story is told at length in Ovid, Met. x., and constantly 
 alluded to in English poetry, cf. e.g. Milton, Lycidas " like to that 
 sanguine flower inscribed with woe," and Spenser, Faerie Queene, iii. 11. 37. 
 Keats makes use of the legend in its later form (for which he may 
 have been indebted to Lempriere) which attributes the death of Hyacin- 
 thus to Zephyrus, who, himself in love with Hyacinthus, and jealous of 
 the rivalry of Apollo, blew the quoit into Hyacinthus's face. Keats in 
 taking this version adds an exquisite touch to the picture, suggesting in 
 the wind and rain that often herald a glorious sunrise the visit of the 
 penitent Zephyrus to weep his fault before the arrival of the angry Sun- 
 god. For the natural picture, noticed by Keats in other places, cf. I stood 
 
 tip-toe, 3-7 : — 
 
 the sweet buds . . . 
 Had not yet lost those starry diadems 
 Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.
 
 ENDYMION, BK. I.— NOTES 423 
 
 In the same spirit, though without the same felicity of expression, 
 Keats recalls in the twanging of the bowstring the story of " Niobe all 
 tears " {HamUt, i. 2. 149), which he knew in Spenser, Faerie Queene, 
 iv. 7- 30, in Chapman's Iliad (xxiv. 536-45), and as told at length in Ovid, 
 Met. vi. Phrases in Sandys's translation of Ovid as well as something ot 
 its spirit {the bowstring twangs — pale lips) suggest that Keats had lately 
 been reading this version of the story, though he far surpasses Ovid in 
 the human sympathy with which he invests it. Particularly noticeable 
 is the manner in whicli by the use of the epithets caressing and motherly 
 he communicates the whole pathos of the situation. 
 
 334. raft : — Used by Keats as past part, of the Spenserian verb (to tear 
 or cut ofiF) of which raft is the perfect. Cf. Faerie Queene, i. 1. 24, " He 
 raft her hatefuU head without remorse ". 
 
 335. Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top : — Keats, like Chaucer, 
 occasionally forms the first foot of this line with only one syllable. Cf. 
 e.g. Prologue to Canterbury Tales, " Al bismotred with his habergeoun " (7<^), 
 " For to delen with no swich poraille " (247). 
 
 347. After the Argonauts, in blind amaze: — The story is not told in 
 Lempriere nor have I been able to trace it to any of the usual sources of 
 Keats's classical knowledge. Apollonius Rhodius relates it in Argonautica, 
 ii. 70, thus rendered by Fawkes (Chalmers, English Poets, xx. 270) : — 
 So toiled the Greeks : nor yet the morning light 
 Had passed the doubtful confines of the night. 
 To Thynia's neighbouring isle their course they bore 
 And safely landed on the desert's shore. 
 When bright Apollo showed his radiant face 
 From Lycia hastening to the Scythian race, 
 His golden locks that flowed with grace divine 
 Hung clustering like the branches of the vine : 
 In his left hand, his bow unbent he bore, 
 His quiver pendent at his back he wore ; 
 The conscious island trembled as he trod 
 And the big rolling waves confessed the god. 
 Keats may have obtained the story from Fawkes or from the version 
 of Green (1780), but this seems improbable, as he makes no use of Apol- 
 lonius elsewhere, and had he read the whole poem he would probably have 
 drawn upon it further. But as Mr Forman has pointed out, this passage 
 in the Argonautica was a favourite with Shelley, who speaks of "the 
 Apollo so finely described by Apollonius Rhodius when the dazzling of his 
 beautiful limbs suddenly shone over the dark Euxine " {Prose Works, iii. 
 66, ed. Buxton Forman). It seems likely, therefore, though this is pure 
 hypothesis, that Shelley had himself called Keats's attention to the incident, 
 and it is rendered somewhat more probable by the fact that Apollonius 
 Rhodius represents Apollo as appearing when the Greeks were on land ; 
 whilst Shelley suggests and Keats definitely states that they were at sea —
 
 424 JOHN KEATS 
 
 a far finer picture. It is worth noticing that these stories suggested by the 
 games of the holiday makers are all of them episodes in the life of Apollo, 
 394. Whose eyelids curtain' d up their jewels dim : — Cf. The Tempest, i. 2. 
 408, " The fringed curtains of thine eye advance ". Cf. Pericles, iii. 2. 
 99-101 :— 
 
 Her eyelids, cases to those heavenly jewels 
 Which Pericles hath lost, 
 Begin to part their fringes of bright gold. 
 These two passages seem here to have combined in Keats's mind. He 
 makes use of the first of them again, though with less success, in ii. 661-4 : — 
 I saw this youth as he despairing stood : 
 Those same dark curls blown vagrant in the wind ; 
 Those same full fringed lids a constant blind 
 Over his sullen eyes. 
 The use of the metaphor by Keats is of peculiar interest as the lines in 
 The Tempest on which it is founded were severely censured by Pope and 
 Arbuthnot in The Art of Sinking in Poetry, and praised with the subtlest 
 discrimination in Coleridge's Lectures on Shakespeare (Lecture ix., 1811-12). 
 405,406. old tale Arabian: — "The allusion is to the Eldest Lady's 
 story in The Porter and the Three Ladies of Bagdad " (HBF). The lady 
 tells of her visit to a city wherein the king and the queen and all the 
 inhabitants except the prince have been turned into black stones for their 
 preference of fire worship to the faith of Mahomet. The prince alone, who 
 had been taught the true religion by his nurse, was found, untouched by 
 the enchantment, engaged in prayer, fasting, and reading the Koran. 
 Keats, like his contemporaries Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Scott, 
 took great pleasure in the marvels of the A rabian Nights, and they have 
 left slight traces of their influence upon his poetry. Hence he drew 
 the name Caf (Hyp. ii. 53), and it was probably the A rabian Nights that 
 suggested the simile in the Fall of Hyp. (i. 48, and note), and the use of 
 the word magian (Endymion, iii. 265, Staffa, etc). His love of oriental 
 names, which he introduces occasionally with singular effect, may have 
 been fed from the same source. 
 
 408. Peona, his sweet sister : — The name Peona has been explained by 
 Mr. W. T. Arnold as taken from Lemprifere's mention of Paeon, one of the 
 sons of Endymion, and by Mr. Colvin as a combination of this with a 
 recollection of Spenser's P'dssina, (Faerie Queene, iv. 9). It seems more likely 
 that the recollection of Spenser's name was associated in Keats's mind with 
 the Paeon of Ovid, Met. xv., whose healing powers are closely paralleled 
 by the watchful care with which Peona attends her sick brother. This 
 side of Peona's character is still further developed in the first draft 
 of the poem, in lines which stood at 440 (q.v. notes) ; and Endymion 
 definitely recognises it ; for at the close of the poem, when he announces 
 his intention of retiring to a hermit's cell, he makes her his deputy in the 
 words : —
 
 ENDYMION, BK. I.— NOTES ^ 425 
 
 Through me the shepherd realm shall prosper well ; 
 For to thy tongue will I all health confide. — iv. 863, 864. 
 C/. also introductory note to bk. iv. 
 
 It is worth noticing that Ovid mentions Paeon in reference to the sick- 
 ness of Hippolytus, another votary of Cynthia, and that the names of Paeon 
 and Cynthia are coupled together as the sanative influences over his life : — 
 Had not Apollo's son imploid the aid 
 Of his great art ; I with the dead had staid. 
 But when by potent hearbs and Paeon's skill 
 I was restor'd, against stern Pluto's will : 
 Lest I, if seene, might en vie have procur'd ; 
 Me, friendly Cynthia in a cloud immur'd. 
 
 One of the lesser gods, here in this grove, 
 I Cynthia serve, preserved by her love. 
 It is worth noting also that the " wise Paeon " is mentioned by Spenser 
 as the son of Apollo and " the lilly-handed Liagore " who healed Marinell 
 of the grievous wounds inflicted on him by Britomart {Faerie Queene, iii. 
 4. 41). 
 
 411. The just omission in the printed text of a passage of twelve lines 
 which marred the draft by their vulgarity of phrase is responsible for the 
 loss of a rhyme to this line. 
 
 440-42. In place of these lines stood originally the following passage, 
 which has a special interest in its possible relation with Keats's source for 
 the name Peona {vide note to 408) : — 
 
 When last the Harvesters rich armfuls took. 
 She tied a little bucket to a Crook, 
 Ran some swift paces to a dark wells side, 
 And in a sighing-time return'd, supplied 
 With spar cold water ; in which she did squeeze 
 A snowy napkin, and upon her knees 
 Began to cherish her poor Brother's face ; 
 Damping refreshfully his forehead's space. 
 His eyes, his Lips : then in a cupped shell 
 She brought him ruby wine ; then let him smell, 
 Time after time, a precious amulet. 
 Which seldom took she from its cabinet. 
 Thus was he quieted to slumbrous rest. 
 469. Followed in MS. by the three lines : — 
 From woodbine hedges such a morning feel 
 As do those brighter drops, that twinkling steal 
 Through those pressed lashes, from the blossom'd plant. . . . 
 
 — HBF. 
 For other passages altered by Keats to get rid of the Huntian use of 
 " feel " cf. In a drear-nighted December and note, and Hyperion, i. 189, note.
 
 426 JOHN KEATS 
 
 494, 495. For these lines the MS. originally reads : — 
 More forest-wild, more subtle-cadenced 
 Than can be told by mortal : even wed 
 The fainting tenors of a thousand shells 
 To a million whisperings of Lilly bells ; 
 And mingle too the Nightingale's complain 
 Caught in its hundredth echo ; 'twould be vain. . . . 
 496. Dry ope, the wife of Andremon, bore a child to Apollo. On the 
 bank of a lake sacred to the Nymphs she broke off the branch of a tree- 
 flowering lotus, that her little son might amuse himself with it. The 
 maiden Lotis had already been turned into the lotus plant, and Dryope 
 was punished with the same transformation. The story is told by Ovid, 
 Met. ix., with an emphasis upon the relations of Dryope and her child 
 which may have suggested the picture to Keats. The allusion is not 
 likely, in spite of the opinion of most critics, to be to the other Dryope, 
 mother of Pan and wife of Hermes, for in Chapman's Homeric Hymn to 
 Pan, whence Keats drew his knowledge of her, she is distinctly represented, 
 in a grotesque passage, as terrified at the ugliness of her child. 
 
 512-14. Keats is here, perhaps, thinking of the beautiful passage in 
 Spenser, Faerie Queene, vii. 6. 40, where the poet describes Diana 
 bathing in the Molanna, and observed by Faunus. 
 
 515. At no time did Keats's critical judgment stand him in better stead 
 than when it led him to reject the following passage which originally stood 
 here : — 
 
 And I do pray thee by thy utmost aim 
 To tell me all. No little fault or blame 
 Canst thou lay on me for a teasing Girl ; 
 Ever as an unfathomable pearl 
 Has been thy secrecy to me : but now 
 I needs must hunger after it, and vow 
 To be its jealous Guardian for aye. 
 531. Out-facing Lucifer : — Mr. Forman quotes as a parallel to this passage 
 Ovid, Met. ii. 114, 115. Sandys renders it thus : — 
 
 Cleare Lucifer the flying stars doth chase. 
 And after all the rest resigns his place, 
 adding the significant comment " Lucifer is here saide to fore-runne 
 Aurora, or the morning: and last of all to resign his place, in that the 
 last starre which shineth. This is the beautiful planet of Venus ; which 
 when it riseth before the Sunne, is the Morning starre, and setting after 
 it, the Evening." 
 
 550. tighten : lighten first edition. Keats often forgot to cross his t's. 
 This passage, like the glorious description of the rising sun in lines 
 530-32, owes something to Sandys's rendering of Ovid, Met. ii., where 
 the poet is describing the adventures of Phaeton with the horses of the 
 sun. The snorting four are thus described : —
 
 ENDYMION, BK. I.— NOTES 427 
 
 Meane while the Sunne's swift Horses, hot Pyydus 
 Light Aethoii, fiery Phlegou, bright Ecus, 
 Neighing aloud, inflame the Ayre with heat ; 
 And, with their thundering hooves, the barriers beat. 
 " The track of his wheeles," comments Sandys, " is the Ecliptick line, 
 and the beasts he encounters, the figures in the Zodiac." Hence, perhaps, 
 the reference in line 553 ; cf. also Endymion, iii. 363-65. 
 
 562. Young Mercury . . . had dipt his rod in it, i.e., the Caduceus, of 
 which Keats had read in the Faerie Queene, where Spenser, describing the 
 Palmer's staff, writes : — 
 
 Of that same wood it fram'd was cunningly. 
 Of which Caduceus whilome was made, 
 Caduceus, the rod of Mercury, 
 With which he wonts the Stygian realmes invade 
 Through ghastly horrour and eternall shade : 
 Th' infernal feends with it he can asswage. 
 And Orcus tame, whom nothing can perswade, 
 And rule the Furyes, when they most do rage : 
 Such vertue in his Staffe had eke this Palmer sage. 
 
 — ii. 12. 41. 
 Cf. also Faerie Queene, iv. 3. 42, and Troilus and Cressida, ii. 3. 14. 
 646. along the dangerous sky : in safe deliriousness MS. 
 666. upon that alp. Cf. note to Sonnet XVH. (poems of 1817). 
 749. that . . . dreams and fitful whims of sleep are made of. An obvious 
 reminiscence of The Tempest, iv. 1. 156 : — 
 
 we are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 
 Keats had just been reading the play {vide Letter to Reynolds, 17th April, 
 1817). 
 
 770. Mr. Forman notes that the phrase nothing base is applied by 
 Tennyson " to the coinage of his predecessor Wordsworth " ; it had 
 already been used by Leigh Hunt in the Story of Rimini, ii. 86 : — 
 She he loved could have done nothing base. 
 776-81 . The original reading of this passage ran : — 
 To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks. 
 Wherein lies happiness.'' In that which becks 
 Our ready minds to blending pleasurable : 
 And that delight is the most treasurable 
 That makes the richest Alchymy. Behold 
 The clear Religion of Heaven ! Fold 
 A Rose leaf, etc. 
 This, says Mr. Forman, was altered to : — 
 
 To fret at sight of this world's losses. For behold 
 Wherein lies happiness Peona. Fold 
 A rose leaf, etc.
 
 428 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Finally the text as we have it was sent to the publisher in the following 
 letter : — 
 
 " My dear Taylor, 
 
 " These lines as they now stand about ' happiness ' have rung 
 in my ears like a chime a mending. See here, 
 
 ' Behold 
 Wherein lies happiness, Peona? fold, etc' 
 " It appears to me the very contrary of blessed. I hope this will appear 
 to you more eligible. {Then follows the reading of the text.) 
 
 " You must indulge me by putting this in, for setting aside the badness 
 of the other, such a preface is necessary to the subject. The whole thing 
 must, I think, have appeared to you, who are a consecutive man, as a 
 thing almost of mere words, but I assure you that when I wrote it, it was 
 the regular stepping stone of the Imagination towards a truth. My 
 having written that argument will perhaps be of the greatest service to 
 me of anything I ever did. It set before me the gradations of happiness, 
 even like a pleasure thermometer, and it is my first attempt towards the 
 chief attempt in the drama. The playing of different natures with joy 
 and sorrow. Do me this favour, and believe me, 
 
 *' Your sincere friend, 
 
 "J. Keats." 
 
 The whole passage therefore must be regarded as of the utmost im- 
 portance in the interpretation of the poem, whilst particular attention 
 must be paid to the lines finally added ; for they contain a truth which Keats 
 thought essential to the development of his idea, which he had, evidently, 
 not fully grasped when he conceived the poem, but which only grew upon 
 him as he proceeded with it and came afterwards to revise it. The grada- 
 tions of happiness thus appear to be, (1) the sensuous delight in nature 
 and romance ; (2) the pleasures of friendship and human sympathy ; 
 (3) love, which feeds upon itself and is of its essence self-sacrificing. This 
 stage is all-sufficient for most men. (4) communion with the ideal — in 
 itself higher than them all, yet only to be gained by one who has passed 
 through them all. The pursuit of this ideal is the subject of the whole 
 poem, and its development corresponds with the plan here laid down. It 
 gives the key beforehand to the adventures of Endymion under the sea, 
 and explains the perplexities of his relations with Phoebe. Keats is 
 perfectly right in speaking of these lines as a " preface necessary to the 
 whole ". Without them lines 775, 776, are unsupported by what follows, 
 and the whole of the fourth book extremely diflScult to comprehend. 
 His conception is thus a somewhat crudely expressed, but intensely in- 
 teresting, foretaste of the sketch of the progress of the poet's soul pre- 
 sented in the Fall of Hyperion {vide Introduction to that poem). 
 
 786. Molian : Eolian 1818. 
 
 790. where : were 1818.
 
 ENDYMION, BK. II.— NOTES 429 
 
 796. The rhymelessness of this line is unaccounted for in the draft. 
 802-806. high-fronted honour : — A common Elizabethanism. 
 831. How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood. This beautiful 
 line owes, perhaps, a suggestion to both Shakespeare and Milton. In 
 Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5. 10 : — 
 
 jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. 
 In Comus, 188 : — 
 
 the gray-hooded Even 
 Like a sad Votarist in Palmer's weed 
 Rose like the hindmost wheels of Phoebus wain. 
 8f35-42. This passage may have been in Shelley's mind when, in 1819, 
 he wrote his well known lyric Love's Philosophy. 
 
 862. Latona : — The mother of Apollo and Cynthia, to whom she gave 
 birth in Delos ; hence the allusion in 966. 
 
 944. Proserpine : — One of Keats's favourite classical stories. Cf. note 
 on Lamia, i. 63. 
 
 947. Echo : — A legend already treated by Keats in / stood tip-toe, 166-80, 
 q.v. note. 
 
 976. And come instead demurest meditation, 
 
 To occupy me wholly, and to fashion 
 My pilgrimage for the world's dusky brink : — 
 It is impossible not to detect in these lines the spirit of Milton's // 
 Penseroso, with its conception of Melancholy, described by Milton as 
 demure, which, in contrast with the more thoughtless pleasures of his 
 earlier life, is to be the guide of his closing years. 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 1-43. This passage has been much attacked by some critics (e.g. Cour- 
 thope, Liberal Movement in English Literature, 181) as illustrative of the 
 weakness of Keats's general temper and attitude to life ; but it is essentially 
 suitable to its context, as an introduction to the book which presents 
 Endymion's search for love, and it naturally follows upon the comparison 
 of love and heroism at the close of the preceding book. The same charge, 
 moreover, might equally well be made against Shakespeare for writing the 
 plays to which Keats refers, especially, e.g. Troilus and Cressida and Romeo 
 and Juliet, wherein the wars of Troy and the quarrels of Montagues and 
 Capulets are, as Keats suggests, totally subordinated to the love stories. 
 Keats doubtless knew the Troilus and Cresseyde of Chaucer, to which Wood- 
 house thinks that he alludes here, but it is probable that Shakespeare's 
 play is more definitely in his mind ; partly because of the other references 
 to Shakespeare at the beginning of the book (cf. 27, Romeo and Juliet ; 31, 
 Much A do abotit Nothing and Cymbeline), and because we know Keats to 
 have been engrossed in Shakespeare study at the time, partly also because
 
 430 JOHN KEATS 
 
 there are actual traces in this book of words and phrases probably sugg'ested 
 by Troiliis and Cressida. The word close, as Woodhouse notes, means 
 embrace; it is so used by Shakespeare in this very play (iii. 2. 51), "an 
 'twere dark you'ld close sooner " (for the noun cf. Twelfth Night, v. 1. 161, 
 "the close of lips "). So the form pight (60) is in Troilus and Cressida, 
 V. 10. 24, whilst in 92 the application of mealy to the wings of a butterfly, 
 " afraid to smutch even with mealy wings the water clear," used again, in 
 996, with less appropriateness, of the wings of a bee, recalls Troilus and 
 Cressida, iii. 3. 78, 79 : — 
 
 Men like butterflies 
 Show not their mealy wings but to the summer. 
 
 Pastorella is the heroine of book vi. of the Faerie Queene, always a 
 favourite with Keats. Her capture by bandits is described in Cantos x. 
 and xi. 
 
 143. The loss of rhyme here is due to a change in the text from the 
 first draft. The passage originally ran : — 
 
 Whoso encamps 
 His soul to take a city of delight 
 O what a wretch is he : 'tis in his sight. 
 
 149. pebble head 1818 : — HBF alters to pebble-bead on authority of the 
 MS. and a corrected copy of the text. 
 
 197. The story of the flood from which Deucalion and Pyrrha alone 
 escaped is told by Ovid, Met. i. Keats again alludes to it in Lamia, i. 
 333 {q.v. note). 
 
 Orion was the son of Neptune, and a great hunter. Coming to Chios, 
 he wooed the daughter of Oionopion, Merope ; and Oionopion, having 
 drugged him, blinded him in his sleep and cast him out on the sea shore. 
 An oracle foretold that he would regain his sight if he journeyed to the 
 East and exposed his eyes to the rays of the rising sun. So Apollodorus, 
 i. 4. 3 ; according to earlier legends (Homer, Od. v. 121) Orion married 
 Aurora and was in consequence killed by Diana. So Spenser, Faerie Queene, 
 vii. 7. 39. It is interesting to know that we owe this magnificent line to 
 an afterthought, the original reading Or blind Orion waiting for the dawn, 
 being tame in comparison, and, moreover, entailing a false rhyme. Hazlitt, 
 who, we are told by Haydou, could never be persuaded to acknowledge 
 Keats's genius, was much impressed by this line, for he makes it the motto 
 of his Essay On a landscape of Nicolas Poussin (Table Talk, 232, ed. Bohn ; first 
 published, 1821). He thus opens his essay : " Orion, the subject of the 
 landscape, was the classical Nimrod ; and is called by Homer ' a hunter of 
 Shadows himself a shade '. He was the son of Neptune : and having lost 
 an eye in some affray of the gods and men, was told that if he would go to 
 meet the rising sun, he would recover his sight. He is represented as 
 setting out on his journey, with men on his shoulders to guide him, a bow 
 in his hand, and Diana in the clouds greeting him. He stalks along, a giant 
 upon earth, and reels and falters in his gait, as if just awakened out of sleep.
 
 ENDYMION, BK. IL— NOTES 431 
 
 or uncertain of his way — you see his blindness, though his back is turned. 
 Mists rise around him, and veil the sides of the green forests ; earth is dark 
 and fresh with dews, the 'gray dawn and the Pleiades before him dance' 
 and in the distance are seen the blue hills and sullen ocean. Nothing was 
 ever more finely conceived or done . . . one feeling of vastness, of strange- 
 ness, of primeval forms pervades the painter's canvas, we are thrown back 
 upon the first integrity of things. This great and learned man . . . alone 
 has a right to be considered as the painter of classical antiquity." Does it 
 not seem likely that Keats had this picture in his mind when he wrote the 
 line, even indeed that he had heard Hazlitt praise it .'' Letters written in 
 April and May, 1817, suggest that Keats had already enjoyed something 
 of Hazlitt's society in the previous winter, and he might again be seeing 
 him in London at the very time lie was writing this book. Both were 
 frequent visitors at Haydon's studio. We know that any remark of 
 Hazlitt's would sink deep into Keats's mind, for Hazlitt's " depth of taste " 
 was to him " one of the three things to rejoice at in this age " {Letter to 
 Haydon, 10th Jan., 1818). This hypothesis receives some support from the 
 presence of Diana in Poussin's picture, thus connecting it with the heroine 
 of Keats's poem, whilst the power of a great painting to kindle his im- 
 agination is amply illustrated by the influence upon him of Titian's Bacchus 
 and Ariadne (cf. Sleep and Poetry, 336 ; Endymion, iv. 196) and Claude's 
 Enchanted Castle (cf. Epistle to Reynolds, 26 ; Ode to the Nightingale, vii, 9). 
 230. vast autre : — A reminiscence of Othello, i. 8. 140, " of autres vast 
 and deserts idle ". This great speech wherein Othello tells how he won 
 Desdemona's love must have especially impressed Keats. In an Acrostic (10) 
 he again borrows from it, referring to the Anthropophagi mentioned hy 
 Othello in line 144 of the same scene. 
 
 277. the fog-born elf, Whose flitting lantern, etc. : — The will o' the wisp 
 who ''misleads night-wanderers laughing at their harm" {A Midsummer- 
 Night's Dream, ii. 1. 39) described by Milton {Paradise Lost, ix. 634-42) as 
 
 a wandring Fire 
 Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night 
 Condenses, and the cold invirons round, 
 Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame, 
 Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends. 
 Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, 
 Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way 
 To Boggs and Mires, and oft through Pond or Poole, 
 There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr. 
 The first draft of Endymion reads bog for swamp, and was thus slightly 
 nearer to Milton. 
 
 282. raught HBF, following MS. ; caught 1818. 
 
 318. boughs among HBF, following MS. ; among the zephyr boughs 
 1818. 
 
 360. Avion the poet, on his voyage from Italy to Greece, was robbed
 
 432 JOHN KEATS 
 
 and cast overboard by the sailors ; but the Dolphins, who had gathered 
 round the ship to hear his song, bore him safely back to Taenarus. C/. 
 Spenser, Faerie Qiteene, iv. 11. 23 : — 
 
 Then was there heard a most celestiall sound, 
 Of dainty musicke, which did next ensew 
 Before the spouse : that was A rion crownd ; 
 Who playing on his harpe, unto him drew 
 The eares and hearts of all that goodly crew, 
 That euen yet the Dolphin, which him bore 
 Through the JEga^an seas from Pirates vew, 
 Stood still by him astonisht at his lore, 
 And all the raging seas for joy forgot to rore. 
 So went he playing on the watery plaine. 
 363. The rhyme to lyre is lost by the rejection of the following 
 passage in the draft : — 
 
 To seas Ionian and Tyrian. Dire 
 Was the love lorn despair to which it wrought 
 Endymion — for dire is the bare thought 
 That among lovers things of tenderest worth 
 Are swallow'd all, and made a blank — a dearth 
 By one devouring flame : and far far worse 
 Blessing to them become a heavy curse 
 Half happy till comparisons of bliss 
 To misery lead them. 'Twas even so with this. . . . 
 387. After a thousand mazes overgone : — A classical construction which 
 we should hardly expect to find in Keats at this period. It is probably 
 due to the influence of Milton, which was by no means confined, as is 
 often represented, to Hyperion. Cf. Comtis, 48, ''after the Tuscan mariners 
 transformed". For other Miltonisms, cf. End. iv. 367, note ; iii. 135, etc. 
 400. " Woodhouse notes that ' tenting swerve ' meant in the form of the 
 top of a tent " (HBF) ; cf. Glossary. 
 
 400. This picture of Venus and Adonis was probably suggested partly 
 by Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and partly by Spenser's Gardens of 
 Adonis {Faerie Qiieene, iii. 6. 46-49 ; cf. also iii. 1. 35-40). Keats's version 
 is closer to Spenser in that in both writers Cupid is represented as being 
 present. The story is also related at length in Ovid, Met. x., a book 
 which Keats had certainly been reading quite lately, as the picture of 
 Cybele (640 q.v.) is taken from the tale of Atalanta which Ovid represents 
 Venus as relating to Adonis. 
 
 443. Ariadne : — Cf. Sleep and Poetry, 336 (note). It is worth noticing 
 that the wine, fruit and cream with which Cupid presents Endymion are 
 all associated with a well-known love story. The legend of the love of 
 Vertumnus for Pomona is told in Ovid, Met. xiv. Amalthea the daughter 
 of Molossos King of Crete fed Jupiter with goat's milk. As a reward she 
 was made a constellation ; and one of the horns of the goat, presented to
 
 ENDYMION, BK. II.— NOTES 433 
 
 her in commemoration, became the horn of plenty with the maa^ic power 
 of pouring forth fruits and flowers at will. The horn of Amalthea is 
 mentioned by Milton (Paradise Regained, ii. 356) in his account of the 
 banquet provided by Satan for Christ, and it is significant that in Milton 
 as in Keats it is followed by a reference to the Hesperides : — 
 Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades 
 With fruits and flowers from Amalthea' s horn. 
 And Ladies of th' Hesperides. 
 475, 476. drew Immortal tear-drops down, etc : — So in // Penseroso 
 Orpheus "drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek". 
 
 632, 533. muse . . . coy excuse : — So Milton to his Muse in Lycidas 
 "hence with denial vain and coy excuse": 
 
 This whole passage (526-633) in its earliest form (given by HBF) 
 afi"ords a striking example of the weak side of Keats's poetic genius at this 
 time : — 
 
 Queen Venus bending downward, so o'ertaken. 
 So suffering sweet, so blushing mad, so shaken 
 That the wild warmth prob'd the young sleeper's heart 
 Enchantingly ; and with a sudden start 
 His trembling arms were out in instant time 
 To catch his fainting love. — O foolish rhyme 
 What mighty power is in thee that so often 
 Thou strivest rugged syllables to soften 
 Even to the telling of a sweet like this. 
 Away ! let them embrace alone ! that kiss 
 Was far too rich for thee to talk upon. 
 Poor wretch ! mind not those sobs and sighs ! begone ! 
 Speak not one atom of thy paltry stuff. 
 That they are met is poetry enough. 
 536. love's 1818 ; Love's HBF, MS. 
 641. dyes 1818; dies HBF, MS. 
 
 663. Those fringed lids a constant blind : — Cf. i. 394, note 
 585. Mtnean : Etnean 1818. 
 
 639. Forth from a rugged arch . . . Came mother Cybele : — This wonder- 
 ful picture of Cybele has been supposed to have drawn its inspiration from 
 an engraving in Spence's Polymetis, but it was certainly suggested by 
 Sandys's translation of Ovid, Met. x. wherein Hippomenes and Atalanta 
 came to the "fane" of the "Mother of the gods" "obscured by dark 
 and secret shade" " a gloomy grot much like unto a cave" (The descrip- 
 tion of the place under the earth reached by Endymion is compared in 
 line 626 to " dusk places in times far aloof Cathedrals call'd "). They 
 pollute the shrine and are changed into lions whom 
 
 Cybel checks 
 With curbing bits, and yokes their stubborn necks. 
 A study of the draft and caiicelled readings shows still closer debts to 
 38
 
 434 JOHN KEATS 
 
 this passage. In 639 for " rugged " arch we read "gloomy," and for " dusk " 
 
 "dark," SLXid in 6^6-7:— 
 
 nervy tails 
 cowering their tufted brushes to the dust (original draft). 
 Cf. Their tufted tails whisk up the dust (Sandys). 
 
 The full reading of the earlier drafts was as follows. The first draft ran : — 
 About her majesty, and her pale brow 
 With turrets crown'd, which forward heavily bow 
 Weighing her chin to the breast. Four lions draw 
 The wheels in sluggish time — each toothed maw 
 Shut patiently — eyes hid in tawny veils — 
 Drooping about their paws, and nervy tails 
 Cowering their tufted brushes to the dust. 
 This was revised thus : — 
 
 About her majesty, and front death-pale 
 With turrets crown'd. Four tawny lions hale 
 The sluggish wheels ; solemn their closed maws 
 Their surly eyes half shut, their heavy paws 
 Uplifted lazily, and nervy tails 
 Vailing their tawny tufts. 
 Cf. also Spenser, Faerie Queene, iv. 2. 28. 
 
 685. So sad, so melancholy, so bereft : — Cf. the sonnet On a Dream 
 (p. 285) :— 
 
 So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft. 
 This parallel was noted by Rossetti. 
 
 688. dancing before the morning gates of heaven : — A reference to the 
 Hours or Seasons who kept the gate of clouds at the entrance of Olym- 
 pus, and with the Graces attended upon Venus. Cf. Milton, Paradise 
 Lost, iv. 266-68 :— 
 
 Universal Pan 
 Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance 
 Led on th' Eternal Spring. 
 In Chapman's Homeric Hymn to Apollo, well known to Keats, they 
 are represented as dancing before the sun god : — 
 
 But here the fair haired Graces, the wise Hours 
 Harmonia, Hebe, and sweet Venus' powers 
 Danced, and each other's palm to palm did cling. 
 And in the description of the palace of Sol with which Ovid opens bk. ii. 
 of the Met. we read (in Sandys), 
 
 Sol clothed in purple sits upon a throne 
 Which clearly with translucent Emralds shone : 
 With equall-raigning Houres on either hand. 
 The Days, the Months, the Yeares, the Ages stand. 
 The fragrant Spring with flowry chaplet crown'd 
 Wheateares, the brows of naked Summer bound :
 
 ENDYMION, BK. II.— NOTES 435 
 
 Rich Autumue smear'd with crusht Lyaeus blood ; 
 Next hoary headed Winter quivering stood. 
 This last passage was obviously in Keats's mind when he wrote the 
 lines about the Hours in bk. iv. 420-25, q.v. 
 
 690. old At las' children: — i.e. the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas by Pleione, 
 one of the Oceanides. They, too, dance before the morning sun. Cf. 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, vii. 373 : — 
 
 the gray 
 Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danc'd 
 Shedding sweet influence. 
 
 691. One of shell-winding Triton's bright hair'd daughters?: — A clear 
 reminiscence of Milton, Comus, 865— "scaly Triton's winding shell". It 
 is noticeable, however, that Keats alters the meaning of the epithet wind- 
 ing and applies it not to the shell as Milton in Comus, but to Triton 
 himself, perhaps with a recollection of Lycidas, 28, where the gray-fly 
 winds her sultry horn. Triton was the son of Neptune and Amphitrite, 
 whose duty was to stir or calm the waves by blasts upon his shell. In 
 the passage about the Hours both in Ovid {Met. ii.) aud Milton {Paradise 
 Lost, iv.) Triton is also mentioned ; hence perhaps his presence here. 
 
 715. doting H, HBF ; doating 1818. 
 
 793. vailed MS., HBF ; veiled 1818, etc. 
 
 823, 824. Is grief contain d In the very deeps of pleasure : — An anticipa- 
 tion of the idea upon which Keats wrote his great Ode on Melancholy : — 
 Ay, in the very temple of Delight 
 Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine. 
 The reading in the draft, which gives "shrine" for "deeps," draws the 
 passages still closer together. 
 
 830. Long ago 'twas told, etc. : — On Keats's instinctive feeling for the 
 natural origin of all the great classical stories cf. I stood tip-toe, 123, and note. 
 
 841. ears Whose tips are glowing hot : — Mr. Forman compares with 
 Lycidas, 76, 77 : — 
 
 But not the praise, 
 Phoebus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears. 
 Keats, therefore, probably means by his line "those who are eager to 
 gain poetic fame". But even so the passage is obscure. 
 
 842. centinel stars : — The spelling of " centinel " suggests an Elizabethan 
 source, but the phrase is really Campbell's. Cf. Soldier's Dream (publ. 
 1804), "And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky". 
 
 866. ^olian : Eolian 1818. 
 
 875. Alecto, daughter of Nox, and the most terrible of all the Furies. 
 It was " A lecto with swolne snakes and Stygian fire " that raised tierce passion 
 in Myrrha's breast (Ovid, Met. x., Sandys) ; and later she asks herself:— 
 Nor fearst the Furies with their hissing haire 
 Who on the faces of the guilty stare 
 With dreadful toi ches .''
 
 436 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Keats may have remembered that it is Alecto whom Juno sends (Vergil, 
 Aen. vii. 324) to stir up war between the Trojans and Latins. 
 
 876. Hermes' pipe : — Hermes was sent by Zeus to carry off lo who had 
 been changed by Hera into a cow, and was guarded by the hundred-eyed 
 Argos. He succeeded in lulling Argos to sleep by the music of his flute, 
 and after cutting off his head returned with lo. Mr. Forman suggests that 
 the vivid impression made upon Keats by this story was due to the reading 
 of Gary's Dante (Purgatory, canto xxxii.), for on the fly leaf of his copy he 
 wrote the sonnet As Hermes once, etc. (q.v. p. 285). But it is doubtful 
 whether Keats, when he wrote bk. ii. of Endymion, had read much Dante. 
 His interest in Dante was chiefly stimulated by Bailey and seems to have 
 begun a little later. Anyhow the story was known to him elsewhere, both, 
 as Mr. Forman points out, in Ovid, Met. i., where it is treated in detail, 
 and in Milton's description of the cherubim : — 
 
 four faces each 
 Had, like a double Janus, all thir shape 
 Spangl'd with eyes more numerous then those 
 Oi Argus, and more wakeful then to drouze, 
 Charm'd with Arcadian Pipe, the Pastoral Reed 
 Of Hermes, or his opiate Rod, 
 
 — Paradise Lost, xi. 128-33. 
 936. Arethusa, a nymph in attendance on Diana, was loved by Alpheus 
 a river god in whose stream she was bathing ; she fled his pursuit and 
 calling upon Diana for help was changed into a stream. The story is 
 told at length in Ovid, Met. v., whence Keats borrowed it. Its intro- 
 duction into Endymion was doubtless in a measure suggested by the 
 part played by Diana — its significance in the allegory of the poem has 
 already been pointed out (vide Introduction, p. xl). It is by his sympathy 
 with the lovers that he enters into the third stage of his pilgrimage- 
 beneath the sea, and advances nearer to the consummation of his own quest. 
 960. In the 1818 edition inverted commas stand at the end of this line 
 and beginning of 961, and after "criminal" and before "Alas" in 963. 
 
 994. more unseen Than Saturn in his exile : — A first suggestion of the 
 picture with which Hyperion opens. 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 The exordium to this book is eminently characteristic of Keats both at 
 his worst and at his best. Beginning in an attack upon the Tory govern- 
 ment (with a thought, doubtless, of the critics who supported it), written in 
 a confused jumble of inappropriate metaphors that read with ludicrous 
 effect, it develops into his most marvellous interpretation of the beauty of 
 the moon, described with delicate observation and the subtlest musical 
 cadence. 
 
 7. Fire-branded foxes :—Cf. Book of Judges, xv. 4, 6. Keats rarely draws
 
 ENDYMION, BK. III.— NOTES 437 
 
 upon the Bible for suggestions of phrase or idea, but c/. Sleep and Poetry, 
 197 ; Endymion, iv. 877 ; Isabella, xxxiii. ; Fall of Hyperion, i. 75. 
 
 54. a holier din : — The elevation of the meaning of a commonplace 
 word, generally used with a contemptuous significance, may perhaps be 
 attributed to the influence of Wordsworth, who in the White Doe of Rhyl- 
 stone alludes to the "fervent din " of the music in the abbey. 
 
 71. And Tellus feels his forehead's cumbrous load: — i.e. the forehead of 
 Oceanus, but it was not so understood by the printer, who gave her in the 
 first edition ; and though the mistake was corrected in the errata at the end 
 of the volume Mr. W. T. Arnold notes tliis as one of the examples of Keats's 
 ignorance and compares with line 918, where also he misjudges Keats. He 
 imagines that the his is meant to refer to Tellus ; but this argues a mis- 
 conception of the picture, which is of huge moonlit billows thundering 
 in upon the shore that seems to tremble at their weight — a magnificent 
 conclusion to Keats's presentation of the varied splendours of the moon. 
 78. Vesper ; " amorous glow-worm of the sky " (Ode to Psyche, 27) : — 
 A name given to Venus as the evening star. 
 
 80. How chang'd, how full of ache, how gone in woe ! : — The cadence of 
 this line may have been caught from a line which Keats had read in 
 Sandys's commentary on Ovid, Met. iv. : — 
 
 How pale they look, how wither' d, how forlorn. 
 97. A series of classical reminiscences particularly dear to the Eliza- 
 bethans. Cf. e.g. Marlowe's Hero and Leander ; for Orpheus, Milton 
 L' Allegro and // Penseroso, and for Pluto The Winter's Tale, iv. 4. 116-18, 
 and Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 269-72 (Keats's favourite passage) : — 
 
 Proserpin gathring flours 
 Her self a fairer Floure by gloomie Dis 
 Was gatherd, which cost Ceres all that pain 
 To seek her through the world. 
 120-36. Mr. Sidney Colviu (EML, p. 103) notices that " the description 
 of the sunk treasures cumbering the ocean floor challenges comparison, 
 not all unequally, with the famous similar passage in Shakespeare's 
 Richard III. ". Cf. Richard III., i. 4. 21-33. 
 
 133. A ncient Nox . . . behemoth . . . leviathan : — Milton is suggested 
 by the application of the epithet ancient to Night (cf. Paradise Lost, ii. 
 970, 986) and by his allusions to behemoth (Paradise Lost, vii. 471) and 
 leviathan (Paradise Lost, vii. 412). It was principally due to the influence 
 of Bailey that Keats first came to appreciate the genius of Paradise Lost, 
 so that it is especially interesting to notice in this third book, written at 
 Oxford in Bailey's company, several Miltonic phrases and expressions 
 which we might not, perhaps, expect to find in his work at so early a date. 
 Cf. the Miltonic use of the indefinite adjective in 693 and 867 to express 
 limitless space. It should, however, be noted that the word vast in this 
 sense is to be found not in Milton but in Shakespeare (Pericles, iii. 1. 1). 
 Cf. also notes to iii. 282, 615 ; iv. 365, etc.
 
 438 JOHN KEATS 
 
 142. Mr. Robert Bridges compares this j)assa^e with Wordsworth's 
 account of the influence of nature upon his childhood. A parallel even 
 more forcible is to be found in the account which Coleridge gives (Night- 
 ingale, 98-105) of the effect of the moon upon his own child : — 
 
 I deem it wise 
 To make him Nature's playmate. He knows well 
 The evening star : and once when he awoke 
 In most distressful mood (some inward pain 
 Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream) 
 I hurried with him to our orchardplot, 
 And he beholds the moon, and hushed at once 
 Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently 
 While his fair eyes that swam with undropt tears 
 Did glitter in the yellow moonbeam. 
 180. orby : — The form of the word throws an interesting light on 
 Keats's love of -y adjectives ; for in the draft he wrote orbed. The form 
 orby is Chapman's. 
 
 192. A n old man sitting calm and peacefully : — The episode of Glaucus and 
 Scylla, introduced by Keats in order to develop still further his conception 
 that only after active sympathy with the fate of others could Endymion 
 realise his aspirations, was probably suggested to him by his reading of 
 Ovid, Met. xiii., xxiv. Keats treats the story, however, with absolute 
 freedom. In Ovid Glaucus, enamoured of Scylla, applies to Circe for aid ; 
 Circe proffers her own love instead, is spurned by Glaucus, and in revenge 
 turns Scylla into a monster with a hundred barking mouths. Keats, desir- 
 ing to read more meaning into his version, makes Glaucus submit to the 
 charms of Circe, forgetting for the time his allegiance to Scylla. By 
 chance he discovers Circe among the beasts who were once, like himself, 
 her lovers, and realises his true condition. Then Circe, enraged, sends 
 Scylla into a deathlike trance and casts a spell of palsied age upon Glaucus. 
 Thus Keats makes the punishment of Glaucus the result of his temporary 
 infidelity, perhaps following out the idea suggested in the introductory 
 poem in Sandys which contrasts with a baser passion the powerful love of 
 Nature that leads to Fame and Glory, adding 
 
 But who forsake that faire Intelliirence 
 To follow Passion and Voluptuous sence 
 Such, charm'd by Circe's luxurie and ease. 
 Themselves deforme. 
 Glaucus is punished by the apparent death of Scylla and the paralysis 
 in himself of all power of advance, and is only saved by the sympathetic 
 strength of Endymion who is in pursuit of the ideal. Thus whilst Endymion 
 is given an opportunity of rising out of his own fatal self-absorption to help 
 another, the fate of Glaucus throws additional light upon the problem 
 which is before Keats's mind all through the poem — the relation of love 
 in its different forms to higher ambitions of the soul. In Ovid Glaucus
 
 ENDYMION, BK. III.— NOTES 439 
 
 eats a herb which, he has noticed, gives life to the fishes he has caught, and 
 thereby he becomes a god. In Keats he thirsts for a larger life and like 
 Endymion pursues with love a maid above him ; whilst his temporary 
 infidelity to Scylla affords a contrast with the supposed infidelity of 
 Endymion to Cynthia presented in bk. iv. 
 
 202. This line, not in 1818 edition, was first restored to the text from 
 the MS. by Mr. Buxton Forman. 
 
 244. giant . . . That writhes about the roots of Sicily : — " It is not clear 
 whether the reference is to Briareus or Enceladus, since both were sup- 
 posed to have been imprisoned under Mount Etna" (HBP"). Keats is 
 probably thinking of Enceladus, whom he generally identifies with 
 Typhon, though he makes two persons of them in Hyperion {q.v.), trans- 
 ferring however the powers of Typhon to Enceladus. " Typhon from 
 earth's gloomy entrails raised " is mentioned in a passage from Sandys's 
 Ovid of which Keats made clear use in Hyperion, ii. 70-72. He may also 
 have remembered translating from Vergil, Aeneid, iii. 577-82, the lines: — 
 Fama est Enceladi semiustum fulmine corpus 
 Urgeri mole hac, ingentemque insuper Aetnam 
 Impositam ruptis flammam expirare caminis, 
 Et fessum quotiens mutet latus, intremere omnem 
 Murmure Trinacriam et caelum subtexere fumo. 
 
 It is noticeable also that Ovid in the very passage upon which Keats 
 is drawing in this book, mentions Glaucus in his search for Circe as 
 passing 
 
 High Aetna on the jaws of Typhon cast. 
 
 This reference makes the allusion certain. Briareus, on the other 
 hand, is a mere name to Keats. 
 
 282. Look'd high defiance : — Another phrase with a Miltonic ring, cf. 
 Paradise Lost, iv. 873, "in his look defiance lours". 
 
 301, 302. hadst thou never loved an unknown power, etc. : — It is by 
 reason of the high aspirations which guide Endymion's life that he is able 
 to save Glaucus. 
 
 364. ^thon : — Cf. note to Endymion, i. 550. 
 
 406. From where large Hercules wound up his story : — This awkward 
 and ambiguous line is probably an example of the way in which Keats 
 sometimes allowed his rhyme to lead his sense. To one who knew 
 Lycidas as well as Keats " promontory " naturally suggested " story " (cf. 
 Lycidas, 94, 95). The death of Hercules is told in Ovid, Met. ix. and 
 his labours alluded to. His last labour was to sustain heaven on his 
 shoulders, on which Sandys comments, " The fable goes how Atlas, who 
 sate on a mighty mountain and supported Heaven on his back, desired 
 Hercules, having heard of his surprising strength to ease him for a while 
 in bearing his burden ; who readily undertook it. Hercules," he adds, 
 " had travelled to the uttermost bounds of the earth to increase his know- 
 ledge by conferring with Atla5." Hence the point of the allusion here.
 
 440 JOHN KEATS 
 
 411. Circe was the daughter of Helios by Perse the Oceanid — Saadys 
 calls her Phcebean Circe. It was at ^aea, the island where she lived, 
 that Odysseus visited her (Odyssey, bk. x.) and Keats iu his description of 
 the transformation of her late lovers into beasts is rather drawing upon 
 Homer's description of her treatment of the followers of Odysseus than 
 upon Ovid, who confines his story to her dealings with Glaucus and Scylla. 
 Keats would also remember the description of Circe in Conms. 
 
 461. Amphion was the son of Zeus and Antiope and husband of Niobe 
 (c/. i. 337). Hermes presented him with a lyre, upon which he played so 
 beautifully that the stones moved of their own accord and without human 
 intervention built up the walls of Thebes. It is evident from this 
 passage, and still more from line 1002, that Keats, working from memory, 
 is confusing him with another mythical musician. Avion {cf. ii. 360). 
 Amphion had no connection with the sea. 
 
 .530. Python was the huge serpent that inhabited Parnassus and was 
 killed by Apollo (Ovid, Met. i.). Boreas, the North, and the most up- 
 roarious, wind. Cf. e.g. 'the ruffian Boreas' of Troilus and Cressida, 
 i. 3. 38, and the Masque in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy, i. 1, 
 where Cynthia asks that all the winds should be loosed : — 
 
 only Boreas 
 Too foul for our intention, as he was. 
 Still keep him fast chained. 
 645. ruddy drops: — Cf. Julius Ccesar, ii. 1. 289. "The ruddy drops 
 that visit my sad heart." 
 
 565. Into the dungeon core of that wild wood : — It is interesting to 
 notice that Milton uses the word dungeon to suggest the gloom of the im- 
 penetrable wood where his enchanter Comus lurks. In this close dungeon 
 of innumerous bowes. Comus, 349. 
 
 615. such hellish spite With dry cheek who can tell ? — The strange trans- 
 position in the order of words as well as the cadence of the sentence 
 forcibly recalls Milton, Paradise Lost, xi. 494, 495 : — 
 
 Sight so deform what heart of Rock could long 
 Drie-ey'd behold .'' 
 It is not at all in keeping with Keats's natural manner at this period. 
 Cf. note, line 133. 
 
 625. like a common weed 
 
 The sea-swell took her hair : — 
 These beautiful lines recall Sleep and Poetry, 376-80 : — 
 
 as when ocean 
 Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothness o'er 
 Its rocky marge, and balances once more 
 The patient weeds ; that now unshent by foam 
 Feel all about their undulating home. 
 663. ^olus : Eolus 1818 ; so in line 951. 
 811. Through HBF ; though 1818.
 
 ENDYMION, BK. III.— NOTES 441 
 
 835. The vivid use of the word shuulderd recalls Clarke's account of 
 Keats's admiration on first reading Spenser — " What an image that is — 
 ' sea-shouldering whales ' ! " The line in Spenser " Spring-headed Hydraes, 
 and sea-shouldering whales " is to be found in Faerie Queene, ii. 12. 23. 
 
 853. Paphian army, i.e., army of lovers. The isle of Paphos was 
 sacred to Venus. 
 
 859. veil their eyes Like callow eagles at the first sunrise: — ''This 
 simile must surely be a reminiscence of Perrin's Fables Amusantes or some 
 similar book used in Mr. Clarke's school. I remember the Fable of 
 the old eagle and her young stood first in the book I used at school " 
 (HBF). But surely an Elizabethan source would be at once more 
 likely and more inspiring ; cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, The Humourous 
 Lieutenant, i. 1 : — 
 
 The Royal Eagle 
 When she hath try'd her young ones 'gainst the sun 
 And found them right ; next teacheth them to prey. . . . 
 And cf. Spenser, Faerie Queene, i. 10. 47 : — 
 
 Yet wondrous quick and persant was his spright 
 As eagles eye, that can behold the sunne. 
 865. Beauty s paragon. Spenser, Faerie Queene, vii. 7. 59 : — 
 So Venus eeke, that goodly paragone. 
 So Drummond, Madrigal, iii., calls his lady " beauty's fairest paragon ". 
 The draft of this and the previous line reads : — 
 
 At his right hand stood winged Love, elate 
 And on his left Love's fairest mother sate. 
 899. Nais the mother of Glaucus, according to some authorities 
 beloved by Neptune. 
 
 918. Visit thou my Cythera : etc. : — Mr. Forman by restoring the draft 
 reading supplied by Woodhouse has freed Keats from the stigma cast 
 upon him by the text of previous printed editions. Visit my Cytherea, which 
 suggested to Mr. Arnold and others that Keats was not aware that Cythera 
 was the name of the island and Cytherea the epithet of Venus as its queen. 
 Fortunately we are not also obliged to incorporate with it the vulgar line 
 which closes the couplet in the draft : — 
 
 Visit thou my Cithera : thou wilt find 
 Cupid a treasure, my Adonis kind. 
 927, 928. pleach' d .—Mr. W. T. Arnold first noticed that Keats had 
 probably borrowed this word from Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, 
 iii. 1. 7- The matter is made doubly certain by the fact that a few lines 
 later Shakespeare also uses the word " coverture " introduced by Keats 
 into his next line. 
 
 973. yEolian : Eolian 1818. So in line 1000, the 1818 edition reads 
 Egean for ^gean. 
 
 979. when thou hast smil'd : — So of the moon in iii. 144, " I oft have 
 dried my tears when thou hast smil'd ".
 
 442 JOHN KEATS 
 
 994-1004. Oceanus. The mention of Oceanus here, though his 
 kingdom had already passed away from him, may have been suggested by 
 the somewhat parallel scene of the marriage of the Thames and the 
 Medway in Spenser, Faerie Queene, iv. 11. 18: — 
 Next came the aged Ocean, and his Dame 
 Old Tcthys, th' oldest two of all the rest ; 
 For all the rest of those two parents came, 
 Which afterwards both sea and land possest : 
 Of all which Nereus, th' eldest, and the best, 
 Did first proceed, then which none more upright, 
 Ne more sincere in word and deed profest ; 
 Most voide of guile, most free from fowle despight, 
 Doing him selfe, and teaching others to doe right. 
 Nereus is the " JEgean seer" of line 1000, as Spenser tells us in his 
 next stanza "expert in prophesies," the reference to Nereus following, 
 in Keats as in Spenser, upon a reference to Oceanus. It is noticeable also 
 that a few stanzas later Spenser brings Arion on to the scene and tells his 
 history — in Keats by error of memory or i^lip of pen Antphion (but c/. note 
 to 1. 461). " The gray-eyed Doris " Spenser alludes to in stanza 48 as one 
 of the Nereides, i.e. the daughter and not the wife of Nereus, but Ovid, 
 Met. ii. init., a passage we know that Keats studied in Sandys very care- 
 fully (vide Hyperion, ii. 21, note) gives us : — 
 
 Grey Doris and her daughters heavenly faire. 
 Some sit on Rocks, and dry their sea-greene haire. 
 And on Doris Sandys gives a marginal note. " Wife of Nereus and 
 mother to the sea nymphs". Thetis Spenser does not mention in this 
 passage, but the whole feast is presided over as in Keats by Neptune who 
 is accompanied by his queen Ampliitrite (iv. 11. 11) in a passage which 
 offers several points of comparison with the lines of Keats : — 
 First came great Neptune with his three forkt mace 
 That rules the Seas, and makes them rise or fall ; (cf. 945-50). 
 His dewy lockes did drop with brine apace (cf. 890-2). 
 Under his Diademe imperiall : 
 And by his side his Queene with coronall 
 Fair Amphitrite, most divinely faire, (cf. 1003). 
 Whose yvorie shoulders weren covered all, 
 As with a robe, with her owne silver haire. 
 And deckt with pearles, which th' Indian seas for her prepaire (cf. 
 1003). 
 These marched farre afore the other crew : 
 And all the way before them as they went, 
 Triton his trompet shrill before them blew (cf. 888). 
 For goodly triumph and great jollyment 
 That made the rocks to roare, as they were rent. (cf. 888). 
 Into this scene Glaucus also is introduced, though playing a subordin-
 
 ENDYMION, BK. IV.— NOTES 443 
 
 ate part, whilst Venus, introduced by Keats for purposes of his own story, 
 has no raison d'etre in Spenser's scene, and is therefore absent. 
 
 This similarity is extraordinarily interesting as showing Keats's deep 
 knowledge of Spenser, especially where he deals with classical themes. 
 It is not in the least to be supposed that he definitely copied the passage — 
 the mistake as to Amphion would hardly have occurred in that case — but 
 it had sunk into his mind, so that, when desirous of representing a similar 
 scene himself, he drew upon it unconsciously. A comparison between the 
 two passages as independent treatments of a similar theme would have 
 interesting results. Spenser's picture is of a far more sustained beauty 
 and is nowhere marred by the faults of taste from which the work of 
 Keats at this period is never free for any long space. At the same time 
 Keats rises in places to a higher plane of emotion, and where Spenser is 
 content with presenting a picture of serene beauty, Keats is more dramatic, 
 and realises more fully the human significance in which the legends took 
 their rise. 
 
 1016. After this line the MS. originally reads : — 
 
 They gave him nectar — shed bright drops, and strove 
 
 Long time in vain. At last they interwove 
 
 Their cradling arms, and carefully conveyed 
 
 His body towards a quiet bowery shade. 
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 This book is so important to Keats's conception of the relation which 
 the pursuit of ideal beauty and truth bears to actual life, that it will, per- 
 haps, be well to give some analysis of its development, with indications 
 as to the probable significance of the allegory. 
 
 At the end of Book III. Endymion is rewarded for his sympathy with 
 Glaucus and Scylla by a renewed vision of Cynthia and a promise of eternal 
 happiness. He is roused from his prayers of thanksgiving by the voice of 
 an Indian maiden lamenting her lost lover (iv. 86). She typifies intense 
 human love, which is keenest when brought into being in sorrow, and 
 Endymion is all the more susceptible to it by reason of his awakened 
 human sympathy, so that he cannot choose but love her, and strive to con- 
 sole her in her grief (124 ; cf. Sleep and Poetry, 124, 125, where " the agonies 
 of human hearts " is represented as an essential to the poet's development, 
 and the Fall of Hyperion, i. 147-49). Yet in loving her he feels that he is 
 disloyal to Cynthia, and his heart is " cut in twain " between his love for the 
 actual and the ideal (85-97). The maiden urges upon him that his impulse 
 to human love is the just law of his being, that all nature incites to it (130), 
 but she fails to ease his heart of its perplexity, and only after she has sung 
 to him the Ode to Sorrow, laying stress again on sorrow as the surest bond 
 of human love, does she win him to surrender. Even then, as he submits to 
 her call, he hears a warning note, Woe to Endymion ! sound through the
 
 444 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 forest (321). Then two heavenly steeds appear and bear the lovers through 
 the air (347). A comparison with Sleep and Poetry (125-54) suggests that 
 these steeds are meant to typify the rekindling of the poet's imagination 
 — now called upon to act on a mind which has become exquisitely sensitive 
 to deep human passion. A vision follows naturally upon this state of mind. 
 The steeds bear them through the realm of sleep (370), and, as they pass, 
 Morpheus dreams of Endymion's coming apotheosis (375-89), whilst En- 
 dymiou himself has a vision of like import (406-33). Then, while his 
 dream of happiness still retains its reality to him and Cynthia still seems 
 to be bending over him, he is conscious of the presence of his human lover 
 by his side (440), and he is again lost in perplexity ; though as the im- 
 agination loses vitality the ideal seems to slip from him and the actual 
 once more asserts her supremacy (470). He rekindles his imagination to 
 a more conscious effort (481, " he roused the steeds "), and as he beholds 
 the beauty of the moon and once more the ideal regains its hold upon him, 
 his human love begins to fade ; he cannot take her with him ; her steed 
 drops to earth, and he is left alone (512). And now for the time he seems 
 to have lost both. His imagination which has separated him from his 
 human love is not vital enough to compensate for her loss — without her 
 lacks its necessary inspiration ; whereas without the presence of the ideal 
 in his heart, even his earthly love proves herself a shadow. There follows 
 a state of spiritual exhaustion (525-51) in which he has neither strength to 
 feel the loss nor hope to surmount it, nor alertness of mind to I'ealise the 
 joy that awaits him in the future (610). From this state he reaches earth 
 and once more finds his human love. Overcome with the intensity of his 
 passion he persuades himself that he has found the root of his mistake. 
 He should not have attempted to reconcile a deep sympathy with the 
 realities of life with impossible aspirations — rather should he avoid both 
 and live in an exquisite enjoyment of the present (the peculiar temptation 
 of the poet, cf. Sleep and Poetry, 100-21, and Introduction to Fall of 
 Hyperion, p. 515) recognising the nobility of his aspirations, but postponing 
 them to another world (665). He tries to satisfy his imagination by draw- 
 ing a picture of such an existence (670-720). But his fancies are " vain 
 and crude" (722). And the maiden only gives voice to his own inner 
 feeling when she tells him that she may not be his upon these terms. 
 Endymion is destined for higher things (763). 
 
 Once more he is in bitter perplexity. But now at last he realises 
 that he is at home, in Caria — i.e. he becomes conscious of the existence 
 around him of that large world of reality which he had deserted in 
 his pursuit of the ideal. Peona comes forward to meet him (800). She 
 typifies the perfection of the practical as opposed to the imaginative mind, 
 one of those who, contented with fulfilling their sphere in the world of 
 action : — 
 
 seek no wonder but the human face. 
 No music but a happy-noted voice {Fall of Hyperion, i. 163, 164).
 
 ENDYMION, BK. IV.— NOTES 445 
 
 Peoiia calls upon him to fulfil his place in the world, and, seeing the 
 maiden in his company, rejoices that he is also to share the pleasures of 
 intense human love (856). But Endymion has at last realised wherein 
 his mistake has lain. His passion for the maiden, like his quest for the ideal, 
 has been too self-absorbed, he has allowed it to narrow his outlook, and 
 only when he has renounced this passion in a wider love of humanity can 
 he truly attain his goal. And so he will renounce his Indian maid, giving 
 her to the care of his sister, and devote his life to that study which shall 
 at once foster his imagination and minister to the real needs of the world 
 (860-64). The pleasures which his sister has held out to him are real 
 enough for those who have no thirstings after the imaginative life (851, 
 862 ; cf. the contrast developed in the Fall of Hyperion (i. 161-81) between 
 the man of action and the dreamer), but such a life is impossible for him 
 (863-57). His renunciation costs him such anguish that for the time life 
 seems impossible to him and a state of apathy follows, in which he longs 
 for death (960) ; but the necessary purification of his soul has been effected. 
 He is spiritualised (992), and thus at last the different impulses of his nature 
 are reconciled and he is at peace. 
 
 The whole book should be compared with Sleep and Poetry and with the 
 Fall of Hyperion. Cf. also Endymion, i. 769, etc., and notes. The view 
 here presented of the development of the poet's mind in its search for ideal 
 beauty and truth is fully borne out by many passages in the Letters. 
 
 1-29. This invocation to the Muse of English poetry, who sits '' rapt in 
 deep prophetic solitude " till the poets of the East, of Greece, Rome and 
 Italy have sung their songs, should be compared with Keats's other 
 utterances upon English poetry and his own genius, especially with the 
 famous passage in Sleep and Poetry (163-312). Here, as in Sleep and Poetry, 
 there is a deep recognition of the greatness of the past, mingled with a 
 feeling of despondency at the present, the same ambition for himself 
 blended with that humility which naturally accompanies his abiding rever- 
 ence for " the eternal Being, the Principle of Beauty and the Memory 
 of great Men ". Particularly interesting is the tribute to Dante (15) to 
 whom Keats had just been introduced, in the version of Gary, by his friend 
 Bailey. The idea of tracing the genius of poetry through Greece, Rome 
 and Italy to England may have been suggested to Keats by Gray's Pro- 
 gress of Poesy. 
 
 QQ. Hermes' wand : — The magic Caduceus, " opiate rod " of Milton, 
 Paradise Lost, xi. 133; cf. Endymion, i. 662, note, ii. 876 ; and Lamia, i. 
 133. 
 
 68. Hyacinthus : — Cf. i. 328, and note. 
 
 97. for them in twain MS. reading, restored by HBF ; in twain for 
 them 1818, etc. 
 
 111. Thou art my executioner : — A reminiscence of the words of Phoebe 
 to her lover Silvius in As You Like It, ill. 5. 8, "I would not be thy 
 executioner".
 
 446 JOHN KEATS 
 
 136-45. lu place of these lines the draft reads : — 
 
 " Canst thou do so ? Is there no balm, no cure 
 
 Could not a beckoning Hebe soon allure 
 
 Thee into Paradise ? What sorrowing 
 
 So weighs thee down what utmost woe could bring 
 
 This madness — Sit thee down by me, and ease 
 
 Thine heart in whispers — haply by degrees 
 
 I may find out some soothing medicine." — 
 
 " Dear Lady," said Endymion, " I pine, 
 
 I die — the tender accents thou hast spoken 
 
 Have finish'd all — my heart is lost and broken. 
 
 That I may pass in patience still speak : 
 
 Let me have music dying, and I seek 
 
 No more delight — I bid adieu to all. 
 
 Didst thou not after other climates call 
 
 And murmur about Indian streams — now, now — 
 
 I listen, it may save me — O my vow — 
 
 Let me have music dying ! " The ladye 
 
 Sitting beneath the midmost forest tree 
 
 With tears of pity sang this roundelay — 
 167, 168. A lover would not tread 
 A cowslip on the head : — 
 A reminiscence of Sabrina's song (Camus, 898-900) : — 
 Thus I set my printless feet 
 O're the Cowslips Velvet head, 
 That bends not as I tread. 
 185. Brimming the water-lily cups with tears : — An echo of Lycidas, 
 150, " And DaflFadillies fill their cups with tears ". The music and cadence 
 of Milton's earlier poems were evidently running in Keats's head at the 
 time that he wrote this Ode. C/. the sound of 266, "And all his priesthood 
 moans," with Lycidas, 48, "And all their echoes mourn," and " To the silver 
 cymbals' ring," with Ode on the Nativity, 208, " In vain with cymbals ring ". 
 In his use of the short line of three beats Keats is driven back of necessity 
 upon his old master (c/. / stood tip-toe, 48, note), and his alternation of short 
 lines with decasyllabics gains much of the metrical charm of Milton's 
 Ode on the Nativity. That this poem was in his mind seems additionally 
 probable not only from his use of the epithet Osirian, but from the obvious 
 parallelism in idea between lines 267-67 and stanzas xix.-xxv. of Milton's 
 Ode, which tell how all the heathen deities vail their might before the 
 infant Christ. For other Miltonisms in this book cf. 365, note. 
 
 193. This marvellous picture of Bacchus and his crew " is in fact the 
 Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian in the National Gallery, translated into 
 verse " (Houghton). Keats had already made use of it in Sleep and Poetry 
 (335) where he vividly describes the picture. The conquest of the East 
 by Bacchus, which gives suitability to his introduction into the roundelay
 
 ENDYMION, BK. IV.— NOTES 447 
 
 sung- by the Indian maid, is suggested by Keats in a passage glowing with 
 all the colour of the East. Lempriere asserts that Bacchus is the Osiris 
 of the Egyptians and that he was drawn by lions and tigers, but even here 
 it is probable that where Keats is not drawing entirely on his imagination, 
 he is developing suggestions which are to be found in Ovid, Met. iii. and 
 iv., the passage which was also (with Carmen Ixiv. of Catullus) the inspira- 
 tion of Titian's picture. The more important lines are thus rendered by 
 Sandys : — 
 
 The dames and Maids from usual labour rest 
 That wrapt in skins, their hair-laces unbound 
 And dangling Tresses with wild Ivy crown'd 
 They leavy speares assume. . . . 
 
 The Matrons and new-married wives obey : 
 Their webs their unspun wool aside they lay. 
 In the lines which follow Bacchus is thus addressed : — 
 
 Thy conquests through the Orient are renown'd 
 Where tawny India is by Ganges bound 
 . . . Thou hold'st in awe 
 The spotted lynxes, which thy chariot draw 
 Light Bacchides, and skipping Satyrs follow. 
 Whilst old Silenus, reeling still doth hollow : 
 Who weakly hangs upon his tardy Asse. 
 What place so'ere thou entrest, sounding brasse, 
 Loud Sacbuts, Tymbrels, the confused cryes 
 Of Youths and Women, pierce the marble skyes. 
 Titian's Bacchus and A riadne is also finely described by Lamb, Essays 
 of Elia — Barrenness of the imaginative faculty in the productions of modern art. 
 221. Followed originally by the line : " We follow Bacchus from a far 
 country ". 
 
 260. Nor care for wind and tide : — A line recalling the mysterious motion 
 of the phantom ship in the Ancient Mariner " withouten wind withouten 
 tide". Another slight coincidence occurs in the next stanza where 
 Coleridge tells us that "the western wave was all aflame". Keats uses 
 the same phrase to describe the faces of the Bacchanals (1. 201). In the 
 draft, after line 136, comes a passage, in which Keats uses the word ladye 
 with accent on the last syllable, and Mr. Forman notices that " its use 
 was defended by Coleridge ". . . . See the Ballad of the Dark Ladye. 
 This accentuation is retained by Keats in line 886, whilst the line which 
 stood originally after 221 (vide previous note) again gives a Coleridgian ac- 
 centuation {cf. A ncient Mariner, 570, " all in my own countree"). Similarly 
 as in the Ancient Mariner we read that the sun was "no bigger than the 
 moon," so in lines 497, 498 : — 
 
 The moon put forth a little diamond peak. 
 No bigger than an unobserved star.
 
 448 JOHN KEATS 
 
 and the passage is itself more suggestive of Coleridge than the mere 
 parallelism of a commonplace phrase would suggest (c/. A ncient Mariner, 
 209-12). Each of these parallels is trivial in itself, but if taken together 
 they show that Keats had been reading Coleridge, and are signiiicant 
 examples of the manner in which the books that he read gained an 
 irresistible hold over him. And proof is here given external evidence, for 
 among his letters we find the following, dated November, 1817, i.e. exactly 
 when he was writing the fourth book of Endymion : — 
 
 " My dear Dilke, Mrs. Dilke or Mr. W. Dilke, whoever of you shall 
 receive this present, have the kindness to send per bearer " Sibylline 
 Leaves," and your petitioner shall ever pray as in duty bound. Given 
 under my hand this Wednesday morning of November, 1817, 
 
 " John Keats. 
 " Vivat Rex et Regina — amen." 
 
 From the passages quoted above we may conjecture that the volume was 
 sent. 
 
 364. Muse of my native land, am I inspir'd ? : — An unfortunate line that 
 was seized upon for ridicule, in itself quite just, by a contemporary 
 review. 
 
 362-66. The presence of the word snujf in Hyperion is explained by 
 critics as showing the influence of Milton on that poem (c/. Paradise Lost, 
 X. 272. " He snuffed the smell of mortal change on earth "). Its pres- 
 ence here goes perhaps to swell the evidence afforded in these notes that 
 Milton's influence upon Keats was far more general than is often supposed. 
 Cimmerian {2>15) is of course a reminiscence of the Cimmerian desert of 
 L' Allegro (10) whilst the treatment of sleep in lines 370-85 recalls 
 
 the drowsie frighted steeds 
 That draw the litter of close-curtain'd-sleep. 
 
 — Comus, 553, 554. 
 Perhaps also 426 " To sway their floating morris " may be a reminiscence 
 oi Comus, 116, the "wavering Morrice". 
 
 392-97. An interesting passage in connection with Keats's treatment 
 of Nature ; lines 391-93 may be placed with / stood tip-toe, 72-76, as a 
 vivid reminiscence of his own childhood " when he frequently loitered 
 over a rail of a foot bridge that spanned ... a little brook near Ed- 
 monton" (Clarke). The reference to Skiddaw, as Mr. Arnold pointed 
 out, is a purely literary reminiscence, and must be regarded as a tribute 
 to Wordsworth, for at that time Keats had not visited the Lakes. 
 
 400. Endymion's dream suggests the identity of Diana and the Indian 
 maiden, though he does not realise its significance. In his delineation of 
 the dream Keats introduces the well-known traditional characteristics of 
 the different gods and goddesses: the peacocks of Juno, the shield of 
 Pallas, the thunderbolt of Jove, the goblet of Hebe, goddess of youth, 
 and the bugle, attribute of Diana in her r6le of huntress queen. For the
 
 ENDYMION, BK. IV.— NOTES 449 
 
 source of the lines on the Seasons, etc., c/. ii. 688, note, and also Thomson's 
 Seasons, Summer, 120: — 
 
 round thy beaming car. 
 High-seen, the Seasons lead, in sprightly dance 
 Harmonious knit, the rosy-fingered Hours, 
 The Zephyrs floating loose, the timely rains, 
 Of bloom ethereal the light-footed dews 
 And, softened into joy, the surly storms. 
 For the reference to Icarus in 442, cf. Sleep and Poetry, 303. 
 
 429, 430. its mistress' lips, etc. : — These two lines, weak as they are, 
 show an unmistakable improvement on those which stood in the MS. : — 
 Its Mistress' Lips ? Not thou ? Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah ! 
 'Tis Dian's, here she comes, look out afar. 
 486. silverly MS., HBF ; silvery 1818. 
 
 510. The absence of a rhyme to this line is unaccounted for. 
 536. Semele the mother of Bacchus by Jove. Hence Keats supposes 
 that she must have quaffed delicious draughts before his birth. 
 548. led MS., HBF ; let 1818. 
 
 648. This Cave of Quietude : — " There could not be a truer description 
 of apathy " (Mrs. Owen, John Keats, a Study, p. 101). The whole descrip- 
 tion of the den of the soul's quiet seems made out of the real stuff of 
 experience, and stands out with a strange vividness from its vague and 
 somewhat fantastic surroundings. 
 
 567. Hesperus, the star of Evening : frequently, therefore, invoked in 
 epithalamia. Cf. Ben Jonsou's famous Epithalamion written for the 
 marriage of Lord Ramsay (1608), every stanza of which ends with the 
 line : — 
 
 Shine Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star ! 
 But there is an additional appropriateness in the introduction of Hesperus 
 here, for, as evening star, he was the natural forerunner of Diana herself. 
 Cf, Ben Jonson's well-known Hymtt to Diana : — 
 
 Queen and huntress, chaste and fair. 
 Now the sun is laid to sleep. 
 Seated in thy silver chair, 
 State in wonted manner keep. 
 Hesperus entreats thy light 
 Goddess excellently bright. 
 Zephyrus, "■ flowery Zephyrus," as Sandys calls him, was " the West 
 wind, the nourisher of life," and thus supposed to be enamoured of Flora, 
 the goddess of flowers and Spring. So in Paradise Lost, v. 16, Adam 
 addresses Eve 
 
 with voice 
 Milde, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes. 
 The rest of the song is a pure ebullition of Keats's fancy on the relations 
 of the signs of the Zodiac and the planets. Keats, apparently, was not 
 29
 
 450 JOHN KEATS 
 
 himself certain as to whether it had a clear enough hearing either upon 
 the situation he was describing, or upon the character of the different 
 planets ; for he sent the passage to Reynolds asking him to vote for it 
 pro or con {Letter to Reynolds, 22nd November, 1817). Keats seems to 
 have been interested in the astronomical application of ancient mythology, 
 for he bought later a copy of Hyginus, Audores Mythographi Latini and 
 made some use of it for Hyperion. Here he was probably drawing on the 
 commentary to Sandys's Ovid, and has no other object than to present the 
 signs of the Zodiac that are propitious to man as triumphing over those 
 which were regarded as hostile. Thus Castor and Pollux (the Gemini) 
 who are under the direction of Apollo are represented as subduing Leo 
 and the Bear, both hostile, and the Centaur, another hostile planet, is 
 also put to flight. 
 
 Aquarius, ''the winter sign of the zodiac, was the name given to Gany- 
 mede as a constellation. He was represented as a boy pouring wine out 
 of a goblet ; and because an abundance of raine is poured upon the earth 
 from the clouds when the Sunne is in that signe, he is said to be Jupiter's 
 Cup-bearer" (Sandys). Keats's lines are a development of this idea. 
 
 Andromeda, "bound to a rock for the pride of her mother Cassiope 
 who durst contend in beauty with the Nereides : for which a sea-monster 
 was sent by Neptune to infest the country " (Sandys, Met. iv. commen- 
 tary). Perseus, " Danae's son," slew the monster and freed Andromeda, 
 who was afterwards turned into a constellation. 
 
 .569. Followed in the MS. by two lines fortunately omitted in the 
 text ; — 
 
 He stay behind — he glad of lazy plea ? 
 Not he ! not he ! 
 611. Daphne fled the love of Apollo, and was changed into a laurel. 
 Ovid tells the story in Met. i. Cf. Spenser, Faerie Queene, iii. 11. 36. 
 632. to : too 1818. 
 
 651. cloudy phantasms, etc. : — A reminiscence of Comus, 204 : — 
 
 a thousand fantasies 
 Begin to throng into my memory 
 Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire. 
 And airy tongues, that syllable men's names 
 On Sands, and Shoars, and desert Wildernesses, 
 [tself, perhaps, indebted to the Faithful Shepherdess, i. 1. 112: — 
 Voices calling me in dead of night 
 To make me follow. 
 Mr. Forman refers ''for the explanation of this speech" to bk. ii., 
 199-214, where Endymion hears a voice from the deep cavern saying : — 
 
 He ne'er is crown'd 
 With immortality, who fears to follow 
 Where airy voices lead : so through the hollow. 
 The silent mysteries of earth, descend.
 
 ENDYMION, BK. IV.— NOTES 451 
 
 693. tarn : — The use of this word is another {vide 394) suggestion of 
 the influence of Wordsworth at this period. Tarn to the modern reader 
 is quite a familiar word, but it was at this time confined to the Lake 
 district, so that Wordsworth in his 1807 poems thought it necessary to 
 explain its meaning in a footnote, "a small Mere or Lake mostly high up 
 in the mountains ". Keats shows how he has been impressed by the superb 
 picture of Helvellyn in Fidelity : — 
 
 There sometimes does a leaping fish 
 Send through the tarn a lonely cheer ; 
 by allowing the word to pass, quite naturally, into his own vocabulary. 
 
 701. I'll kneel to Vesta, for a flame of fire :—Cf. Ovid, Met. xiv. (Sandys) 
 " Chaste Vesta with thy ever burning fire ". She was the Roman goddess 
 of the hearth. 
 
 713. Delphos, or as it is more commonly called by Keats, Delphi, was 
 the shrine from which the priestess of Apollo gave forth her prophecies. 
 Cf. i. 499 and the allusion in ii. 80-82. Milton, however, only used the 
 form Delphos, cf. the Ode on the Nativity (178) with which Keats was familiar 
 {cf. note to iv. 185), " steep of Delphos," and Paradise Regained, i. 458. 
 
 739. The rhymelessness of this line is unaccounted for. Mr. Forman's 
 reading " kisses gave," is, he tells us, a pencil insertion in the margin of 
 the MS. 
 
 756. Ask me no more! — An anticipation of a famous phrase usually 
 associated with Tennyson. Keats repeats it in a rejected reading of the 
 Cap and Bells, lix. 4. 
 
 764. lovelorn, siletit, wan : — A cadence which Keats caught from Chatter- 
 ton, and uses in one or two places. Cf. Eve of St. Agnes, ii., ''meagre, 
 barefoot, wan," and Hyperion, i. 18, note. 
 
 774. The subject of Hyperion is already in the poet's mind. For other 
 passages which suggest this cf. the treatment of Oceanus (iii. 994-98) and 
 the reference to "Titan's foe " (iv. 943), to " Saturnus' forelock," and " his 
 head shook with eternal palsy " (iv. 95G), oaths which could hardly have 
 occurred to Keats in this place if he had not already thought on the 
 subject of his next classical poem. 
 
 818, 819. There is in these lines a curious though vague suggestion of 
 Wordsworth. The first of them recalls the contrast in the Ode on Intima- 
 tions, etc., between the gladness of thoughtless childhood and the sobered 
 happiness of experience, and the expression " common day " recalls the 
 lines in the Prospectus to the Excursion where we are told of Paradise and 
 
 the Elysian groves that : — 
 
 the discerning intellect of Man, 
 
 When wedded to this goodly universe 
 
 In love and holy passion, shall find these 
 
 The simple produce of the common day. 
 
 Both these poems Keats had been studying deeply in September ; and in 
 
 Endymion, where he is attemoting to present his own conception of the 
 
 progress of the soul, Wordsworth's solution of the problem must often
 
 452 JOHN KEATS 
 
 have been in his mind. And this passage of Keats grows in significance 
 if it is considered in this relation. 
 
 878, 879. no little bird, Tender soever, hut is Jove's own care : — One of 
 the few passages in which (and here rather unfortunately) Keats is perhaps 
 indebted to the Bible. Cf. St. Matthew, x. 29. But it is more probable 
 that Keats is thinking of Hamlet, v. 1. 231, " we defy augury : there's 
 a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to 
 come : if it be not to come it will be now." 
 
 935. nor much it grieves To die, when summer dies on the cold sward, 
 Cf. Ode to the Nightingale, 6 and note. 
 
 953. Rhadamanthus, one of the "three sons of Jupiter ; who for their 
 justice were fained to judge the soules in another world " (Sandys, on 
 Ovid, Met. ix.). 
 
 970. Wan as primroses gather' d at midnight By chilly finger' d spring : — 
 A fine example of the manner in which Keats's imagination found its 
 material in a loving observation of Nature. Cf. Ode to Maia, and note. 
 The phrase " chilly-fingered spring " was probably suggested by Collins's 
 How sleep the brave, 3, " When Spring with dewy fingers cold ". 
 
 1003. Cf. I stood tip-toe, 141, 142. "On the smooth wind to realms 
 of wonderment ". 
 
 LAMIA, ISABELLA, THE EVE OF ST. AGNES AND OTHER 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems, as the volume 
 of 1820 was styled, contains, with the exception of a few sonnets and 
 short lyrics, all the best work of the eighteen months which extended 
 from April, 1818, to September, 1819. Beginning chronologically with 
 Isabella and ending with the Ode to A utumn it is surely the richest volume 
 ever produced in so short a time, and by a poet not yet twenty-five years 
 of age ; and it is upon this book that the claim of Keats " to be among 
 the English poets," ultimately rests. Towards the end of 1819 Keats 
 began to prepare it for the press, for in December he wrote to his sister : 
 " I have been very busy since I saw you, and shall be for some time, in 
 preparing some Poems to come out in the Spring ". The publication was 
 somewhat delayed, for in June we find him still occupied with the final 
 revision, and writing to Brown : " My book is coming out with very low 
 hopes, though not spirits, on my part. This shall be my last trial ; not 
 succeeding I shall try what I can do in the apothecary line," The volume 
 actually appeared about 10th July, and in the next month he wrote to 
 Brown : " My book has had good success among the literary people and 
 I believe has a moderate sale." A little later he writes again: "The 
 sale of my book is very slow though it has been very highly rated. One 
 of the causes I understand from diflFerent quarters, of the unpopularity of 
 this new book, and the others also, is the offence the ladies take at me. 
 On thinking the matter over, I am certain that 1 have said nothing in a 
 spirit to displease any woman I would care to please ; but still there is a
 
 LAMIA— NOTES 453 
 
 tendency to class women in my books with roses and sweetmeats, — they 
 never see themselves dominant." 
 
 Leigh Hunt wrote an excellent criticism of the volume in the Indicator 
 of 2nd and Oth August, and Jeffrey noticed it in the Edinburgh Review of 
 the same month, though he devoted most of his space to a consideration 
 of Endymion, which he had not criticised before. But the most interest- 
 ing criticism, perhaps, was that of Lamb in the New Times for 19th July 
 (vide note on Isabella, xlvi.). 
 
 On the Advertisement, vide Introduction to Hyperion, p. 487. 
 
 LAMIA 
 
 Lamia was plauned and a small part of it written before Keats left 
 Hampstead for Shanklin, at the end of June, 1819, for the language in 
 which he tells Reynolds on 12th July that he has " proceeded pretty well 
 with Lamia, finishing the first part which consists of about 400 lines" 
 proves that his correspondent knew something of the poem already. 
 Then he left the poem for more than a month ; for writing to Bailey on 
 15th August he records no more progress. Lamia is still " half finished ". 
 However he had concluded his work upon it by 5th September, when he 
 sent a specimen (ii. 122-45) to his publisher, Taylor. Keats himself 
 regarded Lamia as the most successful of his compositions : " I am 
 certain," he writes to his brother (18th Sept., 1819,) "there is the sort 
 of fire in it which must take hold of people in some way. Give them 
 either pleasant or unpleasant sensation — what they want is a sensation of 
 some sort." For a criticism of the poem vide Introduction, p. xli. It is 
 indeed an admirable example of impassioned narrative only vitiated in 
 certain places by lapses into the bad taste of his earlier poems, by a re- 
 currence of faulty rhymes (c/. i. 17, 18 ; 35, 36 ; 57, 58 ; 233, 234 ; 277, 
 278, etc.), and some unfortunate coining of words. Lamia was founded 
 upon a story told in Burton's A natomy of Melancholie, quoted by Keats at 
 the close of the poem {q.v.). For its classical embellishments he drew as 
 usual upon Sandys and Spenser. The vocabulary shows signs of his 
 intimacy with Spenser, Milton and the Elizabethans, with a slight 
 tendency to the laxities of Endymion and the 1817 volume. 
 
 The versification is closely modelled upon the Fables of Dryden, from 
 which Keats learnt how to relate his metre with his sentence structure 
 and to use both the triplet and the Alexandrine with striking success. 
 The influence of Dryden upon the verse as a rule acts merely as a restraint 
 upon his earlier vices of style, but occasionally, as in the following lines, 
 Keats directly reproduces the epigrammatic and antithetical style of his 
 model : — 
 
 So threw the goddess off, and won his heart 
 More pleasantly by playing woman's part. 
 With no more awe than what her beauty gave, 
 That, while it smote, still guaranteed to save.
 
 454 JOHN KEATS 
 
 As would uaturally be expected, considering Keats's recent study of 
 Milton, there are several traces throughout the poem of Miltonic style 
 and reminiscence. 
 
 The variant readings supplied, by permission of Mr. Forman, from the 
 corrected printer's MS., and from two leaves of the draft of book ii. in 
 the possession of Lord Houghton, are of particular interest as showing 
 Keats's power of criticising his own worst faults of style and taste. It 
 is noticeable also that some of them are made in order to secure a correct 
 quantity to a classical proper noun {e.g. 11. 78, 115, 174, 225). It is 
 probable that Woodhouse was the authority to whom Keats referred such 
 matters, for at the beginning; of the proof sheets of Lamia, corrected by 
 Woodhouse, is a list of all the classical names in the poem with their 
 quantities carefully marked. 
 
 1-6. before the faery broods Drove Nymph and Satyr, etc. : — Mr. Buxton 
 Forman has called attention to the striking parallel between this passage 
 and Sandys, Ovid, Met. i. 192-95: — 
 
 Our Demigods, Nymphs, Sylvans, Satyrs, Faunes 
 Who haunt clear Springs, high Mountains, Woods and Lawnes, 
 (On whom since yet we please not to bestow 
 Celestial dwellings) must subsist below. 
 He adds that in bk. iv. " we find Latona daughter of Coeus the Titan 
 called Titania, a name suggestive of fairy-land to any English imagination, 
 and sufficient to account for the presence of ' King Oberon ' in line 3 ". 
 But it is not necessary to go to bk. ii. for Titania, for the name occurs in 
 this very book, in which we also find the story of Jupiter's employment of 
 Hermes to slay Argus, which may have suggested lines 10, 11, where 
 Hermes is represented as desirous ''to escape the sight of his great 
 summoner". As a matter of fact, however, the association of the fairies 
 of English folklore with characters of classical mythology was common in 
 Elizabethan literature. An interesting illustration of this is to be found 
 in Spenser {Faerie Queene, ii. 10. 70, 71), who tells how Prometheus : — 
 
 did create 
 
 A man, of many parts from beasts deryv'd 
 
 And then stole fire from Heaven to animate 
 
 His worke . . . 
 
 The man so made he called Elfe, to wit 
 
 Quick, the first author of all Elfin kynd. 
 
 Who, wandering through the world with wearie feet 
 
 Did in the gardins oi' Adonis find 
 
 A goodly creature, whom he deemed in mynd 
 
 To be no earthly wight, but either Spright, 
 
 Or Angell, th' Authour of all womankynd ; 
 
 Therefore a Fay he her according hight. 
 
 Of whom all Faeryes spring, and fetch their lignage right. 
 This stanza and the following suggested some of the names used by Keats 
 in the Cap and Bells (iv. notes), written by him only a few months later.
 
 LAMIA— NOTES 455 
 
 There is an interesting passage, which also illustrates this point, in 
 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholic (pi. i. sect. ii. mem. i. subs, ii.) " Terrestrial 
 devils are fh^se Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs, Woodnymphs, Foliots, Fairies, 
 Robin Goodfellows, Trolli, etc., which as they are most conversant with 
 men, so they do them most harm. Some think it was they alone that 
 kept the heathen people in awe of old, and had so many idols and temples 
 erected to them. Of this range were Dagon among the Philistines, . . . 
 Isis and Osiris amongst the Egyptians, etc. Some put our Fairies into 
 this rank which have been in former times adored with much super- 
 stition. . . . These are they that dance on heaths and greens." 
 
 68. Ariadne's tiar : — The constellation of seven stars into which 
 Ariadne was translated after her marriage with Bacchus. Keats is 
 thinking of the Titian which inspired him in the Ode to Sorrow {End. iv. 
 196, q.v.), wherein the circlet of stars is placed above Ariadne's head as a 
 symbol of her coming transfiguration. Cf. also Spenser, Faerie Queene, 
 vi. 10. 13 ;— 
 
 Looke how the crowne which A riadne wore 
 
 Upon her yvory forehead, that same day 
 
 That Theseus her unto his bridal bore. 
 
 Being now placed in the firmament. 
 Through the bright heaven does her beames display. 
 And is unto the starres an ornament. 
 Which round about her move in order excellent. 
 63. As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air .•—The story of Proser- 
 pine who was beloved by Pluto and carried oif to Hell, but upon her 
 mother's entreaty was allowed to return to earth for half the year, was 
 especially dear to Keats. Milton's well-known allusion to 
 
 that faire field 
 Of Eniia, where Proserpin gathring flours 
 Her self a fairer Floure by gloomie Dis 
 Was gatherd, which cost Ceres all that pain 
 To seek her through the world (Paradise Lost, iv. 268-72) 
 was singled out by Mm on his 'notes on Paradise Lost as one of " two 
 specimens of a very extraordinary beauty in the Paradise Lost ; they are 
 of a nature as far as I have read unexampled elsewhere ". And so in a 
 letter to Bailey (18th July, 1818), he writes: '^When I see you the first 
 thing I shall do will be to read you that about Ceres and Proserpine". 
 The cadence of Milton's lines he imitated in Hyperion, ii. 64 : to the story 
 he alludes in the Fall of Hyperion, i. 37, 38 : — 
 
 Proserpine return'd to her own fields. 
 Where the white heifers low. 
 Cf. also Endymion, i. 944. 
 
 The story is told at length in Ovid, Met. v., and Keats would also know 
 it in Spenser, and in the allusion in The Winter's Tale (iv. 4. 116).
 
 456 JOHN KEATS 
 
 75. Deaf to his throbbing throafs long, long melodious moan : — Cf. 
 Hyperion, iii. 80. Apollo then 
 
 Thus answer' d, while his white melodious throat 
 Throbb'd with the syllables. 
 
 78. bright Phasbean dart : mission'd phoebean dart MS. (quoted HBF), 
 amended by Keats to avoid the false quantity. 
 
 81. star of Lethe : — Hermes is so called because it was his duty to lead 
 the souls of the dead to Hades {cf. Odyssey, xxiv. init.). The phrase ''star 
 of" is an Elizabethan ism {cf. Beaumont and Fletcher " star of Rome "). 
 We are not surprised to find that the expression appealed irresistibly to 
 the only contemporary of Keats who could be said to equal him in his 
 passion for Elizabethan literature. Charles Lamb, reviewing Lamia in 
 the New Times, 19th July, 1820, calls this "one of those prodigal phrases 
 which Mr. Keats abounds in, which are each a poem in a word, and 
 which in this instance lays open to us at once, like a picture, all the dim 
 regions and their inhabitants, and the sudden coming of a celestial among 
 them ". 
 
 Lines 81, 82, with their inversion not delay'd and the phrase rosy eloquence 
 suggest a recent study of Milton. So too line 92 the phrase brilliance 
 feminine and cf. ii. 26, note. 
 
 115. lifted her Circean head : lifted up her circean head MS. (quoted 
 HBF) amended for the same reason as line 78. 
 
 133. Caducean : — Cf. Endymion, i. 562, note, 
 
 139. self-folding like a floiver That faints into itself at evening hour : — 
 Nowhere perhaps in Paradise Lost does Milton show more delicacy in 
 observation of nature, nor more insight into the simple charm of his 
 heroine, than in that line in which Eve tells the time of day by its effect 
 upon the garden which she tended with such loving care : — 
 Just then returned, at shut of Evening Flours. — {Paradise Lost, ix. 278.) 
 Keats, at least, was peculiarly impressed by it, for he reproduces part of 
 Milton's phrase in two places {Hyperion, ii. 36, and Sonnet xxix. p. 287). 
 Here he develops the picture with an added touch peculiarly characteristic 
 of himself. So line 220, " Now on the moth-time of that evening dim " is 
 a development of the same poetic method noticeable in the original line 
 of Milton. Cf. also Lamia, ii. 107, "at shut of day". 
 
 144. green-recessed woods : — Cf. Hyperion, iii. 41 where the isolation 
 of Apollo's isle is described : — 
 
 Throughout all the isle 
 There was no covert, no retired cave 
 Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves. 
 Though scarcely heard in many a green recess. 
 
 149. grass, therewith besprent. Wither d at dew -.—Cf. Comus, 452, " Knot 
 grass dew besprent". 
 
 158. brede : — vide Appendix C, p. 583. 
 
 173, 174-76. She fled into that valley they pass o'er, etc. : — Here again 
 
 J
 
 LAMIA— NOTES 457 
 
 the MS. (quoted HBF) shows false quantities and was emended. Origin- 
 ally these lines ran : — 
 
 She fled into that valley they must pass 
 Who go from Corinth out to Cencreas, 
 The rugged paps of little Perea's rills. 
 212. Mulciber : — The name for Vulcan used by Milton, Paradise Lost, 
 i. 740. So also Spenser, Faerie Queetie, iii. 11. 26. 
 225. port Cenchreas, harbour Cenchreas, MS. 
 
 244. syllabling: — The use of syllable as a verb again recalls Comns 
 (208), " and airy tongues, that syllable mens names ". The voice which 
 "syllables" the name of Lycius is, like the voices in Comiis, itself un- 
 earthly, and fraught with dire consequences to him that hears it. 
 
 248. Orpheus : — Perhaps the Miltonic touch in the preceding passage 
 leads Keats unconsciously to this story to which Milton alludes both in 
 U Allegro and // Penseroso. 
 
 251. his eyes had drunk her beauty up : — Cf. Burton's Anatomy of 
 Melancholie (pt. iii. sect. ii. mem. iii. subs. i.). " So will she by him — drtjik to 
 him with her eyes, nay dritik him up, devour him, swallow him," cf. also Ode 
 to Fanny, iii., " Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast.''" and notes. 
 260. so I shall die: — Followed in MS. by a line omitted in printed 
 text : — 
 
 Thou to Elysium gone, here for the vultures I. 
 333. Pyrrha's pebbles : — The story how, after the flood which de- 
 stroyed mankind, Deucalion and Pyrrha peopled the world by casting 
 stones behind them which became men, is told at length in Ovid, Met. i. 
 The juxtaposition of Adam and Pyrrha savours of the commentary of 
 Sandys, who always parallels, where it is possible to do so, the stories of 
 the Bible and of Classical Mythology. It is noticeable, also, that Milton 
 thus represents Adam and Eve repentant : — 
 
 . . . thir port 
 Not of mean suiters, nor important less 
 Seem'd thir Petition, then when th' ancient Pair 
 In Fables old, less ancient yet then these, 
 Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha to restore 
 The Race of Mankind drownd, before the Shrine 
 Of Themis stood devout. — Paradise Lost, xi. 8-14. 
 Cf. also Spenser, Faerie Qtieene, bk. v.. Introduction, 2. 
 377. dreams " : dreams 1820. 
 
 LAMIA II 
 
 26. slope : — A Miltonic reminiscence. Cf. Hyperion, i. 204. 
 
 39. That but a moment's thought is passion's passing bell : — Cf. Hyperion, 
 i. 173, note. 
 
 46. After this line stood in MS. an additional couplet (quoted HBF) : — 
 Too fond was I believing, fancy fed 
 In high deliriums, and blossoms never shed !
 
 458 JOHN KEATS 
 
 47. My silver planet : — Lycius perhaps recurs to his former conjecture 
 (c/. i. 267) that the Lamia is one of the Pleiades. 
 
 81. Sh& burnt, she lov'd the tyranny : — The MS. reading of the passage 
 which follows, besides showing some alterations of detail, contains the 
 following additional lines : — 
 
 Became herself a flame — 'twas worth an age 
 Of minor joys to revel in such rage. 
 She was persuaded, and she fixt the hour 
 When he should make a Bride of his fair Paramour. 
 After the hot[t]est day comes languidest 
 The colour'd Eve^ half-hidden in the west ; 
 So they both look'd, so spake, if breathed sound. 
 That almost silence is, hath ever found 
 Compare with nature's quiet. Which lov'd most. 
 Which had the weakest, strongest, heart so lost. 
 So ruin'd, wreck'd, destroy'd : for certes they 
 Scarcely could tell . . . they could not guess 
 Whether 'twas misery or happiness. 
 Spells are but made to break. 
 This was rightly replaced by Keats by the reading in the text ; but 
 the first two lines are interesting in the parallel they afford to the idea in 
 the Ode on Melancholy : — 
 
 Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, 
 Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave ; 
 whilst the exquisite lines that follow — " After the hottest day . . . quiet," 
 eminently characteristic of Keats, we can ill afford to lose. " So ruin'd, 
 wreck'd, destroy'd," in its collocation of adjectives, repeats a favourite 
 mannerism of Keats — cf. Hyperion, i. 18, note ; Eve of St. Agnes, ii. 3. 
 
 89 Fit appellation/or this dazzling frame : — An additional variation of 
 this line " Of fit sound for this soft ethereal fi-ame," again suggests 
 Milton. 
 
 141, 142. The Houghton fragment gives the following four lines 
 between 141 and 142 : — 
 
 And so till she was sated — then came down 
 Soft ligh[t]ing on her head a brilliant crown 
 Wreathed turban-wise of tender wannish fire 
 And sprinkled o'er with stars like Ariadne's tiar. 
 These were probably omitted because the comparison to Ariadne's tiar 
 had already been employed in i. 578. 
 
 187. Ceres' horn : — Cf. Fall of Hyperion, i. 35 : — 
 
 Still was more plenty than the fabled horn 
 Thrice emptied could pour forth at banqueting. 
 237. Unweave a rainbow : — Mr. Forman quotes Haydon's A utobiography 
 which tells how *' Keats and Lamb, at one of their meetings at Haydon's 
 house, agreed that Newton had destroyed all the beauty of the rainbow.
 
 LAMIA— NOTES 459 
 
 by reducing it to tlie prismatic colours". Many critics, from Leigh 
 Hunt onwards, have blamed Keats for the introduction of this passage, 
 and treated it as though it expressed his own settled point of view. But his 
 general attitude to science can hardly be inferred from this one place ; 
 nor is it fair to compare it, as it has been compared, with the position 
 taken up with regard to science in Wordsworth's Prefaces. The lines 
 have here an obvious dramatic value, and Keats's final word with regard 
 to science is no more summed up in them than Wordsworth's is summed 
 up in the Poet's Epitaph, when the man of science is described as 
 
 a prying fingering slave 
 One that would peep and botanise 
 Upon his mother's grave. 
 Both the Poet's Epitaph and these lines of Keats present a point of view, 
 and figure truly the influence which science exercises upon a certain 
 narrow type of mind. If Keats had been writing a defence of poetry, he 
 would not have admitted for a moment that science had power to afl'ect 
 the things of the imagination ; he would have been the first to insist, to 
 borrow the words of Leigh Hunt, that "there will be a poetry of the im- 
 agination as long as the first causes of things remain a mystery ". 
 
 Keats's lines have often been compared with Campbell's poem The 
 Rainbow, where a similar idea is expressed : — 
 
 Triumphal arch that fills the sky 
 
 When storms prepare to part 
 
 I ask not proud Philosophy 
 
 To teach me what thou art 
 
 When science from Creation's face 
 Enchantment's veil withdraws 
 What lovely visions yield their place 
 To cold material laws ! 
 It should be remembered that The Rainbow was only written in 1819, and 
 made its first appearance in the New Monthly of December, 1820. 
 
 293. as heart-struck and lost. He sank supine beside the aching ghost. 
 The MS. (quoted HBF) reads :— 
 
 From Lycius answer'd, as he sunk supine 
 Upon the couch where Lamia's beauties pine, 
 and gives the speech of Apollonius v296 et seq.) thus : — 
 
 from every ill 
 That youth might suffer have I shielded thee 
 Up to this very hour, and shall I see 
 Thee married to a Serpent .'' Pray you Mark, 
 Corinthians ! A Serpent, plain and stark ! 
 298. prey ? " prey ? 1820.
 
 460 JOHN KEATS 
 
 ISABELLA OR THE POT OF BASIL 
 
 "This adaptation of Boccaccio," says Lord Houghton, " was intended 
 to form part of a collection of Tales from the great Italian novelist, 
 versified by Mr. Reynolds himself. Two by Mr. Reynolds appeared in 
 the Garden of Florence (publ. 1821). Isabella was the only one Keats 
 completed." He began the poem in February, 1818, and writes to 
 Reynolds on 27th April that it is finished. The poem is founded on the 
 Decameron, Day iv. Novel 5, the heading of which runs : " The three 
 brethren of Isabella slew a gentleman that secretly loved her. His 
 ghost appeared to her in her sleep, and showed her in what place they 
 had buried his body. She, in silent manner, brought away his head, and 
 putting it in a pot of earth, such as flowers, basil and other sweet herbs 
 are usually set in, she watered it a long while with her tears. Whereof 
 her brothers having intelligence, soon after she died with mere conceit 
 of sorrow." Keats follows his source very closely, but he alters the 
 scene of the tragedy from Messina to Florence, and the number of 
 Isabella's brothers from three to two. He adds, also, as the motive of 
 the murder, their desire to wed their sister to a rich noble, and develops, 
 in some places with inartistic insistence, their intense greed for gold. 
 In his treatment of the two main characters and their passion, and in the 
 spirit in which he tells the story he is, of course, completely independent 
 of Boccaccio {cf. Introd., p. liv). Reynolds was delighted with the poem, 
 and felt it to be unsuited to publication with his humbler stories. " You 
 ought to be alone," he writes, and again : " I am confident that the Pot 
 of Basil hath that simplicity and quiet pathos which are of sure sovereignty 
 over all hearts " {Letter from Reynolds quoted by HBF). 
 
 It was probably the Italian source of the story which suggested to Keats 
 the employment for this poem of the ottava rima, the favourite metre of 
 the Italian narrative poets. This measure had been used by Chaucer and 
 the Elizabethans, and had been recently reintroduced into English poetry 
 by Hookham Frere {The Monks and the Giants) and by Byron {Beppo and 
 Don Juan) for the mock heroic. Keats employs it with striking success, 
 and for the first time shows complete mastery over his verse, avoiding 
 the danger, common to the use of this stanza in narrative poetry, of giving 
 it too epigrammatic a finish ; and never, except perhaps at the close of 
 xlviii., allowing the search for a rhyme to lead him into bathos, but sustain- 
 ing throughout a delicate and subtly modulated rhythm well suited to the 
 emotion of the story. In command of language, too, he shows a distinct 
 advance. Once or twice, perhaps, does he fall below the high poetic standard 
 which his conception demands, in the ludicrous ending of xvi., and in the 
 common-place and off-hand adieu of Lorenzo, "Good-bye ! I'll soon be back," 
 of xxvi. His vocabulary, too, is singularly free alike from the natural faults 
 of his earlier work and the direct influence of the work of his predecessors. 
 For the first time the -y adjectives are kept under due control and the
 
 ISABELLA— NOTES 461 
 
 only licence he allows himself is in the use of nouns as verbs, anguished 
 (vii.) (used again in Hyp.) and fear (found however in Shakespeare), and 
 verbs as nouns, assail (xx.) and pierce (xxxiv.) neither of them supported 
 by good authority. The word kafits (liv.) has been regarded as Keats's 
 invention and the NED. gives no precedent for its use in English poetry. 
 But Coleridge had employed it in The Nightingale (Lyrical Ballads, 1798), 
 though in later editions of the poem he substituted the commoner word 
 leaflets. 
 
 ITie variant readings are supplied from the MS. of the poem, in Keats's 
 handwriting, now in the British Museum. The poet's alterations from them 
 afford several fine examples of his rapidly developing taste and feeling 
 in all matters connected with his art. Woodhouse evidently follows BM. 
 but his copy is corrected in several places to the version of the text. 
 
 I. 6. each to be the other by : each to be each other by BM. 
 
 VII. 7, 8. " Lorenzo ! " — here she ceas'd, etc. BM reads : — 
 " Lorenzo, I would clip my ringlet hair 
 To make thee laugh again and debonnair." 
 "Then should I be," said he, "full deified ; 
 
 And yet I would not have it, clip it not : 
 For, lady, I do love it where 'tis tied 
 
 About the neck I dote on, and that spot 
 That anxious dimple it doth take a pride 
 
 To play about — Aye lady, I have got 
 Its shadow in my heart and ev'ry sweet 
 Its mistress owns there summed all complete 
 and on the opposite page records the following rejected passage : — 
 Lorenzo in the twilight Morn was wont 
 To rouse the clamorous Kennel to the Hunt ; 
 And then his cheek inherited the Ray 
 
 Of the outpouring Sun ; and ere the Horn 
 Could call the Hunters to the Chace away 
 
 His voice more softly woke me : Many a Morn 
 From sweetest Dreams it drew me to a Day 
 
 More sweet ; but now Lorenzo holds in scorn 
 His Health ; and all those bygone Joys are Dreams 
 To me — to him, I mean — so chang'd he seems. 
 
 XII. Theseus' spouse : — A reference to the story of Ariadne, known to 
 Keats in Ovid, Met. viii. (to which he is here alluding) and impressed on 
 his imagination by the famous picture of Titian. Cf. notes to Endymion, 
 iv. 196, and Lamia, i. 58. 
 
 XIV. proud-quiver d : — Mr. Forman thinks it necessary to delete the 
 hyphen, understanding the passage as meaning "many loins once proud.
 
 462 JOHN KEATS 
 
 now quivered," but in spite of MS. authority this change from the first 
 edition does not seem desirable. The compound adjective is quite in 
 Keats's manner at this period, and the significance of the whole phrase 
 " once proudly equipped with quivers," i.e. who once delighted in hunt- 
 ing, quite intelligible. The soft-conchM of the Ode to Psyche is a similar 
 adjective-compound — the soft being half independent of the conched and 
 applying directly to the noun ear which follows. 
 
 XV. Mr. Forman points out the debt of this stanza to Dryden's Annus 
 Mirabilis : — 
 
 For them alone the Heav'ns had kindly heat, 
 In Eastern Quarries ripening precious Dew ; 
 For them the Idumasan Balm did sweat. 
 And in hot Ceilon spicy Forrests grew. 
 
 XVII. 5. The hawks of ship-mast forests : — i.e. " ready to pounce on the 
 trading vessels as they came in" (Palgrave, Golden Treasury Keats). 
 After xvii. BxM gives the following additional stanza : — 
 Two young Orlandos far away they seem'd. 
 
 But on a near inspect their vapid Miens — 
 Very alike, — at once themselves redeem' d 
 
 From all suspicion of Romantic spleens — 
 No fault of theirs, for their good Mother dream'd 
 
 In the longing time of Units in their teens 
 Of proudly bas'd addition and of net — 
 And both their backs were mark'd with tare and tret. 
 
 XIX. 1, 7, 8. O eloquent and famed Boccaccio ! etc. BM reads in place 
 of these lines : — 
 
 O eloquent Boccace of green Arno ! 
 For venturing one word unseemly mean, 
 In such a place, on such a daring theme. 
 
 XXV. 7, 8. features bright Smile through an in-door lattice. BM reads : — 
 " her smiling through A little indoor Lattice ". 
 
 XXXIII. Hinnom's vale : — It was in Hinnom's vale that Ahaz " burnt 
 his children in the fire after the abominations of the heathen " (2 Chron- 
 icles, xxviii. 3). Thus the crime of the two brothers comes upon them 
 like the smoke which betokened to Ahaz that he had murdered his 
 children. 
 
 XXXVIII. 7, 8. Go shed one tear, etc. : — 
 
 Go shed a tear upon my hether bloom 
 And I shall turn a diamond in my tomb. — BM. 
 Woodhouse follows the same reading, but changing / to it and my to the.
 
 ISABELLA— NOTES 463 
 
 XL. 3. the taste of earthly bliss : the heaven of a kiss BM. 
 
 XLI. Mr. F. S. Storr has communicated to me the following interesting 
 note upon this stanza. " Browning was discussing the relations of Tenny- 
 son to Keats and quoted these lines as an instance of Keats's supreme 
 mastery of language, adding 'They have to me an additional pathos 
 because they record a personal experience. It is what Keats, poor fellow, 
 must himself have seen many a night in the early stages of consumption ! ' " 
 "I cannot vouch," adds Mr. Storr, "for the exact words, as I made no 
 note of them at the time, but I can still hear Browning's delivery of ' and 
 see the spangly gloom froth up and boil '." 
 
 XLVI., XLVII. Mr. Colvin has justly called attention to these stanzas 
 as containing some of Keats's finest work. "The swift despairing gaze 
 of the girl, anticipating with too dire a certainty the realisation of her 
 dream : the simile in the third and fourth lines, emphasising the clear- 
 ness of that certainty, and at the same time relieving its terror by an 
 image of beauty : the new simile of the lily, again striking the note of 
 beauty, while it intensifies the impression of her rooted fixity of posture 
 and purpose : the sudden solution of that fixity, with the final couplet, 
 into vehement action, as she begins to dig ' more fervently than misers 
 can ' ; then the first reward of her toil, in the shape of a relic not ghastly, 
 but beautiful both in itself and for the tenderness of which it is a token : 
 her womanly action in kissing it and putting it in her bosom, while all 
 the woman and mother in her is in the same words revealed to us as 
 blighted by the tragedy of her life : then the resumption and continuance 
 of her labours, with gestures once more of vital dramatic truth as well as 
 grace : to imagine and write like this is the privilege of the best poets 
 only, and even the best have not often combined such concentrated force 
 and beauty of conception with such a limpid and a flowing ease of nar- 
 rative " (EML, p. 153). It must be a satisfaction to Mr. Colvin to find that 
 in his selection of this passage for especial praise he has been anticipated 
 by the finest critic of Keats's own time. In the New Times for 19th July, 
 1820, appeared a review of the Lamia volume only recently unearthed by 
 Mr. E. V. Lucas and attributed by him to Lamb, on evidence which seems 
 to me indisputable. Lamb tells the story of Isabella and speaks of it 
 as "the finest thing in the volume". On reaching this point of the 
 narrative he breaks out : " Her arrival at the place digging for the body, 
 is described in the following stanzas, than which there is nothing more 
 awfully simple in diction, more nakedly grand and moving in senti- 
 ment, in Dante, in Chaucer, in Spenser" (here follow stanzas xlvi.-liii.). 
 He concludes his criticism with a comparison of Lamia and Isabella. 
 Lamia is "for younger impressibilities. To us an ounce of feeling is 
 worth a pound of fancy ; and therefore we recur again, with a warmer 
 gratitude, to the story of Isabella and the pot of basil, and those never
 
 464 JOHN KEATS 
 
 cloying stanzas which we have cited, and which we think should disarm 
 criticism, if it be not in its nature cruel ; if it would not deny to honey 
 its sweetness, nor to roses redness, nor light to the stars in heaven ; if it 
 would not bay the moon out of the skies, rather than acknowledge she 
 is fair" {Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. by E. V. Lucas, 1903, vol. 
 i. 200, 470). 
 
 XLVIII. 6. Three hours they labour'd. Three hours were they BM. 
 
 L. 1. With duller steel, etc. BM reads : — 
 
 With duller sliver than the Persean sword 
 They cut away no foul Medusa's head 
 But one's . . . 
 And in line 6 : — 
 
 If ever any piece of Love was dead. . . . 
 Woodhouse corrects this to 
 
 With fond caress, as if it were not dead, 
 and records, with pencil on the opposite page, another reading : — 
 The ghastly Features of her lover dead. 
 
 Persean : — i.e. of Perseus, the slayer of the Medusa. 
 
 LL fringed : single BM. 
 
 LXI. your " Well-a-way ! " ; you well away BM. 
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 Keats began the Eve of St. Agnes at Chichester towards the end of 
 January, 1819,^ and finished it on his return to Hampstead in February. 
 Writing to his brother in America on 24th February, he says of his visit 
 to Sussex, " I took down some thin paper and have wrote on it a little 
 poem called St. Agnes' Eve, which you shall have as it is when I have 
 finished the blank part of the rest for you ". Its composition therefore 
 followed immediately upon the laying aside of Hyperion. On 5th Sep- 
 tember he writes to John Taylor, from Winchester, to say that he is 
 engaged in revising it, and upon the text of no other poem does he seem 
 to have expended so much pains. The rough draft still extant in the 
 Locker-Lampson collection and the Woodhouse transcript of it exhibit 
 a large number of variant readings, whilst the transcript of the poem by 
 George Keats, now in the British Museum, seems to have been made 
 from a different MS. altogether. P'or a complete account of the readings 
 in the Locker-Lampson MS. reference must be made to Mr. Buxton Forman's 
 edition. The most interesting variants are recorded below. 
 
 iNot improbably on the Eve of St. Agnes itself, i.e. 20th January; for we know 
 that Keats was back in Hampstead early in February, that he spent about a fortnight 
 at Bedhampton, whence he writes a letter on 24th January, and that he was for a few 
 days, only just before this, at Chichester.
 
 EVE OF ST. AGNES— NOTES 465 
 
 Leigh Hunt, in an article in the London Journal for 2l8t January, 
 1835 (quoted by HBF) explains the legend on which the poem is based 
 by a reference to Brand's Popular Antiquities where Ben Jonson is 
 quoted : — 
 
 And on sweet St. Agnes' '■ night. 
 
 Please you with the promis'd sight — 
 
 Some of husbands, some of lovers. 
 
 Which an empty dream discovers. 
 But the subject was more probably suggested to Keats by a passage in 
 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholic (pt. iii. sect. ii. mem. iii. subs. i.). "'Tis 
 their only desire if it may be done by Art, to see their husbands picture 
 in a glass, they'll give anything to know when they shall be married, 
 how many husbands they shall have, by Crommyomantia, a kind of divina- 
 tion with Onions laid on the Altar on Christmas Eve, or by fasting on 
 St. Agnes' Eve or Night, to know who shall be their first husband." 
 
 II. 3. meagre, barefoot, wan : — A favourite collocation of epithets pro- 
 ducing a cadence which had been suggested to Keats by Chatterton. Cf. 
 Excellent Ballad of Charitie, " withered, forwynd, deade," etc. Keats had 
 already made use of it in Endymion, iv. 764, " lovelorn, silent, wan," and 
 in Hyperion, i. 18, " nerveless, listless, dead ". He employed it again in 
 this poem (xxi. 7), *' silken, hush'd, and chaste". 
 
 To think how they may ache, etc. : — " The germ of this thought," says 
 Hunt, '*or something like it, is in Dante, where he speaks of the figures 
 that perform the part of sustaining columns in architecture. Keats had 
 read Dante in Mr. Gary's translation, for which he had a great respect. 
 . . . Most wintry as well as penitential is the word ' aching ' in ' icy 
 hoods and mails ' ; and most felicitous the introduction of the Catholic 
 idea in the word * purgatorial '. The very colour of the rails is made to 
 assume a meaning, and to shadow forth the gloom of the punishment — 
 Imprisoned in black, purgatorial rails." 
 
 It would, indeed, be difficult to parallel in our poetry the dramatic 
 intensity with which Keats has conceived the background of his subject, 
 so that both here and in stanza iv., in which 
 The carved angels, ever eager-eyed, 
 Star'd, where upon their heads the cornice rests. 
 
 With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts, — 
 the very architecture seems to be taking a silent part in the action. Such 
 passages illustrate the manner in which the art of Keats at times approxi- 
 mates to the art of painting ; recalling, for example, the wonderful treat- 
 ment of background in Botticelli's picture of Calumny in the Uffizi Gallery 
 at Florence. 
 
 ^ The quotation is from Ben Jonson's Masque The Satyr (50-53). Most editions 
 read Anna's for Agnes' , and this is probably what Jonson wrote — not from error, for 
 he was well versed in popular legend, but out of compliment to Queen Anne, for whose 
 entertainment the Masque was performed. 
 30
 
 ^66 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Keats had been making a study of Gary's Dante on his Scotch tour in 
 the previous summer, the passage alluded to (quoted by HBF) being as 
 follows : — 
 
 As, to support incumbent floor or roof, 
 
 For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, 
 
 That crumples up its knees into its breast ; 
 
 With the feign'd posture, stirring ruth unfeign'd 
 
 In the beholder's fancy ; so I saw 
 
 These fashion'd, when I noted well their guise. 
 
 Each as his back was laden, came indeed 
 
 Or more or less contracted ; and it seem'd 
 
 As he, who show'd most patience in his look. 
 
 Wailing exclaim'd : " I can endure no more ". 
 
 III. Followed in Woodhouse MS. by the additional stanza: — 
 But there are ears may hear sweet melodies, 
 And there are eyes to brighten festivals, 
 And there are feet for nimble minstrelsies. 
 And many a lip that for the red wine calls. — 
 Follow, then follow to the illumined halls. 
 Follow me youth — and leave the eremite — 
 Give him a tear — then trophied bauneral 
 And many a brilliant tasseling of light 
 Shall droop from arched ways this high baronial night. 
 
 V. 1. At length burst in the argent revelry : At length step in the 
 urgent revelers, Woodhouse MS., gives 3-6: — 
 
 Ah what are they .'' the idle pulse scarce stirs. 
 The muse should never make the spirit gay ; 
 Away, bright dulness, laughing fools away — 
 And let me tell of one sweet lady there. ... 
 
 VI. Between VI. and VII. BM has the following additional stanza : — 
 
 'Twas said her future lord would there appear 
 Offering as sacrifice — all in the dream — 
 Delicious food even to her lips brought near : 
 Viands and wine and fruit and sugar'd cream. 
 To touch her palate with the fine extreme 
 Of relish : then soft music heard ; and then 
 More pleasures followed in a dizzy stream 
 Palpable almost : then to wake again 
 Warm in the Virgin mom, no weeping Magdalen. 
 
 VII. 3. She scarcely heard : Touch'd not her heart, Woodhouse MS. 
 
 4. saw many a sweeping train Pass by : — An interesting letter to John 
 Taylor, dated 11th June, 1820, shows that this passage was misunderstood
 
 EVE OF ST. AGNES— NOTES 467 
 
 by the printer. " In reading over the proof of St. Agnes' Eve since I left 
 Fleet Street, I was struck with what appears to me an alteration in the 
 seventh stanza very much for tlie worse. The passage I mean stands 
 thus : — 
 
 her maiden eyes incline 
 Still on the floor, while many a sweeping train 
 Pass by. 
 'Twas originally written : — 
 
 her maiden eyes divine 
 Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train 
 Pass by. 
 My meaning is quite destroyed by the alteration. I do not use irain 
 for concourse of passers by, but for skirts sweeping along the floor." 
 
 high disdain : — A Miltonic phrase. Cf. Paradise Lost, i. 98 : to be 
 found also, however, in Coleridge's Christabel, 41(5 {cf. note to xxiv.-xxvii.). 
 
 VIII. 1. regardless : uneager BM. 
 
 XI. 8. Mercy, Porphyro ! Mercy, Jesu ! BM. 
 
 XIII. 9. St. Agnes wool is that shorn from two lambs which (allusive 
 to the Saint's name) were upon that day brought to Mass, and off'ered 
 whilst the Agnus was chanted. The wool was then spun, dressed and 
 woven by the hands of the nuns (Palgrave). 
 
 XIV. 3. hold water in a witch's sieve : — The power of rendering a sieve 
 impervious to water was regarded as one of the commonest signs of witch- 
 craft. Cf Macbeth, i. 3. 8 :— 
 
 But in a sieve I'll thither sail. 
 
 5, 6. it fills me with amaze, etc. : about these thorny ways Attempting 
 Be'lzebub BM. 
 
 6. XV. 2, etc. Porphyro : Lionel Woodhouse MS., and so throughout. 
 
 XV. brook Tears :—i.e. " to check or forbear them " (EML, p. 169), a 
 meaning which the word brook can never bear. Keats has coined several 
 words, and somewhat stretched the meaning of others, but I can re- 
 member no other example of an actual mistake in his use of a common 
 archaism. 
 
 XVI. 1, 2. like a full-blown rose : full-blown like a rose : flushing 
 heated BM. more rosy than the rose. Heated. Woodhouse MS. 
 
 8. Go, go! O Christ BM. 
 
 XVII. 1-3. / will not harm her, etc. : — 
 
 I will not harm her, by the great St. Paul ; 
 Swear'th Porphyro, — O may I ne'er find grace 
 When my weak voice shall unto heaven call. — BM.
 
 468 JOHN KEATS 
 
 XVIII. 1. Ah! why wilt thou affright : How caust thou terrify BM. 
 3. Whose passing-bell : — Cf. Hyperion, i. 173 and note ; Lamia, ii. 39. 
 
 XIX. Never on such a flight, etc. : — This passage is explained by Mr. 
 Forman by a reference to Dunlop's History of Fiction. "The demons, 
 alarmed at the number of victims which daily escaped their fangs since 
 the birth of our Saviour, held a council of war. It was there resolved that 
 one of their number should be sent to the world with instructions to en- 
 gender on some virgin a child who might act as their vicegerent on earth, 
 and thus counteract the great plan that had been laid for the salvation 
 of mankind." This " monstrous debt " was, as Mr. Forman rightly points 
 out, " his monstrous existence which he owed to a demon and repaid when 
 he died or disappeared through the working of one of his own spells by 
 Viviane ". At the same time I cannot agree with Mr. Forman in thinking 
 that Dunlop's History of Fiction was the source upon which Keats drew, for 
 the simile was obviously suggested to his mind by the storm which he con- 
 ceives as bursting out upon the meeting of Porphyro and Madeline, as 
 before on the meeting of Merton and Viviane, and no mention of the storm 
 is made in Dunlop. But I have not yet been able to trace the reference. 
 
 XXI. 8, 9. Woodhouse MS. reads :— 
 
 There he in panting covert will remain 
 From Purgatory sweet to view what he may attain. 
 On the opposite page " all that " is suggested in place of " what ". 
 
 XXII. 4. mission' d spirit : spirit to her BM. 
 
 9. like ring-dove fray'd and fled. A reminiscence, as Mr. Read has 
 suggested, of Spenser, Faerie Queene, v. 12. 5 : — 
 
 he them chast away 
 And made to fly like doves, whom th' eagle doth affray. 
 
 XXIII. 2. its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died : — A picture of delicate 
 but vivid imagination, recalling to the mind Sir Walter Scott's account 
 of how Wordsworth "told Anne (Scott) a story the object of which, as 
 she understood it, was to show that Crabbe had no imagination. Crabbe, 
 Sir George Beaumont, and Wordsworth were sitting together iu Murray's 
 room in Albemarle Street. Sir George, after sealing a letter, blew out 
 the candle which had enabled him to do so, and exchanging a look with 
 Wordsworth, began to admire in silence the undulating thread of smoke 
 which slowly rose from the expiring wick, when Crabbe put on the 
 extinguisher. Anne laughed at the instance, and inquired if the taper 
 was wax, and being answered in the negative, seemed to think that there 
 was no call on Mr. Crabbe to sacrifice his sense of smell to the admiration 
 of beautiful and evanescent forms. In two other men I should have said, 
 'Why, it is affectations,' with Sir Hugh Evans; but Sir George is the 
 man in the world most void of affectations ; and then he is an exquisite
 
 EVE OF ST. AGNES— NOTES 469 
 
 painter, and no doubt saw where the incident would have succeeded in 
 painting," Keats saw here, as often, with the eye of a painter. 
 
 XXIV. -XXVII. " This sumptuous passage occupied the poet's care very 
 considerably. The following opening stands cancelled in the Locker- 
 Lam pson MS. : — 
 
 A Casement tripple arch'd and diamonded 
 With many coloured glass fronted the Moon 
 In midst w[h]ereof a shi[e]lded scutcheon shed 
 High blushing gules ; she kneeled saintly down 
 And inly prayed for grace and heavenly boon ; 
 That blood red gules fell on her silver cross 
 And her white hands devout." — HBF. 
 And the rough draft of these stanzas shows many false starts to lines, 
 as well as many words and phrases which the poet did not allow to stand 
 in his final version. 
 
 XXV. She knelt : prayed BM. so ... so ; too .. . too Woodhouse 
 MS., BM. 
 
 These stanzas (xxiv.-xxvii.) have been selected for especial praise by 
 many famous critics, among them Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, and Lamb. Par- 
 ticularly interesting is Lamb's criticism. ''Such is the description that 
 Mr. Keats has given us, with a delicacy worthy of Christabel, of a high- 
 born damsel, in one of the apartments of a baronial castle, laying herself 
 down devoutly to dream on the charmed Eve of St. Agnes, and like the 
 radiance, which comes from those old windows upon the limbs and 
 garments of the damsel, is the almost Chaucer-like painting, with which 
 this poet illumines every subject he touches. We have scarcely anything 
 like it in modern description. It brings us back to ancient days, and 
 Beauty making-beautiful old rhymes." 
 
 This parallel in the delineation of Madeline and that of Christabel, 
 each perfect in its own peculiar way, suggests also a striking contrast in 
 the characteristic methods of these two greatest masters of the mediaeval 
 romance, Keats obtaining his effects in a picture of rich and detailed 
 splendour, Coleridge by a reticence fully as eloquent : — 
 Her gentle limbs did she undress 
 And lay down in her loveliness. 
 
 In La Belle Dame sans Merci, Keats approaches more closely to the 
 manner of Coleridge.^ 
 
 1 Keats in all probability took a few hints from Christabel in points of detail. The 
 mastiff bitch was doubtless responsible for the wakeful bloodhound of stanza xli., and 
 Christabel's chamber carved so curiously : — 
 
 Carved with figures strange and sweet, 
 
 All made out of the carver's brain, 
 
 For a lady's chamber meet : 
 
 The lamp with twofold silver chain 
 
 Is fastened to an angel's feet — 
 may have given a suggestion for 'he " carved angels" of stanza iv. as well as for the 
 " chained drooped lamp " of xl.
 
 470 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Another interesting parallel is to be found in Browne, Brit. Past, i. 
 6. 80 et seq., which, says Mr. W, T. Arnold {Keats, xliii.), "I do not 
 think that any one can read without being convinced that Keats had them 
 in mind when he wrote the lines on Madeline". The passage runs : — 
 And as a lovely maiden, pure and chaste. 
 With naked ivory neck, a gown unlaced. 
 Within her chamber, when the day is fled. 
 Makes poor her garments to enrich her bed : 
 First, puts she off her lily-silken gown. 
 That shrinks for sorrow as she lays it down ; 
 
 Her breasts all bare, her kirtle slipping down. 
 
 Prepares for sweetest rest. 
 
 XXIX. 7. clarinet : Woodhouse, MS., BM. Clarionet 1820. 
 
 9. The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone : — On reading to 
 Clarke the MS. of the Eve of St. Agnes Keats told him that this line 
 " came into my head when I remembered how I used to listen in bed to 
 your music at school ". 
 
 It seems likely that in his contrast between the "rude wassailers" in 
 the castle and the emotion of his hero Keats is indebted, though uncon- 
 sciously, to a similar contrast between Hamlet's refined nature and his 
 grosser uncle. Cf. especially Hamlet, i. 4. 8-12 : — 
 
 The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse, 
 Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels ; 
 And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, 
 The Kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out 
 The triumph of his pledge. 
 This is borne out by stanza xxix. where the bloated wassailers {cf. the 
 phrase ''bloat king" applied to Claudius, iii. 4. 182), are represented 
 as 
 
 Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead. 
 The original reading in xxxix. 7, Drenching mead again suggests how 
 Keats's mind turned to Shakespeare for his presentation of this side of his 
 story. Cf. Macbeth, i. 7. 67 : — 
 
 When in swinish sleep 
 Their drenched natures lie as in a death ; 
 whilst the porter, with uneasy sprawl 
 
 With a huge empty flaggon by his side 
 is no distant relation to the guardian of Macbeth's castle. 
 
 XXX. While he, etc: — The description of the banquet prepared for 
 Madeline, like that of the banquet in the Fall of Hyperion (i. 30, etc.) 
 owes much to the famous description in Milton of the meal prepared by 
 Eve for the Archangel : —
 
 EVE OF ST. AGNES— NOTES 471 
 
 fruit of all kindeB, in coate, 
 Rough, or smooth rin'd, or bearded husk, or shell 
 She gathers, Tribute large, and on the board 
 Heaps with unsparing hand : for drink the Grape 
 She crushes, inoffensive moust, and meathes 
 From many a berrie, and from sweet kernels prest 
 She tempers dulcet creams {Paradise Lost, v. 341-347). 
 For the whole stanza Keats drew upon his Elizabethan reading. 
 Tinct is a word only found in Spenser {Shep. Cal., November) ; for the use 
 of soother he was in a measure indebted, as Mr. Forman has noticed, to 
 Milton's use of the superlative " the soothest shepherd " {Comus, 823), 
 though he gives it a different meaning — softer ; the argosies are probably 
 suggested by Marlowe or Shakespeare ; whilst Samarcand and Fez are 
 both perhaps drawn from Milton {Paradise Lost, xi. 389, 403). 
 
 XXXIII. La belle dame sans mercy : — Cf. note to Keats's poem of that 
 name. 
 
 XXXV. 9. For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go : — It is 
 interesting to know that this beautiful line, so expressive of the pure 
 simplicity of Madeline's whole character, as Keats has conceived it, was 
 an afterthought. BM reads for lines 8, 9 : — 
 
 See while she speaks his arms encroaching slow 
 
 Have zon'd her, heart to heart — loud, loud the dark winds blow. 
 
 XXXVI. 1-7. In place of the text BM reads here :— 
 For on the midnight came a tempest fell. 
 More sooth for that his close rejoinder flows 
 Into her burning ear ; — and still the spell 
 Unbroken guards her in serene repose. 
 With her wild dream he mingled as a rose 
 Marryeth its odour to a violet. 
 
 Still, still she dreams. — louder the frost wind blows. 
 The phrase solution sweet is Miltonic, both in its inversion of the adjective 
 and in its appositional relation with the rest of the sentence. 
 
 XXXVIII. 3. vermeil dyed : — Cf. Milton's vermeil-tinctured lip {Comus, 
 752). 
 
 XXXIX. 4. The bloated wassaillers . . . Drown'd all in Rhenish : — Cf. 
 note to xxix. 
 
 8, 9. Awake! arise! etc. Woodhouse reads here: — 
 Put on warm clothing, sweet, and fearless be 
 Over the Dartmoor black I have a home for thee. 
 The alteration in the first of them is a fortunate escape from bathos ; the 
 reading in the latter is intensely interesting, as affording us a clue to the
 
 472 JOHN KEATS 
 
 scenery in which the imajErination of Keats had localised his story. The 
 reading of the text Southern gives just that touch of warmth which 
 throughout the poem is reserved for the lovers, whilst our knowledge that 
 Dartmoor was first written suggests inevitably that the home which awaited 
 Madeline " opened on the foam of perilous seas ". 
 
 XL. 9. the long carpets rose along the gusty floor : — Critics from Hunt 
 onwards have commented on the anachronism of the introduction of 
 carpets here. But the poem belongs by right to no definite period of the 
 world's history. Thus Mr. Forman's quotation from Rossetti's King^s 
 Tragedy showing how the unchronological flaw could be avoided " And 
 the rushes shook on the floor " seems hardly to the point ; for Rossetti 
 is writing a strictly historical ballad in which accuracy of local colour may 
 justly be demanded, whilst Keats's poem is entirely imaginative. It is 
 noticeable that though the carpets have been mentioned twice before (in 
 stanzas xxviii. and xxxii.) no critic has objected to them there. 
 
 XLI. 3. the Porter : — Cf. note to xxix, 
 
 XLII. 6-9. were long be-nighttnar'd, etc. : — 
 Were all benightmared. Angela went off 
 Twitch'd with the Palsy ; and with face deform 
 The beadsman stifFen'd, twixt a sigh and laugh 
 Ta'en sudden from his beads by one weak little cough. — BM. 
 7. with meagre face deform : — Mr. Read compares Spenser, Faerie Queene, 
 iv. 8. 12. 
 
 With heary glib deformed and meiger face. 
 
 Ode to the Nightingale : — Written early in May, 1819, when Keats 
 was living with Charles Brown at Wentworth Place, Hampstead, and first 
 published in the following July in the Annals of the Fine Arts, a quarterly 
 magazine edited by James Elmes. Of the origin and circumstances of com- 
 position of the poem Brown writes : '* In the spring of 1819 a nightingale 
 had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy 
 in her song : and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table 
 to the grass-plot under a plum-tree, where he sat for two or three hours. 
 Wheu he came into the house, I perceived he had some scraps of paper in 
 his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, 
 I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feeling on 
 the song of our nightingale. The writing was not well legible ; and it was 
 diflicult to arrange the stanzas on so many scraps. With his assistance I 
 succeeded, and this was his ' Ode to a Nightingale,' a poem which has 
 been the delight of every one." The original draft of the poem has 
 recently come to light and was reproduced in facsimile in the Monthly 
 Review for March, 1903, accompanied by a valuable commentary by Mr,
 
 ODE TO THE NIGHTINGALE— NOTES 473 
 
 Sidney Colvin, entitled A Morning's Work in a Hampstead Garden. Mr. 
 Colvin proves conclusively that the Keats MS. which he reproduces is the 
 original draft, ''written while the main and essential work of composition 
 was actually going on in the poet's brain. . . . Hence we may dismiss 
 Haydon's account of the ode having been recited to him by Keats in the 
 Hampstead fields ' before it was committed to paper ' as one of the orna- 
 mental flourishes characteristic of that writer ; whose vividness of state- 
 ment is seldom found, when we have opportunity to test it, to coexist with 
 strict accuracy." 
 
 Brown's account of the genesis of the poem, written twenty years 
 later, is inaccurate in detail. For example, the Ode was not written on 
 four or five scraps, but upon two half sheets of notepaper, and the difficulty 
 of arranging the stanzas in order was not due to piecing these together, 
 but rather because of the odd in an'i out arrangement of the stanzas on 
 the two sheets. But in spite of such a slip of memory as this there is no 
 reason to doubt the substantial truth of Brown's statement, for he is 
 generally found to be a trustworthy authority, nor to regard as a legend 
 the story that Keats " was quietly thrusting away the scraps behind the 
 books ". It receives some support at least from a letter written some six 
 months before wherein he tells Woodhouse, " I feel assured that I should 
 write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even 
 if my night's labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever 
 shine upon them " (22nd October, 1818). 
 
 The readings of the draft, as they have not before been given in any 
 edition of Keats, are recorded in full in the following: notes. The final 
 text shows remarkably f&'vr alterations from it, a signal proof of the readi- 
 ness with which language of supreme poetic felicity came naturally to the 
 poet, according to his own ideal, " as leaves to a tree ". It is, however, 
 interesting to notice that the two most famous lines 
 
 Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn, 
 show two vital corrections — "magic" for the tame ''the wide," and 
 "perilous" for the cacophonous and unsuggestive "keelless". On these 
 alterations — "the former made after the whole line had been written 
 down, and the latter instantly after the epithet ' keelless ' had been tried 
 and found wanting, depends, remarks Mr. Colvin, the special enchantment 
 of the passage". 
 
 For a general criticism of the Ode, cf. Introduction, p. Ix. 
 
 I. In the Draft (D) is a cancelled opening, " Small winged Dryad ". 
 
 I. 1 . drowsy numbness pains : painful numbness falls D cane. 
 
 4. past : hence D cane. 
 
 5. 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot: — Mr. Bridges compares 
 Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, i. 3. 164. " Sweet Philomela ... I do not 
 envy thy sweet carolling."
 
 474 JOHN KEATS 
 
 II. 2. Cool'd a long age : Cooling an age D cane. 
 
 2. deep-delved earth : — Suggested, as Mr. W. T. Arnold has pointed out, 
 by Milton's Death of a Fair Infant, " Hid from the world in a low-delved 
 tomb". 
 
 6. trtie, the : true and D. 
 
 7. beaded : cluster'd D. 
 
 10. away D, 1820; omitted by Dilke, BM, and Annals. 
 
 III. 3. the fever, and the fret : — An unconscious reminiscence of Words- 
 worth's Lines composed a few miles above Ti?itern Abbey (52, 53) — a favour- 
 ite poem with Keats — 
 
 the fretful stir 
 Unprofitable, and the fever of the world. 
 
 6. pale, and spectre-thin, and dies : pale and thin and old and dies D 
 cane. 
 
 IV. 2. Bacchus : — Another reminiscence of the great picture by Titian 
 which had already inspired two passages in his poetry. Cf. Sleep and Poetry, 
 335, and the Ode to Sorrow (End. iv. 196, and notes). 
 
 7. Cluster'd : clusted (sic) D cane., but no altei-native suggested. 
 10. "sidelong" D cane, as false start to line 
 
 IV. 10, V. 1-3. It is interesting to notice that Coleridge, in his poem 
 of The Nightingale, well known to Keats {cf. End. iii. 144, and note) makes 
 use of several similar words in describing the landscape in which his own 
 bird sang : — 
 
 You see the glimmer of the stream beneath 
 But hear no murmuring ; it flows silently 
 O'er its soft bed of verdure — All is still, 
 A balmy night, and though the stars be dim 
 Yet let us think upon the vernal showers 
 That gladden the green earth, and we shall find 
 A pleasure in the dimness of the stars. 
 
 V. 2. Nor what : followed in D by " blooms " {cane.) 
 
 VI. The feeling expressed in this stanza is essentially characteristic of 
 Keats, and, as several critics have pointed out, had been expressed by him 
 in a sonnet written some weeks earlier than this Ode. 
 
 Why did I laugh .'' I know this Being's lease, 
 
 My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads ; 
 Yet would I on this very midnight cease, 
 And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds. 
 2. easeful: painless D. VI. 7. forth: thus D, Annals. VI. 10. To D: 
 for D cane., Annals. 
 
 I 
 
 VII. 5. song : voice D cane. 
 
 9, 10. magic . . . perilous : the wide . . . keelless D cane.
 
 ODE TO THE NIGHTINGALE— NOTES 475 
 
 VII. This stanza has been blamed by Mr. Colvin " as a breach of logic 
 which is also a flaw in the poetry contrasting the transitoriness of the 
 human life, meaning the life of the individual, with the permanence of 
 the song-bird's life, meaning the life of the type" (EML, ]). 176), and by 
 Mr. Bridges who remarks (Keats, p. liv.) that "the thought is fanciful or 
 superficial — man being as immortal as the bird in every sense but that of 
 sameness, which is assumed and does not satisfy ". But these objections 
 hardly seem to me to be serious. For the poet is not really thinking of 
 the permanence of the song-bird's life, but rather of his song, with which 
 he naturally identifies the bird, seeing that, apart from its song, it has no 
 life for him.^ I have never seen this objection raised against Words- 
 worth's lines To the Cuckoo to which it would be as applicable. Words- 
 worth, like Keats, addresses the bird as : — 
 
 The same whom in my schoolboy days 
 I listened to ; 
 and the emotion of each poet is kindled by 
 
 No bird, but an invisible thing, 
 A voice, a mystery, 
 which has power, by reason of this very lack of individuality, to awaken 
 in his mind the beauty and the glory of the past. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that Wordsworth, in a passage which we 
 know Keats to have studied, represents the ancient Greek as impressed 
 with this same sense of contrast between the eternity of nature and the 
 mutability of human life. The father, lamenting the loss of his child, 
 would cast his hair as a votive offering upon the river Cephisus. . . . 
 And, doubtless, sometimes, when the hair was shed 
 Upon the flowing stream, a thought arose 
 Of Life continuous. Being unimpaired ; 
 That hath been, is, and where it was and is 
 There shall endure ; existence unexposed 
 To the blind walk of mortal accident ; 
 From diminution safe and weakening age ; 
 While man grows old, and dwindles, and decays ; 
 And countless generations of mankind 
 Depart, and leave no vestiare where they trod. 
 
 — Excursion, iv. 752-62. 
 In the last two lines of the stanza Keats is once more recording the 
 impression made upon him by a favourite picture, Claude's Enchanted Castle. 
 (Cf. Epistle to Reynolds 26-66 and note.) 
 
 VIII. 2. me back : to me D cane, tny sole self! unto myself D. 
 4. deceiving : deceitful D cane. 
 
 ^ So Meredith in his poem The Lark Ascending, delights in the bird's 
 
 Song seraph ically free 
 From taint of personality.
 
 476 JOHN KEATS 
 
 3. 4. Fancy . . . deceiving elf : — Professor A. C. Bradley has called my 
 attention to a similarity of phrase in Wordsworth's Duddon Sonnets xxiv. 
 10, " the Fancy, too industrious elf". This sonnet was written in 1820, and 
 it seems likely that Wordsworth had seen the Ode to the Nightingale when it 
 appeared in the Annals of the Fine Arts in the previous July. Haydon was 
 the inspiring genius of that magazine, and would doubtless send him a 
 copy of it. Wordsworth never appreciated the genius of Keats, and it is 
 significant that he should here re-echo what is undoubtedly the weakest 
 passage in Keats's great Ode. 
 9. Was it a vision, etc. : — 
 
 Was it a vision real or waking dream 
 
 Fled is that Music — do I wake or sleep. — D. 
 
 Vision? . . . music.'' — Annals. 
 
 Ode on a Grecian Urn ; — Written in February or March, 1819, and first 
 published early in 1820 in no. xv. of the Annals of the Fine Arts. The 
 Annals aflFords some variant readings, others are to be found in the MSS. 
 of Sir Charles Dilke and at the British Museum. As Mr. Colvin points 
 out, the poem was inspired by no single extant work of antiquity, but was 
 imagined by a ''combination of sculptures actually seen in the British 
 Museum with others known to him only from engravings, and particularly 
 from Piranesi's etchings. Lord Holland's urn (often >;poken of as though 
 it were the sole inspiration of the poem) is duly figured there in the Vast 
 de Candelabri of ihaitSLdmirMe master" (EML, p. 174). It is difficult indeed 
 to believe that the lines on the sacrifice and the picture of the " heifer 
 lowing at the skies " were not suggested solely by the Elgin marbles. 
 
 In his expression of the main idea upon which the poem is based — the 
 permanent character of the beautiful in art as opposed to its mortality and 
 change in nature and humanity — Keats was echoing a thought which must 
 have been an inspiration to many of the greatest artists. It is concen- 
 trated by Leonardo da Vinci into one pregnant phrase which Keats might 
 well have taken as the motto of his poem : — 
 
 Cosa bella mortal passa e non d'arte 
 and there can be little doubt that here, as often, Wordsworth was not 
 without his influence upon him. Cf. the sonnet Upon the Sight of a 
 Beautiful Picture (publ. 1815). 
 
 Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay 
 
 Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape ; 
 
 Nor would permit the thin smoke to escape. 
 
 Nor these bright sunbeams to forsake the day ; 
 
 Which stopped that band of travellers on their way, 
 
 Ere they were lost within the shady wood ; 
 
 And showed the bark upon the glassy flood 
 
 For ever anchored in her sheltering bay. 
 
 Soul soothing Art, whom Morning, Noontide, Even, 
 
 Do serve with all their changeful pageantry ;
 
 ODE TO PSYCHE— NOTES 477 
 
 Thou, with Ambition modest yet sublime. 
 Here, for the sight of mortal man, hast given 
 To one brief moment caught from fleeting time 
 The appropriate calm of blest eternity. 
 {N.B. espec. 11. 7, 8). Wordsworth, too, had called his attention to the 
 music of silence : — 
 
 music of finer tone ; a harmony 
 So do I call it, though it be the hand 
 Of silence, though there be no voice. — Excursion, iii. 710. 
 And in another passage, well known to Keats, had actually suggested 
 something of the phraseology by which to express it : — 
 
 sweetest melodies 
 Are those which are by distance made more sweet.^ 
 
 —Personal Talk, 25, 26, publ. 1807. 
 But it was left for Keats to realise the full significance of the idea and to 
 give it adequate expression. 
 
 In the Epistle to Reynolds {vide p. 270) written 25th March, 1818, are 
 to be found two anticipations of this Ode : — 
 
 The sacrifice goes on ; the pontiff knife 
 Gleams in the Sun, the milk-white heifer lows. 
 The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows. — 20-22. 
 
 Things cannot to the will 
 Be settled, but they tease us out of thought. — 77, 78. 
 For Keats's use of brede cf. Appendix C, p. 583. 
 
 I. 8. What men or gods : what Gods or Men Annals. 
 
 9. What mad pursuit ? what love? what dance.'' Annals. 
 
 II. 6. nor ever can those trees be bare : nor ever bid the spring adieu 
 Annals. 
 
 III. 2. ever : never Annals. 
 
 IV. 7. this folk : its folk H. 
 
 V. 9, 10. ''Beauty is truth," etc. :— 
 
 Beauty is truth, truth Beauty — That is all 
 
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. — Attnals. 
 
 Ode to Psyche : — Writing to his brother George on 15th April, 1819, 
 Keats sends this Ode and speaks of it as " the last I have written — the 
 first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have 
 for the most part dash'd off my lines in a hurry. This I have done 
 leisurely, — I think it reads the more richly for it, and will I hope encourage 
 me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. 
 
 'Wordsworth was himself indebted to Collins, The Passions, 60. "In notes by 
 distance made more sweet. "
 
 478 JOHN KEATS 
 
 You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the 
 time of Apuleius the Platonist who lived after the Augustan age, and 
 consequently the goddess wa^^ never worshipped or sacrificed to with any 
 of the ancient fervour — and perhaps never thought of in the old religion 
 — I am more orthodox than to let a heathen goddess be so neglected." 
 The copy of the poem included in the letter affords several variant read- 
 ings. The Psyche legend was known to Keats in Spence (and Mr. Forman 
 thinks that an engraving in Spence had suggested the picture in the first 
 stanza), Mrs. Tighe and Spenser, and he had already treated it in / stood 
 tip-toe, 140 {vide note). Keats's reference to the story in Apuleius may be 
 due to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholie, which he was reading at the time. 
 " If he be a man of extraordinary parts, they will flock afar off to hear 
 him, as they did in Apuleius, to see Psyche. . . . Many mortal men came 
 to see fair Psyche, the glory of her age : they did admire her, commend, 
 desire her for her divine beauty, and gaze upon her but as on a picture " 
 (pt. i. sect. ii. mem. iii. subs. xv.). 
 
 Palgrave suggests that in writing this Ode Keats had Gray and Collins 
 in mind, but what literary obligation there is rather is to Milton. The 
 opening couplet recalls both in idea and cadence the " bitter constraint 
 and sad occasion dear " of Lycidas, and later on there is an obvious debt 
 to the Ode on the Nativity. It is strange to read {vide supra) that Keats took 
 unusual pains over the poem, for it is not flawless as are some of the other 
 Odes which were apparently written far more rapidly ; but despite occa- 
 sional weaknesses in it, it is a magnificent example of that blending of a 
 delicate feeling for Nature with a sense of the true significance of ancient 
 legend which is peculiarly characteristic of him. 
 
 This was, in all probability, the last of the Odes written by Keats in 
 the Spring of 1819 ; it is interesting to notice how it knits them all to- 
 gether by re-echoing a phrase from each. 
 
 " Their lips touched not but had not bade adieu " {cf. Grecian Urn, iii. 2 ; 
 its idea a contrast with ii. 7, and the Ode on Melancholy, iii. 2, 3) and 
 " the casement ope at night " {cf. Ode to the Nightingale, vii. 9). 
 
 The manuscript letter supplies the following variant readings : — TO. 
 roof : fan. 14. silver-white, and budded Tyrian : freckle pink and budded 
 Tyrian. 17. bade : bid. 23. truel true.^ 36. brightest : bloomiest. 
 32-5. No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat 
 
 Of pale-mouth' d prophet dreaming. 
 Cf. Milton, Ode on the Nativity, xix. : — 
 
 The Oracles are dumm. 
 
 No voice or hideous humm 
 
 Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 
 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 
 Can no more divine. 
 
 With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos leaving. 
 
 No nightly trance, or breathed spell, 
 
 Inspires the pale-ey^d Priest from the prophetic cell.
 
 FANCY— NOTES 479 
 
 52-5. Far, far around shall those dark-cluster' d trees 
 
 Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep. 
 This wonderful passage affords a deeply interesting example of the way in 
 which literary reminiscence combined in Keats's mind with accurate and 
 impassioned observation to form some of his greatest pictures. The first 
 appearance of the " Mountain pine " in his poems (/ stood tip-toe, 128) is obvi- 
 ously a purely literary reminiscence, and suggests neither feeling nor 
 observation. But he came across two passages in the Faithful Shepherdess, 
 which had evidently sunk into some " backward corner of the brain ". 
 In the first Act he read : — 
 
 " Straighter than the straightest pine upon the steep 
 
 Head of an ancient mountain." 
 In the fourth Act : — 
 
 " Sailing pines that edge yon mountain in." ^ 
 Then, in the summer of 1818, he visited the Lakes, and seeing now with 
 his own eyes what had before only been imaged in his mind, at once made 
 it his own, touching it with a vivid imagination far beyond Fletcher's 
 reach. 
 
 Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees 
 Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep. 
 Of Lodore he had said in a letter to his brother Tom (29th June, 1818), 
 " There is no great body of water, but the accompaniment is delightful ; 
 for it oozes out from a cleft in perpendicular rocks, all fledged with ash 
 and other beautiful trees ". An exactly parallel example of the manner 
 in which Keats's imagination was stimulated by the combined influence 
 of literature and nature is to be found in his debt for the picture {q.v.) of 
 the fallen Titans, to Chapman, Wordsworth and the Druid Stones near 
 Keswick. 
 
 Fancy, included together with Bards of Passion and / had a Dove in 
 Keats's Journal Letter to his brother and sister in America under the date 
 2nd Jan., 1819, and presumably written shortly before. Keats prefaces 
 them with the words, " Here are the poems — they will explain themselves 
 — as all poems should do without any comment". 
 
 This and the four following poems are written in the four-accent metre 
 which Keats had employed in his lines to G. A. W. (p. 16). It had been 
 common in English poetry since Chaucer, but Keats's use of it suggests 
 especially Milton and Fletcher ; and while the poem is perfectly original 
 and independent, the style of description and much of the cadence of the 
 verse seem to recall L'A llegro. Keats is hardly at home in the four-accent 
 verse, which was not entirely suited to his genius. He is evidently troubled 
 with the weight of his unaccented syllables (e.g., 11. 7, 8, 17, 38) and was 
 never completely successful with the metre till he wrote the Eve of St. Mark. 
 
 1 In Endymion, i. 85, 86, we have a similar picture, in 
 
 The freshness of the space of heaven above, 
 Ed^d round with dark tree tops.
 
 480 JOHN KEATS 
 
 But of the lyrics written in this measure Fancy is certainly the most 
 charming, the treatment of the Seasons is felicitous throughout and the 
 language is nowhere marred (except perhaps in the use of "so " in 76) by 
 the peculiar faults of Keats's style. 
 
 1. The story of " Ceres' daughter " (81) was a special favourite of Keats's 
 {vide Lamia note). For Hebe (86) the goddess of youth and cupbearer of 
 Jove, cf. End. iv. 415. 
 
 The following interesting variants and rejected passages are supplied 
 by the manuscript letter : — 
 
 6. Through the thought : Towards heaven MS. 
 24, 26. Even . . . there : Vesper . . . then MS. 
 29. bring, in spite : bring thee spite MS. 
 33, 34. All the buds, etc. :— 
 
 All the faery buds of May 
 On spring turf or scented spray ; MS. 
 43-46. And, in the same moment, etc. : — 
 
 And in the same moment hark 
 To the early April lark 
 And the rooks with busy caw MS. 
 67. And the snake, etc. : — 
 
 And the snake all winter-shrank 
 Cast its skin on sunny bank MS. 
 67, 68. For these two lines the manuscript letter gives six : — 
 For the same sleek throated mouse 
 To store up in its winter house. 
 
 O sweet Fancy let her loose ! 
 Every sweet is spoilt by use 
 Every pleasure every joy 
 Not a Mistress but doth cloy. 
 89. And Jove grew languid. The letter here adds the following lines : — 
 And Jove grew languid. Mistress fair ! 
 Thou shalt have that tressed hair 
 Adonis tangled all for spite 
 And the mouth he would not kiss 
 And the treasure he would miss ; 
 And the hand he would not press 
 And the warmth he would distress 
 O the Ravishment — the Bliss — 
 Fancy has her there she is ! 
 Never fulsome, ever new 
 There she steps ! and tell me who 
 Has a mistress so divine .'' 
 Be the palate ne'er so fine 
 She cannot sicken.
 
 BARDS OF PASSION, ETC.— NOTES 481 
 
 Break the Mesh 
 Of the Fancy's silken leash 
 Where she's tether'd to the heart — 
 Quick break her prison string. . . . 
 
 Ode. Bards of Passion and of Mirth : — Included in Journal Letter to 
 George and Georgiana Keats dated 2nd January, 1819. " From the fact 
 that it is written in Keats's Beaumont and Fletcher, . . . and from in- 
 ternal evidence, we may judge it to be addressed to the brother poets of 
 passion and mirth who wrote the tragi-comedy of The Fair Maid of the 
 Inn" (HBF). Keats had written the poem on the blank page facing 
 The Fair Maid of the Inn. The Ode, Keats explains to his brother, " is 
 on the double immortality of poets," and after copying it he adds : " These 
 (i.e., the Ode and the Fancy) are specimens of a sort of Rondeau which I 
 think I shall become partial to — because you have one idea amplified with 
 greater ease and more delight and freedom than in the sonnet ". Keats's 
 idea of the Rondeau form must have been somewhat vague. 
 
 19, 20. But divine melodious truth, etc. The manuscript letter reads : — 
 
 But melodious truth divine 
 
 Philosophic numbers fine. 
 
 Lines on the Mermaid Tavern : — Written in 1818 and sent to Reynolds 
 in a letter dated 3rd February. It is another expression of Keats's delight 
 in the Elizabethan dramatists. The Mermaid Tavern was their principal 
 resort. Keats in his reference to it is probably indebted to Master Francis 
 Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson, written before he and Master Fletcher came 
 to London with two of the precedent comedies, then not finished, which de- 
 ferred their merry meetings at the Mermaid : — 
 
 "I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine." — line 6. 
 And again : — 
 
 " What things have we seen 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble, and so full of subtle flame. 
 As if that every one from whence they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. 
 And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
 Of his dull life." 
 The rare word " bowse " was probably taken by Keats, as Mr. Forman 
 suggests, from Sandys's Commentary to Ovid, Met. v. " I of the horses 
 spring did never bowse," a trans, of Persius in Prolo. ; labra prolui. The 
 MS. gives the following conclusion to the poem : — 
 Souls of Poets dead and gone. 
 Are the winds a sweeter home, 
 Richer is uncellar'd cavern 
 Than the Merry Mermaid Tavern .'* 
 
 31
 
 482 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Robin Hood. The " Friend " is John Hamilton Reynolds {vide p. 537) 
 to whom Keats sent the poem together with the Lines on the Mermaid in 
 a letter dated 3rd February, 1818. In the letter the poem is headed " To 
 J. H. R. in Answer to his Robin Hood Sonnets ". It is prefixed by an attack 
 upon modern poetry, especially that of Wordsworth, as having "a palpable 
 design upon us," which suggests a contrast with the "great and unobtru- 
 sive poetry" of the Elizabethans. ''1 do not mean," he adds, ''to deny 
 Wordsworth's grandeur or Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not 
 be teased with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated 
 and unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your 
 letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Canto 
 of Childe Harold and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return 
 for your dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they'll 
 look pretty." The reference in line 10 is probably to Reynolds having 
 taken up the profession of Lawyer — on 14th February, 1818, Reynolds 
 wrote his Farewell to the Muses, and Keats must have known of his inten- 
 tion by the time he wrote the poem. Perhaps in lines 47, 48, there is 
 another side allusion to the same event. 
 
 18. forest drear, Milton, II Penseroso, 119. 
 
 36. " greene shawe," Chaucer, Friar s Tale, " Wher ridestou under this 
 greene shawe ? " 
 
 To Autumn. The latest written of the Odes. Woodhouse adds a note 
 to his copy of the 1817 volume stating that this poem was composed on 
 Sept. 19, 1819. In a letter to Reynolds from Winchester dated Sept. 22, 
 1819, Keats says — " How beautiful the season is now — How fine the air 
 — a temperate sharpness about it. Really without joking, chaste weather 
 — Dian skies — I never liked stubble-fields so much as now — Aye better 
 than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm 
 — in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much 
 in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it." 
 
 The BM MS. shows two or three interesting variant i-eadings. 
 
 In I. 6. ''Sweetness" for "ripeness". 
 
 II. 6, 7. Dosed with a fume of poppies, while thy hook 
 
 Spares the next sheath and all its honied flowers ; 
 
 9. Steady thy leaden head across the brook ; 
 
 11. " oozing " for " oozings ". 
 
 Ode on Melancholy. Though there is no external evidence of the 
 date of this Ode it can be attributed with certainty to the early spring of 
 1819. Keats was reading the Anatomy of Melancholic at the time, and the 
 introductory verses in Burton may have helped to suggest the theme. He 
 would also be familiar with the song in Fletcher's Nice Valour which Mil- 
 ton imitated in the opening to II Penseroso.
 
 ODE ON MELANCHOLY— NOTES 483 
 
 Heuce, all your vain delights. 
 As short as are the nights, 
 Wherein you spend your folly ! 
 There's nought in this life sweet. 
 If man were wise to see't 
 But only melancholy. 
 Oh sweetest melancholy ! etc. 
 For the significance of the ode in relation with Keats's train of thought 
 at the time c/. Introduction, p. Ixi. 
 
 H supplies from MS. the following rejected opening to the poem, which 
 Keats wisely discarded as out of keeping with the true spirit of the whole — 
 Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones, 
 
 And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast. 
 Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans 
 
 To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast ; 
 Although your rudder be a dragon's tail 
 Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony, 
 
 Your cordage large uprootings from the skull 
 Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail 
 To find the Melancholy — whether she 
 Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull. 
 III. 5. in the very temple of Delight, etc.: — Cf. Endymion, ii. 82, 83 
 (draft), " There is a grief contained In the very shrine of pleasure ".
 
 484 JOHN KEATS 
 
 HYPERION 
 
 The idea of writing a poem on the subject of the fall of the Titans, 
 with Apollo the god of light and song as its hero, to form, as it were, 
 a companion poem to Endymion, occurred to Keats before he had finished 
 Endymion. It is to this that he alludes when, on 28th September, 1817, 
 he writes to Haydon, " I have a new romance in my eye for next summer," 
 and the treatment of Oceanus in Endymion, bk. iii. 994-7 {vide note) written 
 certainly within a few days of the letter to Haydon, contains the germ 
 of the conception of Oceanus in Hyperion. Similarly in Endymion, iv. 
 written in November, 1817, the line : — 
 
 Thy lute-voic'd brother will I sing ere long (774) 
 and the rather far-fetched oaths " by Titan's foe " (943) and 
 
 By old Saturnus' forelock, by his head 
 
 Shook with eternal palf^y " (956-7) 
 suggest again that he is brooding over the story of the Titans. He 
 referred to it again in the famous Preface to Endymion (April, 1818) — "1 
 hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of 
 Greece, and dulled its brightness : for 1 wish to try once more, before 
 I bid it farewell " ; and it is highly probable that it was beginning to take 
 definite shape, no longer as a romance but as an epic, before his departure, 
 at the end of June, for the English lakes and Scotland. There is evidence 
 from his letters that while he was away the subject was still in his mind, 
 and writing to Woodhouse, some two months after his return, he refers 
 to the theme of the poem as though it were well known to his friends that 
 he was engaged upon it. " If (the poet) has no self, and if I am a poet, 
 where is the wonder that I should say I would write no more ? Might 
 I not at that very instant have been cogitating on the characters of Saturn 
 and Ops?" (27th October). In the next month, probably, as he watched 
 by the bedside of his dying brother, he actually began to put the poem 
 upon paper, for in December he writes to America that he has '^gone on a 
 little with it " : and a few days later that " it is scarce begun " {i.e., ''scarce 
 begun " in proportion to the length of the poem which at that time he con- 
 templated). When, therefore. Brown asserts of the first few weeks after 
 Tom's death, " It was then that he wrote Hyperion " he can only be under- 
 stood as referring to the main portion of the work. On 14th February, 
 1819, Keats wrote, " I have not gone on with Hyperion ". During the 
 next three months he was chiefly occupied with the Odes, and whether he 
 added to Hyperion we have no means of judging. Certainly, no more can 
 have been written after April, for in that month Woodhouse had the MS. 
 to read, and noted that " it contains two books and a half — about 900 lines 
 in all ". . . . " When Keats, after nearly a year's interruption of his
 
 HYPERION— NOTES 485 
 
 correspomleuce with Bailey, tells him in August ' I have been wilting parts 
 of my Hyperion ' this must not be taken as though lie had been writing 
 them lately, but only that he had been writing them — like Isabella, and 
 The Eve of St. Agnes, which he mentions in the same passage, since the 
 date of his last letter" ^ (C/. EML, pp. 228, 229). This letter to Bailey, 
 therefore, does not fix the downward limit of the date of the composition 
 of the poem, but it suggests, by its reference to " my Hyperion," that 
 Keats had definitely projected his poem and discussed it among his 
 friends before he went to Scotland, when he last saw Bailey. But it is 
 evident that for some time after April, Keats contemplated proceeding 
 with the poem, for it is not till 22nd September that he writes de- 
 finitely to Reynolds, *'I have given up Hyperion". 
 
 Of the sources of the poem something has already been said {cf. Intro- 
 duction, p. xliii). Notwithstanding the fact that critics almost unanimously 
 assert that Keats was drawing upon information obtained from Lempri^re 
 and Tooke— even Mr. Colvin saying (EML, p. 155) that "he had nothing 
 to guide him except scraps of ancient writers, principally Hesiod, as re- 
 tailed by compilers of classical dictionaries " there is very little that cannot 
 be ascribed with probability to a more inspiring source. Apart from the 
 intensely significant passages in Chapman's Iliad, quoted in the General 
 Introduction, Keats would know the main points in the story from many 
 references to it in previous English literature, e.g. in Spenser, Faerie 
 Queene, iii. 7. 47, or in Paradise Lost, i. 510 et seq. where Milton mentions 
 among those who attended the Council in Hell : — 
 
 Titan Heav'ns first born 
 With his enormous brood, and birthright seis'd 
 By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove 
 His own and Rhea's Son like measure found ; 
 So Jove usurping reign'd : . . . 
 All these and more came flocking. 
 Chapman's translation of the Works and Days of Hesiod (called by him 
 the Georgics) would also be known to Keats, and it is difficult to believe 
 that he did not read one of the translations of Hesiod's Theogony, well 
 known at the end of the eighteenth century, e.g., that of Cooke, given in 
 Chalmers's English Poets (1810), or that of Greene. Anyhow, bks. ii. and 
 iii. of Ovid's Metamorphoses (trans, by Sandys) were certainly known to him, 
 and in Sandys's observations on these books he would have found several 
 translations of passages bearing upon the subject, from which he would 
 cull a ievf suggestions. It is noticeable that Keats's version of the story, 
 independent as it is both in construction and conception of any one original, 
 contains many elements clearly taken from sources more literary than 
 
 1 Asa matter of fact, Isabella was written before Keats's last letter to Bailey, which 
 is dated i8th July, 1818, and the fact that he includes it in his list only shows more clearly 
 that Keats is not attempting to record his recent literary activity, but to give some 
 account of his occupations during the long interruption of their intercourse, the exact 
 duration of which he has for the moment forgotten.
 
 486 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Lempri^re, whilst Lempri^re supplies him with nothing which he could not 
 have obtained elsewhere. One may add that he falls into the error, against 
 which Lempriere particularly warns his readers, of confusing the Titans 
 and the giants (c/. bk. ii. 19). His confusion of Greek and Latin names 
 points also to the variety of sources upon which, in many cases uncon- 
 sciously, Keats was drawing. Lempriere almost invariably gives the Latin 
 name only. 
 
 There is probably no fragment in our literature which we would rather 
 see completed than Hyperion ; and it is, therefore, interesting to conjec- 
 ture as to the scheme on which Keats intended to carry on his work. It 
 is obvious, from what he has written, that he was taking full advantage 
 of the divergence of his different authorities to present the story and to 
 interpret it in his own manner. In the first place we must consider what 
 he has actually left us in the two and a half books that we possess. 
 Hyperion begins in mediis rebus. Saturn and Oceanus are already deposed, 
 many of their colleagues (most of them, it may be remarked. Giants not 
 Titans, who, therefore, took part in the later war and not properly 
 speaking in the Titanomachia at all) are already chained in torture (ii. 18) ; 
 the kingdom of Hyperion himself, though as yet unassailed, is filled with 
 portents of its coming doom. Bk. i. gives first the picture of the fallen 
 Saturn whom Thea, wife of Hyperion, is summoning to the council of the 
 Titans (1-157), and then a picture of Hyperion himself, conscious of im- 
 pending fate, yet vowing resistance to the end. His father Coelus pities 
 him and encourages him to resist, though he can aflFord him little hope, 
 and Hyperion plunges into the night to join his brethren (-357). Bk. ii. 
 presents us with the Titans in council, now joined by Saturn. Oceanus 
 interprets to his brothers the meaning of their inevitable fall, speaking of 
 the invincible beauty of his dispossessor, and Clymene, in a speech of 
 like import, tells of the beauty of Apollo. But Enceladus scorns their 
 words, calling upon the Titans to renew the struggle and gather around 
 Hyperion who is still undisg raced (1-345). The sun god appears, but his 
 dejected form only brings despondence upon the fallen gods, and suggests 
 in no questionable manner the coming catastrophe. Bk. iii. relates the 
 meeting of Apollo with Mnemosyne, and breaks off as the new god of light 
 and song attains his invincible divinity. How was the poem to proceed.'' 
 Woodhouse, who evidently knew Keats's original design, asserts that 
 ''the poem if completed would have treated of the dethronement of 
 Hyperion, the former god of the Sun, by Apollo — and incidentally of 
 those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by Jupiter, etc., and of the war 
 of the Giants for Saturn's re-establishment — with other events, of which 
 we have but very dark hints in the mythological poets of Greece and 
 Rome. In fact, the incidents would have been pure creations of the 
 poet's brain." It is evident that the execution of this scheme upon the 
 same scale as the two and a half books actually written would require at 
 least the ten books which tradition has always ascribed to the complete 
 
 :-M
 
 HYPERION— NOTES 487 
 
 poem as projected by Keats — a tradition borne out by the publishers' 
 Advertisement to the volume which states "^The poem was intended to 
 have been of equal length with Endymion, but the reception given to that 
 work discourao^ed the author from proceeding ". 
 
 It may be said at once that the reason here given for the discontinuance 
 of the poem is not only disproved by Keats's own attitude to this criticism 
 {vide Introduction to Endymion) but also by a slight attention to dates ; for 
 the last of the hostile reviews upon Endymion had appeared in September, 
 1818 ; Keats's correspondence proves that the annoyance occasioned by 
 them had certainly reached its height by October, whereas Hyperion was 
 not begun before November {vide supra). If the reviews had any influence, 
 therefore, they would have prevented his writing the poem at all, and not 
 caused him to give up the work some time later. But we have, in fact, 
 other evidence that Keats himself was not responsible for the Advertise- 
 ment. In a copy of the volume formerly in the possession of the late 
 Canon Aiuger, Keats has himself firmly crossed out the whole of it, writing 
 above it the remark, " I had no part in this ; I was ill at the time " ; and he 
 has bracketed the statement concerning his discouragement at the recep- 
 tion of Endymion, placing beneath it the words " This is a lie ". This is 
 intensely significant, and it gives a greater plausibility to a theory of 
 which careful examination of the poem had previously convinced me : 
 that Keats had modified his scheme of the poem considerably since his 
 discussion of it with his friends, and that during the actual time of com- 
 position he had no intention whatever ot writing an Epic in ten books. 
 For there are obvious discrepancies between the scheme of the poem as 
 presented by Woodhouse and the fragment as it actually exists. Accord- 
 ing to Woodhouse the depositions of Saturn and Oceanus are to be related 
 incidentally. But to whom could the episodes be related and by whom ? 
 They might, it is true, be narrated in the council of the gods on Olympus, 
 but this seems on the face of it improbable ; and the interest of such a 
 narration would be considerably lessened by the fact that the climax in 
 the case of Saturn has already been alluded to by Coelus (i. 822-26), and 
 in the case of Oceanus has been described with significant detail (ii. 230-89). 
 Again, we are told that the subsequent wars of the Giants for Saturn's 
 re-establishment are to follow ; but surely, if the central event of the 
 poem is to be the fall of Hyperion, any detailed account of such a war 
 would be an inartistic anti-climax — it would naturally be alluded to, but 
 could hardly be made the subject of elaborate treatment. There are other 
 difiiculties in the way of believing that Keats intended to narrate the wars 
 of the Giants. In the first place many of the most conspicuous Giants are 
 already "chain'd in torture," and "pent in regions of laborious breath" 
 (ii. 22) ; in the second place Keats has already alluded to the most import- 
 
 1 Not, as Mr. Forman implies, the wko/e statement about Endymion, but the second 
 half of it from " but " to " proceeding".
 
 488 JOHN KEATS 
 
 ant event of that war, the momentary victory of the Giants before their 
 final overthrow. Enceladus, we are told, 
 
 plotted, and even now 
 Was hurling mountains iti that second war, 
 Not long delay'd, that scar'd the younger Gods 
 To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird. 
 If Keats had intended to narrate this war, would he have spoilt his 
 story by anticipating its most interesting feature ? The poem, as far as it 
 goes, is much too masterly to allow us to believe it. Moreover, the very 
 phrasing "in that second war" is a characteristic and eiFective way of 
 alluding, not to an event which the author intends to record, but rather 
 to one which the reader is expected to know for himself, which bears upon 
 the action, but is outside its immediate scope {cf. the superb phrase of 
 Milton, from Keats's own favourite passage in Paradise Lost " which 
 cost Ceres all that pain "). As a matter of fact Woodhouse's scheme, 
 which presupposes a long poem, stands and falls with the Advertisement 
 for which, as literary adviser of Messrs Taylor & Hessey, he was very 
 likely responsible. Now if all these events referred to by Woodhouse are 
 cut out or curtailed, what remains to fill a poem of 4000 lines ? and if they 
 are not cut out, but dealt with upon a scale suggested by the two and a 
 half books that exist, how could the poem be so short as to justify Keats's 
 repudiation of the Advertisement in so far as it relates to the length of 
 the poem.'* The view, therefore, which I advance tentatively, as seeming 
 to fit in both with the external evidence and with the contents and char- 
 acter of the poem as it stands, is that Hyperion would not have reached 
 more than 1200 — 1500 lines, or four books of the length of the first and 
 second. Conjecture as to what tlie unwritten one and a half books would 
 have contained may seem impertinent, but it is irresistible, and may be justi- 
 fied on the ground that it may stimulate a renewed and more careful study 
 of the poem itself. I conceive that Apollo, now conscious of his divinity, 
 would have gone to Olympus, heard from the lips of Jove of his newly 
 acquired supremacy, and been called upon by the rebel three to secure the 
 kingdom that awaited him. He would have gone forth to meet Hyperion 
 who, struck by the power of supreme beauty, would have found resistance 
 impossible. Critics have inclined to take for granted the supposition that 
 an actual battle was contemplated by Keats, but I do not believe that such 
 was, at least, his final intention. In the first place he had the example of 
 Milton, whom he was studying very closely, to warn him of its dangers ; ^ 
 in the second, if Hyperion had been meant to fight he would hardly be 
 represented as already, before the battle, shorn of much of his strength ; 
 thus making the victory of Apollo depend upon his enemy's unnatural weak- 
 
 1 In addressing his Muse at the beginning of bk. iii. Keats dwells upon his sense of 
 unfitness for treating stormy themes, and it is noticeable how little there is of martial 
 language and allusion in all of the poem that Keats had as yet written, though he had 
 plenty of opportunities of introducing it. Milton, on the contrary, gives us vivid detail 
 from the first, thus preparing for the account of the battle which follows.
 
 HYPERION— NOTES 489 
 
 ness and not upon his own strength. One may add that a combat would 
 have been completely alien to the whole idea of the poem as Keats conceived 
 it, and as, in fact, it is universally interpreted from the speech of Oceanus 
 in the second book. The resistance of Enceladus and the Giants, them- 
 selves rebels against an order already established, would have been dealt 
 with summarily, and the poem would have closed with a description of the 
 new age which had been inaugurated by the triumph of the Olympians, 
 and, in particular, of Apollo the god of light and song. The e\ents here 
 suggested would have formed a part of tlie poem however long, and if 
 we accept the view that it was not to attain the dimensions once supposed, 
 it is hard to believe that there would have been room for more. The 
 ignorance of Woodhouse and others as to the change which had come over 
 Keats's conception since he had first discussed it among them as something 
 after the conventional epic pattern, is easy to explain. He wrote the poem 
 by his brother's bedside and immediately after his brother's death, when, 
 probably, he was seeing little society but that of Brown. Then he laid 
 it aside to write the Odes and some of his romantic poems, becoming en- 
 gaged in work which was more congenial to him, and could be composed 
 in greater freedom from an exact model ; and there is no proof that he 
 touched it again till he came to reconstruct it in the form of a vision, 
 
 Hyp&rion represents, as has been pointed out in the General Introduc- 
 tion, the height of Milton's influence upon Keats, its style as well as much 
 of its treatment of subject being modelled on Paradise Lost. Milton's 
 minor poems had fascinated Keats at an early period, and in the summer 
 of 1817, partly owing to the enthusiasm of Bailey,^ he first began to fall 
 under the spell of Milton's masterpiece. Signs of its influence are apparent 
 in the later books of Endymion {vide notes to End. iii. 133, 615, iv. 365) and 
 early in 1818 Milton began to be his chief study. " I long to feast on old 
 Homer," he writes to Reynolds (April 1818), "as we have on Shakespeare, 
 and as I have lately upon Milton," and early in the next month followed 
 the well-known comparison between Milton and Wordsworth {Letter to 
 Reynolds, 3rd May, 1818), Writing to Bailey, (18th July) he refers to the 
 " fine thing about Milton and Ceres and Proserpine " {Paradise Lost, iv. 
 268 ; cf. notes to Hyp. ii. 54) as " in his head," and in August of the next 
 year he tells both Reynolds and Bailey that Paradise Lost is every day "a 
 greater wonder" to him. He had already, however, discoveied that Mil- 
 ton's style could not be imitated by him without the sacrifice of much that 
 was essential to the expression of his own genius {vide p. li). Mr. Sidney 
 Colvin remarks that " Hyperion is hardly Miltonic in the stricter sense " 
 and justly points out the essential differences between the genius of the 
 two poets (EML, p. 158) ; but in doing so, perhaps, he somewhat under- 
 estimates the persistence with which Keats reproduces the more obvious 
 Miltonic eflfects, sometimes in conscious imitation, and oftener as an 
 
 1 Severn also laid claim to this and spoke " with a natural pride in having been 
 instrumental in turning Keats's attention to the noble beauty of Paradise Lost " (Life of 
 Severn, Sharp, p. 40).
 
 490 JOHN KEATS 
 
 unconscious echo of the Miltonic music which was ringine^ in his ears. 
 The follovvins^ list of parallels is not short considering that the whole 
 length of Hyperion is less than 900 lines. 
 
 Miltonic Syntax. These are perhaps the most important, as they are 
 the chief indication of the undue influence of Milton on his style, and 
 illustrate clearly the introduction of un-English expressions to which, in 
 his advocacy of Chatterton's native English, he particularly objected. 
 
 (fl) Elliptical constructions : — uncertain where (ii. 9) ; cf. Paradise 
 Lost, iii. 75, 76: — 
 
 Firm land imbosom'd without Firmament, 
 Uncertain which, in Ocean or in Air. 
 Under this head might be classed also phrases like — though an immortal 
 (i. 44) ; though feminine (ii. .56) ; thus brief (i. 153). 
 {b) Redundancies : — 
 
 No further than to where his feet had stray 'd. 
 And slept there since (i. 16). 
 I, Coelus, wonder, how they came and whence ; 
 And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be. . . . (i. 314, 315). 
 Cf. Paradise Lost, ix. 288, Thoughts, which how found they harbour in 
 thy brest, and Paradise Lost, xii. 128, 129, I see him, but thou canst not, 
 with what Faith He leaves his Gods. 
 
 (c) Classical construction : — save what . . . gave of sweet (i. 207). 
 
 Cf. Paradise Lost, i. 182, Save what the glimmering of these livid 
 flames casts pale; cf. also Paradise Lost, v. 324. For "gave of" cf. 
 Paradise Lost, x.(143, gave me of the Tree. With the whole phrase Mr. 
 Arnold compares : — 
 
 With what besides in Councel or in Fight, 
 
 Hath bin achievd of merit {Paradise Lost, ii. 20, 21). 
 
 (d) Classical use of the participle and adjective : — 
 
 I. in place of a relative sentence : thus aflflicted (i. 56) ; so gifted (iii. 68). 
 
 n. in place of adv. or adv. phrase : a stream went voiceless by (i. 11) ; 
 let the rose glow intense (iii. 15) ; shook horrid (i. 94) ; plucked witless 
 
 in. in place of the abstract noun : barren void (i. 119) ; {cf. Milton's 
 " vast abrupt," etc.). 
 
 Miltonic repetitions. One of the most characteristic and efl'ective 
 features of the style of Paradise Lost is the studied repetition of words 
 and phrases. This is a development of the poetic device called by Dryden 
 the "turn," by which the same word or phrase is used twice in a different 
 relation — its repetition giving a particular significance to the part which 
 it performs on the second occasion. The "turn" can be employed for 
 mere emphasis, or for musical efi'ect, or, more satisfactorily, for both com- 
 bined ; but its finest use is informed with a certain pathos, or subtle but
 
 HYPERION— NOTES 491 
 
 telling irony, as in Vergil's lines on the fatal impatience of Orpheus to 
 see his bride : — 
 
 Cum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem 
 Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes. 
 
 {Georgics, iv. 488, 489.) 
 In classical literature the '^turn" found most favour with Ovid, in whom 
 it degenerated into a mere prettiness, and the early Elizabethans caught 
 it principally from Ovid, though Spenser developed to the full its most 
 delicate musical possibilities. But in English poetry Milton has the most 
 constant recourse to it ; in his work it is found in all its forms, from the 
 vulgar Ovidian pun, which fortunately Keats escaped, to its finest and 
 highest use. The most sustained example of its musical development is 
 to be found in the speech of Eve {Paradise Lost, iv. f)41-.58), " Sweet is 
 the breath of morn," etc., where an exquisite effect i< obtained by the re- 
 iteration of the delights of earth which in Eve's eyes were associated with 
 her love for Adam. Other illustrations, of varying force, are the follow- 
 ing :— 
 
 There rest, if any rest can harbour there {Paradise Lost, i. 185). 
 
 and feel by turns the bitter change 
 Of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce (ii. 598.) 
 
 faithful found 
 Among the faithless, faithful only bee (v. 897). 
 
 unchang'd 
 To hoarce or mute, though fall'n on evil dayes, 
 On evil dayes though fall'n, and evil tongues (vii. 24-26). 
 Even Wordsworth in the Excursion fell under the influence of Milton's 
 style in this respect, and Keats, often with singular success, makes use of 
 the same poetic device. 
 
 (1) How beautiful, if sorrow had not made 
 
 Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self (i. 35, 36). 
 
 (2) sometimes eagles' wings. 
 Unseen before by Gods or wondering men, 
 Darken'd the place ; and neighing steeds were heard, 
 Not heard before by Gods or wondering men (i. 182-85). 
 
 (3) Two wings this orb 
 
 Possess'd for glory, two fair argent wings (i. 283, 284). 
 
 (4) Unus'd to bend, by hard compulsion bent (i. 300). 
 (6) There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines 
 
 Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines (ii. 116, 122). 
 
 (6) Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain (ii. 202). 
 
 (7) it enforc'd me to bid sad farewell 
 
 To all my empire : farewell sad I took (ii. 238, 239). 
 
 (8) (the brook that) 
 
 Doth fear to meet the sea : but sea it met (ii. 302).
 
 492 JOHN KEATS 
 
 I question whether Milton himself uses this device on an average 
 once in every hundred lines, as Keats does. 
 
 The ''turn" can in many of these cases be clearly distinguished from 
 the mere repetition of phrase (as 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8) but the dividing line 
 between them is a vanishing one, so that it seems better to group them 
 together, as having all the same musical effect upon the poem. 
 
 Miltonic inversions. This simple device is, of course, employed by all 
 poets to aid them in overcoming the difficulties of metre and rhyme, but 
 the excessive use of it is peculiarly associated with Milton and is one of 
 the most obvious examples of the Latinism of his style. Keats, who used 
 it sparingly elsewhere, employs it nearly fifty times in Hyperion, e.g. ; 
 palace bright (i. 176) ; metal sick (189) ; rest divine (192) ; stride colossal 
 (195) ; radiance faint (304) ; children dear (309) ; palpitations sweet, and 
 pleasures soft (313) ; etc., etc. And the effect is especially Miltonic when 
 one adjective precedes the noun and another follows it ; e.g. gold clouds 
 metropolitan (i. 129) ; lithe serpent vast (i. 261) ; cf. Paradise Lost, iv. 
 870, faded splendour wan, etc. 
 
 Miltonic vocabulary. Under this heading may fairly be placed words 
 which, not in Keats's ordinary prose vocabulary, are to be found in both 
 Milton and Hyperion. Many of them are common to other writers of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries {cf. Glossary) but their presence in 
 Hyperion is probably due to Keats's engrossing study of Milton at this 
 period. Most noticeable among these are the following (further explana- 
 tion, when necessary, will be added in the notes) argent (i. 284) ; colure 
 (i. 274) ; essence (i. 232, ii. 331, iii. 104) ; gurge (ii. 28) ; inlet (i. 211) ; 
 lucent (i. 239) ; oozy (ii. 170) ; orbed (i. 166) ; reluctant (i. 61) ; slope 
 (i. 204). Notice also the spelling of sovran (iii. 115) and astonied (ii. 165). 
 
 It is noticeable also that in Hyperion for the first time Keats's vocabu- 
 lary abounds in adjectives formed from substantives by the addition of -ed 
 instead of -y. This is a formation used largely by Milton, and from this 
 time onward by Keats also. 
 
 Miltonic reminiscence or intonation. Under this head must be classed 
 lines and phrases which recall to the ear some well-known Miltonic cadence 
 or combination of words. They cannot be regarded as direct borrowings, 
 but they are indicative of the pi'ofound influence which Milton exercised 
 in this poem over Keats's style and thought. 
 
 Came like an inspiration (ii. 109) ; cf. Paradise Lost, i. 711, rose like 
 an Exhalation. 
 
 Dark, dark And painful vile oblivion seals my eyes (iii. 87), cf. Samson 
 Agonistes, 80, O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon. 
 
 (The conjunction of the two epithets " painful vile " has also a Miltonic 
 sound. ) 
 
 No shape distinguishable (ii. 79) ; cf. The other shape If shape it 
 might be call'd that shape had none Distinguishable {Paradise Lost, ii. 
 667).
 
 HYPERION— NOTES 493 
 
 The meek ethereal Hours (i. 216) ; cf. th' ethereal Powers {Paradise 
 Lost, xii. 677). 
 
 Soft delicious warmth (ii. 266) ; cf. soft delicious Air {Paradise Lost, 
 ii. 400) ; soft Ethereal warmth {Paradise Lost, ii. 601). 
 
 Breath of morn {Hyp. i. 2) ; {Paradise Lost, iv. 641). 
 
 Season due (i. 265) ; (Lycidas, 7). 
 
 Repetition of " this " : — 
 
 Am I to leave this haven of my rest, 
 This cradle of my glory, this soft clime (i. 235, 236). 
 Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime? . . . (Paradise Lost, i. 242). 
 
 In thousand hugest phantasies (ii. 13) cf. a thousand pliantasies 
 (Comtis, 205). 
 
 (The uncommon superlative " hugest" is also Miltonic.) 
 
 Locks not oozy (ii. 170) ; his oozy locks (Lycidas). 
 
 Some comfort yet (i. 21) ; cf. som solace yet {Comus, 348). 
 
 More striking passages of the same kind {e.g. ii. 54, ii. 75, ii. 36) are 
 reserved for treatment in the notes. 
 
 It was largely due to this excessive Miltonism that Keats abandoned 
 the poem {vide letters quoted, p. Ii) and set about its reconstruction in 
 the form of a vision, but his friends seem to have been enthusiastic in its 
 praise and to have recognised its supreme poetic worth. Hunt, reviewing 
 the 1820 volume in the Indicator, spoke of it as "a fragment — a gigantic 
 one, like a ruin in the desert, or the bones of the mastodon. It is truly a 
 piece with its subject, which is the downfall of the elder gods." The 
 only dispassionate contemporary review of which we have knowledge is 
 that of Jeffrey in the Edinburgh of August 1820. It is chiefly devoted to 
 a criticism of Endymion, which Jeffrey had not noticed before, and only 
 speaks, at the close, of Hyperion as '' containing passages of some force 
 and grandeur" but, he adds, ''it is sufficiently obvious that the subject 
 is too far removed from all sources of human interest to be successfully 
 treated by any modern author. Mr. Keats has unquestionably a very 
 beautiful imagination, and a great familiarity with the finest diction of 
 English poetry ; but he must learn not to misuse or misapply these 
 advantages ; and neither to waste the good gifts of nature and study on 
 intractable themes, nor to luxuriate too recklessly on such as are more 
 suitable." (For a reply to this criticism, vide EML, p. 153.) Byron was 
 furious at this praise of the Edinburgh and makes several offensive 
 references to it in his correspondence (Sept. -Dec. 1820), e.g. " oi the 
 praises of that dirty little blackguard Keates in the Edinburgh, I shall 
 observe as Johnson did when Sheridan the actor got a pension ; ' what, 
 has he got a pension } then it is time I should give up mine ! ' Nobody 
 could be prouder of the praises of the Edinburgh than I was, or more 
 alive to its censure. ... At present all the men they have ever praised 
 are degraded by their insane article. Why don't they review ' Solomon's 
 Guide to Health ' } It is better sense and as much poetry as Johnny Keates.' 
 {Letters and Journals, ed. Prothero, v. 120.)
 
 494 JOHN KEATS 
 
 But in spite of this he recognised the genius of Hyperion. In Don 
 Juan. (xi. 60) he attempted to compromise matters, and to sneer and praise 
 at the same time. . . . 
 
 " John Keats, who was killed oiF by one critique 
 
 Just as he really promised something great 
 
 If not intelligible, without Greek 
 
 Contrived to talk about the gods of late, 
 
 Much as they might have been supposed to speak. 
 
 Poor fellow ! His was an untoward fate ; 
 
 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle. 
 
 Should let itself be snuffed out by an article." 
 In a letter to Murray (Aug. 1821, Prothero, v. 331) he admitted that 
 " his Hyperion is a fine monument and will keep his name " and a few 
 months later wrote in a manuscript note to his earlier attack on Keats {vide 
 note to Sleep and Poetry, 230), " His fragment on Hyperion seems actually 
 inspired by the Titans and is as sublime as ^schylus ". Shelley, whom 
 neither vanity nor jealousy ever touched, always recognised the greatness 
 of the poem, which was to him the finest of all Keats's work. " If 
 Hyperion be not grand poetry, none has been produced by our contempo- 
 raries," he writes to Peacock (15th Feb., 1821) whilst in his unpublished 
 letter to the Quarterly Review he remarks : '' The great proportion of this 
 piece is surely in the very highest style of poetry". Medwin states that 
 Shelley '' considered the scenery and drawing of Saturn dethroned and 
 the fallen Titans, surpassed those of Satan and his rebellious angels in 
 Paradise Lost — possessing more human interest, and that the whole poem 
 was supported throughout with a colossal grandeur equal to the subject " 
 (Dowden, Life of Shelley, ii. 109). 
 
 For the importance of Hyperion in the development of Keats's mind 
 and thought, cf. General Introduction, and Introduction to the Fall of 
 Hyperion. 
 
 Until quite recently the only MS. of Hyperion known to be extant was 
 that to be found in the Woodhouse Commonplace Book, into which it was 
 copied by one of Woodhouse's clerks. But in October last (1904) the Biitish 
 Museum purchased from Miss Bird, sister of Dr. George Bird the physician 
 and friend of Leigh Hunt, the autograph MS. of the poem. It is clear 
 that when Keats started upon this MS. he intended it to be a fair copy, 
 and it was only discarded because of the numerous alterations which he 
 made when he came to view his work a second time, and the act of writing 
 rekindled in him with even greater intensity the inspiration in which the 
 poem had first been composed. For a full account of the MS. and its 
 cancelled passages readers are referred to my Introduction and Notes to 
 the Facsimile of the Autograph MS. of Hyperion, published by the Clarendon 
 Press ; all the more important readings in it are quoted in the following 
 notes. It was from this MS. that the transcript in the Woodhouse Common- 
 place Book was taken.
 
 HYPERION, BK. I— NOTES 495 
 
 Book I 
 
 1. For the relation of the picture of the dejected Saturn with which 
 the poem opens to Chapman's translation of Iliad, viii. 425, vide General 
 Introduction, p. xlvi. 
 
 3. Eve's one star : evening MS. cancelled, the substitution of a vivid 
 picture for mere statement. 
 
 8. Not so much life as on a summer's day 
 
 Robs not one light seed from the feather' d grass. 
 This passage affords us one of the most interesting examples of gradual 
 development to perfection. Originally it ran : — 
 
 Not so much life as what an eagle's wing 
 Would spread upon a field of green-ear'd corn, 
 ''what an eagle's" was then deleted in favour of "a young vulture's" 
 — hardly an improvement — and so the passage was left. Then at a later 
 time, when Keats came to read through what he had written, the two 
 lines were crossed through and their place taken by the following, written 
 across the right-hand side of the page : — 
 
 Not so much life as on a summer's day 
 
 Robs not at all the dandelion's fleece. 
 
 This was left unaltered in the MS., and reappears in Woodhouse. But 
 
 Keats was dissatisfied with it, and the felicitous reading of the text was 
 
 added on the proof-sheets.^ 
 
 16. Stray' d : stay'd MS., Woodhouse. 
 17-19. The MS. first read :— 
 
 And slept without a motion : since that time 
 His old right hand lay nerveless on the ground 
 Unscepter'd, and his white-browd eyes were clos'd ; 
 and reached its present form through several changes. Thus ''on the 
 ground " was first cancelled for " dead supine," and " white-browed " gave 
 place to "ancient" before the inspiration came which prompted the most 
 vital word in the whole passage — " realmless ". 
 
 18. nerveless, listless, dead : — A collocation of adjectives whose cadence 
 Keats had caught from his favourite, Chatterton — cf. Excellent Ballad of 
 Charitie, 23, withered, sapless, dead. 38. lost, dispended, drowned. Keats 
 makes use of it in two other places — Endymion iv. 764, lovelorn, silent, 
 wan. St. Agnes' Eve, ii., meagre, barefoot, wan. 
 
 21. Between lines 21 and 22 the MS. and Woodhouse supply four can- 
 celled lines : — 
 
 Thus the old Eagle drowsy with great grief, 
 Sat moulting his weak plumage, never more 
 
 ^ In reality the change made its first appearance in The Fall of Hyperion, written 
 in November, 1819. Critics are always ready to point out the general inferiority of the 
 reconstructed poem ; they do not realise that four of the most felicitous changes from 
 the Hyperion of the Woodhouse Commonplace Book to the printed text of 1820 are 
 anticipated in The Fall of Hyperion. Besides this passage we may note the substitution 
 of " gradual " for "sudden " in line 76 and the changes in lines 189 and 200.
 
 496 JOHN KEATS 
 
 To be restored or soar against the sun ; 
 While his three sons upon Olympus stood. 
 
 23. there came one : — Thea, wife of Hyperion {vide 1. 95). 
 
 28. By her in stature the tall Amazon 
 
 Had stood a pigmy'' s height : — 
 Placed by her side the tallest Amazon 
 Had stood a little child MS. cancelled. 
 The idea of comparing Thea's height with the stature of the Pigmy was 
 doubtless suggested by Paradise Lost, i. 780, where the devils are repre- 
 sented as 
 
 " now less than smallest dwarfs . . . like that Pigmean race," etc. 
 It is important to notice that the Miltonic touch thus given to the pas- 
 sage was a correction to the MS. 
 
 30. stay'd Ixion's wheel : eased Ixion's toil MS., IVoodhouse. 
 
 35-37. Mr. W. T. Arnold and Mr. Buxton Forman point out the debt 
 in this passage to Landor's Gebir, i. 56-60 : — 
 
 There was a brightening paleness in his face 
 Such as Diana, rising o'er the rocks 
 Shower'd o'er the lonely Latmian ; on his brow 
 Sorrow there was, yet nought was there severe. 
 The Miltonic grandeur of Landor's blank verse would naturally attract 
 Keats at this period, whilst the reference to the Endymion legend would 
 tend to make his memory retentive of this passage. 
 
 46. She laid and to the level of his ear : She laid and to the level of 
 his hollow ear MS. with two hypermetric syllables. This had apparently 
 escaped Keats's notice, but Woodhouse has underlined it in pencil, and 
 put a + against it in the margin. The mistake was easily rectified by the 
 omission of the word " hollow ". 
 
 48. tone : tune MS., Woodhouse. 
 
 52. poor old King : — When it is remembered that Keats's sonnet re- 
 cording the profound impression made upon him by re-reading King Lear 
 (vide p. 277) was written at a time when Hyperion was already in his mind, 
 it is easy to believe that he was more or less consciously influenced by 
 Shakespeare in his conception of the character of Saturn, whose kingdom, 
 and the powers of mind necessary to rule it, have passed away from him 
 in age. It is noticeable that the epithet old is applied to Lear, at least 
 twenty times, with deeply tragic reiteration ; and his weakness, whether 
 it is viewed with contempt, or pity, or love, or referred to by Lear himself 
 in his utter misery, is always alluded to as the weakness of age. Goneril 
 alludes to it with a sneer (i. 3. 16-19), Regan taunts him with it (ii. 4. 148) 
 and Gloucester twice in the same speech applies to him the epithet poor old 
 (iii. 7. 57, 62), whilst Lear calls himself a poor old man and constantly harps 
 upon it. (C/. also ii. 4. 156, 194, 238 ; iii. 4. 20, etc.) It is noteworthy 
 also that Saturn replies to Thea (lines 98-102) by questions as to his own 
 identity which recall strikingly the language and mood of Lear (i. 4. 
 246-50) :—
 
 HYPERION, BK. I.— NOTES 497 
 
 Doth any here know me ? This is not Lear : 
 
 Doth Lear walk thus ? speak thus ? Where are his eyes ? 
 
 Either his motion weakens, his discernings 
 
 Are lethargied — Ha! waking? 'Tis not so. 
 
 Who is it that can tell me who 1 am ? 
 
 61. reluctant:— Mr. Forman quotes as a parallel to this passage Paradise 
 
 Lost, i. 171-177. The Miltonic use of the word reluctant suggests Paradise 
 
 Lost, vi. 56-69 :— 
 
 . . . Clouds began 
 
 To darken all the Hill, and smoak to rowl 
 In duskie wreathes, reluctant flames, the signe 
 Of wrauth awak't. 
 On which Keats comments, in his Notes to Milton, " ' Reluctant ' with its 
 original and modern meaning combined and woven together, with all its 
 shades and signification has a powerful eifect ". 
 63. Unpractised : impetuous MS. cancelled. 
 
 67. That unbelief has not a space to breathe. Followed in the MS. by 
 a line afterwards cancelled : — 
 
 Or a brief dream to find its way to heaven. 
 72-8. Those green-rob'd senators, etc. : — This exquisite interpretation of 
 the trees, whose age suggests their connection with the mystery of the 
 past, is essentially characteristic of the manner in which the influence of 
 Nature and of romance was blended in the mind of Keats. Cf. Fall of 
 Hyperion, ii, 6, of the wind which 
 
 blows legend-laden through the trees. 
 So in an early sonnet (xvii. p. 39) 
 
 breezes than are blown 
 Through its tall woods with high romances blent. 
 We find a close parallel to the idea in a half-sportive passage in the 
 letters of Gray, where he speaks of the " most-venerable beeches . . . 
 that like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old 
 stories to the winds : — 
 
 and as they bow their hoary tops, relate 
 In murmuring sounds the dark decrees of fate : 
 While visions, as poetic eyes avow. 
 Cling to each leaf and swarm on every bough ". 
 These lines were first written in the MS. thus : — 
 
 The oaks stand charmed by the earnest stars 
 And through all night without a stir they rest. 
 Save from one sudden momentary gust 
 Which comes upon the silence and dies off. 
 As if the sea of air had but one wave. 
 The heaviness of the double monosyllabic ending to line 75 seems to have 
 struck Keats at once, for " they rest " is struck out in favour of " remain ". 
 Then he changes the order to 
 
 And through all night remain without a stir. 
 32
 
 498 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Later comes the happy thought of developing the human idea already 
 suggested in the word " senators ". He wishes to impress upon us the still- 
 ness of the scene, and even politicians are not reposeful enough unless they 
 are asleep. The night is "tranced," and the influence of "the earnest 
 stars " is upon the whole face of Nature. It is not therefore a senseless 
 sleep, but one of magic dreams. So " dream " is substituted for " stand " ; 
 but this does not help the second line, which is the weakest. Clearly the 
 idea of dreaming must be reserved for the second line, and the inspiration 
 
 comes : — 
 
 Dream, and so dream all night without a stir. 
 
 But if this is to stand, the previous line must once more be altered ; and 
 
 Keats changes the construction of his sentence, and coins a compound 
 
 adjective, grammatically indefensible perhaps, but peculiai-ly effective for 
 
 all that, in its suggestions of the potency and the all-pervading influence 
 
 of the charm which has been laid upon the dreaming oaks. 
 
 The change in the two adjectives of line 76 still further improves the 
 passage. The substitution of "solitary " for " momentary" is a gain both 
 in sound and sense ; so too is the substitution of " gradual " for " sudden," 
 which, however, was not made in the MS., but only added as a pencil 
 correction in Woodhouse. 
 
 81. falling : fallen MS. 
 
 86. in cathedral cavern : — Keats had been much impressed during his 
 Scotch tour in the previous summer (1818) with the beauty of Fingal's 
 Cave, and had already celebrated it in a poem. Staff a (q.v.), wherein 
 he spoke of it as The Cathedral of the Sea. He is here drawing upon 
 his recollections of it. In his letter to Thomas Keats (26th July) in which 
 he sends him the poem on Staffa, he speaks in a manner suggestive of these 
 lines. " Suppose now the Giants who rebelled against Jove had taken a 
 whole mass of black columns and bound them together like bunches of 
 matches — and then with immense axes had made a cavern in the body of 
 these columns — of course the roof and the floor must be composed of the 
 broken ends of these columns — such is Fingal's Cave except that the sea has 
 done the work of excavation and is continually washing there. . . . I'or 
 solemnity and grandeur it far surpasses the finest cathedral." 
 
 90. His faded eyes and saw his kingdom gone. Keats first wrote in 
 the MS. :— 
 
 His eyes and saw his royal kingdom gone ; 
 but as he copied he recognised the tautology of " royal kingdom," and 
 decided to give the epithet to "eyes ". First he tried "faint-blue," but 
 deleted it in favour of "faded," which suggests more forcibly Saturn's 
 loss of royal power, and is doubtless an unconscious reminiscence of the 
 " faded cheek " of Satan {Paradise Lost, i. 602). 
 
 92. and then spake : and he said MS. cancelled. 
 
 98. Look up, and tell me, etc. : — vide note to i. 52. 
 
 102. front of Saturn .-—Followed in MS. and Woodhouse by the follow- 
 ing line : —
 
 HYPERION, BK. I.— NOTES 499 
 
 What dost think? 
 Am I that same ? O Chaos ! 
 106-112. This is one of the passages taken by Mr. W. T. Arnold to 
 prove Keats's close study of Lempriere. Of Saturn, Lempriere says " he 
 employed himself in civilising the barbarous manners of the people of Italy 
 and in teaching them agriculture and the useful and liberal arts. His reign 
 was so mild and popular that mankind have called it the golden age, to inti- 
 mate the happiness and tranquillity which the earth then enjoyed ". But 
 there is nothing here with which Keats was not familiar in Chapman's trans- 
 lation of Hesiod's Georgics and in Sandys's Ovid. In Chapman we read : — 
 When first both gods and men had one time's birth 
 The gods of diverse languaiged men on earth 
 A golden world produced, that did sustain 
 Old Saturn's rule when he in heaven did reign : 
 And then lived men, like gods in pleasure here 
 Indued with minds secure ; from toils, griefs, clear. 
 
 Thus lived they long and died as seized in sleep 
 All good things served them ; fruits did ever keep 
 Their free fields crowned, that all abundance bore 
 All which all equal shared, and none wished more. 
 Similarly Ovid, Met. i. (Sandys), founded in all probability on this 
 
 passage : — 
 
 in firme content 
 And harmlesse ease, their happy days were spent 
 The yet free Earth did of her own accord 
 Untorne with ploughs all sorts of fruit afford. 
 
 'Twas always Spring, warm Zephyrus sweetly blew 
 On smiling flowers, which without setting grew, 
 and more in the same strain, whilst in his commentary Sandys translates 
 another similar passage from Hesiod's Theogony. The tone of these passages 
 is much closer to Keats than is Lempriere, in whom, it may be remarked, 
 there is no reference to Saturn's influence over the weather, which Ovid 
 has emphasised. 
 
 111. acts : arts MS., a not impossible reading. The lines which follow 
 are thus written in the MS. : — 
 
 Must do to ease itself, but too hot grown 
 Doth ease its heart of love in, just as tears 
 Leave a calm pleasure in the human breast 
 O Thea I must burn — my Spirit gasps. 
 The poet cancelled all these lines except that part which stands in our 
 text, and then added " I am gone " below, to complete the line. 
 116. Spot: bit MS., Woodhouse. 
 
 125. Be of ripe progress, etc. First written in the MS. : — 
 Be going on — Saturn must still be king 
 but altered to the reading of the text.
 
 600 JOHN KEATS 
 
 134. where is : am I MS. cancelled. 
 139. and heard not : not hearing MS. cancelled. 
 
 147. The rebel three : — Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto. Cf. speech of 
 Neptune, Chapman's Iliad, xv. 174, 175: — 
 
 Three brothers born are we 
 To Saturn, Rhea brought us forth, this Jupiter and I 
 And Pluto, god of undergrounds. 
 154. shade : gloom MS. cancelled. 
 
 156. that yielded like the mist : which to them gave like air MS. altered 
 to ''that gave to them like mist ". So Woodhouse. 
 
 166. Hyperion : — Mr. W. T. Arnold notes that Hyperion was not really 
 the god of the Sun " but strictly speaking the father of Helios, the Sun ". 
 But his statement is incorrect, and even if it had not been so, there would 
 have been plenty of precedent for Keats in Elizabethan poetry. Cf. 
 Shakespeare, Titus Andronictt-s, v. 2. 56: — 
 
 Even from Hyperion's rising in the East 
 and Timon of Athens, iv. 3. 184: — 
 
 , . . heaven whereon Hyperion's quickening fire doth shine. 
 169-73. as among us mortals etc. : — A reminiscence of Paradise Lost, 
 i. 698 (a passage selected in Keats's Notes for s^pecial comment) where a 
 natural portent is described which " with fear of change perplexes Monarchs ". 
 Keats remarks upon it : " How noble and collected an indignation against 
 Kings ! " The rest of the passage, in its connection of the bell and the 
 gloom bird, suggests the words of the terror-stricken Lady Macbeth 
 {Macbeth, ii. 2. 3, 4) :— 
 
 It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman 
 Which gives the stern'st good night. 
 The reference here and in Keats may be to the practice of sending the 
 town bellman to a condemned man on the night before his execution to 
 warn him that his time was come, or to a custom of ringing the church 
 bell when a person was dying, in order to obtain prayers for the passing 
 soul. The idea seems to have impressed Keats, for he makes two other 
 forcible allusions to it : — 
 
 A poor, weak, palsy-stricken churchyard thing. 
 Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll. 
 
 {St. Agnes' Eve, xviii.) 
 and 
 
 but a moment's thought is passion's passing bell. 
 
 {Lamia, ii. 39.) 
 174. prophesyings of the midnight lamp : — Mr. W. T. Arnold thinks this 
 to be a reminiscence of Vergil, Georg. i. 390-92. 
 
 Ne nocturna quidem carpentes pensa puellae 
 
 Nescivere hiemem, testa cum ardente viderent 
 
 Scintillare oleum et putris concrescere fungos. 
 
 We know that Keats read Vergil in the original at school ; but that he 
 
 was not scholar enough to appreciate the language is evident from the
 
 HYPERION, BK. I.— NOTES 501 
 
 fact that he who "looked upon fine phrases like a lover" and constantly 
 drew upon his predecessors, should have made no attempt to reproduce this 
 greatest phrase-maker of literature. It seems far more probable, there- 
 fore, though I have as yet been unable to trace it, that in this passage 
 Keats is indebted not to Vergil, but a Vergilian echo to be found in some 
 scholarly Elizabethan. 
 
 175. But horrors, portion'd to a giant mrve: But warnings, portion'd to 
 his giant sense MS. altered to text. 
 
 176. Oft made Hyperion ache : Oft [made his Chin] pressed his curly 
 Chin upon his Breast MS. cancelled. 
 
 178. And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks. First written in MS. — 
 With chequered black of bronzed obelisks. 
 
 185. Not heard before by Gods or wondering men : Not heard before by 
 either Gods or Men MS. altered in order to make more perfect the char- 
 acteristic Miltonic repetition. 
 
 189. Savour of poisonous brass, etc. : a nauseous-feel of brass and metal 
 sick MS. changed to " poison," and so Woodhouse : — The alteration is 
 among the most felicitous of Keats's changes. " Feel," used as a noun, 
 takes us back to the most vulgar phase in Keats's poetic development. 
 
 190. And so, when harbour' d in the sleepy west: So that when he had 
 harbour'd in the West* MS. cancelled. The change, both here and in 
 line 192, which originally was : — 
 
 Instead of rest upon exalted couch, 
 adds vividness to the picture and enforces the contrast between the past 
 and present condition of Hyperion. The words " full completion " in the 
 next line represent a change in meaning from the earlier draft ; for before 
 them in our MS. stands the cancelled word " gradual ". In the Woodhouse 
 MS. Keats has written in pencil wherefore, the reading which he adopted 
 in the parallel line of the Fall of Hyperion (ii. 35). 
 198-200. Amazd and full of fear ; like anxious men 
 
 Who on wide plains gather in panting troops, 
 When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers. 
 This passage at lirst ran : — 
 
 In fear and sad amaze, like men at gaze 
 Who on a wide plain gather in sad troops 
 When an earthquake hath shook their city towers. 
 Then Keats substitutes "surprise " for " amaze ". But the word " sur- 
 prise " is ludicrously mild for men whose city towers are shaken with an 
 earthquake, and " Amaz'd and full of fear " is adopted as a beginning. The 
 return of " amaz'd " into the line now makes it necessary to get rid of " at 
 gaze," and it goes out first in favour of "trooped," which is found at once 
 to be impossible because of " sad troops " in the next line, and then 
 " anxious " is substituted. In the next line he deletes the "a," intending, 
 doubtless, though forgetting, to add an "s " to "plain ". Then, to give 
 the extra syllable now required, he alters "sad" to "saddened," but 
 deletes it and writes the vivid epithet " panting ".
 
 502 JOHN KEATS 
 
 The change in line 200 was a happy inspiration not found in the MS., 
 but added as a correction in Woodhouse. 
 
 203. Hyperion leaving twilight in the rear : He of the Sun just lighted 
 from the Air MS. cancelled. 
 
 204-12. Came slope upon, etc. : — One of the most characteristically 
 Miltonic passages in the poem, both in the use of words (slope, inlet) and 
 in construction (as was wont, save what, gave of). Cf. Introduction to the 
 poem. After 205 MS. and Woodhouse give the line : — 
 Most like a ro>ebud to a faery's lute. 
 and in place of the " And " of 209 read " Yes, ". 
 217- flared : went MS. cancelled. 
 218-22. From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault. 
 
 Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light, 
 And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades. 
 Until he reached the main great cupola. 
 There standing fierce beneath, he stamped his foot. 
 These lines were first written in the MS. : — 
 
 From gorgeous vault to vault, from space to space 
 Until he reached the great main Copula 
 And there he stood beneath, he stampt his foot. 
 It is noticeable here how in the growing intensity of vision the second 
 draft adds colour and detail to a picture at first vague and ill-defined. 
 223. basements deep : deep foundations MS. cancelled. 
 233. see : mark MS. cancelled. 
 235. Am I to leave this haven of my rest, 
 This cradle of my glory, this soft clime, 
 This calm luxuriance of blissful light ? 
 The phraseology and cadence of this passage owe something to Paradise 
 Lost, i. 242-5. 
 
 Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime, 
 Said then the lost Arch Angel, this the seat 
 That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom 
 For that celestial light ? 
 Satan's bitter indignation at the change of clime and loss of light which has 
 befallen him suggested to Keats Hyperion's prophetic sense of a like change. 
 243. Even here, into my centre of repose : Even here into my sanctuary 
 of repose MS. first altered to " in my old sanctuary of repose," and then 
 to the reading of the text. 
 
 246. Tellus and her briny robes ! Cf. End. iii. 701 : — 
 
 Ocean bows to thee 
 And Tellus feels his forehead's cumbrous load. 
 
 257. mirror' d : glassy MS. c rrected to " miroured," which Wood- 
 house had some diflficulty in deciphering, for he puts a + against the line. 
 
 258. A mist arose, etc. : — This mist brings forcibly to the mind Para- 
 dise Lost, ix. 180-82, where Milton tells of Satan how
 
 HYPERION, BK. I.— NOTES 503 
 
 Like a black mist low creeping, he held on 
 His midnight search, where soonest he might finde 
 The Serpent. 
 It is interesting to notice that this is among the passages selected by 
 Keats in his Notes on Milton for admiring comment. Mr. Forman thinks 
 that the description of Hyperion's palace which follows was " inspired by 
 the noble brief description of the palace of the Sun with which book ii. of 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses opens," but I am unable to trace any resemblance. 
 258. scummy : stagnant MS. cancelled — a vivid touch. 
 267. burst them wide 
 
 Suddenly on the Ocean's chilly streams 
 The planet orb etc. 
 
 burst them wide 
 And sudden on the Ocean's chilly streams. 
 The planet orb etc. MS. 
 This passage was misinterpreted by Woodhouse's clerk, who altered the 
 punctuation to " wide : And, sudden, . . . streams. The planet orb " etc., 
 giving a sense which Keats had never intended. Keats realised the 
 ambiguity later on and returned in the text to his own punctuation, 
 altering however " and sudden " to '* suddenly ". 
 
 273-87. But ever and anon the glancing spheres^ etc. : — Justly described 
 by I Mr. Arnold as the most Miltonic passage in the poem. This is 
 noticeable in the words, the ring of the verse, the sentence and paragraph 
 structure, the use of simile, the inversion of adjectives and the repetition 
 of phrase. But notice also the essentially hum^n touch which Keats gives 
 to the passage by his use of the adjectives muffling and sweet shaped. It is 
 interesting to observe that in the Woodhouse MS. the passage hieroglyphics 
 old . . . centuries has been queried, apparently by Keats himself — probably 
 because, at that time, he felt it to be too Miltonic. 
 
 But it is important to notice that all the changes from the earliest 
 version of the passage to its final form are towards Miltonism. In place 
 of lines 269-85 Keats first wrote only seven lines. Thus : — 
 The planet orb of fire whereon he rode 
 Each day from east to west the heavens through 
 Spun at his round in blackest curtaining 
 Not therefore hidden up and muffled quite 
 For ever and anon the glancing spheres 
 Glow'd through and still upon the sable shroud 
 Made sweet shap'd lightning : Wings this splendent orb, etc. 
 Apparently Keats first attempted to improve the passage a^ it stood, 
 altering " blackest curtaining " first to " darkest curtaining " and then to 
 " curtaining of clouds," and, two lines further on, " For " to " But ". 
 In the next line, which already showed a false start, "shot through," 
 "upon their" became first "within" then "about the". The recon- 
 struction must have occupied Keats on another occasion, for it is written
 
 504 JOHN KEATS 
 
 on the preceding verso ; and the additions are all remarkable for their 
 reminiscence of Miltonic word^ phrase and cadence. As it stands it shows 
 few corrections, which suggests that Keats may have experimented with 
 it on a rough sheet before copying it in. In line 272, however, "hid" 
 was only decided upon after Keats had tried both " dim " and " veiled," 
 and in line 274 "zones" was first written after "arcs". 
 
 Line 275 passed through the intermediary stage 'glared through and 
 struck throughout the muffling dark," and of 281 the earlier version ran 
 Now lost with all their wisdom and import. 
 
 287- Rose : came MS. cancelled. 
 
 295. here 'tis told : it is writ MS. cancelled. 
 
 296. Those silver wings, etc. First written in MS. : — 
 
 Those silver wings of the Sun were full outsp[r]ead 
 Ready to sail their orb ; the Porches wide 
 Were opened on the dusk domain of night. 
 In the next line "bright" is a correction of "enraged" and in 300 
 " hard " a correction of " stern ". 
 
 304. He sfretch'd himself in grief and radiance faint. A vivid substitute 
 for the tame and unmetrical reading cancelled in the A/5. ; — 
 He laid himself supine and in radiance faint. 
 30.5. the Heaven. . . . Look'd down on him with pity, etc. MS. : — Keats 
 makes a noteworthy change in the legend in the feeling of Coelus for his 
 children. He*iod, and after him the other classical mythologists, re- 
 present him as vowing vengeance on his children for the wrong they 
 have done him. He 
 
 told them all with a prophetic mind 
 The hours of his revenge were sure behind. {Theog. 320). 
 317. beauteous life : Life and Beauty MS. cancelled. 
 323. tumbled : hurled MS. cancelled. 
 331. Unruffled : Passionless MS. cancelled. 
 334. / see them, etc. Above is a cancelled line in the MS. : — 
 
 In widest speculation I do see. 
 351. Lifted : — A dramatic change for the first reading of the MS. 
 "opened". "Opened" was merely the obvious word ; " lifted " suggests 
 vividly the weariness of the dejected god. 
 
 353. And stiil they were the same bright patient stars : — This beautiful 
 li:ie was the result of two corrections. Keats wrote first 
 
 And still they all were the same patient stars. 
 then, 
 
 And still he saw they were . . . 
 but the inspiration came to him before he went further with his second 
 attempt. 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 This book is headed " Canto 2nd," a fact not, I think, without some 
 significance in its support of my theory {vide page 488) that when Keats
 
 HYPERION, BK. II.— NOTES 505 
 
 was engaged on the poem he had already given up his notion of making it 
 a formal epic in ten books. 
 
 The opening lines show some hesitation. Keats began first — 
 Upon that very point of winged time 
 That saw Hyperion, 
 probably intending to finish "slide into the air". Then he alters "that" 
 in the first line to "the" and restarts his second line "Hyperion slid". 
 This again is cancelled and the passage rewritten as in the text. The word 
 " beat," however, is crossed out in favour of " move ". Yet " beat " found 
 its way into the Woodhouse book either with or without the consent of 
 Keats, and so into the text. 
 
 4. Cybele identical with Ops (ii. 113) and Rhea — the wife of Saturn and 
 queen of the Titans. 
 
 4. th& bruised Titans : her bruised children MS. cancelled. 
 
 5, 6. where no insulting light Could glimmer. So Satan describes Hell 
 as 
 
 The seat of desolation, void of light 
 Save what the glimmering of these livid flames 
 Casts pale and dreadful. {Paradise Lost, i. 181-83.) 
 7. the solid roar Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse: — The 
 noise of the water had impressed Keats at StafFa. " At the extremity of 
 Fingal's cave," he writes, "there is a small perforation into another cave 
 at which the waters meeting and buffeting each other there is sometimes 
 produced a report as of a cannon." 
 
 17- Couches of rugged stone, etc. : — The MS. shows a false start, " Rough 
 stones," and continues "Couches of rugged stone and edge of slate". 
 It is altered to text after some hesitation. 
 
 19, 20. Cans, and Gyges, and Briareus, Typhon, and Dolor, and Por- 
 phyrion : — In the Woodhouse MS., opposite these lines, and apparently in 
 the hand of Keat> himself, are written the words 
 
 "Big-biawn'd .^gaeon mounted on a whale" 
 and below " Mgadon p. 25, S.O. Typhon or Typhoeus 90. Coeus 108". 
 Reference to these pages in the 1640 edition of Sandys's Ovid gives us in 
 each case the clue to a main source of Keats's knowledge of the Titans. 
 On p. 25 we find the line above quoted, with the marginal note " a giant 
 drowned in the .lEgaeon Sea for assisting the Titans and taken into the 
 number of the sea gods by Tethys " (he is identical with Briareus) ; on 
 p. 90 a marginal note on Typhon " the son of Tellus and Tantarus also 
 called Typhoeus," and on p. 108, again in a note, Coeus is spoken of as 
 " one of the Titans ". Cf. also Hesiod, Theogony 206-11 (Cooke) :— 
 
 Coeus his birth 
 From them derives, and Creus, sons of Earth 
 Hyperion and Japhet, brothers, join 
 Thea and Rhea of this ancient line 
 Descend : and Themis boasts the source divine
 
 506 JOHN KEATS 
 
 And thou Mnemosyne and Phoebe crowned 
 With gold, and Tethys for her charms renowned. 
 Gyges and Briareus and Cottus (49) were born to Uranus and Ge 
 (Heaven and Earth) of a later brood, and were in reality giants as 
 distinguished from Titans. (Hesiod, Theogony (Cooke), 237). They were 
 imprisoned by their father Typhon, by some identified with Typhoeus, 
 by others with Euceladus. Keats follows the former, among whom is 
 Sandys, for he does not use the name Typhoeus ; but it is noticeable that 
 he transfers to Enceladus stories associated with the name of Typhon 
 (ii. m note). 
 
 Dolor : — There was no Titan or giant of antiquity corresponding with 
 this name and its presence here has never been explained. But in the 
 Aucfores Mythographi Latini (containing Hyginus) (ed. Van Staveren, 
 Leyden, 1742), at the top of page 3, we read " ex .^there et Terra, Dolor, 
 Dolus, Ira," etc. (the Titans following two lines later). Mr. Colvin has 
 proved that this book was in Keats's possession in 1819 and that from page 
 4 (really pp. 3 and 4) he took his idea in the Fall of Hyperion of identifying 
 Mnemosyne with Moneta. There is no reason to suppose that he had not 
 seen the book in 1818, '' ex ^there et Terra" would naturally suggest to 
 his mind Uranus and Ge, and the abstract noun would become in his 
 imagination a living Titan, especially as the Titans are themselves 
 mentioned in the same paragraph. Porphyrion is not mentioned by 
 Hesiod, but appears first in Pindar [rav ov8e 'n.op(^vpla>v \ddfv {Pyth. viii. 
 15)]. He occurs also in Horace (iii. Ode 4) and is mentioned on pp. 1 
 and 2 of Hyginus. Keats perhaps took him from the list given in 
 Lempri^re. 
 
 It is important to notice that line 20, with its two far-sought Titans, was 
 probably an afterthought, added because Keats is conscious of the effect 
 gained by a list of charmed names in Milton ; for it is written on the 
 preceding verso of the MS. So, too, lines 21, 23-28 and 31 are all written 
 on the verso, and their addition gives to the passage a Miltonic richness of 
 effect. Line 26 gave Keats some difficulty and the MS. bears traces of two 
 earlier drafts of it : — 
 
 Locked up like metal veins was crampt and screw'd. 
 
 Locked up like metal veins with cramp and screw. 
 In 27 "heaving" was first "labouring" and in 28 " gurge of boiling 
 pulse" was "whelming gurge of pulse". 
 
 29. Mnemosyne : — The mother of the Muses by Jupiter (Hesiod). 
 
 30. Phcebe : — Daughter of Uranus and Ge [Hesiod), the mother of Leto 
 by Coeus, and hence grandmother of the moon-goddess who bore her name. 
 Keats may have identified her with the moon-goddess intentionally, or he 
 may have been misled by the passage in Ovid, Met. (Sandys) i. 9, 10 
 
 No Titan yet the world with light adornes 
 Nor waxing Phcebe fills her wained homes 
 into thinking that the moon Phoebe was a Titan.
 
 HYPERION, BK. II.— xNOTES 507 
 
 32. But for the main, etc. : — Originally written " The others [rest] here 
 found grief and respite sad " — hardly the meaning required by the context. 
 
 34-39. This marvellous simile, so instinct with the spirit of Keats, was 
 suggested by the Druid Stones near Keswick. Cf. letter to Thos. Keats 
 (Keswick, 29th June, 1818), " We set forth about a mile and a half on 
 the Penrith road, to see the Druid Temple. We had a fag up hill, rather 
 too near dinner time, which was rendered void by the gratification of see- 
 ing these aged stones on a gentle rise in the midst of the mountains, which 
 at that time darkened all around except at the first opening of the Vale of 
 St. John." It is worth noticing that Keats himself saw the stones at 
 "shut of eve". It is not impossible that Keats's description was also 
 affected by his recollection of the Excursion, iii. 50 : — 
 Upon a semicirque of turf clad ground 
 The hidden nook discovered to their view 
 A mass of rock. . . . These several stones 
 Stood near, of smaller size, and not unlike 
 To monumental pillars, and from these 
 Some little space disjoined, a pair were seen 
 That with united shoulders bore aloft 
 A fragment like an altar. 
 
 36. at shut of eve : — The phrase which Keats uses again in Sonnet xxix. 
 He owes it in all probability to a reminiscence of Milton. Cf. Lamia, 
 i. 139 note, ii. 107. 
 
 38. throughout night : — A close to the line only reached after first 
 "through long night" and then "the long night" had been tried and 
 found wanting. 
 
 41. Creus : Crceus Woodhouse. Cf. ii. 19 note. 
 
 49. Cottiis : — Hesiod, Theogony, 237, " Cottus terrible to name " ; men- 
 tioned by Hesiod with Briareus and Gyges as of " later birth " than the 
 other Titans. 
 
 60. As though in pain : Pained he seem'd MS. cancelled. 
 
 53. Asia daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, married to lapetus and 
 mother of Prometheus. She is generally identified with Clymene (76), 
 and so Hesiod, Theogony ; but Keats makes of them two persons and gives 
 to Asia a new parentage upon which, as upon Dolor in ii. 19, critics who 
 have discussed the sources of Keats's Titans have refrained from com- 
 menting. Keats probably met the name, as the late Prof. York Powell 
 pointed out to me, in the A rahian Nights, with which he was very familiar. 
 In the Mahommedan faith, Kaf was a fabulous mountain which "sur- 
 rounded the earth as a ring does the finger," it was "the starry girdle of 
 the world " (Burton, 1001 Nights, i. 77. 122) and a not infrequent threat 
 of the magician was that he could transport " the stones of a city behind 
 the mountain Kaf and the circumambient ocean ". Keats, his imagination 
 fired by legends of the East as by those of Greece and Rome, conceives of 
 the Titan Asia as having this parentage.
 
 508 JOHN KEATS 
 
 54. Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs : — an echo of Paradise Lost, 
 iv. 271, " which cost Ceres all that pain " a passage which particularly im- 
 pressed Keats. Cf. Lamia, i. 63 note. 
 
 60. By Oxiis or in Ganges' sacred isles : From Tigris unto Ganges and 
 far north MS. cancelled — then " By Tigris or in Ganges shaded isles ". 
 Lastly "Tigris" becomes " Oxus," but "shaded" is left in the MS. and 
 reappears in Woodhouse. 
 
 61. as Hope upon her anchor leans : — The simile of Hope has been ob- 
 jected to as unclassical, but if it is unclassical it is so accidentally rather 
 than in spirit, and Keats in all probability owed it, in common with most 
 of his unimpeachable classicisms, to an Elizabethan source. Cf. Faerie 
 Queene, i. 10. 14. 
 
 Upon her arme a silver anchor lay 
 Whereon she leaned ever, as befell. 
 66. Enceladus the strongest and fiercest of the giants, usually indenti- 
 fied with Typhon. Keats makes of them two persons {cf. 1. 20) but he 
 attributes here to Enceladus the prowess associated in Ovid with the name 
 of Typhon. Cf. Sandys, Ovid, Met. vi. (quoted in part in Woodhouse): — 
 Typhon from earth's gloomy entrails rais'd 
 Struck all their powers with feare ; who fled amazed 
 Till Egypt's scorched soyle the weary hides 
 And wealthy Nile, who in seven channels glides 
 That hither earth born Typhon them pursued 
 When as the gods concealing shapes indued. 
 Jove turn'd himselfe, she said, into a Ram ; 
 From whence the homes of Lybian Hammon came 
 Bacchus a goat, Apollo was a crow, 
 Phoebe a cat, foveas wife a cow of snow ; 
 Venus a fish, a stork did Hermes hide. 
 (For the significance of lines 70, 71 in relation to the scheme of the 
 poem, cf. Introduction, p. 488). 
 
 The name Enceladus does not occur in Hesiod, but was known to Keats 
 from a passage in Vergil's Aeneid, iii. 578 (wliich he had already utilised in 
 Endymion) and in Spenser, who describes his death in the later war of the 
 Titans at the hand of Bellona {Faerie Queene^ ii. 9. 22). The character 
 of Enceladus may be compared with that of IMoloch in Paradise Lost, but 
 it was doubtless filled out by the suggestions of the mythological gloss 
 in Sandys, pp. 96, 97. " Typhon is the type of Ambition. ... He is said 
 to have reached Heaven with his hands, in regard to his aspiring 
 thoughts ; to have feete unwearied with trouble as expressing his in- 
 dustry in accommodating all thinges to his own designes ; to have flaming 
 eyes ; as full of wrath and violence ; the tongues of serpents ; in that 
 insolent in language, apt to detract, sounding his owne glory on the 
 infamy of others. . . . But better this horrid figuie of Typhon agrees 
 with rebellion. ... By such rebellious not seldom princes are chased out
 
 HYPERION, BK. II.— NOTES 509 
 
 of tlieir countries inforced to hide themselves in some obscure an^le ; as 
 here the Gods pursued by Typhon, fly into Egypt ; concealiufj^ themselves 
 in the shapes of unreasonable creatures." 
 
 73. Atlas : — Son of lapetus and Asia or Clymene. 
 
 74. Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons : — Cf. Faerie Queene, iv. 11. 13. 
 
 The father of that fatal brood 
 
 By whom those old heroes won such fame. 
 
 75. Tethys : — Wife of Oceanus, often referred to in Spenser. The tender 
 and yielding character given to Clymene was perhaps due to the association 
 of the name with the Clymene of Ovid, Met. ii., i.e. the mother of Phaeton 
 and wife of Apollo. Her " tangled hatr " is a reminiscence of Lycidas. 
 
 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade 
 Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair, 
 itself a reminiscence of Peele's David and Bathseba : — 
 Here comes my lover tripping like a roe 
 And brings my longings tangled in her hair. 
 
 77. Themis : vide note to ii. 9. 
 
 79. night confounds : — A phrase recollected from the famous passage in 
 Chapman's Iliad (viii. 420-24 ; vide Introduction, p. xlvi) where the poet 
 describes the abode of the Titans. 
 
 83. chaunt : tell MS. cancelled. 
 
 86. Above a sombre cliff : and now was slowly come MS. cancelled — 
 then ''Above a [clifted] gnarled cliiF" which is altered to text. 
 
 95. biit most of all despair : — In the description of the complexity of 
 Saturn's emotion, Keats almost inevitably draws upon the descriptions of 
 Satan in Paradise Lost {cf. Paradise Lost, iv. 114, 115). 
 
 passion dimm'd his face 
 Thrice chang'd with pale, ire, envie and despair. 
 Cf. also vi. 787 " hope conceiving from despair" and xi. 301. 
 
 112. some wailed: some sat up MS. cancelled. 
 
 134. starry Uranus with finger : starr'd Uranus with his finger, 
 MS., Woodhouse. The final reading is a correction of a false quantity in 
 the draft. 
 
 144. loud warring : engaging MS. cancelled. 
 
 163. Oceanus : — The one Titan according to ancient authority who had 
 not joined in war against the Olympians. His peaceful acquiescence in his 
 fate made him to Keats the mouthpiece of the " eternal truth " of which 
 the poem is the expression. With the last part of his speech should be 
 compared the beautiful rei'erence to Oceanus in Endymion, iii. 994, which 
 suggests that already at that period Keats had pondered upon the subject 
 of Hyperion. 
 
 166. astonied : astonished MS. corrected above, and showing that the 
 corrections were made at a time when Keats desired to be as Miltonic as 
 possible, i.e., before he had given up the poem as too Miltonic. 
 
 169. in his watery shades : beneath watry glooms MS. cancelled.
 
 510 JOHN KEATS 
 
 173. who, passion-stung : whom passion stings MS. cancelled. 
 191. From chaos, etc. : — This great passage in which Oceanus describes 
 the evolution of the world from chaos gave Keats some trouble, but it is 
 difficult from the writing of the MS. to tell what his first conception was. 
 Our MS. begins : — 
 
 Darkness was first, and then a Light there was ; 
 From Chaos came the Heavens and the Earth 
 The first grand Parent — 
 interesting as showing a clear dependence on Milton. Then Keats starts 
 once more : — 
 
 From Chaos and parental darkness came 
 Light, 'twas the first of all (the fruits ?) 
 This was cancelled for the reading of the text. The next line first ran : — 
 
 That sullen ferment, grown unto its height, 
 and in line 194 we have a false start, " Was at strange boil " (for "broil" ?). 
 217. Say, doth the dull soil : Strife indeed there was MS. altered to 
 (1) say, shall the [lifel] senseless soil, (2) the reading of the text. 
 
 263. was breathed from a land : came breathing from inland MS. can- 
 celled. 
 
 266. soft delicious warmth : — This Miltonism came to Keats as he was 
 writing our MS. He began " delight " (delightful ?) but put his pen 
 through the "t " and added " cious ". 
 
 308. from supreme contempt : from contempt of that mild speech MS. 
 altered because it was liypermetric, " Of that mild speech " being re- 
 written as a start to the next line, but afterwards discarded. 
 
 310. Or to the over foolish giant, gods ? : Or to the over foolish, Giant- 
 Gods .'' MS. Mr. Forman, with fine critical acumen, had already antici- 
 pated this as the correct reading. It is at once more musical and more 
 effective. "Giant-gods" is a term applied by Keats to the Titans in a 
 passage rejected from lines 357-71 (vide infra). 
 313. piled : pour'd MS., Woodhouse. 
 
 325. lifted: arose MS. cancelled. A line follows " and standing stood, 
 continuing thus " which we are not surprised to find cancelled. 
 
 341. The winged thing. Victory : — A phrase possibly suggested by a 
 statue, but more likely another reminiscence of Milton. When the Son 
 of God appeared to drive forth the rebel angels 
 at his right hand victorie 
 Sate eagle winged {Paradise Lost, vi. 762). 
 At the same time, "winged victory" is a common classical phrase and would 
 be well known to Keats in Chapman's Homer. 
 
 355. sweeps : turns MS. cancelled — a great gain in vividness. 
 
 357-71. Till suddenly a splendour . . . short Numidian curl: — This 
 
 great passage, like the climax of book i., reached its full poetic height 
 
 from an earlier inadequate form, and in the process underwent so much 
 
 alteration that Keats crossed through his first copy in the MS. and re-
 
 HYPERION, BK. II.— NOTES 511 
 
 wrote it, to judge by the writing, on a later occasion. It first ran 
 thus : — 
 
 Till suddenly a full-blown Splendour fiU'd 
 
 Those native spaces of oblivion 
 
 And every g[l]ulph and every chasm old 
 
 And every height and every sullen depth 
 
 Voiceless, or fiU'd with hoarse tormented streams; 
 
 And all the everlasting cataracts 
 
 And all the headlong torrents far and near 
 
 And all the Caverns soft with moss and weed 
 
 Or dazzling with bright and barren gems ; 
 
 And all the giant-Gods. It was Hyperion ; 
 
 He stood upon a granite peak aloof 
 
 With golden hair of short numidian curl, 
 
 Rich as the colchian fleece. 
 Three changes were, apparently, introduced into the text at once ; ''and 
 every chasm old " in the third line was altered to " was seen and chasm 
 old," the ninth line was altered to " Or blazoned with clear spar and 
 barren gems" to get rid of the cockney pronunciation of " dazzling" as a 
 trisyllable, and the comparison of Hyperion's hair to the golden fleece was 
 cancelled. The reconstruction of the passage is carried out in such a way 
 as to make the situation which it describes at once more familiar and more 
 vivid to the imagination, as an actual sunrise among the mountains. 
 For this reason the reference to the giant-gods, in the earlier version the 
 climax of a long sentence, is omitted, in order that the emphasis laid upon 
 their presence may not violate the universal truth of the picture, whilst 
 lines 9 and 10 are cancelled, as by their very tender beauty detracting 
 from the vast splendour of the scene. At the same time Keats dwells 
 upon the dramatic significance of the situation— the last appearance of 
 Hyperion as the god of day— by adding lines which express the misery of 
 the fallen Titans. It is noticeable that the changes introduced into the 
 description of Hyperion (371, 372) are in the direction of Miltonism. 
 
 374. Memnon .-—The son of Tithonus and Aurora slain by Achilles. 
 Sandys in his commentary on Ovid, Met. xiii. 578, says that he was " sup- 
 posed to be an .Ethiopian in regard of his complexion " and discusses the 
 reason for the dark skins of the Eastern races— which perhaps suggested 
 to Keats the pregnant epithet " dusking" ; though he may have had in view 
 Paradise Regained, iv. 76, "dusk faces with white silken Turbants wreath'd ". 
 Sandys goes on to explain, " And neere Egyptian Thebes in the Grove of 
 Serapis, he had his miraculous statue : sitting and consisting of a hard 
 darke marble : made with such admirable art, that when the rising Sunne 
 cast his beames thereon, it would render a mourneful sound ; and salute 
 as it were his approaching mother ". 
 386. bulk : shade MS. cancelled.
 
 512 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Book III 
 
 The openina: lines have an additional pathos when it is remembered 
 that they were vtritten soon after the death of Tom Keats, by whose 
 bedside the poet had been watching for three months. Perhaps lines 124-30 
 are a reminiscence of this, as is the Ode to the Nightingale, S, 
 where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies. 
 
 2. A mazed : Perplexed MS. cancelled. 
 
 3. O leave them, Muse ! O leave them to their woes ! O leave them 
 Muse ! for they have succour none MS. cancelled. 
 
 6. Thy lips : These anthemed lips MS. cancelled. 
 
 7. Leave them, O Muse : Leave them — for many MS. cancelled. 
 
 8. fallen : lonely MS. cancelled ; mateless MS. cancelled. 
 
 10. piously : deftly MS. cancelled. Probably Keats had some other 
 word than " Delphic " in the line of his first draft, e.g., " Aeolian," which 
 would scan with " deftly ". 
 
 12. In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute : — The delicate music of 
 these lines recalls Paradise Lost, i. 549-51, to whose ''sad sweet melody" 
 Keats had called attention in his Notes to Milton : — 
 
 Anon they move 
 In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood 
 Of Flutes and soft Recorders. 
 
 13. 'tis for : thou singst MS. cancelled. 
 
 14. Flush everything, etc. Keats starts two lines here before he decides 
 definitely how to proceed : — 
 
 Let a warm rosy hue . . . 
 And the corn haunting poppy . . , 
 For " vermeil " Keats first wrote " rosy ". 
 19. faint-lipped : red-lipped MS. cancelled. 
 22. Blush keenly : blush as she did MS. cancelled. 
 27. hazels : — Copied by Woodhouse's clerk as " Hyle's " and thus ex- 
 plained by Mr. Buxton Forman : " Probably Keats left the * a ' out of 
 ' Hazle ' — a quite possible spelling for him ; and the copyist took the 
 ' z ' for a ' y '." A glance at the facsimile will show this conjecture to be 
 correct. In the MS. Woodhouse has marked the line in pencil as doubtful. 
 29, 30. Where was he, when, etc. : — The question here recalls Lycidas, 50 
 
 Where were ye nymphs when the remorseless deep ? 
 33. wandered : roamed MS. cancelled. 
 
 41. boughs: — Keats first wrote ■'shade" and then "oaks" before he 
 decided upon the reading of the text. 
 
 42. He listen'd, and he wept, etc. : — Leigh Hunt, followed by other 
 critics, has censured this conception of Apollo. " It strikes us that there is 
 something too effeminate and human in the way in which Apollo receives 
 the exaltation that his wisdom is giving him. He weeps and wonders some- 
 what too fondly ; but his powers gather nobly on him as he proceeds." If
 
 HYPERION, BK III.— NOTES 513 
 
 the wisdom which Apollo gains were merely knowledge the criticism would 
 be unanswerablej but it is evident that Keats means to include in it far 
 more than this, and to suggest that the great poet of light and song 
 reaches his supremacy not merely by knowledge but by anguish and by 
 a distress of heart which makes him " feel the giant agony of the world/ 
 and gives him an understanding of human suffering. Keats had dwelt 
 upon this idea in Sleep and Poetry, and he draws it out still more pointedly 
 in his Fall of Hyperion, and it is hardly likely that his conception here 
 would be completely different. It is far more probable that he developed 
 the idea more obviously in his revision {Fall of Hyp. i. 147-149) because 
 he felt that his treatment of it in the first version had been too vague. 
 
 44. Thus with half-shut, suffused eyes he stood: So kept his [he.''] with 
 his eyes suffused half-shut MS. corrected. 
 
 60. How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea ? How camest thou over the 
 pathless sea ? MS. corrected to text. 
 
 52. Mov'd : Walked MS. cancelled. 
 
 53. o'er: by MS. cancelled. 
 
 65. in cool mid forest : in the m(id forest ?) A/5, cancelled. 
 
 66. about : along MS. cancelled. 
 
 67. These glassy solitudes, and seen the flowers : These solitudes and 
 seen the grass and flowers MS. cancelled. 
 
 62. hast dreamed : dreamst MS. cancelled. 
 
 63. Didst find a lyre all golden by thy side : Didst find a golden lyre by 
 thy side MS. altered in order to avoid the awkward pronunciation of 
 "lyre" as a dissyllable — a fault to which Mr. Bridges has called attention 
 as characteristic of Keats. 
 
 64. Touch' d: swept MS. cancelled; whose strings : the which MS. 
 cancelled. 
 
 100. To any one particular beauteous star: — Cf. All's Well that Ends 
 Well, i. 1. 96. 
 
 'Twere all one 
 That I should love a bright particular star. 
 114. rebellious : loud voices MS. cancelled. 
 
 116. Creations and destroyings all at once : Creations, visage of destroy- 
 ings and calm peace MS. cancelled. 
 
 118. deify me : and like some MS. cancelled. 
 121. While his enkindled eyes, etc. : — 
 
 While level glanced beneath his temples soft 
 His eyes were steadfast on Mnemosyne MS. cancelled. 
 The lines that follow gave Keats considerable trouble. He began 123 
 "Upon Mnemosyne," and only added "Trembling with light" in the 
 margin. For the next line he first wrote, "and while through all his 
 limbs [cancelled] frame" — then "and wild commotion throughout" — then 
 " and his while " [cancelled] — then at last, " Soon wild commotions," etc. 
 The next line he began " All his white," and then followed : — 
 
 33
 
 514 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Roseate and pained as any ravished nymph [cancelled] 
 Into a hue more roseate than a sweet pain 
 Gives to a Nymph new-r(avished) when her tears 
 altered to : — 
 
 Gives to a ravish'd nymph when her warm tears 
 Gush luscious with no sob. Or more severe 
 More, etc. 
 So Woodhouse. The first three lines, however, are cancelled with a pencil 
 and " And " written for " More " in the fourth line. The text reads 
 " Most ". 
 
 126. Most like the struggle at the gate of death: — Mr. Arnold compares 
 with Gcbir, vii. 240. 
 
 He seems to struggle from the grasp of death. 
 131. His very hair : Even his hair MS. cancelled. In the next line the 
 word "graceful" is inserted above '^undulation," but cancelled. 
 
 13.5. Apollo shrieked : — Above " Apollo " is written the cancelled 
 " Phoebus ". The line originally concluded, " he was the God ! ", the 
 next line beginning " And Godlike," altered in our MS. to " from all 
 his limbs ". 
 
 136. Celestial : And Godlike MS. cancelled. Woodhouse adds in 
 pencil, on what authority we know not : — 
 
 Glory dawu'd, he was a god.
 
 FALL OF HYPERION— NOTES 515 
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS 
 
 THE FALL OF HYPF:RI0N 
 
 A Vision 
 
 The Fall of Hyperion was first printed by Lord Houj^litou in Bibliographical 
 and Historical Miscellanies of the Philobiblion Society (vol. iii. 1856). He 
 republished it in the 1867 edition of the Life and Letters. He had referred 
 to it in 1848 as a recast, but in 1856 he raised a doubt as to which version 
 was the earlier, and in 1867 published The Vision with the words " I have 
 no doubt that it was the first draft ". This view was unhesitatinj^ly 
 accepted by subsequent critics, all of whom printed The Vision as the first 
 version until, in 1887, Mr. Colvin (EML, pp. 187, 2o2) finally showed that 
 view to be untenable, not only by overwhelming internal evidence, but 
 also by reference to the remark of Brown in the Houghton Papers, " in the 
 evening (of Nov. and Dec. 1819) he was deeply engaged in remodelling 
 the fragment of Hyperion into the form of a vision," a view supported by 
 Dr. Richard Garnett who remembered a statement to the same effect in a 
 last MS. of Woodhouse's. 
 
 In October of the present year (1904) Lord Crewe discovered the lost 
 Woodhouse transcript of The Fall of Hyperion, and by his kind permission 
 I am allowed to make use of it in the present edition. A full account of 
 it has already been given in the introduction to the Transliteration of the 
 MS. published by the Clarendon Press and edited by myself, and for full 
 details with regard to it students are referred to that work. The tran- 
 script was made by Woodhouse's clerks in 1833-4 and was carefully cor- 
 rected by Woodhouse himself, so that it is evidently an exact reproduction 
 of the autograph MS. ; and as the autograph is still missing, it is the first 
 authority for the text of the poem. A study of the transcript not only 
 shows that the version hitherto printed is incorrect in several places, mostly 
 due to inaccuracy in copying for press and in proof-reading, but that it 
 has omitted a passage of over twenty lines which is of the highest import- 
 ance to the argument of the poem. The discovery of the transcript came 
 too late to allow me to alter the text of the present edition, but all the 
 corrections and additions which it supplies are recorded in the following 
 notes. 
 
 This attempt to reconstruct Hyperion in the form of a vision revealed 
 and interpreted to the poet by Moneta, a goddess of the fallen race of 
 Titans, was the last work of Keats before his poetic powers deserted him. 
 It occupied the last few months of 1819, and already, as critics have often
 
 516 JOHN KEATS 
 
 pointed out, gave evidence of declining power. But it does not follow 
 because Keats was at this time unequal to the task he set himself, that he 
 would have been unsuccessful if he had been able to attempt it when he 
 was in full possession of his poetic energies. The romantic form which he 
 has now chosen, if not so obviously adapted to the subject, is at least more 
 natural to the poet himself, and more in keeping with the general char- 
 acter of his other work. It was probably the consciousness of this that 
 led him to make the change. It has been suggested that the influence of 
 Dante was lartjely responsible for it, but it must be remembered that 
 Keats's study of Dante occupied his time in the summer of 1818 when he 
 was upon his Scotch tour, and would thus have been more likely to affect 
 the first version of the poem than to have suggested a reconstruction.^ 
 This is sufficiently explained by the reasons which Keats himself gives for 
 leaving Hyperion as a fragment — its excessive Miltonism, together with 
 the feeling which grew upon him as he wrote that in a pure objective poem, 
 such as he had chosen, he would not be able to interpret with sufficient 
 clearness his own conception of the significance of the legends with which 
 he dealt. There is no indication that his views as to that significance had 
 undergone any change, but his feeling with regard to it had become 
 intenser and he decided to work it out with more elaboration. Hence a 
 careful study of the first 250 lines of the Vision will give us a clearer 
 understanding not merely of the Fall of Hyperion, but of the greater 
 fragment of which it is the revision. Allowance must be made, as Mr. 
 Colvin has pointed out, for the growing note of despair, for the fact 
 that whereas before Keats had felt the goal to be within his ultimate 
 reach he now belittles his own endeavours to attain it ; but if he 
 realises more intensely than ever the pains which are the inevitable 
 accompaniment of the sensitive poetic temperament, he has never pre- 
 sented more vividly those ideal emotions which are its ample com- 
 pensation. The opening allegory, of great importance to the proper 
 understanding of Keats's whole conception of life may, perhaps, be inter- 
 preted as follows : — 
 
 It is clear that in the garden, the temple, and the shrine, are presented 
 to us those three stages in the poet's development towards the attainment 
 of his ideal which Keats had dwelt upon in Sleep and Poetry (1816) and in 
 the letter to Reynolds (1818) (vide notes, p. 406). The garden is the garden 
 of Nature and Art, as Nature and Art make their first appeal to the sensi- 
 tive temperament. Its resources are infinite and it offers them without 
 stint to those who are capable of enjoying them. The poet eats his fill 
 and his feast brings upon him a thirst for a draught of something deeper 
 
 1 A distinction should be drawn between such influence of Dante as could come 
 through a translation, and such as could only be due to the direct study of the original. 
 Of this latter and more subtle kind of influence, affecting the style and phraseology of 
 the poet, the first and only examples, as Mr. Bridges points out, are to be found in the 
 Fall of Hyperion. The lines to which he draws attention in this connection are i. 6, 
 97-99 (especially 99), and 145, 146.
 
 FALL OF HYPERION— NOTES 517 
 
 and diviner which he finds Ib a cool vessel beside him. (This corresponds, 
 perhaps, to what Shelley has termed " Intdkctual Beauty ".) To this draught 
 he owes his whole future development ; for by it he is drawn, he knows 
 not how, into another world. His mind is awakened, and his feelings of 
 mere sensuous delight are changed into a profound and often melancholy 
 sense of the infinity and mystery of the world about him. The place where 
 he finds himself is in a sense the temple of knowledge, but it contains far 
 more than the word knowledge usually implies, for it holds within it the 
 beauty and the experience of all time, and yet it beckons rather to the future 
 than to the past. The East from which the light had once come is "shut 
 against the sunrise evermore " ; in the West is the altar to which the poet 
 must bend his steps, and as he approaches the altar he gains some pro- 
 phetic insight into the highest joys of poetry and is refreshed, so that for 
 the moment he forgets how far he is from attaining the goal. At the foot 
 of the shrine is the figure of Saturn, majestic though fallen, a type of what 
 the past can teach the future, whilst the fate of Saturn, soon to be un- 
 folded, is significant of those essential laws of progress which govern the 
 universe and themselves give a unity of all existence. And the priestess 
 interpreter who ministers at the shrine, the " sole goddess of the desola- 
 tion " of the past, is Moneta. Formerly she was known as Mnemosyne, 
 the goddess of memory, the mother of the Muses, by whose inspiration 
 Apollo, the father of song, had gained divinity, but now she is called by 
 a name which suggests that to her powers of inspiration must be added 
 the power to admonish and to guide. With her first words she warns the 
 poet that he must ascend the steps that lead to his ideal life before it is 
 too late. To wander aimlessly among the wonders of the temple is little 
 better than feasting in the garden : he must concentrate himself upon 
 some intense imaginative effort. As he hears this warning and looks 
 about him he becomes conscious of its essential truth. His awakened 
 sense of wonder, his thirst for knowledge, his widened experience of life, 
 have all tended to paralyse his creative faculties, so that it becomes ever 
 harder for him to exercise them. Only by a supreme effort does he put 
 his imaginative sympathies to some definite result, and so gain the lowest 
 stair. And having reached it he learns that further progress cannot be 
 made by imaginative sympathy alone ; the selfish life of artistic isolation 
 will profit him nothing, he must henceforth live in the world about him, 
 making its sorrows his sorrows. Even so, he must realise the superiority 
 of the practical lifie over the life of the dreamer ; and though by rt-ason of 
 his temperament such a life can never be his, he must reverence it at its 
 true worth. 
 
 How is this to be understood .'' It is true, indeed, that the great poets 
 have " usurped the height " ; but wherein have they escaped this sweeping 
 denunciation of the imaginative mind .'' wherein, except in degree, do they 
 differ from their weaker brethren .'' The text as hitherto printed, gives no 
 answer ; it simply leaves us with this antithesis between the practical and
 
 518 JOHN KEATS 
 
 the visionary temper, which may be just but is certainly not the anti- 
 thesis required by the argument. The necessary conclusion is supplied 
 by this passage found in the MS. between lines 186 and 187, but rejected 
 by Woodhouse/ wherein the poet, at the same time, indeed, as he admits 
 his own unworthiness, pleads the cause of his art, and receives no hesi- 
 tating reply : — 
 
 " Majestic shadow, tell me : sure not all 
 
 Those melodies sung into the World's ear 
 
 Are useless : sure a poet is a sage : 
 
 A humanist, Physician to all Men. 
 
 That I am none I feel, as Vultures feel 
 
 They are no birds when Eagles are abroad 
 
 What am I then : thou spakest of my Tribe : 
 
 What Tribe } " The tall shade veiled in drooping white 
 
 Then spake, so much more earnest, that the breath 
 
 Moved the thin linen folds that drooping hung 
 
 About a golden censer from the hand 
 
 Pendent — " Art thou not of the dreamer Tribe ? 
 
 The Poet and the dreamer are distinct 
 
 Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes. 
 
 The one pours out a balm upon the World 
 
 The other vexes it." Then shouted I 
 
 Spite of myself, and with a Pythia's spleen 
 
 " Apollo ! faded ! O far-flown Apollo ! 
 
 Where is thy misty pestilence^ to creep 
 
 'Woodhouse has cancelled the lines with a pencil mark, and added a marginal 
 note, " Keats seems to have intended to erase this and the next twenty-one lines," and 
 the remark has this justification, that the lines are not as a whole up to the poetic level 
 of the rest ; moreover, four of them are employed again a little further on in the poem. 
 But Keats did not erase them (when he rejected a passage he did it with no uncertain 
 stroke of the pen), and, as it seems to me, he would not have done so. He would un- 
 doubtedly have rewritten them, cancelled some and expanded others. Woodhouse's 
 very uncertainty suggests that Keats never revised the poem, and as he gave up all 
 idea of publishing it he probably never wrote a fair copy ; but the evidence as it stands 
 does not, assuredly, give us the right to reject the lines, particularly as they supply a 
 necessary climax to the argument of the introductory allegory, which has hitherto been 
 presented imcomplete. 
 
 -The " misty pestilence" of Apollo may have been suggested to Keats by the first 
 book of the Iliad, but the reference is far more likely to be due to a somewhat blurred 
 reminiscence of a passage in the Homeric Hytrin to Apollo, which he knew well in 
 Chapman's translation. Here he read how Apollo slew the Pythoness who inhabited 
 Parnassus and poured his rays upon the carcase : — 
 
 then seized upon 
 Her horrid heap with putrefaction 
 Hyperion's lovely powers ; from whence her name 
 Took sound of Python, and heaven's sovereign flame 
 Was surnamed Pythias, since the sharp-eyed Sun 
 Affected so with putrefaction 
 The hellish monster. 
 The mention in the lines immediately preceding of Typhon, " the abhorred affright and 
 bane of mortals," as under the charge of the Pythoness, and the reference to the sun as 
 Hyperion, would tend to impress the passage upon the mind of one who had long
 
 FALL OF HYPP:RI0N— NOTES 519 
 
 Into the dwelliiif^s, through the door crannies 
 
 Of all mock lyrists,' large self- worshippers 
 
 And careless Hectorers in proud bad verse? 
 
 Though I breathe death with them it will be life 
 
 To see them sprawl before me into graves." 
 As poetry these lines may not })e very valuable, but there can be no 
 question of their importance to the argument of the poem. If the ima- 
 ginative poet reaches the highest development of which the human mind 
 is capable, the climax of tliis introductory dream must inevitably be de- 
 voted to a revelation of his true nature, and the practical unimaginative 
 man must not be left in complete possession of the Held. And these lines, 
 though as they stand they are clearly inadequate, serve well enough as a 
 bald expression of an idea which would be glorified in such a revision of 
 the poem as Hyperion underwent between the first and second drafts, and 
 such as this poem would surely have undergone had it not been thrown 
 aside in sickness and despair. But for all its crudity the passage is emin- 
 ently suggestive, and supplies a valuable commentary, by no means at 
 variance with his other utterances, upon Keats's conception of the poetic 
 art. The object of the singer, he tells us, is to pour out a balm upon the 
 world, not by luring men away from it to a fanciful land of dreams, but 
 by seeing things as they are, and by concentrating liis imaginative powers 
 upon reality. Only then, after the character of the true poet has been 
 made clear in its relation both with the man of action and with the mere 
 dreamer, does Moneta unfold to him the Vision which contains within 
 it the lesson of all the ages, as Oceanus revealed it to his fallen brethren ; 
 and from this Keats catches a glimpse of that last stage in his develop- 
 ment after which he is striving, wherein his strenuous devotion to Beauty 
 will have raised him above the limitations of ordinary life, and he will 
 have gained that sublime serenity by which he will be able 
 
 to bear all naked truths 
 And to envisage circumstance, all calm. 
 Mr. Robert Bridges has pointed out that the changes made in those 
 passages which were incorporated from Hyperion are chiefly due to the 
 desire to avoid excessive Miltonisms, and certain mannerisms of Keats's 
 own earlier style ; but it will be noticed that the influence of Milton had 
 struck far too deep to be easily shaken off, and if many Miltonisms are 
 removed many are retained, and even new ones introduced. An attempt 
 will be made to suggest reasons for the alterations as they occur — those 
 already pointed out by Mr. Bridges are distinguished by the initials RB. 
 
 The Fall of Hyperion : A Vision. The MS. describes the poem as " A 
 Dream ". 
 
 " brooded over " the subject of the Titans. The " Fythia " is the priestess of Apollo's 
 temple whom Keats conceives as overcome with anger as she views the desecration of 
 the art which has been entrusted to her care. 
 
 ' " Mock lyrists," etc. , an obvious attack upon Byron. C/. note to S/eep and Poetry, 
 234-
 
 520 JOHN KEATS 
 
 22-24. The brackets are inserted by Woodhouse in the MS. in pencil. 
 24. Twining : Turning MS. A far more natural reading. 
 29. a feast of summer fruits : — A reference to the repast prepared by 
 Eve for Raphael in Paradise Lost (v. 321-349). The " arbour with a droop- 
 ing roof" (25) "not far from roses" (24) "of trellis vines, and bells, and 
 larger blooms" (26) recalls Adam's coole Bowre (Paradise Lost, v. 300) 
 which Milton compares with " Pomona's Arbour . . . with flourets deck't 
 and fragrant smells" (v. 378); cf. especially with lines 29-34 and 52, 53, 
 " fragrant husks and berries crush'd," 
 
 fruit of all kindes, in coate. 
 Rough, or smooth rin'd, or bearded husk, or shell 
 She gathers. Tribute large, and on the board 
 Heaps with unsparing hand ; for drink the Grape 
 She crushes, inoffensive moust, and meathes 
 From many a berrie, and from sweet kernels prest 
 She tempers dulcet creams, nor these to hold 
 Wants her fit vessels pure, then strews the ground 
 With Rose and Odours from the shrub unfum'd. 
 
 {Paradise Lost, v. 341-49). 
 It will be noticed that in recalling the situation described by Milton 
 Keats has in a large measure resumed its language. 
 
 For the fabled horn (35) cf. Endymion ii. 448 and note. 
 48. soon fading : — Woodhouse notes that the original reading was 
 "death-doing". This throws some light upon the meaning of an obscure 
 passage. 
 
 55. sank : sunk MS. A correction by H of a common error of Keats's. 
 60. curved : carved MS., which again seems more natural than the 
 reading of the text. 
 
 75. the moth could not corrupt : — Cf. Si. Matthew, vi. 19. 
 
 76. so, in some, distinct : so, in some distinct MS., on which Woodhouse 
 notes in pencil qy. correct. Mr. Colvin has suggested to me that "some" 
 may be miswritten for " zone," which would make excellent sense. 
 
 77. 80. imageries : — This peculiar use of the plural abstract coupled 
 with the curious combination of "effects" is a notable feature in the style 
 of Keats's later poems. In the Eve of St. Mark (56) we have " daz'd with 
 saintly imageries " and a passage descriptive of the illumination in an old 
 manuscript volume (25-37) which for its strange combination may be com- 
 pared with these in the Vision. We may compare too stanza L of the 
 Cap and Bells, written at the same time as the Vision. Cf. Appendix C, 
 under Chapman. 
 
 83. The embossed roof, the silent massy range Of columns : — Cf. II 
 Penseroso, 156-68. 
 
 To walk the studious Cloysters pale. 
 And love the high embowed Roof, 
 With antick Pillars massy proof.
 
 FALL OF HYPERION— NOTES 521 
 
 96. One ministering: — "Following' a clue which he had found in a 
 Latin book of mythology he had lately bought, he now identifies this 
 Greek Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, with the Roman Moneta ; 
 and (being possibly aware that the temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitol 
 at Rome was not far from that of Saturn) makes his Mnemosyne Moneta 
 the priestess and guardian of Saturn's temple " (Colvin, EML, p. 186). The 
 passage which, as Mr. Colvin states, is to be found on pp. 3, 4 of the 
 Mythographi Latini, in the notes to Hyginus, runs "Ilia est Mnemosyne 
 Hesiodo et Apollodoro. Vidit et Turnebus, cum scriberet Moneta 
 Hygino est, quae Mnemosyne k Graecis vocatur. . . . Mvthit] appellatur 
 Anthol. i. viii. 1 Menioria. . . . Inde a poetis Jovis et Minervae esse eas filias 
 constitutum est. . . . Nimirum Minervam quidam memoriam esse dixerunt. 
 Arnob, p. 118. Unde ipsum nomen Minerva, quasi quaedam Meminerva, 
 formatum est . . . Certe Moneta eadem est, quae Mnemosyne, nam auctor 
 infra dicet matrem esse Musarum Monetam quae a Pindaro. . . . Mnemosyne 
 dicitur . . . Junonem Mowe^aw a Romanis cultam vel pueri norunt" (because 
 she warned the Romans of the approach of the Gauls to the Capitol by 
 the cackling of her sacred geese). 
 
 97. As in mid-day : When in midway MS. "Midday" is probably 
 what Keats meant, but there is no need to change " When " to " As ". 
 Cf. p. 563. 
 
 135. As once fair angels on a ladder flew From the green turf to heaven : — ■ 
 Genesis, xxviii. 12. But it seems far more likely that Keats was thinking 
 rather of the allusion to Jacob's ladder in Paradise Lost (iii. 610) where 
 Satan is represented coming upon the stairs which lead from Heaven to 
 Earth. 
 
 The Stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw 
 Angels ascending and descending, bands 
 Of Guardians bright, when he from Esau fled 
 To Padan-Aram in the field of Lmz, 
 Dreaming by night under the open Skie, 
 And waking cri'd. This is the Gate of Heav'n. 
 The poet, like Satan in Paradise Lost, is on "the lower stair". 
 158. more : — Woodhouse notes that " more " here means eo magis. It 
 is certainly more forcible if so interpreted, but Keats is not likely to have 
 intended it. 
 
 161. Those: They MS. 
 
 167. do : [do] MS. The word is indeed unnecessary, and sense and 
 metre are alike better without it. 
 
 175. Only the dreamer venoms all his days, etc. : — For this conception of 
 the poetic temperament cf. a letter to Miss Jeffrey (9th June, 1819), 
 contrasting Shakespeare with Ariosto. Ariosto " was a noble poet of 
 Romance ; not a miserable and mighty poet of the human heart. The 
 middle age of Shakespeare was all clouded over ; his days were not more 
 happy than Hamlet's who is perhaps more like Shakespeare in his common 
 everyday life than any other Oi" his characters."
 
 522 JOHN KEATS 
 
 18f). After this line comes in the MS. the passage rejected by Wood- 
 house and already quoted and discussed in the introduction to this poem. 
 
 202, 203. supreme, Sole goddess of this desolation : supreme Sole priestess 
 of his desolation MS. This divergence cannot have been the work of a 
 professional copyist. 
 
 214. languorous : lang'rous MS., as in Sonnet xxix., The day is gone, 
 etc. And so, by turns : And so by turns MS. 
 
 242. Soft, mitigated : Soft mitigated MS. Keats's intention here was 
 obviously to write one of his characteristic compound adjectives. The 
 inserted comma obscures his meaning, and makes the passage far less 
 effective. 
 
 245. But in blank splendour beamed, : But in blank splendor, beamed 
 MS. Here, by restoring the punctuation intended by Keats, the music 
 and the force of the line are much improved. 
 
 252. brow : brain MS. The mistake has arisen from the eye of the 
 copyist falling upon the last word of the previous line. 
 
 253. environed : — The MS. reading of the word is illegible. It looks 
 like "enwouned," and being unable to suggest anything better I am 
 obliged to accept the reading of the text. But I do not believe that Keats 
 wrote " environed ". 
 
 270-72 Hyperion, i. 1-3. 
 
 286-306. Hyperion, i. 7-25 : — The expansion of the first sentence gets 
 rid of two ugly repetitions of sound in the first version " no stir of air was 
 there" and life and light; the change of "voiceless" to "noiseless" has 
 no MS. authority. The change of " the " (292) for the original " his " and 
 the expansion of 296-98 from Hyperion, i. 16, 17, were both necessary to 
 the altered scheme, but incalculably weaken the effect. 
 
 316-63. Hyperion, I 37-88. 
 
 317. venom'd for " vanward " (Hyperion, i. 39) : — A change with no 
 MS. authority — a printer's error. 
 
 324. his ear : his hollow ear MS. The line is thus hypermetric and it 
 was altered by H as Keats had altered the analogous line in Hyperion. 
 
 328. in this like accenting; how /raj/ .-—Originally "in these like 
 accents ; O how frail," the change made to get rid of the exclamation— a 
 characteristic fault of Keats's early work. So in 332 " wherefore thus " 
 for " O wherefore " (RB). (So in the Ode on a Grecian Urn the words 
 "yet do not grieve " were written and first published "O do not grieve "). 
 "And for what" (330) originally "though wherefore" (i. 52) is probably 
 altered to escape repetition of "wherefore" in 332; "poor lost" from 
 " poor old" to avoid a commonplace phrase (RB;. But cf. note to Hyp., 
 i. 52.) At the same time it must be noticed that the only really bad feature 
 of the passage, the vulgar use of " like " (328) remains in both versions. 
 
 337. thy hoary for " thine hoary " (ii. 59) to avoid unnecessary archaism ; 
 similarly " spoke " for "spake ". " Captious at " (338) for " conscious of" 
 i. 60) to give a fuller and more definite meaning.
 
 FALL OF HYPERION— NOTES 523 
 
 341. scourges and burns: — An undoubted improvement on ''scorches 
 and burns" (i. 63) avoiding the tautology and streng-theninj? the effect 
 both by the addition of the n&vf idea and by the emphasis of the assonance, 
 but it is an alteration which has no MS. authority. 
 
 342-47. Remodelled and curtailed from i. 64-71, chiefly in order to avoid 
 three exclamations {cf. note on 328). But it is noticeable that in gettintj 
 rid of one of them Keats falls into the obvious Miltonism '■'me thoughtless " 
 (RB). 
 
 348. As when upon a tranced summer-night, etc. : — It is impossible not 
 to regret the loss of "those green-robed senators of mighty woods" and 
 difl^cult to suggest a reason for it, unless it was, perhaps, that Keats 
 thought the line too fanciful for its place here. Still more unfortunate is 
 the substitution of "noise" (350) for "stir" (i. 75). The change of 352 
 from i. 77, " which comes upon the silence, and dies off" is easier to under- 
 stand, delicately suggestive as it is, by its peculiar cadence and inversion 
 of normal accentuation, of the rise and fall of the wind. " Swelling upon 
 the silence, dying off". 
 
 355. prest for " touch'd " to avoid the unusual use of the word. So for 
 " couchant on " Keats substitutes in 362 the more natural " bending to ". 
 The alteration of 357 from i. 82 is not successful. One can understand 
 his objection to the first version, but the second, with its introduction of 
 the " curls," is worse. The change of " mat " to " met," however, has no 
 MS. authority. 
 
 368-70 are changed from i. 83, 84 to avoid the excessive Miltonic in- 
 version — hence the unfortunate " shedded," but one must note that the 
 use of " intense " which follows is itself Miltonic. 
 
 385. of the : in the MS. 
 
 386. Spoke: spake MS. 
 
 387. moanings : musings MS. The error in the printed list came, 
 doubtless, from the copyist's eye catching sight of " moan " in the next 
 line. 
 
 388. Keats has completely altered the tone of Saturn's speech, making 
 his words far more querulous and weak. He dwells upon the " pain of 
 feebleness " (405) and it is especially noticeable that when he prophesies 
 at the close of the speech that " there shall be Beautiful things made new" 
 he does not as in the first version add the words "I will give command ". 
 And whereas in the first version Thea receives his words with a sort of 
 hope the whole picture in the Vision is one of despair. As poetry the 
 second version is hardly comparable with the first and it is difficult to see 
 how it makes clearer the general tenor of the poem, except in so far as 
 it emphasises the point made in the introduction to Hyperion that the 
 power of the Titans was in reality already passed away, and that no further 
 war between them and the Olympians was possible. From the point of 
 view of style it is to be noted that the lines containing the boldest licence 
 in the use of language (i. 117-20) are omitted, and that the "gold clouds
 
 524 JOHN KEATS 
 
 metropolitan " (a phrase which has a distinctly Miltonic ring, though the 
 word " metropolitan " is probably drawn from Wordsworth) becomes the 
 more natural and perhaps more highly poetical "gold peaks of heaven's 
 high piled clouds " ; " weak as the reed " (404) is another phrase drawn 
 from the Bible. 
 
 391. upon : above MS. 
 
 402. an aching palsy : a shaking palsy MS. 
 
 412. there shall be : let there be MS. The reading of Hyperion is 
 " there shall be," and it looks as though the copyist had erred through 
 his recollection of the line as it occurred in the earlier poem. 
 
 418. that unison : that pleasant unison MS., hypermetric. 
 
 Canto II 
 
 1-3. The book opens with a distinct reminiscence of the words of 
 Raphael to Adam, Paradise Lost, v. 671-74 : — 
 
 what surmounts the reach 
 Of human sense, I shall delineate so. 
 By lik'ning spiritual to corporal forms. 
 As may express them best. 
 
 7-end corresponds with Hyp. i. 158-217. The reading in line 12 of 
 ''in their doom " for " in sharp pain " emphasises again the hopelessness of 
 the Titan's situation, " eagle-brood " (13) for " mammoth-brood " is altered 
 perhaps to avoid the use of an unnecessarily rare word, and in 18 
 " upon the earth dire prodigies " stands in place of the Miltonic " among 
 us mortals omens drear ". 
 
 The substitution of "insecure " for " unsecure" has no MS. authority, 
 nor has the change of " flushed " to " flash ". The latter case is important, 
 for whereas "Flush" gives a superb picture of the clouds upon the dawn 
 of a stormy day, and by adding a human touch to the picture makes the 
 scene more real to the imagination, " flash " is both feeble and untrue. 
 It should be noted that the essentially Miltonic passage which follows 
 here in the first version (i. 182-85) is omitted in the Vision. 
 
 20. Not a :'Sor at M5., which makes better sense. For "hated" MS. 
 reads " Even ". Line 23 is not found in the MS. and must have been 
 copied into the Fall of Hyperion from a memory of the passage in Hyperion. 
 
 26. shining : glowing MS., as in Hyperion. 
 
 35. Where/ore, substituted for the weaker "and so". 
 
 52. paved so MS. ; paned H. 
 
 44. Who on a wide plain gather in sad troops : — Originally " who on 
 wide plains gather in panting troops " ; the substitution of " sad " for 
 " panting" is a loss in vividness. Keats may have felt his earlier epithet 
 less applicable to the dejected Titans with whom he is instituting the com- 
 parison. 
 
 49. is sloping : — A change to avoid the Miltonism of " slope " (Hyp. i. 
 204). It is noticeable that the next few lines of the first version, essenti- 
 ally Miltonic in construction, are omitted in the Vision.
 
 EVE OF ST. MARK— NOTES 525 
 
 The Eve of St. Mark (first publ. H 1848). First conceived by Keats 
 and probably begun in Jan. 1819, i.e. when he was engaged upon the com- 
 panion poem, the Eve of St. Agnes. For in the Journal Letter, dated 19th 
 February, he says, " In my next packet, I shall send you my Pot of Basil, 
 St. Agnes' Eve, and if I should have finished it, a little thing called the 
 Eve of St. Mark. You see what fine Mother lladcliffe names I have — it is 
 not my fault — I do not search for them." Under the date 20th September, 
 he writes from Winchester to his brother. " The great beauty of poetry 
 is that it makes everything, every place, interesting. The palatine Venice 
 and the abbotine Winchester are equally interesting. Some time since 
 I began a poem called the Eve of St. Mark, quite in the spirit of town 
 quietude. I think it will give you the sensation of walking about 
 an old country town in a coolish evening. I know not whether I shall 
 finish it ; I will give it as far as I have gone." Then follows the poem. 
 The poem was regarded by D. G. Rossetti, as together with La Belle Dame 
 sans Merci " in manner the choicest and chastest of Keats's work " and on the 
 fly leaf at the end of his copy of the poems he wrote the following note : — 
 " The Eve of St. Mark : — The following is no doubt the superstition in 
 accordance with which Keats intended to develop this poem. It was much 
 akin to the belief connected with the Eve of St. Agnes : It was believed 
 that if a person, on St. Mark's Eve, placed himself near the church porch 
 when twilight was thickening, he would behold the apparitions of those 
 persons in the parish who were to be seized with any severe disease that 
 year, go into the church. If they remained there, it signified their death ; 
 if they came out again, it portended their recovery ; and the longer or the 
 shorter the time they remained in the building, the severer or less danger- 
 ous their illness. Infants, under age to walk, rolled in." — From The 
 Unseen World, p. 72 (Masters, 1853). " It seems that on account of the 
 superstition to be embodied, Keats must have laid the scene of his poem 
 near a cathedral " (article by G. Milner in Manchester Quarterly, 1883 — 
 On some Marginalia made by Dante G. Rossetti in a copy of Keats's poems). 
 It is curious to notice that Keats introduces the legend of St. Mark's 
 Eve into his burlesque fairy story the Cap and Bells. In that poem the 
 fairy king's earthly lover is named Bertha, she lives at Canterbury (xliii.) : 
 the magician produces a sample of her handiwork with the same kind of 
 conventional pattern as appears on the screen described in Bertha's chamber 
 in the Eve of St. Mark, and he provides the king with " an old and legend- 
 leaved book, mysterious to behold " (Ivii.) which contains the charms by 
 means of which he is to bear her off (Iviii.) ; moreover, the book is to be 
 laid on Bertha's table, and '"twill help your purpose dearly" (lix.); 
 presumably it contains the legend of St. Mark. His adventure, too, can 
 only be successful upon 
 
 April the twenty-fourth, — this coming day, 
 
 Now breathing its new bloom upon the skies. 
 
 Will end in St. Mark's Eve ; — you must away. 
 
 For on that eve alone can you the maid convey. (Ivi.)
 
 526 JOHN KEATS 
 
 The Eve of St. Agnes, as has been shown, bears slight traces of the 
 influence of Christabel, and there can be no doubt that here Keats owed 
 something to this poem in his use of metre, employing it, as Mr. 
 Bridges has pointed out, with that "sort of latitude advocated by Cole- 
 ridge ". In his treatment of the subject he is entirely independent of any 
 model, and nowhere has he excelled in delicacy and vivid suggestiveness 
 the description in the opening lines. The picture of the streets of the 
 ('athedral city in the evening affords an interesting comparison with the 
 different, but equally successful, picture of the streets of Corinth at night, 
 written about the same time {Lamia, i. 350-61). In both the shuffling feet 
 are heard on the pavements, in both companies of people are seen gather- 
 ing at the entries, and the whole effect of thronged thoroughfares is 
 given in a few significant touches. Here the effect is heightened by 
 reason of the contrast it affords with the indoor scene of the lonely Bertha 
 poring over her magic book, which, as Mr. Colvin says " in its insistent 
 delight in vivid colour and minuteness of far sought suggestive and 
 picturesque detail, is perfectly in the spirit of Rossetti" and "anticipates 
 in a remarkable degree the feeling and method of the modern pre- 
 Raphaelite schools" (EML, p. 165). It is unnecessary to expose in detail 
 the philological inaccuracy of Keats's attempt to reproduce the language 
 of the Middle Ages ; he had probably no more knowledge of early English 
 than Chatterton, and the style of lines 99-114 may be due to Chatter- 
 ton's influence. 
 
 The BM MS. gives two cancelled openings to the poem — " It was on 
 a twice holiday " and "Twice holy was the Sabbath day bell ". 
 
 68. Abroad, etc. Originally written "Both abroad and in the room " 
 and followed by two cancelled lines : — 
 
 The Maiden lost in dizzy maze 
 Turned to the fire and made a blaze. 
 
 La BEiiLE Dame sans Merci. Was included in the Journal Letter to 
 George Keats dated Feb.-May, 1819, and headed Wednesday evening 28th 
 April. The manner in which it is written and corrected points to its being 
 a first draft, composed at that time. It was first published in the Indicator 
 of May, 1820, with a short prefatory essay by Leigh Hunt stating that it was 
 suggested by the title of a poem. La Belle Dante sans Mercy, once supposed 
 to be a translation by Chaucer of a dialogue by Alain Chartier, the court 
 poet of Charles 11. of France. The note prefixed to the poem, that M. 
 Aleyn " framed this dialogue between a gentleman and a gentlewoman, 
 who finding no mercy at her hand dieth for sorrow " {vide Chalmers, English 
 Poets, i. 518) may have given a further hint to Keats, but he could have 
 found nothing suggestive in the poem itself, which is not only monotonous 
 but totally devoid of real feeling. In idea and atmosphere Keats's poem 
 is closer to Spenser's description of Phaedria {Faerie Queene, ii. 6. 3, 14, 
 7):-
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI— NOTES 527 
 
 a Ladie fresli and faire, 
 Making sweet solace to her selfe alone ; 
 who meets Cymochles and leads him away 
 
 to a shady dale 
 And laid him downe upon a grassie plaine ; 
 And her sweet selfe without dread, or disdane. 
 She set beside, laying his head disarm'd 
 In her loose lap, it softly to sustains. 
 Where soone he slumbred, fearing not be harm'd, 
 The whiles with a love lay she thus him sweetly charm'd. 
 
 Sometimes her liead she fondly would aguize 
 With gaudie girlonds, or fresh flowrets dight 
 About her necke, or rings of rushes plight. 
 But while Keats may owe something to this passage his conception is 
 invested with a sense of tragedy which Spenser had no desire to convey. 
 In this a striking parallel may be noted with Pericles {cf, especially Belle 
 Dame, stanzas 10 and 11) where Pericles is about to stake his life to win 
 the king's daughter, and Antiochus bids him take warning by the princes 
 who have already lost their lives : — 
 
 Yon sometime famous Princes, like thyself 
 Drawn by report, adventurous by desire, 
 Tell thee with speechless tongues, and semblance pale 
 That without covering save yon field of stars 
 Here they stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars. 
 And with dead cheeks advise thee to desist 
 For going on death's net, whom none resist (i. 1. 34-40). 
 In his use of the ballad metre Keats is following the example and has 
 something of the spirit of Coleridge, though his use of a short fourth line 
 heavily accentuated, admirably expressing the weird tragedy of the whole, 
 is his own development. One more interesting reminiscence of a prede- 
 cessor may be noted. William Browne, whose felicity of actual description 
 had attracted Keats in his earlier years, was peculiarly successful in 
 expressing his delight in the song of the birds {vide Brit. Past., i. 3. 195- 
 220 and ii. 3. 709-732, etc.) and in writing an elegy on the death of a 
 friend he can lament his loss in no more feeling way than in this invoca- 
 tion to Nature : — 
 
 Slide soft, ye silver floods 
 
 And every Spring, 
 Within the shady woods 
 
 Let no bird sing ! (Brit. Past., ii. 1. 242). 
 Keats completes his picture of the desolation of his lyric tragedy with 
 the same idea and in the same cadence "and no birds sing". Keats and 
 Browne have not seldom been compared ; but the essential difi'erence in 
 the genius of the two poets could hardly be realised better than in a com- 
 parison of the use to which each of them puts this simple phrase.
 
 528 JOHN KEATS 
 
 The first version of the poem is given side by side with the final version 
 as printed in the Indicator because I agree with several critics in regarding 
 it as decidedly superior. The poem thus seems to afford the one example, 
 if we leave out of count the case of Hyperion, of alterations for the worse 
 made by Keats in the text of his poems. This is especially true as it 
 applies to the first line of the poem. " Knight at arms" gives us at once 
 a definite conception of the main character, whilst his hapless state, which 
 is all that a " wretched wight " suggests, is already sufficiently attested in 
 the question "what ails thee.''" and is developed throughout the poem. 
 "Wretched wight" on the other hand, brings no distinct image before 
 the mind, being equally applicable for example to a distressed maiden or 
 to a beggar. Hardly more successful are the changes in stanzas 8 and 9. 
 These were probably due to a feeling that the " kisses four " would rouse 
 ridicule in the reader, and Keats's remark which he appended to the poem 
 on sending it to his brother and sister lends some support to this view. 
 " Why four kisses — you will say — why four, because I wish to restrain the 
 headlong impetuosity of my Muse — she would fain have said " score " 
 without hurting the rhyme — but we must temper the imagination, as the 
 Critics say, with Judgment. I was obliged to choose an even number 
 that both eyes might have fair play, and to speak truly I think two a piece 
 quite sufficient. Suppose I had said seven there would have been three 
 and a half a-piece, a very awkward affair, and well got out off on my side." 
 But because, disengaging himself from the mood in which he had composed 
 the poem, he can jest about this line, it does not in the least follow that he 
 thought it could justly be condemned, nor that it would seem ridicu- 
 lous to a reader in complete sympathy with the spirit of the whole poem. 
 That Keats made the alteration in a moment of less intense imaginative 
 realisation of his theme is sufficiently attested by the fact that the line 
 substituted " so kissed to sleep " is undoubtedly the weakest in the whole 
 poem. Moreover the change in the next stanza, which follows as a necessary 
 result, does not give the same sense of the subtle power of the enchantress 
 over her fated lover. 
 
 The MS. of the poem, as given in the Journal Letter, shows the follow- 
 ing original readings : — 
 
 3. a lilly : death's lilly. 
 
 a fading rose : d eath' s fading rose. 
 
 Fast withereth : withereth ; "fast" added in small hand. 
 
 4. Meads : -W^Ws. 
 
 7. manna : b onoy . 
 
 8. and sigh' d full sore : and there olie oighod . 
 
 11. With horrid warning gaped wide : AH tromb l o . . . T r ido agape . 
 
 12. sojourn : wither . 
 
 Woodhouse gives the first version, properly punctuated, but in 9. 3 has 
 "dream'd" for "dreamt," and in 10. 4 "Hath thee" for "Thee hath". 
 H follows Woodhouse. 
 
 i
 
 ODES, ETC.— NOTES 529 
 
 ODES, ETC. 
 
 To Maia. First published H 1848 ; and written on May Day 1818. It 
 was sent in a letter to Reynolds two days afterwards, prefaced by the words, 
 " With respect to the aft'ections and Poetry you must know by a sympathy 
 my thoughts that way, and 1 daresay these few lines will be but a ratification. 
 I wrote them on May Day and intend to finish the Ode all in good time." 
 But fragment as it may be of a fuller unwritten poem it is yet complete in 
 itself, and blends with subtle art two sources of the poet's happiest inspir- 
 ation — the spirit of Greece as he understood it and the peaceful beauty of 
 Nature. And, as is often the case, the whole essence of the poem seems 
 to pass into the exquisite use of the commonest words. The epithet " old " 
 is rarely used by Keats without some sense of yearning after the beauty 
 and the glory of primeval life. Thus in Endymion he delights in the "old 
 piety " of Pan's worshippers (i. 130) and is himself in a sense brought into 
 closer touch with the life of the past as with them he watches " the sun-rise 
 and its glory old " (i. 106) ; and so here it is the old vigour of the Greek 
 bard for which he longs, his use of the epithet at once suggesting the 
 absence of that vigour from the poets of his own day, and its association 
 with the life on which he loved to dwell. With as full and as subtle a 
 suggestiveness he touches, in his allusion to the " quiet primrose," upon the 
 mysteries of Nature's healing power. His love for the simplest flowers and 
 the manner in which he presents them is in itself a sufficient answer to the 
 critics who see little but exuberance and the love of luxury in the poetry 
 of Keats ; and this passage forcibly calls to the mind the beautiful lines 
 written to James Rice some time later, when his fatal illness was already 
 upon him. " How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world 
 impress a sense of its natural beauties upon us ! Like poor Falstaff, 
 though I do not babble, I think of green fields ; I muse with the greatest 
 affection on every flower I have known from my infancy — thus shapes and 
 colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with a superhuman 
 fancy. It is because they are connected with the most thoughtless and 
 the happiest moments of our lives. I have seen foreign flowers in hot- 
 houses of the most beautiful nature, but I do not care a straw for them. 
 The simple flowers of our Spring are what I want to see again " (16th 
 Feb. 1820). 
 
 Ode on Indolence (first published H 1848). In the Feb.-May Journal 
 Letter to George and Georgiana Keats is a passage under the date 19th 
 March which suggests by its parallelism of phrase and idea that this Ode 
 had either just been finished or was about to be written. " This morning 
 I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless. I long after a 
 stanza or two of Thomson's Castle of Indolence — my passions are all asleep, 
 from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre 
 all over me, to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of 
 
 34
 
 530 JOHN KEATS 
 
 faintness. If I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it 
 languor, but as I am I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy 
 the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, 
 and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and 
 pain no unbearable power. Neither Poetry, nor Ambition, nor Love have 
 any alertness of countenance as they pass by me ; they seem rather like 
 figures on a Greek Vase — a man and two women whom no one but myself 
 could distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only happiness, and 
 is a rare instance of the advantage of the body overpowering the Mind." 
 
 Its whole tone is eminently characteristic of one side of Keats's genius 
 and as such may be compared with the famous letter to Bailey (22nd Nov. 
 1817, vide Introduction, p. xxxviii.) and with the lines on the thrush (p. 258). 
 But that it was only a passing mood is amply proved by his extraordinary 
 mental activity at this period. The Ode on Indolence has not the sustained 
 beauty of the other Odes written at this period but, if we except the bathos 
 of vi. 3, 4, it reaches a high level of artistic workmanship. It is noticeable 
 how throughout it harps upon phrases and images employed in the contem- 
 porary Odes to the Nightingale and the Grecian Urn and Psyche, and per- 
 haps for this reason was omitted from the 1820 edition. In a letter to Miss 
 Jeffrey of Teignmouth, dated 9th June, is an interesting reference to the 
 Ode on Indolence which repeats, curiously enough, as though Keats were 
 satisfied with it, the one passage of the poem which we would willingly 
 see altered. " I have been very idle lately, very averse to writing : both 
 from the over pressing idea of our dead poets, and from abatement of my 
 love of fame. I hope I am a little more of a philosopher than I was, con- 
 sequently a little less of a versifying pet-lamb. You will judge of my 1819 
 temper when I tell you that the thing I most enjoyed this year has been 
 writing an Ode to Indolence." But later and perhaps juster critics than 
 himself will always judge of his " 1819 temper" by his composition in that 
 year of The Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia, The Eve of St. Mark, La Belle Dame 
 sans Merci and the majority of his finest Sonnets. 
 
 I. S. first seen shades: — The Aldine editions read "first green shades" 
 but probably upon no authority, and as H 1848 has " seen," " green " 
 may be regarded as a printer's error. 
 
 Ode to Fanny. First published H 1848, and probably written in 
 the spring of 1819. Keats first met Fanny Brawne late in 1818 at the 
 house of his friend Dilke. Writing in December to his brother and sister 
 in America he describes her as "beautiful and elegant, graceful, silly, 
 fashionable and strange — we have a tiff now and then — and she behaves 
 a little better, or I must have sheered off " ; and further, writing a few days 
 later " Shall I give you Miss Brawne .'' She is about my height — with a 
 fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort — she wants sentiment in 
 every feature — she manages to make her hair look well — her nostrils are 
 fine — though a little painful — her mouth is bad and good — her profile is 
 better than her full face which indeed is not full but pale and thin without
 
 ODES, ETC.— NOTES 531 
 
 showing any bone. Her shape is graceful and so are her movements — 
 her arms are good, her hands badish — her feet tolerable — she is not seven- 
 teen — but she is ignorant — monstrous in her behaviour — flying out in all 
 directions, calling people such names — that I was forced lately to make 
 use of the word Minx — this is not 1 think Irom any innate vice but from 
 a penchant she has for acting stylishly. ... I am however tired of such 
 style and shall decline any more of it." It is evident that Keats was not 
 at this time in love with Miss Brawne, and the slight reference to her in 
 the letter of 24th February, 1819, points to the same fact, though it is 
 equally evident that he was more fascinated by her than he cared to admit. 
 But soon after this the engagement must have taken place. The above 
 quotation affords a commentary on the emotion expressed in the poem, 
 and throws some light on the really tragic side of Keats's passion. The 
 
 next poem (To ) and the sonnets addressed to Fanny (p. 287) throw 
 
 still more. Possessed of these, we have no need and should have no 
 inclination to dwell on the agony of the love letters. On page 297 
 of Keats's edition of the Anatomy of Melancholic, now in the collection 
 of Sir Charles Dilke, the poet has underlined the following passage which 
 as Mr. Forman points out, is the source of the expressions used in the 
 third stanza — " They cannot look off whom they love : they will impregnare 
 earn ipsis oculis, deflowre her with their eyes : be still gazing, staring, 
 stealing faces, smiling, glancing at her" — the continuation of the passage 
 (not quoted by Mr. Forman) may have suggested line 2 of the stanzas 
 — "as Apollo on Leucothoe, the Moon on her Endymion, when she 
 stood still in Caria, and at Latmos caused her chariot to be stayed". 
 Further on we have a passage of which Mr. Forman gives us Keats's 
 annotation — a companion to the well known song of Ben Jonson — "so 
 will she by him— drink to him with her eyes, nay drink him up, devour 
 him, swallow him" (pt. iii, sect, ii. mem. iii. subs. i.). The Anatomy 
 of Melancholic, which Keats seems at this time to have been studying very 
 closely, and especially the third book, Of Love and Love Melancholy, can 
 hardly have been healthy reading for him in his present frame of mind, 
 and its good-humoured jests at the expense of lovers must have " scalded 
 him like tears ". Only a few pages before the passage above quoted, under 
 the head of "artificial allurements" to passion (iii. ii. ii. iv.) Burton 
 had discussed dancing as "none of the least," and it was in all probability 
 the news that Miss Brawne was going to a dance, working upon the 
 memory of this passage, that called forth the poem. Certainly stanzas 5 
 and 6 are the cynical indifference of Burton translated into the language 
 
 of passion. 
 
 In the collection of Lord Crewe is preserved a fragmentary autograph 
 
 MS. of the poem, containing stanzas 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7. This has only just 
 come to light. 
 
 Ill, The MS. supplies a false start to this stanza—" My temples with 
 hot jealous pulses beat ".
 
 532 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 VI. The MS. gives the following false starts to this stanza : — 
 
 I know it ! yet sweet Fanny I would feign 
 
 Knoll for a mercy on my lonely hours. 
 
 I know it : yet sweet Fanny 1 would feign 
 
 Cry your soft mercy for a . . . 
 1 he latter part of the stanza runs thus in the MS. : — 
 
 Nor when away you roam, 
 
 Dare keep its wretched home. 
 
 Love, Love alone, has pains severe and many : 
 
 When loneliest keep me free 
 
 From torturing jealousy. 
 This reading certainly improves the sense and is more vivid ; the reading 
 of the text is probably due to an error of Lord Houghton's in copying for 
 
 First published H 1848, and there dated October 1849 ; vide 
 
 press. 
 To — 
 
 note to preceding poem. 
 
 Lines. This living hand, etc. This beautiful fragment was found by 
 Mr. Forman in the margin of a page of the manuscript of the Cap and 
 Bells and was first published by him in 1898. The lines are given here by 
 his courteous permission. It is evident both from the place where they 
 were found and from their general character that they were written not 
 earlier than the winter of 1819. It seems almost certain that they were, 
 as Mr. Forman supposes, addressed to Fanny Brawne ; they are expressive 
 of that same passionate unrest which is the prevailing note of the two 
 previous Odes, and they suggest, at least, that Keats might have been 
 saved much anguish of heart if he had set his affections on one who had 
 realised more fully the dignity of her lot. 
 
 SONGS AND LYRICS (p. 255). 
 On . First published H 1848 with date 1817. 
 
 Lines. Unfelt, unheard, unseen. First published H 1848 with date 1817. 
 12. Love doth know no fulness, nor no bounds. First written "that every 
 Joy and Grief and Feeling drowns ". Mr. Forman refers to the line which 
 Keats has substituted as a "quotation from Shakespeare," but it is not to 
 be found in Shakespeare, and I have been unable to trace it in any other 
 poet. 
 
 Where's the Poet P First published H 1848. This conception of the 
 poet's character was a favourite one with Keats — cf. the letter to Wood- 
 house, 27th Oct. 1818, quoted in the Introduction, p. lix. 
 
 Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow, etc. First published H 1848. No 
 date is given, but the poem is hardly likely to have been written before 
 the last few months of 1817, as Keats only began his detailed study of
 
 SONGS AND LYRICS— NOTES 533 
 
 Paradise Lost about September of that year, and the inaccuracy of the 
 quotation shows that it must be given from memory. The passage occurs 
 in Bk. ii. 898-903. 
 
 For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce 
 Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring 
 Tliir embryon Atoms ; they around the flag 
 Of each his faction, in thir several Clanns, 
 Light-arm'd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow, 
 Swarm populous, unnumber'd as the Sands. . . . 
 8. are H, HBF ; burn BM. 
 14. shipwreck'd H, HBF ; storm wrecked BM. 
 
 On a Lock of Milton's Hair. First published H 1848 : sent by Keats 
 in a letter dated 23rd Jan., 1818, to Bailey, the friend who had first roused 
 his enthusiasm for Paradise Lost in the previous autumn. Keats writes — 
 " I was at Hunt's the other day, and he surprised me with a real authenti- 
 cated lock of Milton's hair. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, 
 so here it is — as they say of a Sheep in a Nursery book : — " After the poem 
 he adds — " This I did at Hunt's request — perhaps I should have done 
 something better alone and at home ". 
 
 What the Thrush said. First published H 1848. The lines were sent 
 in a letter to Reynolds written from Hampstead in Feb. 1818, and intro- 
 duced as follows : — 
 
 ''My dear Reynolds, — I had an idea that a man might pass a very 
 pleasant life in this manner — Let him on a certain day read a certain Page 
 of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon 
 it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it, until it becomes stale — but 
 when will it do so .'' Never. When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness 
 in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting-post 
 towards all ' the two-and-thirty Palaces '. How happy is such a voyage of 
 conception, what delicious diligent Indolence. . . . Nor will this sparing 
 touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers — for perhaps the 
 honours paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done 
 by great Works to the " Spirit and pulse " of good by their mere passive 
 existence. Memory should not be called Knowledge. Many have original 
 minds who do not think it — they are led away by Custom. Now it appears 
 to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from inwnrds his own 
 airy Citadel — the points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her 
 work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should 
 be content with as few points to tip with the fine Web of his Soul, and 
 weave a tapestry empyrean full of -symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness 
 for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of distinctness for his 
 luxury. ... It has been an old comparison for our urging on — the Bee- 
 hive ; however it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the
 
 534 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Bee — for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving — 
 no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I 
 doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee — its leaves blush deeper in 
 the next spring. . . . Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like 
 Mercury — let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, 
 bee-like buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to 
 be aimed at ; but let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and 
 receptive — budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints 
 from every noble insect that favours us with a visit — sap will be given us 
 for meat and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear 
 Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness — 
 I have not read any Books — the morning said I was right — I had no idea 
 
 but of the morning and the thrush said I was right — seeming to say " 
 
 After the poem he adds, " Now I am sensible all this is a mere sophistica- 
 tion (however it may neighbour to any truths), to excuse my own in- 
 dolence. So I will not deceive myself that Man should be equal with 
 Jove — but think himself very well off as a sort of scullion-Mercury or even 
 a humble-bee." 
 
 These lines and the letter which contains them are a beautiful expres- 
 sion of one source of Keats's inspiration, the '' wise passiveness " of 
 Wordsworth, and the feeling which underlies them bears comparison with 
 the Ode on Indolence {q.v. and notes) whilst it reaches its consummation in 
 the Ode to A utiimn. That passage in the letter which speaks of the effect 
 of the great thoughts of his predecessors is suggestive of a truth peculiarly 
 applicable to Keats. Mr. Forman calls attention to the manner in which 
 Keats has reproduced in his poem a thrush-like repetition of sound, and 
 compares Browning, Home Thoughts from Abroad: — 
 
 That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over 
 Lest you should think he never could recapture 
 The first fine careless rapture ! 
 
 Faery Songs. First published H 1848, with date 1818. 
 
 Daisy's Song. This and the two following poems (first published H 
 1848, with date 1818) are usually given under the title Extracts from an 
 Opera, together with three others. But as they are all in reality quite 
 independent, it seems better to print these three among the poems, and 
 to relegate the others, which are quite worthless, to the Appendix. Dante 
 Gabriel Rossetti noted that the song " The stranger lighted from his 
 steed" reminds one somewhat of Blake's The Will and the Way (HBF.). 
 The connection seems very remote ; for The Will and the Way is written 
 in a satiric vein in which Blake is rarely successful and which, moreover, 
 is totally at variance with Keats's intention here. A far closer parallel 
 may be traced between "The stranger lighted from his steed" and Blake's 
 L,ove's Secret, especially the last stanza of that poem : —
 
 SONGS AND LYRICS— NOTES 535 
 
 Soon after she was gone from me, 
 
 A traveller came by. 
 Silently, invisibly : 
 
 He took her with a sigh. 
 The Daisy's Song contains similarly a curious suggestion of Blake both 
 in the general simplicity of statement and in a kind of inspired discon- 
 nectedness which can only be justified by its indubitable success. In the 
 same way the general variety of cadence throughout the song recalls 
 Blake's characteristic manner. There is nothing else in Keats at all 
 resembling these two songs ; it seems highly probable that they were 
 written after the perusal of Blake. 
 
 Asleep! O sleep a little while. The phrase sudden adoration, perhaps 
 the only noticeable touch in these lines, is a fine reminiscence of Milton. 
 . . . noble grace that dash't brute violence 
 With sudden adoration, and blank aw {Comus, 451, 452). 
 
 Where be ye going. First published H 1848 without stanza 2, and in 
 1853 in an inaccurate form in Taylor's Life of Haydon (i. 363). The correct 
 text was first given by Mr. Forman in his 1883 edition, where he notes 
 that Rossetti pointed out that the first verse is undoubtedly a remini- 
 scence from one of the songs in (Chatterton's) ^lla : — 
 
 Mie husband. Lord Thomas, a forrester boulde. 
 
 As ever close pynne or the baskette. 
 
 Does as cherysauncys from Elynour houlde 
 
 I have ytte as soon as I ask ytte. 
 Keats's stanzas were sent to Haydon from Teignmouth in a letter dated 
 14th March, 1818. 
 
 Meg Mebrilies. First published in Hood's Magazine for 1844 under 
 the title Old Meg, and afterwards included in H 1848, in a letter written 
 to Tom Keats from Auchencairn, near Dumfries, 3rd July, 1818. Keats 
 had sent the poem to his sister Fanny on the previous day. '' The pedes- 
 trians," says Lord Houghton, "passed by Solway Firth through that 
 delightful part of Kirkcudbrightshire, the scene of Guy Mannering. 
 Keats had never read the novel, but was much struck with the character 
 of Meg Merrilies as delineated to him by Brown. He seemed at once to 
 realise the creation of the novelist, and suddenly stopping in the pathway, 
 at a point where a profusion of honeysuckles, wild rose, and fox glove 
 mingled with the bramble and broom that filled up the spaces between 
 the shattered rocks, he cried out, * Without a shadow of doubt on that 
 spot old Meg Merrilies often boiled her kettle '." 
 
 7. chip hat HBF, following Hood's Magazine; ship hat H. 
 
 Staffa. First published H 1848 ; included in a letter to Tom Keats 
 written from Dun an cullen (Derrynaculan near Cruach-Doire-nan Cruilean, 
 [S.C.],) Island of Mull, on 23i*d July, 1818. It is prefaced by a description
 
 536 JOHN KEATS 
 
 of Staffa, (J noted in the note on Hyperion, i. 86. Lord Houghton printed 
 it, as other editors of the poem since, without the six lines which in the 
 original letter followed line 49 : — 
 
 'Tis now free to stupid face, 
 
 To cutters, and to Fashion boats. 
 
 To cravats and to petticoats : — 
 
 The great sea shall war it down. 
 
 For its fame shall not be blown 
 
 At each farthing Quadrille dance. 
 It is probably to these lines, and not to the whole poem, as Lord 
 Houghton would imply, that Keats refers when he adds in his letter — 
 " I am sorry I am so indolent as to write such stuff as this. It can't be 
 helped." The poem as it stands in the text, if we except the unfortunate 
 line 18, is a singularly felicitous example of the manner in which natural 
 beauty and poetic reminiscence blended in their inspiration of Keats's best 
 work. In his wonder at the majesty of Staffa, which he has tried in vain 
 to describe in prose, it seems to him the very " Cathedral of the sea," and 
 as its pontiff priest he conjures up Lycidas, whose bones perchance were 
 hurled " beyond the stormy Hebrides " (Lycidas, 156). 
 
 A Prophecy. First published H 1848 : was included in the Jotirnal 
 Letter of Keats to his brother George, dated 29th Oct. 1818. The poet, dis- 
 cussing the fate of the different nations, is led, naturally enough, to consider 
 the future of his brother's new home and disputes the view taken by his 
 friend Dilke " that America will be the country to take up the human 
 intellect where England leaves off". " I differ there with him greatly. A 
 country like the United States whose greatest men are Franklins and 
 Washingtons will never do that. They are great men doubtless, but how 
 are they to be compared to those our countrymen Milton and the two 
 Sidneys .''... Those Americans are great, but they are not sublime men 
 — the humanity of the United States can never reach the sublime. ..." 
 And feeling that the real need for America is the development of her imagina- 
 tion he goes on, " If I had a prayer to make for any great good, next to 
 Tom's recovery, it should be that one of your children should be the first 
 American poet. I have a great mind to make a prophecy. They say 
 prophecies work out their own fulfilment." Then follows the poem. 
 
 A Song. In a drear-nighted December. First published, says Mr. Forman, 
 in Galignani's edition of Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge (1829), and assigned 
 by Woodhouse to October or December, 1818. 
 
 21. To know the change and feel it. The feel of not to feel it {Woodhouse 
 MS. Book). The alteration is among the most fortunate examples of Keats's 
 power to detect the faults of his earlier manner and to remove them from 
 his work where they showed any signs of recurrence. 
 
 23. steel HBF following Woodhouse ; steal H.
 
 EPISTLE TO REYNOLDS— NOTES 537 
 
 Hush, Hush ! Tread Softly ! First published H 1848. 
 
 I HAD A Dove. First published H 1848. It is to be found in one of the 
 Journal Letters to America under the date 2nd Jan. 181J), prefaced by 
 the words, " It is my intention to wait a few years before I publish any 
 minor poems — and then I hope to have a volume of some written — and 
 wliich those people will relish, who cainiot bear the burthen of a long 
 poem. In my journal I intend to copy the poems I write the day they are 
 written. There is just room, I see, in this page to copy a little thing I 
 wrote off to some music as it was playing." 
 
 Song of Fouh Fairies. Urst published H 1848. It was sent to George 
 Keats in the Journal Letter of Feb.-May, 1819, and from the remark in 
 the previous letter (quoted in last note) we should infer that the poem 
 had been recently composed. It contains some charming fancies, but was 
 evidently carelessly written and exhibits faults both in language and taste 
 which will lead all readers to concur with the opinion of Rossetti who 
 regarded it as '' unworthy of Keats at this period ". 
 
 9. Faintless fan MS. letter ; faintly fan H ; ever beat MS. letter can- 
 celled. 
 
 32. buried H ; shaded MS. letter. 
 
 46. Beyond the nimble-wheeled quest H ; Far beyond the search and 
 quest MS. letter. 
 
 Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds. First published H 1848. 
 Written and sent to Reynolds on 25th March, 1818, with the following 
 preface — " My dear Reynolds, — In hopes of cheering you through a minute 
 or two, I was determined will he nill he to send you some lines, so you 
 will excuse the unconnected subject and careless verse. You know, I am 
 sure, Claude's Enchanted Castle, and I wish you may be pleased with my 
 remembrance of it." 
 
 John Hamilton Reynolds (1796-1852) met Keats in 1816 at Leigh 
 Hunt's cottage, and soon became one of his warmest friends. Of all the 
 company that Keats met at Hampstead, Reynolds seems to have had the 
 most genuine poetic talent, the keenest powers of criticism, and the 
 greatest sympathy with the intellectual interests of his friend. Like 
 Keats, he had been much influenced by Wordsworth, though he was 
 always alive to his master's defects ; he saw far deeper into the secrets 
 of art than Hunt, and he had more subtlety of mind, more humour and 
 more discrimination than Haydon. We are not surprised, therefore, to 
 find that when Keats wishes to discuss the profounder problems of life 
 and art his letters are generally addressed to Reynolds. When he is 
 deep in Shakespeare study it is Reynolds he asks " whenever you write 
 say a word or two ... on Shakespeare " (April, 1819), it is to Reynolds 
 he sends a doubtful passage in Endymion for his verdict, it is Reynolds
 
 538 JOHN KEATS 
 
 whose condemnation causes him to reject the first Preface to Endymion 
 (q.v. Introduction to Endymion, p. 418 . Judging from the correspond- 
 ence we should infer that the friendship reached its height in the early 
 months of 1818. Then it was that Keats wrote his two criticisms of 
 Wordsworth (quoted pp. 406, 482), and sent him among other poems 
 included in the letters When I have fears, the Robin Houd poem, the 
 Lines on the Mermaid, the Thrush and the Ode to Maia. At the same 
 time he was engaged upon Isabella, written at Reynolds's request to be 
 contributed to a joint volume produced by the two friends {vide Introduc- 
 tion to Isabella). 
 
 The Epistle, in spite of certain obvious lapses in taste, the meaningless 
 caprice of the opening paragraph with the unnecessary banality of line 11 
 and the vulgar pronunciation of perhaps as p'raps in line 14 (c/. Sleep and 
 Poetry, 33) all due in a measure to the rapidity of its production, marks a 
 great advance in style and treatment of subject upon the earlier epistles. 
 The heroic couplet is well controlled throughout, enjambement is sparingly 
 and effectively employed, and there are no double endings to the lines. 
 
 20. the pontiff knife . . . ^oz£'s:— An interesting anticipation of the Oif 
 on a Grecian Urn, and in line 77 we have another anticipation of the 
 
 same poem : — 
 
 Things cannot to the will 
 
 Be settled, but they tease us out of thought. 
 The picture in lines 23-25 suggests Endymion, ii. 78-82. 
 
 26 Enchanted Castle :— Mr. Colvin {Letters of Keats, 91) writes : " The 
 famous picture now belonging to Lady Wantage, and exhibited at Bur- 
 lington House in 1888. Whether Keats ever saw the original is doubtful 
 (it was not shown at the British Institution in his time), but he must have 
 been familiar with the subject as engraved by Vivarfes and Woollett, 
 and its suggestive power worked in his mind until it yielded at last the 
 distilled poetic essence of the ' magic casement ' passage in the Ode to 
 a Nightingale." With a knowledge of Keats's intense admiration for 
 Hazlitt's critical powers (cf. End. ii. 198 note) it is interesting to quote 
 the following criticism of Claude: "Claude's landscapes are perfect 
 abstractions, visible images of things ; they speak the visible language of 
 nature truly, they resemble a mirror or a microscope. To the eye only, 
 they are more perfect than any other landscapes that ever were or will 
 be painted ; they give more of nature as cognisable by one sense alone ; 
 but they lay an equal stress on all visible impressions. They do not 
 interpret one sense by another ; they do not distinguish the character of 
 different objects as we are taught, and can only be taught to distinguish 
 them— by their effect on the different senses; that is, his eye wanted 
 imagination, it did not strongly sympathise with his other faculties. He 
 saw the atmosphere but he did not feel it. He painted the trunk of a 
 tree or a rock in the foreground as smooth — with as complete an abstrac- 
 tion of the gross tangible impression — as any other part of the picture. 
 His trees are perfectly beautiful, but quite immovable ; they have a look
 
 EPISTLE TO REYNOLDS— NOTES 539 
 
 of enchantment. In abort, his landscapes are unequalled imitations of 
 nature, released from its subjection to the elements, as if all objects were 
 become a delightful fairy vision, and the eye had rarefied and refined 
 away the other senses." Hazlitt "On Gusto," The Round Table, 1817. 
 
 42. Santon : — A kind of dervish or priest, regarded as a saint, cf. Byron, 
 Childe Harold, ii. 56. "Slaves, Eunuchs, Soldiers, Guests and Santons 
 wait ". 
 
 46. Lapland Witch .—Cf. Paradise Lost, ii. 662-6 :— 
 Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd 
 In secret, riding through the Air she comes 
 Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance 
 With Lapland Witches, while the labouring Moon 
 Eclipses at thir charms. 
 
 82-85. It is a flaw. . . .Nightingale: — For Keats's feeling on the anta- 
 gonism between reason and emotion cf. Lamia, ii. 230 and note and Intro- 
 duction, p. xli. And the natural result of this shrinking from thought is 
 that emotion itself, unsupported by reason, is liable to violent and 
 capricious changes ; hence the " horrid mood " which follows. 
 
 97. Of an eternal fierce destruction : — Keats returns to the problem of 
 Nature's cruelty in a letter written a year later, and shows himself far 
 more able to grapple with it. "... I perceive how far I am from any 
 humble standard of disinterestedness. Yet this feeling ought to be 
 carried to its highest pitch, as there is no fear of its ever injuring society 
 — which it would do, I fear, pushed to an extremity. For in wild Nature 
 the Hawk would lose his Breakfast of Robins and the Robin his of Worms — 
 the Lion must starve as well as the Swallow. The greater part of Men 
 make their way with the same instinctiveness, the same unwandering eye 
 from their purposes, the same animal eagerness as the Hawk. The Hawk 
 wants a Mate, so does the Man — look at them both, they set about it and 
 procure one in the same manner. They want both a nest and they both 
 set about one in the same manner. The noble animal Man for his amuse- 
 ment smokes his pipe — the Hawk balances about the clouds — that is the 
 only difference of their leisures. This it is that makes the Amusement of 
 Life — to a speculative Mind — I go among the Fields and catch a glimpse of 
 a Stoat or a fieldmouse peeping out of the withered grass — the creature 
 hath a purpose, and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the 
 buildings of a city and I see a man hurrying along — to what? The 
 creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it. But then, as 
 
 Wordsworth says, ' we have all one human heart '. There is an 
 
 electric fire in human nature tending to purify — so that among these 
 human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The 
 pity is, that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in 
 rubbish" {To George and Georgiana Keats, 19th Mar. 1819). 
 
 106. Moods of one's mind : — A reminiscence of the title given by 
 Wordsworth to some poems in the 1807 volumes.
 
 540 JOHN KEATS 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 I. / how I love, etc. First published H 1848, and dated 1816. 
 
 II. After dark vapours, etc. First published in the Examiner, 23rd Feb. 
 1817- Woodhouse, in his copy of the 1817 volume, to which he has added 
 this Sonnet, has dated it 31st Jan. 1817. The use of the word "feel" and 
 the reference to Sappho (r/. Sleep and Poetry, 381) both point to the influence 
 of Leigh Hunt. 
 
 5. relieved of HBF ; relieving of Examiner ; relieved from H. 
 12. sleeping H ; smiling Examiner, HBF. 
 
 III. This pleasant tale, etc. First published in the Examiner, 6th March, 
 1817, and written during the previous month. Charles Cowden Clarke in 
 his Recollections of Writers thus recalls the circumstances of its composition : 
 "Another example of his promptly suggestive imagination, and uncommon 
 facility in giving it utterance, occurred one day upon returning home and 
 finding me asleep on the sofa, with a volume of Chaucer open at The 
 Flowre and the Leafe. After expressing to me his admiration of the poem, 
 which he had been reading, he gave me the fine testimony of that opinion 
 in pointing to the sonnet he had written at the close of it, which was an 
 extempore effusion, and without the alteration of a single word. It lies 
 before me now, signed 'J. K., Feb. 1817.' If my memory do not betray 
 me, the charming out-door fancy scene was Keats's first introduction to 
 Chaucer." 
 
 It is unfortunate that the charming allusion to the Babes in the Wood, 
 in the concluding couplet, is marred by a false rhyme, but it is at least 
 highly probable that both the allusion and the false rhyme are due to the 
 influence of Wordsworth's The Redbreast and the Butterfly, to be found in 
 the 1807 volumes which Keats knew especially well. 
 
 IV. V. To Haydon. These sonnets were first printed in the Examiner, 
 9th March, 1817. For Keats's relations with Haydon, vide note p. 399. 
 Haydon was delighted with the sonnet and wrote a letter of thanks in his 
 usual extravagant vein. But Keats did not owe his knowledge of the Elgin 
 Marbles to Haydon alone. It is interesting to notice that Severn also 
 claimed the honour of having introduced him to them, and was " proud 
 of having taken Keats to see them and of having pointed out their 
 beauty" {Life and Letters of Joseph Severn, William Sharp, 1892). 
 
 12, 13. With brainless idiotism, etc. H. The Examiner reads : — 
 With browless idiotism — o'erwise phlegm 
 Thou hadst beheld the Hesperean shine. 
 
 VI. On a Picture op Leander. First published in The Gem, a Literary 
 Annual, edited by Thomas Hood, 1829. No date is attached to it, but it is 
 followed in Lord Houghton's Aldine edition by the sonnet On the Sea, 
 which he dates (wrongly ; vide note to next poem) August, 1817, so that
 
 SONNETS— NOTES 541 
 
 it was probably written shortly before this. The picture which inspired 
 the sonnet is unknown ; perliaps it was also the inspiration of the reference 
 in Endymion, iii. 97, composed only a little later. 
 
 VII. On the Sea. First published H 1848 where it is dated August, 1817. 
 But Keats had composed it some months before, for he sent it in a letter 
 to Reynolds written from Carisbrook on 17th April. We learn from that 
 letter that it was inspired partly by Shakespeare and partly by the sight 
 of the sea at Shanklin on the day before. " Yesterday I went to Shanklin 
 . . . (it) is a most beautiful place — sloping wood and meadow ground reach 
 round the Chine, which is a clift between the cliffs of the depth of nearly 
 300 feet at least. This cleft is filled with trees and bushes in the narrow 
 part, and as it widens becomes bare, if it were not for primroses at one 
 side, which spread to the very verge of the Sea, and some fishermen's huts 
 on the other, perched midway on the Balustrades of beautiful green 
 Hedges along their steps down to the sands. But the sea, Jack, the sea — 
 the little waterfall — then the white cliff— then St. Catherine's Hill — ' the 
 sheep in the meadows, the cows in the corn '. . . . From want of regular 
 rest I have been rather narvous — and the passage in Leaf — ' Do you not 
 hear the sea.''' has haunted me intensely." Then follows the Sonnet. 
 Later in the letter he adds, " I find I cannot exist without Poetry — without 
 eternal Poetry — half a day will not do — the whole of it— I began with a 
 little, but habit has made me a Leviathan. I had become all in a Tremble 
 from not having written anything of late — the Sonnet over leaf did me 
 good. I slept the better last night for it — this Morning, however, I am 
 nearly as bad again." 
 
 For other passages illustrative of Keats's peculiar feeling for the sea 
 and his power of expressing it cf. Ep. to Geo. Keats, 131-38 ; Sleep and 
 Poetry, 375-80; Endymion, ii. 16, 17, 348-50; iii. 70, 71, 82-90, 625; 
 Ep. to Reynolds, 88-92 ; Hyperion, iii. 40 ; Fall of Hyperion, i. 430-36 ; and 
 his last Sonnet, Bright star, etc. 
 
 7. Be moved for days. Wood ho use records another reading of this 
 line : — " Be lightly moved." 
 
 VHL On Leigh Hunt's Poem, The Story of Rimini. First printed in 
 H 1848 and there dated 1817. On The Story of Rimini and its influence 
 upon Keats vide Introduction, pp. xxiii-xxvii. 
 
 IX. On sitting down to read King Lear once again. First published 
 H 1848 ; included in a letter written by the poet to his brothers George 
 and Tom Keats on 23rd January, 1818, where it is introduced by the 
 words: — "I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately — 
 I cannot bear to be uninterested or unemployed, I, who for so long a time 
 have been addicted to passiveness. Nothing is finer for the purposes of 
 great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers. 
 As an instance of this — observe — I sat down yesterday to read King Lear 
 the thing appeared to demand the prologue of a sonnet. 1
 
 542 JOHN KEATS 
 
 wrote it, and began to read — (I know you would like to see it)." In a 
 letter to Bailey, written upon the same day, he makes a similar allusion 
 to it. " I sat down to read King Lear yesterday, and felt the greatness of 
 the thing up to the writing of a sonnet preparatory thereto". "The 
 golden tongued Romance " is almost certainly the Faerie Queene, and the 
 contrast expressive of the supremacy which Shakespeare had held over 
 his mind for the past year {cf. Introduction, p. xxxiii). 
 
 2. of MS., HBF ; if Letter, H. 
 
 4. pages MS., HBF : volume Letter, H. 
 
 6. damnation MS., HBF ; Hell torment Letter, H. 
 
 X. When I have fears that I may cease to be, etc. First printed H 1848« 
 Sent to Reynolds in a letter dated 31st January, 1818 as " My last sonnet ". 
 It is the first example of Keats's employment of the Shakespearian form 
 (but cf. note to xii. post) and with the exception of the Sonnet on Chap- 
 man's Homer far finer than any he had yet written — among the best, 
 indeed, that he ever wrote. 
 
 It is interesting to notice that the conception embodied in those two 
 superbly imaginative lines. 
 
 When I behold upon the night's starr'd face. 
 
 Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance 
 took deep root in his mind ; for in a letter written to Reynolds three 
 weeks later he develops it and speaks of " weaving a tapestry empyrean 
 full of symbols for his spiritual eye ". The passage is quoted in the note 
 to What the Thrush said (p. 533). 
 
 XI. To THE Nile. First published H 1848. On 16th February, 1818, 
 Keats wrote to his brothers from Hampstead telling them " The Wednes- 
 day before last, Shelley, Hunt and I, wrote each a sonnet on the river 
 Nile : some day you shall read them all ". Shelley's sonnet, not published 
 till 1876 (before which it was generally thought that Shelley's sonnet 
 on Ozymandias was the one here alluded to) was as follows : — 
 
 Month after month the gathered rains descend. 
 
 Drenching yon secret iEthiopian dells. 
 
 And from the desart's ice-girt pinnacles. 
 Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend 
 On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. 
 
 Girt there with blasts and meteors. Tempest dwells 
 
 By Nile's aerial urn, with rapid spells 
 Urging those waters to their mighty end. 
 O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level. 
 
 And they are thine O Nile ! — and well thou knowest 
 That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil. 
 
 And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest. 
 Beware, O Man ! for knowledge must to thee 
 Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.
 
 SONNETS— NOTES 543 
 
 Leigh Hunt's sonnet, published in his Foliage, 1818, ran : — 
 It flows through old hush'd iEgypt and its sands. 
 
 Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream ; 
 And times and things, as in that vision, seem 
 Keeping along it their eternal stands, — 
 Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands 
 That roam'd through the young world, the glory extreme 
 Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam. 
 The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands. 
 Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong. 
 As of a world left empty of its throng, 
 
 And the void weighs on us ; and then we wake. 
 And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along 
 'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take 
 Our own calm journey on for human sake. 
 Leigh Hunt's sonnet is probably the best that he ever wrote, that of 
 Keats is especially interesting as showing how essentially his love of 
 Nature is associated with his own country, Cf, Introduction, p. Ixiii. 
 6, 7. Art thou so fruitful ? etc. : — 
 Art thou so beautiful, or a wan smile 
 Pleasant but to those men, who sick with toil ( Woodhouse MS.). 
 
 XII. To Spenser. First published H 1848. In the Aldine edition of 
 1876 Lord Houghton added another version, with no variations of any 
 importance, but with a note appended, " I am enabled by the kindness 
 of Mr. W. A. Longmore, nephew of Mr. J. H. Reynolds, to give an 
 exact transcript of this sonnet as written and given to his mother by the 
 poet, at his father's house in Little Britain. The poem is dated, in Mrs. 
 Longmore's hand, 5th Feb. 1818, but it seems to me impossible that it 
 can have been other than an early production and of the especially 
 Spenserian time." The tone of the poem seems at first sight to bear out 
 what Lord Houghton says, and accordingly he has been followed by Mr. 
 Forman and other editors. But they are probably mistaken. The form 
 of the sonnet amply corroborates the date which Mrs. Longmore has given, 
 which, apart from internal evidence, there would be no reason for disput- 
 ing. Of the sixty-one sonnets written by Keats thirty-nine follow the Petrar- 
 chan scheme of rhyming (octave fixed ABBA ABBA ; sestet running on 
 two or three rhymes but not ending in a couplet), three are debased or loose 
 Petrarchan (octave correct ; sestet ending in a couplet) and sixteen are 
 Shakespearian (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG) ; the remaining three are experi- 
 ments. In the last six months of 1817 Keats, as far as we know, wrote no 
 sonnets ; indeed, the last dated sonnet of that year is On the Sea (I7th 
 April) and the sonnet on The Story of Rimini, merely dated within the 
 year 1817, is from its subject far more likely to belong to the earlier 
 months, when Hunt's influence was far stronger, than to the latter part of 
 the year. In October and November Keats made his first serious study of
 
 544 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Shakespeare's poems and this not merely had a marked effect upon his 
 mind, but completely destroyed his allegiance to the Italian sonnet. For 
 leaving out of count this sonnet to Spenser we find that before he wrote 
 When I have fears, etc., on yist Jan. 1818, he had written no Shakespearian 
 sonnet at all, and that after he wrote it he only reverted to the Italian 
 form, pure or debased, in the sonnet to the Nile, which was part of a com- 
 petition and naturally, therefore, written in the more approved form, as 
 were both Shelley's and Hunt's : in a Sonnet to Ailsa Rock : in a very weak 
 sonnet on Burns, and in a burlesque On hearing the bagpipes. Of the 
 sonnets written in 1818 before When I have fears, i.e. after the pause in 
 Keats's sonnet activity, one, the sonnet To a Cat is obviously written as 
 a direct parody of Milton (vide note, p. 557) and therefore can hardly be 
 taken into account, the other On sitting down to read King Lear is in de- 
 based Petrarchan form though with more of the Shakespearian manner than 
 is noticeable before in Keats. That is to say, from Jan. 1818 onwards, 
 after one attempt in the form to which he had up to the present faithfully 
 adhered, Keats practically accepted the Shakespearian form as most suited 
 to his genius, whilst before that period he entirely favoured the Petrarchan ; 
 and it seems strange, if the sonnet on Spenser were written as early as Lord 
 Houghton thinks, that the experiment in the Shakespearian form was not 
 repeated for more than two years, especially as it is far easier to write — 
 no slight inducement to Keats in his earliest years of poetic composition. 
 It should be added that, as the poem is evidently written to order, {vide 
 line 3) too much stress ought not to be laid upon its tone. The poet is 
 asked to write a little poem in the Spenserian manner, perhaps by Mrs. 
 Longmore herself, but far more likely by Leigh Hunt in whose company 
 we know him to have been the day before {cf. "last eve" 1. 3 and last 
 sonnet note), and he replies, after a graceful compliment, that he cannot 
 write in the Spenserian manner in the winter {cf. the sonnet on Lear 
 written but a few days before where he bids the poet of the Faerie Queene 
 " leave melodising on this wintry day ") but will do his best " in the summer 
 days ". Such a light and charming little poem might be written under 
 these circumstances at any period, and it should not be regarded as the 
 expression of an allegiance to Spenser as yet unaffected by other influences. 
 
 XIII. To — -. First published in Hood's Magazine for April, 1844. 
 Woodhouse attributes its composition to 4th Feb. 1818, and asserts 
 that it was addressed to " a lady whom he saw for some few moments at 
 Vauxhall ". In rhythm, in the peculiar effect gained by the repetition of 
 phrase, in emotional structure and the management of its crescendo it 
 is probably the most Shakespearian sonnet that Keats ever wrote, the 
 weakness in the twelfth line being its only flaw ; so that few will be 
 inclined to quarrel with the statement of Mr. Robert Bridges that "it 
 might have been written by Shakespeare ". It affords a striking example 
 of Keats's intense and almost intuitive artistic sympathy with the genius
 
 SONNETS— NOTES 545 
 
 of Shakespeare, and was, probably, only the second sonnet written by him 
 in this form. 
 
 1. Time's sea, etc. H, HBF ; Life's sea hath been five times at its 
 slow ebb Hood's Mag. 
 
 7. / camtot look H, HBP' ; I never gaze Hood's Mag. 
 13, 14. Every delight, etc. H, HBF ; 
 
 Other delights with thy remembering 
 
 And sorrow to my darling joys doth bring. Hood's Mag. 
 
 XIV. Answer to a Sonnet by J. H. Reynolds, etc. First published H 
 1848, and dated by Woodhouse 8th Feb. 1818. Reynolds's sonnet was 
 published in his Garden of Florence, 1821. 
 
 XV. O that a week could be an age, etc. : — First published H 1848, with 
 the heading To John Hamilton Reynolds, and generally attributed to Feb.- 
 March, 1818. But in the Woodhouse transcript of the Fall of Hyperion 
 and other poems, recently discovered, the sonnet is headed To J. R., which, 
 as Mr. Colvin reminded me, would undoubtedly refer not to Reynolds, 
 who always signed himself and was addressed/. H. R., but to James Rice, 
 known to Keats and to many of his circle as one of the wittiest and most 
 lovable of men. Keats was in correspondence with Rice at the time when 
 this sonnet is agreed to have been written, so that there is no improbability 
 in the matter, whilst it is quite easy to understand how Lord Houghton 
 might for the moment forget his existence, considering his unimportance, 
 as compared with Reynolds, in the literary life of Keats. No other MS. of 
 this poem is known to exist, and it is quite probable that Lord Houghton 
 printed from the Woodhouse transcript. 
 
 XVL The Human Seasons. First published in Hunt's Literary Pocket 
 Book for 1819. The poem was sent by Keats in a letter to Bailey written 
 at Teignmouth on 18th March, 1818, and introduced as follows : "You 
 know my thoughts on religion. I do not think myself more in the right 
 than other people, and that nothing in the world is proveable. I wish I 
 could enter into all your thoughts on the subject, merely for one short 
 ten minutes, and give you a page or two to your liking. I am sometimes 
 so very sceptical as to think Poetry itself a mere Jack o' Lantern to amuse 
 whoever may chance to be struck with its brilliance. As tradesmen say 
 everything is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit 
 takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer — being itself a 
 Nothing. Ethereal things may at least be thus real, divided under three 
 heads — things real — things semireal — and nothings. Things real, such as 
 Existences of Sun, Moon and Stars — and passages of Shakespeare. Things 
 semireal, such as love, the Clouds etc., which require a greeting of the 
 spirit to make them wholly exist — and Nothings, which are made great 
 and dignified by an ardent pursuit — which, by the by, stamp the Burgundy 
 mark on the bottles of our minds, insomuch as they are able to ' consecrate 
 
 35
 
 546 JOHN KEATS 
 
 whatever they look upon '. I have written a sonnet here of a somewhat 
 collateral nature — so don't imagine it an d, propos des bottes" After the 
 sonnet he adds : " Aye, this may be carried — but what am I talking of? 
 It is an old maxim of mine, and of course must be well known, that every 
 point of thought is the centre of an intellectual world. The two upper- 
 most thouglits in a man's mind are the two poles of his world — he revolves 
 on them ; and everything is Southward or Northward to him through their 
 means — we take but three steps from feathers to iron." 
 
 7. high /s so H ; nigh His Lit. Pocket Book, HBF. 
 
 XVII. To Homer. First published H 1848, and said both by him and 
 by Woodhouse to have been written in 1818. Mr. Forman records that 
 Rossetti, influenced doubtless by the phrase " giant ignorance," in spite 
 of this evidence, thought that the sonnet must have preceded that On 
 first looking into Chapman^s Homer, but the use of the Shakespearian 
 form corroborates, if indeed any corroboration is necessary, the external 
 evidence above quoted. 
 
 7. spermy H ; spumy Woodhouse MS., HBF. 
 
 12. There is a triple sight in blindness keen : — In Keats's notes on 
 Milton, written probably about this time, he speculates upon the influence 
 of Milton's blindness on his imagination. " It can scarcely be conceived 
 how Milton's blindness might here aid the magnitude of his conceptions 
 as a bat in a large gothic vault." 
 
 XVIII. On visiting the Tomb of Burns. First published H 1848. This 
 was the first poem written by Keats on his tour with Brown in Scotland, 
 and was sent to his brother Tom in a letter dated Dumfries, 1st July. 
 ''You will see," he adds after copying the poem, "by this sonnet that I 
 am at Dumfries. We have dined in Scotland. Burns's tomb is in the 
 Churchyard corner, not very much to my taste though on a scale large 
 enough to show that they wanted to honour him. Mrs. Burns lives in 
 this place ; most likely we shall see her to-morrow. This sonnet I have 
 written in a strange mood, half-asleep. I know not how it is, the Clouds, 
 the Sky, the Houses, all seem anti-Grecian and anti-Charlemagnish." The 
 "strange mood, half-asleep," in which the sonnet was composed, is prob- 
 ably responsible for the obscurity of the sestet. It is characteristic of Keats 
 that as he stands beside the grave of Burns he is haunted by the reflections 
 of Hamlet on the influence of the mystery of death upon the human will : — 
 
 Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all. 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought (iii. 1. 83). 
 Such unhealthy reflections as arrested Hamlet's power of action clouded 
 Keats's apprehension of the " real of beauty ". The significant reference 
 to Minos, the wise judge who for his wisdom and integrity on earth was 
 made a judge in the infernal regions, and retained his sanity even in the 
 presence of death, is probably due to the influence of Dante's Inferno, 
 where Minos is several times referred to. Cary's Dante was the only
 
 SONNETS— NOTES 547 
 
 book which Keats took with him on his Scotch tour. There is very little 
 evidence of Keats's feeling with regard to Burns's poetry, for apart from 
 the Epistle to Mathew (71), where his name is used "to hitch in a rhyme " 
 Keats does not allude to him before this. But it is probable that he knew 
 Burns in some detail, and the letter quoted in the note to Sonnet XX. points 
 to this. Moreover it is difficult to imagine where else e.g. he could have 
 found the Scotch form "lampit" for "limpet" which he uses in the 
 Epistle to Reynolds, and the Scotch doggerel rhymes which he wrote on his 
 Scotch tour for the amusement of his family, bad as they are, show some 
 slight traces of his acquaintance with Burns's dialect. 
 
 XIX. To AitiSA Rock. First published in Hunt's Literary Pocket Book 
 for 1819 and written, Lord Houghton tells us, at the inn at Girvan reached 
 by Keats and Brown on 10th July. AVriting to his brother Tom he says : 
 " When we left Cairn our Road lay half way up the sides of a green 
 mountainous shore, full of clefts of verdure and eternally varying — some- 
 times up and sometimes down, and over little Bridges going across green 
 chasms of moss, rock and trees winding about everywhere. After two or 
 three Miles of this we turned suddenly into a magnificent glen finely 
 wooded in parts— seven miles long — with a Mountain stream winding down 
 the midst — full of cottages in the most happy situations — the sides of the 
 hills covered with sheep — the eifect of cattle lowing I never had so finely. 
 At the end we had a gradual ascent and got among the tops of the mountains 
 whence in a little time I descried in the Sea Ailsa Rock 940 feet high — it 
 was fifteen Miles distant and seemed close upon us. The effect of Ailsa 
 with the peculiar perspective of the Sea in connection with the ground we 
 stood on, and the misty rain then falling gave me a complete Idea of a 
 deluge. Ailsa struck me very suddenly — really I was a little alarmed." 
 
 XX. Written upon Ben Nevis : — Written early in August 1818, and first 
 published H 1848 with the following comment : " From Fort William Keats 
 mounted Ben Nevis. When on the summit a cloud enveloped him, and 
 sitting on the stones, as it slowly wafted away, showing a tremendous 
 precipice into the valley below, he wrote these lines." 
 
 For the attitude of mind of which this sonnet is the expression, cf. the 
 letter to Bailey, quoted p. 545. 
 
 XXI. Written in the Cottage where Burns was born. First published 
 H 1848. The circumstances under which it was composed are described 
 in a letter to Tom Keats dated 13th July. "The bonny Doon is the 
 sweetest river I ever saw — overhung with fine trees as far as we could see. 
 We stood for some time on the Brig across it, over which Tarn O'Shanter 
 fled — we took a pinch of snuif on the Keystone — then we proceeded to the 
 'auld Kirk Alloway '. As we were looking at it a Farmer pointed the 
 spots where ' Mungo's Mither hang'd hersel' and ' drunken Charlie brake's 
 neck's bane '. Then we proceeded to the Cottage he wa.s born in — there
 
 548 JOHN KEATS 
 
 was a board to that effect by the door side — it had the same effect as the 
 same sort of memorial at Stratford on Avon. We drank some Toddy to 
 Burns's Memory with an old Man who knew Burns — damn him and damn 
 his anecdotes — he was a ^reat bore — it was impossible for a Southron to 
 understand above five words in a hundred. There was something good in 
 his description of Burns's melancholy the last time he saw him. I was 
 determined to write a sonnet in the Cottage — I did — but it was so bad I 
 cannot venture it here." 
 
 XXII. Fragment of a sonnet. First published H 1848. Sent in a 
 letter to Reynolds dated ''about Sept. 22" (SC) with the words: 
 " Here is a free translation of a Sonnet of Ronsard, which I think will 
 please you — I have the loan of his works — they have great beauties. . . . 
 I had not the original by me when I wrote it and did not recollect the 
 purport of the last lines." The sonnet which Keats was translating ran 
 as follows : — 
 
 Nature, ornant Cassandre, qui deuoit 
 De sa douceur forcer les plus rebelles, 
 La composa de cent beautez nouuelles, 
 Que des mille ans en espargne elle auoit : — 
 De tons les biens qu' Amour an Ciel couuoit 
 Comme un tresor cherement sous ses ailes, 
 Elle enrichit les graces immortelles 
 De son bel oeil qui les Dieux esmouuoit. — 
 Du Ciel A, peine elle estoit descend ue 
 Quand ie la vey, quand mon asme esperdue 
 En deuint folle, et d'un si poignant trait, 
 Amour coula ses beautez en mes veines, 
 Qu' autres plaisirs ie ne sens que mes peines 
 Ny autre bien qu' adorer son portrait. 
 In all probability Keats never completed his version : anyhow no con- 
 cluding couplet of his has come down to us. Lord Houghton suggested 
 this conclusion : — 
 
 So that her image in my soul upgrew, 
 The only thing adorable and true. 
 3. Beauty's fairest dyes HBF. Beauty fairest dies H, MS. 
 
 XXIII. To Sleep. First published H 1848. It was copied into the 
 Journal Letter of Feb.-May, 1819, under the date 30th April, and was 
 probably composed shortly before this. A copy of Pariidise Lost, given by 
 Keats to Mrs. Dilke, has the following version of the first twelve lines : — 
 
 O soft embalmer of the still Midnight 
 
 Shutting with careful fingers and benign 
 
 Our gloom-pleas'd eyes embowered from the light ; 
 
 As wearisome as darkness is divine. 
 
 O soothest Sleep, if so it please thee close
 
 SONNETS— NOTES 549 
 
 My willing eyes in midst of this thine hytnn 
 
 Or wait the amen ere thy poppy throws 
 
 Its sweet death dews o'er every pulse and limb, 
 
 Then shut the hushed Casket of my soul, 
 
 And turn the key round in the oiled wards. 
 
 And let it rest until the morn has stole. 
 
 Bright tressed from the grey east's shuddering bourn. 
 And H quotes from an American Magazine, The Dial, of April 1843, a still 
 earlier draft, agreeing in the main with the Dilke MS., but reading 
 3. "flush'd" for " pleas'd " ; 4. "weariness in" for "wearisome as"; 
 8. " dark " for " death," and stopping short in line 12 at the word " bright". 
 Mr. Forman justly remarks upon "the highest poetic instinct" which led 
 Keats to transpose the tenth and ninth lines and place them at the close 
 of the poem, and it is interesting to observe that the finest line in the whole 
 " Enshaded in forgetfulness divine " only finds its place in the finished 
 version. In rhyme structure (ABAB, CDCU, BC, EFEF), the poem is an 
 experiment and hardly a fortunate one. The subject and treatment would 
 have lent themselves admirably to the stricter Italian form of sonnet, but 
 this Keats had given up, and he judged rightly in rejecting, as contrary 
 to the spirit of this poem, the Shakespearian form with its couplet ending. 
 
 XXIV. Why did I laugh to-night ?— First published H 1848. Enclosed 
 in that part of the Journal Letter to America of Feb. -May, 1819, which is 
 dated 19th March, and probably written, therefore, on the 18th. It is 
 prefaced thus : " I am ever afraid that your anxiety for me will lead you 
 to fear for the violence of my temperament continually smothered down : 
 for that reason I did not intend to have seat you the following sonnet — 
 but look over the two last pages (the passage Keats particularly refers to 
 is quoted in the notes to the Epistle to Reynolds, p. 539) and ask yourselves 
 whether I have not that in me which will bear the buffets of the world. 
 It will be the best comment on the sonnet ; it will show you that it was 
 written with no Agony but that of ignorance ; with no thirst of anything 
 but Knowledge when pushed to the point though the first steps to it were 
 through my human passions — they went away and I wrote with my Mind 
 — and perhaps I must confess a little bit of my heart. ..." After copying 
 the sonnet Keats adds : " I went to bed and enjoyed an uninterrupted 
 sleep. Sane I went to bed and sane I rose." 
 
 6. Say, wherefore MS. Letter ; I say, why H, HBF. 
 
 11. Yet would I H, HBF; yet could I MS. Letter. All critics have 
 called attention to the repetition of the idea and language of this line in 
 the Ode to the Nightingale composed within the next two months. " To 
 cease upon the midnight with no pain." 
 
 XXV. On a Dream, First published in the Indicator of 28th June, 
 1820, written in the first three weeks of April, 1819, and sent to George 
 Keats in the Journal Letter dated 18th or 19th April, with the following
 
 550 JOHN KEATS 
 
 comment : " The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more — it is 
 that one in which he meets with Paolo and Francesca. I had passed 
 many days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I 
 dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most 
 delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated about the whirling 
 atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine 
 were joined as it seemed for an age— and in the midst of all this cold and 
 darkness I was warm— even flowery tree-tops sprung up, and we rested on 
 them sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew us away 
 again. I tried a sonnet upon it, there are fourteen lines, but nothing of 
 what I felt in it, O that 1 could dream it every night." 
 
 In an article On some Marginalia in Rossetti's Keats Mr. George Miluer 
 notes that Rossetti, remarking upon the false rhyme in line 4, pointed 
 out that the line is an echo of End. ii. 684, "so sad, so melancholy, so 
 bereft ". Keats had already alluded to the story of Hermes and Argus in 
 the same poem : — 
 
 ravishments more keen 
 Than Hermes' pipe, when anxious he did lean 
 Over eclipsing eyes {End. ii. 875-77, vide note). 
 
 XXVI. On Fame. First published with the succeeding sonnet in H 
 1848. Written on 30th April, 1819, and enclosed under that date in the 
 Journal Letter to America. 
 
 XXVII. 7, 8, As if a Naiad, etc. H : 
 
 As if a clear lake, meddling with itself 
 
 Should cloud its clearness with a muddy gloom. MS. Letter. 
 
 XXVIII. // by dull rhymes our English must be chain d. First published 
 H 1848. Sent to America in the Journal Letter which contains the last 
 five sonnets, under the date 30th April. It is, as Keats points out, an 
 experiment in its rhyme structure. " I have been endeavouring," he 
 writes, " to discover a better Sonnet Stanza then we have. The legitimate 
 does not suit the language over well from the pouncing rhymes — the other 
 kind appears too elegiac — and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a 
 pleasing eff"ect — I do not pretend to have succeeded — it will explain itself." 
 As Keats justly remarks, his attempt was not successful, and in his few 
 remaining sonnets he was content to follow Shakespeare. 
 
 XXIX. The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! First published H 
 1848, where it is dated 1819. It belongs to the same period and has the 
 same subject as the lines To dated October (q.v. p. 263 and note.) 
 
 In the Woodhouse transcript recently discovered by Lord Crewe is a 
 MS. of this sonnet, the only one known to exist, and possibly that used 
 by Lord Houghton for his text. In line 3 Woodhouse reads "tranced" 
 for " light," far more in keeping with the spirit of the poem and more 
 characteristic of Keats, whilst the second and third quatrains are trans-
 
 OTHO THE GREAT— NOTES 551 
 
 posed. A truly Shakespearian effect, always striven after by Keats in his 
 later sonnets (c/. note, p. 544), and often attained as no other poet has 
 attained it, is secured by the repetition of the word " Faded " when it is 
 reserved for the climax of the sonnet, and the ji;eneral effect of the whole 
 is, I think, immeasurably enhanced. But whatever view is taken of Lord 
 Houghton's version, there can be no doubt as to the authenticity of that 
 preserved by VV^oodhouse. It is therefore appended here : — 
 The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone ! 
 
 Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, 
 Warm breath, tranced whisper, tender semi-tone. 
 
 Bright eyes, accomplish d shape, and lang'rous waist ! 
 Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve. 
 
 When the dusk holiday — or holinight 
 Of fragrant curtain'd love begins to weave 
 
 The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight ; 
 Faded the flower and all its budded charms, 
 
 Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, 
 Faded the shape of beauty from my arms, 
 
 Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise — 
 But, as I've read love's missal through to-day. 
 He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray. 
 9. shut of eve : — Cf. Lamia, i. 139 note. 
 
 XXX. / cry your mercy — pity — love ! — aye, love ! First published H 
 1848, and probably written soon after the preceding sonnet. 
 
 XXXI. Written on a blank page in Shakespeare's Poems, etc. The last 
 poem written by Keats, dated by Mr. Colvin September 28, 1820 ; first 
 published H 1848. On his journey to Italy Keats was becalmed in the 
 English Channel, and landed with Severn on the Dorsetshire coast, 
 near Lul worth Cove. " For a moment," says Severn, " he became like 
 his former self. He was in a part that he already knew, and showed 
 me the splendid caverns and grottoes with a poet's pride, as though 
 they had been his by birthright. When we returned to the ship he wrote 
 for me on a blank leaf in a Folio volume of Shakespeare, which he gave 
 me in memory of our voyage, the following magnificent sonnet." 
 
 H supplies as a variant reading for the last line — 
 
 Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death. 
 
 OTHO THE GREAT 
 
 First published H 1848 : written in the summer of 1819, the first act 
 being finished by 12th July, the next three by 15th August, and the 
 whole work by 23rd August. In December Keats was busy revising and 
 " brightening the interest of the play " {Letter to Fanny Keats, 2nd Dec. 
 1819). The circumstances under which it was composed are thus de- 
 scribed in the Brown MS. (quoted by H 1876).
 
 552 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 " At Shauklin he undertook a difficult task ; I engaged to furnish him 
 with the title, characters, and dramatic conduct of a tragedy, and he was 
 to enwrap it in poetry. The progress of this work was curious, for while 
 I sat opposite to him, he caught my description of each scene entire, 
 with the characters to be brought forward, the events, and everything 
 connected with it. Thus he went on, scene after scene, never knowing 
 nor inquiring into the scene which was to follow, until four acts were 
 completed. It was then he required to know at once all the events that 
 were to occupy the fifth act ; I explained them to him, but, after patient 
 hearing and some thought, he insisted that many incidents in it were too 
 humorous, or, as he termed them, too melodramatic. He wrote the fifth 
 act in accordance with his own views, and so contented was I with his 
 poetry that at the time, and for a long time after, I thought he was in the 
 right." 
 
 \V"hen all this is taken into consideration it will be seen that it is futile 
 to look for anything like dramatic unity, or a close relation between 
 language and characterisation. But the play has its fine passages, and 
 the style and versification throughout bear testimony to a careful study 
 of the Elizabethan dramatists, and of Comiis, that work of Milton's in 
 which he shows most clearly his own debt to his predecessors. 
 
 But Otho was the one work of Keats's of which, perhaps, its author 
 thought too highly. " Mine I am sure," he wrote to his brother in Sep- 
 tember, " is a tolerable tragedy ; it would have been a bank to me, if, just 
 as I had finished it, I had not heard of Kean's resolution to go to America. 
 That was the worst news I could have had. There is no actor can do the 
 principal character besides Kean.^ At Co vent Garden there is a great 
 chance of its being damned. Were it to succeed there it would lift me 
 out of the mire ; I mean the mire of a bad reputation which is continually 
 rising against me. My name with the literary fashionables is vulgar. I 
 am a weaver-boy to them. A tragedy would lift me out of this mess." 
 In December he wrote to his sister : " It is accepted at Drury Lane with 
 a promise of bringing it out in the next season ; as that will be too long a 
 delay we have determined to get EUiston to bring it out this season or to 
 transfer it to Covent Garden. This Elliston will not like, as we have 
 every motive to believe that Kean has perceived how suitable the principal 
 character will be for him. My hopes of success in the literary world are 
 now better than ever." But Keats seems to have been over sanguine on 
 this score, for Otho never made its appearance on the stage. We learn 
 from the Life and Letters of Severn that some years after Keats's death 
 Severn was anxious to have the play produced at a private theatre at 
 Rome. "There are here five Englishmen," he wrote to Brown (14th 
 March, 1854) " who have all been together at Cambridge. They are de- 
 voted admirers of Keats. . . . They have been acting — two of them are 
 
 1 Yet in another letter he writes : " 'Twould do one's heart good to see Macready 
 in Ludolph" (to Rice, Dec. 1819).
 
 OTHO THE GREAT— NOTES 553 
 
 first rate — and they made me join them in the fourth act of the Merchant of 
 Venice, as Gratiano, when I was so struck with one (Mr. O'Brien; as the 
 very man for Ludolph in Keats's Otho. His voice and manner of reading 
 remind me most forcibly of Keats himself. When J mentioned to them the 
 tragedy, they were all on lire to see it. ... I assure you I think it would 
 be well done, and as they are all young men of rank, it would certainly be 
 a good report to its forthcoming. . . . Now I wonder what you will say 
 to all this. Is there any possibility that you throw cold water upon it .'' " 
 Whether or not Brown did so is unknown, but the play was not produced. 
 
 I. i. 129. Lady ! O, etc. HBF ; In H Lady stands, wrongly, at the 
 close of i. 128. 
 
 I. ii. 172. siigar-cates MS., HBF; sugar cakes H. 
 
 I. iii. 52. edge 0' the world : — A Shakespearian phrase. Cf. Ant. and 
 Cleo. ii. 2. 116-8 :— 
 
 if 1 knew 
 What hoop would make us stanch, from edge to edge 
 O' the world I would pursue it. 
 
 II. i. 22. the discoloured poisons of a fen : — It is significant that Ludolph 
 uses something of the same image to express his disgust at the courtiers of 
 Otho as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Coriolanus with regard to the 
 people : — 
 
 whose breath I hate 
 As reek o' the rotten fens {Cor. iii. 3. 120). 
 
 II. i. 57. the thunder comes Sullen against the wind. Cf. Byron, Childe 
 Harold, iv. 98 : — 
 
 Yet Freedom ! yet thy banner, torn but flying, 
 Streams like a thunder cloud against the wind. 
 
 II. i. 133. the towers . . . new kiss'd the parted clouds ! : — An image in 
 all probability suggested by the picture in Hamlet (iii. 4. 69) of 
 
 the herald Mercury 
 New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill. 
 
 II. ii. 129. of you HBF, following MS. ; desunt in H. 
 
 III. i. 18. a spear, Swayed by command, as corn is by the wind : — An un- 
 conscious reminiscence of Milton's superb description of the angelic host 
 which hem Satan round : — 
 
 With ported Spears, as thick as when a field 
 
 Of Ceres ripe for harvest waving bends 
 
 Her bearded Grove of ears, which way the wind 
 
 Swayes them ; the careful Plowman doubting stands 
 
 Least on the threshing floore his hopeful sheaves 
 
 Prove chaff. {Paradise Lost, iv. 980-85.)
 
 554 JOHN KEATS 
 
 The "sheaved" spears of King Stephen, i. 3. 3, probably owe their 
 epithet to the same passage. 
 
 III. ii. 20. soil MS., HBF ; sail H. 
 
 76. mad MS., HBF ; bad H. 
 88. more MS., HBF ; monk H. 
 
 125. like an angel newly-shent, Who veils its snowy wings. Cf. 
 Eve of St. Agnes, xxv. 7 : — 
 
 She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest, 
 
 Save wings, for heaven. 
 
 ni. ii. 160. tedious MS., HBF ; hideous H. 
 
 IV. i. 66. emptied of these folk : — A repetition of phrase from the Ode 
 on a Grecian Urn. 4. " What little town ... is emptied of this folk, this 
 pious morn .'' " 
 
 82. the fabled fair Hesperian tree. A reminiscence in all probability of 
 Milton, Comus 393 : — 
 
 Beauty like the fair Hesperian Tree 
 Laden with blooming gold. 
 With a recollection also of the " Hesperian fables true," of Paradise Lost, 
 iv. 250. 
 
 In this same speech there are also to be noticed some probably uncon- 
 scious echoes of the lamentations of Richard II. at the loss of his kingdom. 
 Like Richard, Auranthe cries : — 
 
 " I could now sit upon the ground " {cf. Richard II., ill. 2. 156). 
 And just as Richard says 
 
 I'll give my jewels for a set of beads. 
 My gay apparel for an almsman's gown. 
 My figured goblets for a dish of wood. 
 My sceptre for a palmer's walking-staff (iii. .3. 147-151). 
 So Auranthe : — 
 
 Bring me some mourning weeds, that I may tire 
 Myself, as fits one wailing her own death. 
 And throw these jewels from my loathing sight. — 
 Fetch me a missal, and a string of beads. — 
 A cup of bitter'd water and a crust. 
 The exclamation " O the heavy day ! " used by the Duke of York, 
 in the same scene of Richard II., at the sight of his fallen master, is twice 
 employed by Auranthe in her speech. 
 
 IV. i. 85. melt in the visionary air: — Another line which recalls 
 Shakespeare. Cf. Tempest, iv. 1, 150, of the spirits who 
 Are melted into air, into thin air, 
 And like the baseless fabric of this vision 
 
 I 
 
 Leave not a rack behind.
 
 KING STEPHEN— NOTES 555 
 
 IV. ii. 18. Auranthe! my life! etc. .-—This fine speech, apart from an 
 occasional weak line, is a magnificent example of the way in which Keats 
 was able to recall the Elizabethan manner. It is noticeable that again he 
 has recourse to Comus. CJ. with lines 8(5 and 37 Comiis, 5-51-.'3 :— 
 
 Till an unusuall stop of sudden silence 
 Gave respit to the drowsie frighted steeds 
 That draw the litter of close-curtain'd sleep. 
 
 V. i. 24. melted into air : — Cf. note to iv. 1. 85. 
 
 ii. 49. Howling in vain, etc. : — A line that might have been written 
 
 by Webster or Marston. 
 iv. 3. 'Tts not in medicine, etc. A reminiscence of the well-known 
 passage in Macbeth : — 
 
 ''Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ? " 
 v. 4. here MS. HBF ; hear H. 
 
 KING STEPHEN 
 
 A Dramatic Fragment. First published H 1848 ; the MS. dated Nov. 
 1810. Of the circumstances of its composition Charles Brown {Houghton 
 MS.) writes as follows: ''As soon as Keats had finished Otho the Great, 
 I pointed out to him a subject for an English historical tragedy in the 
 death of King Stephen, beginning with his defeat by the Empress Maud, 
 and ending with the death of his son Eustace. He was struck with the 
 variety of events and characters which must necessarily be introduced 
 into it, and I offered to give, as before, their dramatic conduct. The 
 play must open, I began, with the field of battle, when Stephen's forces 
 are retreating — ' Stop,' he cried, ' I have been too long in leading-strings ; 
 I will do all this myself.' He immediately set about it, and wrote two 
 or three scenes — about 170 lines." It is unfortunate that so little of this 
 play was written, for, as Mr. Colvin remarks (EML, p. 179), "the few 
 scenes he finished are not only marked by his characteristic splendour 
 and felicity of phrase : they are full of a spirit of heady action and the 
 stir of battle : qualities which he had not shown in any previous work, 
 and for which we might have doubted his capacity had not this fragment 
 been preserved." No writing indeed has reproduced with greater success 
 the spirit which pervades the martial scenes in the early historical plays 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 I. ii. 10. sole and lone : — Mr. Korman compares Lamia, ii. 122, where 
 the phrase "sole . . . and lone " had already been used. 
 
 I. ii. 22. Pallas from the walls of Ilion : — This reference to the Iliad, 
 together with the allusion to Nestor in i. 3, 12, suggests that Keats was 
 still reading Chapman. Cf. Sonnet On first looking into Chapman's 
 Homer, note, pp. 398, 399. 
 
 I. ii. 51. Mars MS. : man H.
 
 556 JOHN KEATS 
 
 I. iii. 3. Bellona : — Probably with a thought of Macbeth who is described 
 as "Bellona's bridegroom lapped in proof". The "sheaved spears" 
 owe their epithet to the simile in Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 980. Cf. note 
 to Otho, iii. 1. 18. 
 
 APPENDIX— POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS (II) 
 
 On Death, First printed by Mr. Forman in 1883 and reproduced here 
 by his permission. Assigned by George Keats to 1814. 
 
 To Byron. H 1848 ; dated Dec. 1814. An extremely feeble sonnet, 
 only interesting as a record of Keats's early feeling for Byron {vide note. 
 Sleep and Poetry). 
 
 To Chatterton. H 1848 ; dated probably 1814. Its interest is similar 
 to that of the previous sonnet to Byron. The word " amate " is attributed 
 to the influence of Spenser, but seeing that it is used several times by 
 Chatterton himself its presence here is more reasonably attributed to a 
 reading of Chatterton than of Spenser. 
 
 Ode and Hymn to Apollo. H 1848. The first of these poems is dated 
 Feb. 1815, the second stands next to it in the volume and obviously 
 belongs to the same period. Every one will agree with the margin notes 
 of Rossetti (quoted Manchester Quarterly, 1883) that the Ode is " very 
 poor and puify " and the Hymn "wretched but for a sense of metre". 
 They are interesting chiefly as a record of the passing influence of the 
 eighteenth century upon the form and diction of Keats. The Ode seems 
 a weak reminiscence of an Ode by Dryden or Gray, and the phrases 
 " adamantine lyres," " radiant fires," " renovated eyes," " laurelled peers," 
 "tuneful thunders," "ravished heavens," "tremblingly expire," "ardent 
 numbers," "melt the soul," etc., all suggest a similar source. 
 
 Sonnet. To a Young Lady, etc. H 1848. Probably written 1816. 
 
 Sonnet. As from the darkening gloom a silver dove, etc. H 1876 ; written 
 1816. 
 
 Sonnet. Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition. Written Dec. 
 1816 ; a weak composition interesting only in its reminiscences of two 
 passages especially dear to Keats — " Lydian airs" {L' Allegro 136) "and 
 hold high converse with the mighty dead ". (Thomson's Seasons, Winter, 
 432.) 
 
 On Oxford. A parody. "Written at Oxford in September, 1817, and 
 sent in a letter to Reynolds with the remark : " Wordsworth sometimes, 
 though in a fine way, gives us sentences in the style of school exercises. 
 For instance. 
 
 The lake doth glitter 
 
 Small birds twitter, etc.
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS— NOTES 557 
 
 Now I think this is an excellent method of giving us a very clear de- 
 scription of an interesting place such as Oxford is." 
 
 Wordsworth's poem, here parodied, is entitled : Written in March 
 while resting on the Bridge at the Foot of Brother's Water. It first appeared 
 in the 1807 volumes, which Keats knew especially well. 
 
 Modern Love. First published H 1848, undated. 
 
 Fragment of the Castle Builder. First published H 1848, undated, 
 but immediately following Modern Love. 
 
 17. A viol-bow, strings torn, HBF ; A viol, bowstrings torn, H. 
 46. An interesting tribute to the art of Haydou. 
 
 To A Cat. First published in Hood's Comic /!««;<«/ for 1830. Wood- 
 house dated the sonnet 16th Jan. 1818, and recorded that it was addressed 
 to Mrs. Reynolds's cat. There can be little doubt that the lines are in- 
 tended as a parody of the Miltonic sonnet, the style of which is very 
 happily caught in the opening invocation, in the contraction of style, and 
 the general rhythm of the sentences. 
 
 Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port. First published H 1848 ; sent 
 to Reynolds in a letter dated 81st Jan. 1818, with the words : " I cannot 
 write in prose ; it is a sunshiny day, and I cannot, so here goes ". After 
 the verses he says : " My dear Reynolds, — You must forgive all this rant- 
 ing — but the fact is, I cainiot write sense this morning". It is obvious, 
 therefore, that these lines are merely an impromptu ebullition of animal 
 spirits which Keats would never himself have reproduced among his serious 
 poems. 
 
 Extracts from an Opera. First published H 1848, with three others, 
 which are placed in this edition among the poems {vide note p. 534.) 
 
 Song. Spirit here that reignest. First published H 1848. 
 
 Here all the Summer, etc. First published in a mutilated form in 
 Taylor's Life of Haydon (1853) with the letter in which it was enclosed ; 
 written in March, 1818, at Teignmouth whither Keats had gone to nurse 
 his brother Tom. Mr. Buxton Forman has pointed out that the lines are 
 full of accurate local colour, but they have little other value, and they 
 were obviously composed with no other object than to amuse his friend. 
 But he seems to have thought better of them than of most of his doggerel 
 impromptus, for he adds—" I know not if this rhyming fit has done any- 
 thing — it will be safe enough if worthy to put among my lyrics". 
 
 Over the Hill and over the Dale. First published H 1848 in a 
 letter to Rice written by Keats from Teignmouth on 25th March, 1818. 
 
 Acrostic. This very weak composition, which, unfortunately, quite 
 belies the assertion of lines 6-9- was written in June, 1818, soon after Keats
 
 568 JOHN KEATS 
 
 had bidden farewell to his newly married brother and sister who were en 
 route for America. It was first published, says Mr. Forman, in a New 
 York newspaper, The World, in June, 1877. The punctuation of lines 10-14 
 has been amended in order to make some kind of sense of the passage. 
 
 LiXBS WRITTEN IN THE HIGHLANDS, etc. First published in the Ex- 
 aminer, 14th July, 1822 ; sent to Bailey in a letter from the island of Mull 
 dated 22nd July (1818). 
 
 Spenserian Stanza. First published H 1848, with the following 
 note : — 
 
 " The copy of Spenser which Keats had in daily use, contains the 
 following stanza, inserted at the close of canto ii. book v. His sympathies 
 were very much on the side of the revolutionary ' Gyant ' who ' undertook 
 for to repair ' the ' realms and nations run awry,' and to suppress ' tyrants 
 that make men subject to their law,' ' and lordings curbe that commons 
 over-aw,' while he grudged the legitimate victory, as he rejected the con- 
 servative philosophy, of the ' righteous Artegall ' and his comrade, the 
 fierce defender of privilege and order. And he expressed, in this ex post 
 facto prophecy, his conviction of the ultimate triumph of freedom and 
 equality by the power of transmitted knowledge." 
 
 The lines are interesting as one of the f^w illustrations in the verse of 
 Keats of his democratic sympathies. 
 
 An Extempore. First published by Mr. Colvin in Macmillan's Magazine 
 for August, 1888. The lines form part of the Journal Letter of Feb. -May, 
 1819, and are evidently an extempore elFusion merely written with the 
 object of amusing his brother and sister in America. It is difficult to say 
 whether any particular fairy story inspired them, but several passages 
 seem to have been suggested by different sources. The " Otaheitan " Mule 
 is probably due to the interest taken at this time in the travels of Sir Joseph 
 Banks, whilst the mule brings to Keats's mind Peter Bell, who uses the 
 same weapon — "a new pealed sapling white as cream" with which to 
 chastise his ass. The close of the canto 
 
 there was nothing seen, 
 But the mule grazing on the herbage green 
 may be another sportive reminiscence of Wordsworth's "solitary doe" 
 who " quietly was feeding on the green herb ". 
 
 At lines 79, 80, we have two quotations from Shakespeare, "every 
 inch a King," King Lear, iv. 6. 109, and "Fortune's fool," Romeo and 
 Juliet, iii. 1. 141. Mr. Colvin has suggested to me that the picture with 
 which the fragment closes of the thievish monkies stealing the Ass's bridle 
 was probably suggested to Keats by an old print. 
 
 The lines have been printed here from the MS. letter, retaining its 
 curious spelling and lack of punctuation. 
 
 Spenserian Stanzas on Charles Armitage Brown. First published 
 H 1848. Included in Feb.-May Journal Letter under the date 16th or
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS— NOTES 559 
 
 17th April and prefaced with the words : " Brown this morning is writing 
 some Spenserian stanzas against Mm., Miss Brawne and me ; so I shall amuse 
 myself with him a little : in the manner of Spenser". After copying the 
 stanzas Keats adds : " This character would ensure him a situation in the 
 establishment of patient Griselda ". It will be remembered that Brown 
 was perhaps Keats's greatest friend during the last three or four years of 
 his life. His Scotch tour was taken in company with Brown, and he 
 went to live with Brown after the death of his brother Tom in December, 
 1818. Otho the Great was written in collaboration with him and much 
 of the material upon which Lord Houghton based his Life and Letters of 
 Keats was supplied to him by Brown, who had at one time intended to be 
 the poet's biographer. 
 
 A Party of Lovers. Included by Keats in the fournal Letter of 
 September, 1819, prefaced by the words : " I saw Haslam. He is very 
 much occupied with love and business, being one of Saunders' executors 
 and lover to a young woman. He showed me her porti-ait by Severn. I 
 think she is, though not very cunning, too cunning for him Nothing 
 strikes me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as love. A man in 
 love I do think cuts the sorryest figure in the world. Even when I know 
 a poor fool to be really in pain about it I could burst out laughing in his 
 face. His pathetic visage becomes irresistible. Not that I take Haslam 
 as a pattern for lovers ; he is a very worthy man, and a good friend. His 
 love is very amusing. Somewhere in the Spectator is related an account 
 of a man inviting a party of stutterers and squinters to his table. It 
 would please me more to scrape together a party of lovers ; not to dinner — 
 no, to tea. There would be no fighting as among knights of old." 
 
 The Cap and Bells ; or. The Jealousies : A Faery Tale. Unfinished. 
 First published H 1848, though stanzas xxv.-xxix. had already appeared 
 in the Indicator of August, 1820, quoted in an article by Leigh Hunt " On 
 Coaches". The poem was written in the autumn of 1819, in the morn- 
 ings; the evenings being occupied with the reconstruction of Hyperion. 
 Of its composition Brown writes : " By chance our conversation turned 
 on the idea of a comic faery poem in the Spenser stanza, and I was glad 
 to encourage it. He had not composed many stanzas before he proceeded 
 in it with spirit. It was to be published under the feigned authorship of 
 Lucy Vaughan Lloyd and to bear the title of the Cap and Bells, or, which 
 he preferred, the Jealousies. This occupied his mornings pleasantly. He 
 wrote it with the greatest facility ; in one instance I remember having 
 copied (for I copied as he wrote) as many as twelve stanzas before dinner " 
 {Houghton MSS. (juoted EML, p. 183). As Mr. Colvin has pointed out 
 Keats " was led to undertake the work partly through the influence of 
 Brown who was a great student of Fulci and Boiardo and partly by the 
 dazzling example of Byron's success in Don Juan (EML, p. 184). The influ- 
 ence of this style is more particularly evident in such stanzas as xiv. and
 
 560 JOHN KEATS 
 
 xxiv. Mr. Forman rightly points out that Keats "probably had a 
 satirical undercurrent of meaning : and it needs no great stretch of 
 imagination to see in the illicit passion of Emperor Elfinan and his detes- 
 tation of his bride-elect, an oblique glance at the marital relations of 
 George IV. It is not difficult to suggest prototypes for some of the faery 
 land statesmen against whom Elfinan vows vengeance ; and there are many 
 particulars in which earthly incidents are too thickly strewn to leave one 
 in the settled belief that the poet's programme was wholly unearthly." 
 
 As late as June 1820 Keats wrote to Brown that he intended to go on with 
 Lucy Vaughan Lloyd, as he calls the poem, but adds " I do not begin com- 
 position yet, being willing in case of a relapse, to have nothing to reproach 
 myself with ". But there is no evidence that he ever touched it after 
 December, 1819, or indeed wrote any poetry after that date except his last 
 sonnet. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add how unsuitable is the Spenserian 
 stanza to the subject for which he here employs it, or how unsuitable 
 the subject and treatment are to the essential character of his own genius. 
 
 I. Ind. . . . Elfinan, etc. : — Keats is here indebted to the Faerie 
 Qiieene, ii. 10. 70-72, where Spenser tells how Prometheus created man 
 from beasts, stole fire from heaven to animate man, and called the first 
 man"Elfe," i.e. quick. Elfe wandering in the garden of Adonis found 
 A goodly creature whom he deemed in mind 
 To be no earthly wight, but either Spright, 
 Or Angell, th' author of all woman kynd : 
 Therefor a Fay he her according hight. 
 Of whom all Faeryes spring, and fetch their lignage right. 
 Their eldest son 
 
 Was Elfin ; him all India obeyed. 
 And all that now America men call : 
 Next him was noble Elfinan. 
 From them were descended the Lords of Faery, Elferon, Oberon, and 
 later Gloriana. Hydaspes and Imaus (stanza iii. etc. , however, are pro- 
 bably introduced through a reminiscence of the famous simile in Paradise 
 Lost : — 
 
 As when a Voltur on Imaus bred 
 
 Dislodging from a Region scarce of prey 
 
 To gorge the flesh of Lambs or yeanling kids 
 
 On Hills where Flocks are fed, flies toward the Springs 
 
 O^ Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams (iii. 431-36.) 
 
 X. Panthea : — The name given by Spenser to the city of the Faeries. 
 Cf. Faerie Queene, ii. 19. 73. 
 
 But Elfant was of most renowned fame. 
 Who all of Christall did Panthea build. 
 
 XI. Of faeries stooping on their wings sublime : — Another Miltonic re- 
 miniscence, " in the air sublime Upon the wing " {Paradise Lost, ii. 528).
 
 POSTHUMOUS AND FUGITIVE POEMS— NOTES 561 
 
 " Hee on the wings of Cherub rode sublime " {Paradise Lost, vi. 771, and 
 Paradise Regained, iv. 542). 
 
 XVII. the square-cut chancellor : — Mr. Buxton Forman points out that 
 "on the supposition of a glance at the royal matrimonial squabble, at its 
 height when Keats wrote this piece, the ' square cut chancellor ' would be 
 Mr. Vansittart, . . . 'the tiptoe marquis' might probably be the Marquis 
 of Lansdowne, whose refusal to sit on the Green Bag Committee in the 
 House of Lords was both ' moral ' and ' gallant '. . . ." Whilst Biancopancy 
 he cleverly explains as Mr. Whitbread (Bianco = white. Pane = bread). 
 " Mr. Samuel Whitbread," he adds, " was so well known as an adherent of 
 Queen Caioline, that he is said to have furnished her Majesty, from his 
 great wealth, with the necessary funds for carrying on her case." 
 
 XXVI. jarvey : — The old term used indiscriminately for a hackney 
 coach or its driver. It was this passage about the coach that Hunt pub- 
 lished in the Indicator. 
 
 XXVII. fiddle-faddle. Perhaps a reminiscence of Wordsworth's Idiot 
 Boy, 14 :— 
 
 Till she is tired, let Betty Foy 
 With girt and stirrup fiddle-faddle. 
 
 XXIX. Louted full low .-—An obvious Spenserianism, as are the words 
 "blent" and "dreariment" in xliv. 
 
 XXXII. / wis : — Spelt by Keats in two words as though he had fallen 
 into the common error of mistaking it for the equivalent of " I know ". 
 
 XLIII. Bertha . . . at Canterbury : — On the Introduction of Bertha, 
 the heroine of the Eve of St. Mark (vide note p. 525). So too stanza 1. 
 
 LI. Cupid I, do thee defy ! :—&o HBF, following MS. ; Cupid, I do 
 thee defy H. 
 
 Somewhat in sadness, but pleas'd in the main : — Perhaps a parody of 
 Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence "cheerfully uttered with 
 demeanour kind, but stately in the main ". 
 
 LVIII. where I wait for guerdon fit. HBF, MS. ; desunt in H. 
 
 hXI. Whew! HBF, MS; Where? H. 
 
 LXIII. Those nows, etc. : — Among Leigh Hunt's Essays is one entitled 
 "A 'Now,' descriptive of a hot day " in which Keats is supposed to have 
 collaborated . 
 
 LXVIII. 7. Farewell! and if for ever, etc. : — A burlesque quotation 
 from Byron's famous " Fare thee well " to Lady Byron. On Keats's 
 feeling with regard to Byron and his poetry cf. Sleep and Poetry, 234, note. 
 
 LXXVIII. 5. favour 'gan HBF; favour; 'gan H. 
 36
 
 569, JOHN KEATS 
 
 ADDENDA: NOTES ON THE POEMS FOUxND IN THE WOOD- 
 HOUSE TRANSCRIPT OF THE FALL OF HYPERION AND 
 OTHER POEMS 
 
 FiLi, FOR ME A BRIMMING BOWL, ctc. .* — Dated ill the MS., August 1814, 
 and never before published. It is thus, as far as we know, only preceded 
 among Keats's Juvenilia by the Imitation of Spenser. Of as little intrinsic 
 value as that poem, it is of equal interest in the light it throws upon the 
 influences that affected his early work. Just as in the Imitation of Spenser 
 we only see the Elizabethan master through the veil of his later imitators, 
 so here we have the influence of the early poems of Milton acting upon 
 Keats though he is only treating a conventional subject in a purely con- 
 ventional manner. The lines are interesting as certainly Keats's first 
 experiment in the measure which he learnt from Milton and Spenser, 
 and was afterwards to employ with conspicuous success in Fancy and the 
 Eve of St. Mark. 
 
 A Song. — Stay, ruby-bbbastbd warbler stay: — First printed by H 
 among Keats's early poems, but omitted by Mr. Forman from his editions 
 of Keats because in a scrap book "containing a mass of transcripts by 
 George Keats from his brother's poetry, this poem is not only written in 
 George's hand, but signed 'G. K. ' instead of 'J. K.' and indeed it reads 
 more like one of the effusions which George is recorded to have produced 
 than an early poem by John " (HBF, I. xiv.). With this evidence Mr. 
 Forman had no choice but to reject the lines, but their appearance in the 
 Woodhouse transcript puts a somewhat different complexion on the matter. 
 It is highly probable that Woodhouse obtained these poems from auto- 
 graph MSS. in the possession of Brown, and Brown is the last person who 
 could be expected to honour George Keats by the preservation of one of 
 his poems. This evidence, though not conclusive against the signature in 
 the scrapbook, is at least as weighty ; and I incline, though reluctantly, to 
 restore the lines to John. 
 
 Sonnet: On Peace: — Now first published and undated in the MS. 
 We can hardly be wrong in assigning it to 1814 or 1815, i.e., after 
 Napoleon's retirement to Elba or his defeat at Waterloo. The weakness 
 of the sonnet would lead us to favour the earlier date. Again we notice 
 a debt to the early poems of Milton in the allusion to the "mountain 
 nymph sweet liberty " {cf. L'A llegro, 36) whilst a phrase here and there 
 suggests that Keats had already made the acquaintance of Wordsworth's 
 poems of 1807 {Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty). 
 
 To Emma:— First published by HBF, 1883, with "Georgiana" on 
 line 1 for "my dear Emma" and in line 11 "And there Georgiana" for 
 "There beauteous Emma". The stanzas were addressed to Georgiana
 
 ADDENDA— NOTES 563 
 
 Augusta Wylie, the future wife of George Keats. It will be remembered 
 that Emma or Emmeline, according to the exigencies of metre, was the 
 name by which Wordsworth referred to his sister Dorothy, and there can 
 be little doubt that Keats is influenced by this fact when he veils the 
 identity of his future sister-in-law under the same nom dc plume — an 
 amusing instance of his early acquaintance with a poet \vho was afterwards 
 to influence him so profoundly. 
 
 Additional Note on Fall of Hyperion, I. 97- 
 
 As in mid-day : So H 1856 ; When in midday H (Aldine) ; As in mid- 
 way MS. I am indebted to Professor A. C. Bradley for pointing out to 
 me that there is no reason for altering the MS. reading. Keats conceives 
 of the east wind, on its way to the country it means to parch, suddenly 
 relenting and shifting into a south wind. "This is just what happens 
 when, after a fierce anti-cyclone, the weather changes : a wind begins 
 in north-east or east, and veers round to south-east, then south, then 
 south-west and the rain comes. There seems no point in 'midday' 
 either, and if Keats had written * midday ' would he not have written 
 'at' instead of 'in'.''" I do not feel that "midday" is pointless, for 
 changes of wind often occur about noon, but I feel that Professor Bradley 
 is undoubtedly right in his defence of the MS. reading. "Midway," 
 moreover, is better, metrically, than " midday," which would naturally 
 be accented upon the first syllable.
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 Chronological Table of the Life of John Keats 
 
 1795. (29th or 31st Oct.). John Keats born at the Swan and Hoop, 
 
 Finsbury Pavement, London. 
 1797- George Keats born. 
 1799. Thomas Keats born. 
 1801. Edward Keats born (died in infancy). 
 
 1803. Francis Mary Keats (Fanny) born. J. K. goes to the private school 
 
 kept by the Rev. J. Clarke at Enfield ; joined there a little 
 later by G. K. and in a few years by T. K. 
 
 1804. (April). K.'s father killed by a fall from his horse. 
 
 1805. K.'s mother marries Will. Rawlings, stable keeper at the Swan and 
 
 Hoop. 
 
 1806. Mrs. Rawlings leaves her husband and takes her children to live 
 
 with their grandmother Mrs. Jennings, at Edmonton. 
 
 1809. J. K. acquires a passion for reading. 
 
 1810. (Feb.). Mrs. Rawlings dies of consumption (July). Mrs. Jen- 
 
 nings makes a will leaving £8,000 to her grandchildren, 
 appointing as their guardians Messrs. Abbey and Santell. 
 They remove J. K. from school at once, and apprentice him 
 to Mr. Hammond, an Edmonton surgeon. 
 
 1811. J. K. finishes (prose.'') translation of the Aeneid, begun at school ; 
 
 he pays frequent visits to the Clarkes to borrow books. 
 
 1812. The Hunts publish their libel on the Prince Regent in the 
 
 Examiner (March) — they are condemned to two years' im- 
 prisonment (Dec). 
 1812 (13?) C. C. Clarke reads to J. K. the Epithalamium of Spenser, 
 and lends him the Faerie Queene. Imitation of Spenser. Hunt 
 publishes The Feast of the Poets with critical introduction and 
 notes, and is at work upon The Story of Rimini. 
 
 1814. J. K. breaks his apprenticeship with Hammond and goes to London 
 
 to study medicine. He lodges at 8 Dean St., Borough. He 
 reads poetry indiscriminately, though chiefly, probably, the 
 poetry of the eighteenth century and of his contemporaries. 
 On Death, Sonnet to Byron and Chatterton. 
 
 1815. J. K. meets the Wylies, and through them Haslam and Severn. 
 
 He writes Sonnet on Hunt leaving prison and shows it to Clarke
 
 APPENDIX B 565 
 
 (3rd Feb.). Clarke takes lodgings in Clerkeiiwell and arranges 
 frequent literary symposia with K. He introduces him to 
 Chapman's Homer. The sonnet On first looking into Chapman's 
 Homer Spring. J. K. leaves Dean St. and lodges with two 
 fellow medical students at St. Thomas' St. 
 
 1815. Other poems belonging to this year: Hadst thou liv'd (Feb.). 
 
 Ode and Hytrin to Apollo, To some Ladies, On receiving a curious 
 Shell, To Hope, Woman ! when I behold thee. Epistle to Matheu- 
 
 (Nov.). 
 
 1816. Hunt's Story of Rimini published (March) ; Sonnet to Solitude 
 
 printed in Examiner (3rd May). Clarke shows Hunt some of 
 Keats's MSS. and is asked to bring him to Hampstead (before 
 end of May.''). K. sees something of Hunt (but cf. note at 
 end of Chronological Table). Sonnet to Wells, To one who 
 has been long in city pent, Calidore, Induction. I stood tip-toe 
 begun (under title of Endymion). 
 
 J. K. joins his brother in lodgings in the Poultry (June, July) ; he 
 pays his (first }) visit to the sea, at Margate. Epistle and Sonnet 
 to G. K., Epistle to Clarke (Aug. Sept.). 
 
 Sept. -Dec. J. K. back in London ; sees a great deal of Hunt and 
 his friends ; is introduced to Haydon (3rd Nov. Sonnet to Hay- 
 don) and meets also at Hunt's and Haydon's, Reynolds, Shelley, 
 Horace Smith, and Hazlitt. 1st Dec. Hunt's article on young 
 poets (Reynolds, Shelley and K.) appears in Examiner : he 
 quotes the Chapman Sonnet. Poems of this time : Keen fitful 
 gusts, Give me a golden pen (Oct. Nov.), To my brothers 
 (18th Nov.), The church bells toll (24th Dec), The poetry of 
 earth (30th Dec). In December also Sonnet to G. A. W., to 
 Kosciusko, I stood tip-toe (finished), and Sleep and Poetry. During 
 the year also Oh! how I love. As from the darkening gloom 
 (early }), Had I a man's fair form, Happy is England ! {?). 
 
 1817. Jan. After dark vapours (published Examiner, 23Td Feb.). 
 
 Feb. Sonnet written at end of Floure and Lefe (published Examiner, 
 16th March) and To Haydon on Elgin Marbles (published 
 Examiner, 9th March). 
 
 March. Dedication Sonnet written and 1817 volume published. 
 
 April. J. K., following advice of his brothers and Haydon, retires 
 to the country for study and self-development. He goes to 
 Isle of Wight, visits Shanklin (16th April, Sonnet on Sea and 
 Carisbrook. He is deeply engrossed in Shakespeare study. 
 He begins Endymion. 
 
 May. J. K. moves to Margate, finishes Endymion, bk. i. ; joins 
 T. K. at Canterbury. 
 
 June-August. J. K. returns to London and with his brothers 
 resides at Well Walk, Hampstead. He enjoys the society of 
 his old London f-iends and is introduced to Dilke, C. A,
 
 566 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Browu aud Bailey. He declines invitatiou to stay with Shelley 
 at Marlowe " that his imagination may have unfettered scope ". 
 He finishes Endymion, bk. ii. 
 
 1817. Sept.-Oct. (middle). J. K. visits Bailey at Oxford, is engaged in 
 
 reading Milton and Wordsworth and in writing Endymion, bk. 
 
 iii. He makes an excursion with Bailey to Stratford-on-Avon. 
 
 The first Blackwood article On the Cockney School appears (Oct.) 
 
 attacking Hunt, but with sneering allusion to J. K. 
 Nov. J. K. pays a visit to Bunford Bridge, near Dorking, where 
 
 he studies Shakespeare's Poems and Sonnets and finishes 
 
 Endymion. 
 Dec. K. in London, writing dramatic criticisms for the Champion, 
 
 showing the influence of Hazlitt. He attends Hazlitt's Lectures 
 
 on the English Poets. He meets Wordsworth at Haydon's 
 
 "immortal dinner". Lamb also present (28th Dec). J. K. 
 
 throws himself with gusto into the social life of his friends. 
 To this year also belong sonnets On a Picture of Leander and On 
 
 Hunt's Story of Rimini and the lyrics Think not of it, and 
 
 Unfelt, unheard, unseen. 
 
 1818. Jan. -March. K. continues to see much of his friends and pays 
 
 several visits to Wordsworth. He writes many of his shorter 
 poems— To a Cat (16th Jan.), Chief of organic numbers (21st 
 Jan.), O golden-tongued Romance (23rd Jan.), Hence Burgundy, 
 Claret, and Port (31st Jan.), also in Jan. When I have fears ; 
 Lines on Robin Hood (3rd Feb.), Sonnet to the Nile and Time's 
 sea (4th Feb.), To Spenser '5th Feb. ), Blue ! 'tis the life of heaven 
 (8th Feb.), O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's Wind (19th 
 Feb.), The Human Seasons. In the same year and probably in 
 the early part of it Where's the poet? and And what is love? 
 To-night ril have my friar, Welcome joy, Extracts from an 
 Opera, and Sonnet to Homer. 
 
 March-May (middle). K. joins his brother Tom at Teignmouth, 
 writes Here all the summer and Where he ye going (14th March), 
 Epistle to Reynolds 25th March). He is employed in seeing 
 Endymion through the press, in writing Isabella and in reading 
 Milton. Ode to Maia (1st May). K. returns to Hampstead. 
 
 June-August. G. K. marries Miss Wylie (G. A. W.) and starts for 
 America. K. accompanies them to Liverpool (22nd June) and 
 then starts a walking tour with Brown through the Lake 
 country to Scotland, through Dumfries and (Jalloway, along 
 the coast of Kirkcudbrightshire to Newton Stewart, thence to 
 Stranraer and Portpatrick. Thence to Ireland for two days 
 and back to Stranraer, thence along the coast north to Ayr 
 passing in view of Ailsa Craig. From Ayr to Glasgow, Loch 
 Awe, Oban, Staffa, Fort William, Ben Nevis, Inverness (6th 
 Aug.). Advised by a doctor to give up further touring, he
 
 APPENDIX B 567 
 
 leaves for London by boat (8th Auff.) and reaches Hampstead 
 (18th August). Chief poems of the tour — On visiting the 
 Tomb of Burns (2nd July), Meg Merrilies (3rd July), To Ailsa 
 Rock (10th July), Staffa (26th July), Somtet written upon 
 Ben Nevis (2nd Aug.) K.'s only book on the tour is Gary's 
 Dante. 
 
 1818. Aug. 19-Dec. K. at Hampstead. He meets Fanny Brawne at the 
 
 Dilkes — is in constant attendance by the bedside of Tom K. 
 Tom dies (first week of Dec. j and K. goes to live with Brown at 
 Wentworth Place. During this period be begins Hyperion and 
 writes Nature witheld Cassandra, 'Tis the witching hour of 
 night, In a drear-uighted December, Bards of Passion, To Fancy, 
 I had a dove. Hush, hush ! tread softly ! . . . . (The last is 
 probably at the very end of Dec.) 
 
 1819. Jan. K. at work on Hyperion and Eve of St. Agnes — he pays visits 
 
 to Chichester, where he plans the Eve of St. Mark, and to Bed- 
 hampton. Ode to Fanny (?). 
 
 Feb.-July (middle). K. at Hampstead. He writes Ode on Indolence. 
 Sonnets — Why did I laugh and As Hermes once. Extempore 
 (15th April), Spenserian stanzas on Brown (16th, I7th April), 
 La Belle Dame sans Merci (28th April), Song of Four Fairies, 
 Ode on a Grecian Urn, Nightingale, Psyche and Melancholy 
 (April, May), Sonnet to Sleep, On Fame (30th April) and On the 
 Sonnet. 
 
 July. K. stays with Rice at Shanklin. Brown joins them and 
 they write Otho the Great. K. also at work on Lamia. 
 
 August-October (middle). K. at Winchester (a few days in London 
 in Sept.) continues Lamia and Eve of St. Mark and begins 
 Stephen. He studies Italian, writes Pensive they sit and on 
 19th Sept. the Ode to Autumn. 
 
 Oct. -Dec. K. returns to London, at first for a few days to West- 
 minster, intending to earn a living by journalism, then back to 
 Brown's at Hampstead. His love passion becomes more absorb- 
 ing and he writes To , and Sonnets, The day is gone and / 
 
 cry your mercy. ... In Nov. -Dec. at work in mornings at the 
 Cap and Bells, in evenings at the recast of Hyperion — also 
 retouching Otho and preparing the 1820 volume for the press. 
 
 1820. G. K. pays a short visit to England (Jan.) K. has bad haemorrhage 
 
 in which he sees his death warrant (3rd Feb.). After con- 
 valescence he lodges at Kentish Town to be near Leigh Hunt 
 (May) — and is engaged in seeing 1820 volume through the 
 press. He has a relapse (22nd June) and goes to live with 
 Hunt in Mortimer Street. 
 
 July. 1820 volume published. 
 
 August. Favourable reviews by Hunt in Indicator and Jeifrey in 
 Edinburgh Review. K. leaves Mortimer St. for the Brawnes
 
 568 JOHN KEATS 
 
 (12th Aug.) ; he declines invitation from Shelley to spend the 
 winter with him in Italy. 
 
 1820. Sept. K. sails with Severn in Maria Crowther for Naples (18th), 
 
 lands near Lulworth Cove and writes last Sonnet (28th Sept.), 
 reaches Naples (end of Oct.), Rome (Nov. middle), has a bad 
 relapse (10th Dec). 
 
 1821. K. dies (23rd Feb.), is buried (27th Feb.). 
 
 Note on Date of Hunt's First Acquaintance with Keats 
 
 The exact date of Keats's first introduction to Hunt is important, as it 
 involves the question of the date of several poems in the 1817 volume, and 
 of the influences which are to be traced in them. Mr. Colvin, both in his 
 life of Keats and in his article {Diet. Nat. Biog.) gives it as early in 1816, 
 in which case Keats would be acquainted with Hunt before the " Solitude " 
 sonnet had appeared in the Examiner (5th May) and before he went to 
 Margate, where he wrote the Epistles to his brother and to C. C. Clarke. 
 In support of this view is the statement in Hunt's Autobiography that he 
 met Keats in the spring of 1816, and the genei-al chai-acter of the poetry 
 belonging to this period points in the same direction. / stood tip-toe, e.g. 
 written, as all agree, under the inspiration of Hunt, is essentially sug- 
 gestive of early rather than of late summer, and is most naturally inter- 
 preted not as a distant reminiscence, but as a vivid, recollection of 
 pleasures that he has just enjoyed. In like manner, the references to 
 Libertas in the Ep. to Geo. Keats (dated Aug. 1816) are more like remini- 
 scences of a conversation, introduced in delight at his acquaintance with 
 Hunt, than a mere second-hand reference, which has filtered through 
 Clarke ; whilst the reference to Hunt in the Ep. to Clarke suggests that 
 Clarke is enjoying a comradeship which he has himself experienced. 
 Professor Hoops, on the other hand {Keats's Jugend und Jugendgedichte), 
 contends that Hunt and Keats did not meet till October. He quotes as 
 evidence of his point Hunt's article in the Examiner of 1st Dec. where he 
 says : " He (Keats) had not published anything except in a Newspaper, 
 but a set of his manuscripts were handed in the other day," and again in 
 his review of the 1817 volume where, after praising the volume, he 
 remarks : " From these and stronger evidences in the book itself the 
 reader will conclude that the author and critic are friends, and they are 
 so — made, however, in the first instance by nothing but his poetry, and at 
 no greater distance of time than the announcement above mentioned {i.e. 
 the sentence written in the Examitter Dec. 1816). We had published one 
 of his sonnets in our paper without knowing more of him than of any 
 other anonymous correspondent ; but at this period in question, a friend 
 brought us in one morning some copies of verses which he said were from 
 the pen of a youth, etc. . . ." Professor Hoops further points out that the 
 sonnet Keen, fitful gusts was written " very shortly after Keats's installa- 
 tion at the cottage " (not as Mr. Forman says, " on the occasion of Keats's
 
 APPENDIX B 569 
 
 iustallatioii at the Cottage ")• But it is obviously a late autumn Kounet and 
 could not have been written before October, and Professor Hoops thinks 
 that / stood tip-toe mif?ht itself be written in late September. 
 
 This conclusion, which the internal evidence of the character of the 
 poems affected by it makes it difficult to accept, is not so plausible even on 
 external evidence as it may appear at lirst sight. Professor Hoops is 
 probably right in thinking that Mr. Colvin's date is a little too early, 
 for Hunt could not, as he has shown, have known Keats at the beginning 
 of May, when the sonnet on Solitude made its appearance, but in his main 
 contention that tlie two men were acquainted during the summer, i.e. 
 before Keats went to Margate, Mr. (olvin is almost certainly correct. 
 There is no evidence which should prevent us from holding that they met 
 in late May or early June. Indeed the acceptance of the sonnet by the 
 Examiner on 5th May would naturally tend to press on a meeting for 
 which Clarke must long have been anxious. Clarke would probably lose 
 no time in taking his friend's manuscript to Hunt, and Hunt in his turn 
 would be eager at once to meet the poet of whose future he formed so 
 high an estimate. It is unnecessary to interpret literally, with Professor 
 Hoops, a loose journalistic phrase "the other day." Hunt's only object 
 in using it is to point out that his friendship for Keats sprang from his 
 admiration for his poetry and not vice versa. Nor need Clarke's phrase 
 " very shortly after the installation at the cottage " be taken exactly. 
 Clarke, it must be remembered, was writing many years afterwards, and 
 moreover it does not follow that Keats would be installed at Hampstead 
 immediately upon his introduction to Hunt. As corroboration of the view 
 that late May or early June is the right date may be quoted another 
 passage from Hunt's reminiscences where he tells us " we became intimate 
 on the spot. . . . No imaginative pleasure was left untouched by us, or 
 unenjoyed ; from the recollection of the bards and patriots of old, to the 
 luxury of a summer rain at our window, or the clicking of the coal in 
 winter time."
 
 APPENDIX C 
 
 On the Sources op Keats's Poetic Vocabulary 
 
 In summing up the distinctive features of Keats's accomplishments as 
 a poet, Lord Houghton remarks that " above all his field of diction and 
 expression, extending so far beyond his knowledge of literature, is quite 
 inexplicable by the ordinary processes of mental education. If his English 
 reading had been more extensive, his inexhaustible vocabulary of pictur- 
 esque and mimetic words could have been easily accounted for: but here 
 is a surgeon's apprentice with the ordinary culture of the middle 
 classes . . . reproducing his impressions (of antique life and thought) in 
 a phraseology as complete and unconventional as if he had mastered 
 the whole history and the frequent variations of the English tongue, 
 and elaborated a mode of utterance commensurate with his vast ideas." 
 
 This sentence puts in an admirable form the view with regard to 
 Keats's vocabulary which is still, perhaps, current, though more careful 
 criticism has long shown it to be untenable. For " his field of diction and 
 expression " can in no way be said to have " extended beyond his know- 
 ledge of literature," and though the term "extensive" as applied to a 
 man's reading must always be relative, a poet who is steeped in the 
 writings of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, to 
 mention no others, has acquired more than the ordinary culture of the 
 middle class, has gone some way, at least, towards mastering " the whole 
 history and variations of the English tongue." The wonder indeed 
 remains as great, but it is a wonder of a different kind — that Keats should 
 have realised so intensely his kinship with his predecessors and gained his 
 peculiar power of self-expression so that their life became his and their 
 language the only possible utterance for his ideas and moods. 
 
 The object of this appendix is to make some analysis of the sources of 
 Keats's poetic vocabulary and to trace at the same time the development 
 of his power over language. Much valuable work has already been ac- 
 complished on this subject. Woodhouse ' began the task by annotating 
 his own MS. volume of his friend's poems ; Mr. W. T. Arnold in the 
 introduction to his Poems of Keats (1888) gave the first comprehensive 
 treatment of it, and additions have since been made by Mr. Sidney Colvin, 
 
 1 Woodhouse also interleaved his copies of Keats's published poems, inserting re- 
 jected readings and setting down any explanations which seemed necessary, or parallel 
 passages from our earlier poetry which occurred to him. Through the kindness of Mr. 
 Bourdillon I have been allowed to examine his copy of the 1817 volume. The explana- 
 tions are sometimes obvious but many of them are suggestive ; the parallels cited show 
 a capricious but often detailed knowledge of Elizabethan poetry. Of Woodhouse's 
 notes on Endymion Mr. Forman has made free use in his edition of Keats, but he has 
 not distinguished them from his own notes, so that we are unable to tell which of the 
 Elizabethan parallels that he cites were originally noted by Woodhouse.
 
 APPExNDIX C 571 
 
 aud Mr. Buxton Formaa, whilst Mr. Read iu his dissertation Keats and 
 Spenser has discussed fully the relations of Keats and Spenser, and Prof. 
 Hoops in his edition of Hyperion the debt of Hyperion to Milton. 
 
 It is unavoidable that many of my remarks should be a mere repetition 
 of theirs, but even so I can claim for them that they are corroborative, in 
 that they are the result of independent investigation ; yet my contribution 
 to the subject may not be without value if it shows, by the glossary which 
 is appended to it, what has, I think, never been shown before, that Keats's 
 language is not nearly so definitely imitative of single authors as repro- 
 ductive of a language which the earlier authors held in common and which, 
 therefore, he regarded as his lawful inheritance. If Keats became familiar 
 with a word in many authors, instead of merely meeting it in one, he 
 would be not only more likely to reproduce it, but more fully justified in 
 so doing. This is where the valuable work done by several scholars, in 
 suggesting Keats's debt to individual authors, has at times created a false 
 impression. Mr. Arnold, e.g., attributes the word eterne "probably" to 
 Spenser, and in this he is followed by Mr. Forman, but when we see that 
 the word is used also by Chaucer, is to be found in one of the most haunt- 
 ing speeches of Lady Macbeth's, is in Browne, in Chapman, and in 
 Chatterton, all of whom Keats knew well, the complexion of the matter 
 is quite altered. The word may be archaic, but to Keats it seems quite 
 natural — he is merely employing language which he has frankly accepted 
 as his poetic birth-right. This is doubtless an extreme instance, but a 
 glance at the glossary will show that the point could be illustrated at 
 great length. Messrs. Arnold and Read attribute to Spenser among other 
 words gyiesly,^ perceaunt, raught, sallows, and Mr. Read "with a high de- 
 gree of certainty," aniate, atween, bale, distraught, fray and affray, pight ; 
 but though Keats was certainly familiar with them in Spenser he knew 
 them equally well in other sources — amate, e.g., is in Chatterton, and seeing 
 that it is used by Keats iu his Sonnet to Chatterton it would be more natural 
 to connect its use with him than with the earlier poet. So perceaunt is 
 used twice by Chatterton (and twice by Chatterton means as much as 
 many times in Spenser, because of the different bulk of the two writers) 
 and by Keats at the time when he was making a special study of Chatter- 
 ton ; atween is a form used by Coleridge in the Ancient Mariner, fray and 
 affray are used by Chapman and Shakespeare, pight by Shakespeare in 
 Troilus and Cressida, a play Keats knew through and through ; griesly is 
 as much connected with Milton as Spenser, sallows is used by Sandys and 
 Chapman, whilst bale, ratight, and distraught are archaisms common 
 enough to need no special explanation. The point to realise is that in 
 the majority of cases Keats does not borrow consciously from any definite 
 author or passage. His memory is richly stored with the language of 
 earlier poets and he draws upon it, as we draw upon our own natural 
 
 1 " Griesly, perceaunt, and raught," says Mr. W. T. Arnold, Keats, p. xxiv., " were 
 undoubtedly derived from " Spenser.
 
 572 JOHN KEATS 
 
 vocabulary, unconscious of its actual source ; and even when, as is often 
 the case, the cadence of the passage in which the word is used or its 
 definite association with other words betrays its immediate origin, our 
 judgment of Keats's use of it must be tempered by the fact that the word 
 was familiar to him from other sources and was therefore to him a natural 
 word to use. His case is in no way to be compared with Chatterton's ; 
 Keats never set himself to hunt for words ; he read those authors who had 
 most kinship with him and their manner of expression became his own. 
 
 But the basis of any author's vocabulary is the language that he brings 
 to it from his ordinary life. Of this the greater proportion calls for no 
 comment, but its most striking features must be examined before the influ- 
 ence of literature can be fully understood. " As soon as literature becomes 
 common," says Coleridge, " and a large number of men seek to express 
 themselves habitually in the most precise, sensuous and impassioned 
 language, the difference (between prose and verse) as to mere words ceases. 
 The sole difference in style is that the poetry demands a severe keeping — 
 it admits nothing that prose may not often admit, but it oftener rejects.*' 
 Without the culture of such a society as Coleridge here describes, and 
 moving for the most part among those who were not accustomed "to 
 express themselves habitually in the most precise, sensuous and impas- 
 sioned language," Keats needed to extend his vocabulary in the direction 
 in which such language could be found ; equally did he need to learn a 
 lesson which a more cultivated man would have known instinctively, — what 
 it was essential for him to reject. 
 
 The vulgarisms of Keats's diction resolve themselves into the use of 
 words, which, debased by trivial association or in themselves quite incom- 
 patible with genuine passion, should never be used in poetry ; the use of 
 words to which he gives a meaning which they do not bear, except in 
 slang or the loose language of a too familiar conversation, and the undue 
 affection for certain words or formations of words. In the first class I 
 should be inclined to notice elegant, gigle, tip-top (Endymion, i. 805, iii. 
 15), the interjection hist! by which Endymion recalls Peona — "hist! 
 one word I have to say" (End. iv. 909), the unfortunate remark of 
 Cynthia's Pallas is a dunce {ib. ii. 799), and the reference to himself in the 
 Hymn to Apollo as a " blank idiot." In the second class I should plsice jaunty 
 as applied to a stream (Tip-toe, 22, etc.), smitten in the sense of smitten with 
 love, beauty, etc. {Ep. to C. C. C. 102, Lamia, i. 7), things as a loose substitute 
 for a more definite noun (End. iv. 717, etc.), treat in the sense of a joy or 
 delight {Lamia, i. 330), like in the phrase these like, this like (Hyp. i. 50 ; 
 F. of Hyp. i. 328),^ and the frequent use of feel and shine as nouns. The 
 first of these is essentially vulgar, the second is a common Elizabethanism, 
 but it cannot be regarded as such in Keats ; it came to him from his ordin- 
 ary life, and its vulgar associations should have kept him from introducing 
 it so frequently into his verse. 
 
 ' This use of " like " may be due in Keats to false analogy with " such like " which 
 is common in Shakespeare.
 
 APPENDIX C 573 
 
 This list is necessarily small, because Keats who felt that " poetry should 
 surprise by a fine excess " was not prone to adopt the commoner words or 
 to attempt dangerous experiments on the side of familiarity — had he in any 
 measure accepted Wordsworth's theory of diction the list would have been 
 greatly extended. But he had no desire to approach too near to the lan- 
 guage of common life and when he recognised that he had done so he was 
 quick to correct. Two bad uses oi feel disappeared from the first draft of his 
 poems, and many of the passages rejected from Endymionowe their absence 
 from the printed text to his consciousness of their triviality of phrase. 
 
 The undue affection for certain words is rather a matter of tempera- 
 ment than, strictly speaking, of vocabulary, for given the sentiment to 
 be expressed, the words themselves are often quite justifiable ; and it is 
 only their reiteration which contributes an element of peculiarity to 
 the vocabulary. Certain of these however call for brief comment. The 
 word luxury and the adjectives which correspond to it recur unpleasantly 
 in the early poems. Mr. Arnold notes the recurrence of delicious twenty 
 times, and Mr. Bridges calls attention to the undue reiteration of such 
 words as melting, fainting, swimming, swooning, and panting. Peculiarly 
 offensive is the word stare which is continually introduced in the poet's 
 early love scenes (about ten times), whilst squeeze {Cal. 81 ; End. iv. 665) 
 is, if possible, worse. 
 
 Other favourite words are tiptoe, tease and nest. In no way perhaps 
 is the mastery over language shown more indisputably than in the power 
 to elevate a common word either by its association or position or the feel- 
 ing put into it, into a world of higher thought or emotion ; but this is the 
 last reward of a consummated style and is hardly to be expected in a mere 
 tyro, particularly if he is ill-educated. Keats does not always know when 
 a common word is elevated by its context, or when the whole sentiment 
 of his passage is degraded by a common word. This is admirably illustrated 
 by his use of the word tease which occurs no less than ten times in his 
 poetry and rings the changes on all grades of emotion from the execrable 
 " No little fault or blame Canst thou lay on me for a teasing girl " {End. 
 i. 517 rej.), almost paralleled in vulgarity in his Song of Four Fairies 
 written at a time when he might have been expected to know better, "and 
 Oberon will tease," to the great passage in the Ode on a Grecian Urn — 
 Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 
 As doth eternity. 
 
 The same gradation of feeling can be traced in his employment of the 
 word tiptoe, which he introduces once at leaist with exquisite effect ; but 
 nest was always a snare to him, its singularly inappropriate introduction 
 into Hyperion to describe the assembly of the Titans being one of the few 
 serious flaws in the essential dignity of the poem. 
 
 From considering Keats's predisposition to certain words we pass 
 naturally to a discussion of the peculiar word formations to which he had 
 an unfortunate leaning. First among these is the love of abstract nouns, 
 some of them manufactured for the occasion, and the majority of them
 
 574 JOHN KEATS 
 
 strained from their usual significance to express a concrete idea. The 
 fault here, therefore, is twofold — a lack of resource in language which leads 
 to the tiresome recurrence of the same word formation, and a lack of 
 definiteness in expression. The favourite abstract noun in Keats is that 
 which is easiest to make — the adjective transformed by the addition 
 of -ness, or the simple present participle. So we have in / stood tip-toe 
 the quaint mossiness of aged roots (40), Apollo kisses the dewiness of the 
 flowers (53), the streams are ca,iled freshnesses (70), and later on in the same 
 poem we have deliciousness, silkiness, clearness, and nearness. To the same 
 period or a little later belong Uafiness {Cal. 34 ; Sleep and Poetry, 7), 
 cragginess [ib. 126), smoothness {ib. 377), nothingness {ib. 159, and End. i. 3), 
 gloominess, pleasantness {=pleasant scene, End. i. 89) cloudiness {ib. i. 741), 
 taperness, [thy finger's taperness =thy taper finger {ib. i. 782;.] Of present 
 participles used as nouns, and usually in the same vague sense, we have, 
 among others, in / stood tip-toe, flutterings (^92;, doings and cooings (63, 64), 
 wandering and pondering (,121, 122;, smotherings (132), shiftings {Sleep and 
 Poetry, 286), mutterings {ib. 40;, imaginings {ib. 71, and End, iii.), folly- 
 ing {End. i. 612j, towery perching {ib. i. 535;, feathery whizzing {ib. i. 333), 
 tannings {ib. ii. 664), hoverings ^ib. ii. 931), fingering {ib. ii. 54),pleasurings 
 {ib. iv. 716j, illuminings {ib. iv. 584), thunderings ySonnet to Haydon), spiriting 
 {Sonnet to Spenser). And the use of abstract for concrete extends beyond 
 words of this formation ; cf. e.g. those three grossly offensive phrases quite 
 close together in End. ii. — smooth excess (743;, slippery blisses (768;, milky 
 sovereignties (759). 
 
 The number of cases in which these words bear the rhyme demon- 
 strates clearly that Keats was often led into the habit through insufficient 
 mastery over his versification ; but the chief reason for their employment 
 has a different cause. His desire to place upon record his appreciation of 
 nature and his enthusiasm for the beautiful has outrun his power of 
 accurate portrayal, and he substitutes for that vivid delineation of 
 significant detail which brings a whole picture before the mind terms 
 which merely convey a vague and formless impression of it. The fault 
 resolves itself into a lack of definiteness, where definiteness is in reality 
 the secret of all great art. Vagueness has indeed a distinct poetic value 
 varying in almost exact proportion to the artist's power over detail, and a 
 comparison with Milton (the great master in this kind) will at once show 
 the weakness of Keats. Probably Milton's influence more than any other 
 helped Keats to throw off this early vice, as well as to discover where the 
 abstract can be used with really telling poetic effect. Lamia is spoken of 
 as the " brilliance feminine " (i. 92), but only when a vivid picture of her 
 dazzling charms has already been given us, which the phrase at once 
 recalls, adding to it a touch of mystery. So too of the " wide quietness" 
 in which the temple of Psyche is to be built ; the two divine lovers are 
 not presented, as they would have been presented in 1816, couched in 
 floweriness and rooty blossomings, but 
 
 mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-ey'd.
 
 APPENDIX C 575 
 
 The picture is vivid and clear in every detail, and when we reach the 
 phrase " wide quietness " there is added to it a suggestion of infinite calm 
 — that sense of distance without which a landscape carries no meaning to 
 our hearts. 
 
 Analogous in its effect to this use of abstract nouns is the predilection 
 for adverbs formed from present participles. These are particularly 
 offensive when they are combined, as often in Keats, with the word so, 
 used not in its proper grammatical significance, but loosely, as in the 
 emasculate conversation of the drawing-room, to mean indescribably. In 
 Calidore, the worst specimen of this style, we have so lingeringly (5), so 
 elegantly (11), so invitingly (31), so sweetly . . . so completely (62, 63), with 
 the companion phrase quite transcendent (133), and other cases of the present 
 participle adverb and of so used independently. This vulgarism tends to 
 disappear as Keats develops in literary power, but examples of it survive 
 to mar his finest work. Even in the Eve of St. Agnes we have so 
 dreamingly (xxxiv.) and the vague use of so occurs more than once in 
 Lamia. A similar vulgarism introduced from conversation is the use of the 
 auxiliary do for emphasis — do smile {End. iv. 115), do gently murder half my 
 soul {End. iv. 309), do come now {End. i. 406, rej.), and the pronunciation of 
 perhaps as a monosyllable {S. and P. 33, 324 ; Ep. to Reynolds, 14). 
 
 Another marked feature of the early poems is the love of -y adjectives. 
 Here again it is only the excessive and unnatural use that calls for 
 censure — up to a certain point they are perfectly justifiable and have the 
 highest authority. These adjectives are a natural formation from the 
 noun, but it is obvious that they should only be formed when their 
 relation with the noun from which they are formed and the noun which 
 they qualify are alike clear — otherwise they are merely an easy way of 
 escaping the difficulty of accurate expression. This is not seldom the 
 case in Keats, e.g. pillowy silkiness (/ stood tip-toe, 188), liny marble 
 (S. and P. 364). 
 
 But it is evident that Keats had a further reason for their use — a 
 metrical one. Ever since those changes in the language had taken place 
 which mark the transition from Middle English to Modern English, the 
 loss of unaccented syllables and in particular of the unaccented -e had 
 given a weight to the language which made it particularly difficult to give 
 lightness and variety to the verse. Especially true is this of the heroic 
 couplet. Even if we had a poet to-day who could equal Chaucer in 
 metrical skill, he would be unable to produce, within the bounds of that 
 metre, effects comparable to those which Chaucer produced in the Canter- 
 bury Tales ; and these -y words have a peculiar value to the modern 
 metrist in that their unaccented syllable is free from the weight which a 
 consonant seldom fails to give. There can be no doubt that Keats was 
 troubled by the weight of his unaccented syllables, and that he fell into 
 the habit of using an undue number of these adjectives because they gave 
 him some relief from it. Take e.g. one of his worst words — boundly " my 
 boundly reverence "(S. and P. 209). Mr. W. T. Arnold suggests that
 
 576 JOHN KEATS 
 
 boundly is on the analogy of roundly whicli Keats had found in Browne. 
 This seems to me very far-fetched. 1 think that obviously Keats was led to 
 it through a desire, perhaps unconscious on his part, to write a euphonious 
 verse. He may have meant boundless or bounden ; in the one case he would 
 have had an ugly repetition of his sibilant, in the other an ugly repetition 
 of a nasal — he felt it and he cut the difficulty in a manner that seemed to 
 him at that period quite natural and quite justifiable. But the greatest 
 artists do not avoid the difficulties of their material, they triumph over 
 them ; and it is noticeable that as Keats gains a mastery over the language 
 these words become more and more sparingly used till they assume their 
 proper proportion among his adjectives. Out of about fifty which we find 
 in the poems (not counting those in ordinary use) only fifteen appear 
 after Endymion {i.e. after 1817), of these only seven are new to him, and 
 of those seven only two or three are not justified, either by some literary 
 association, or by their unquestionable efi"ectiveness. These are fledgie 
 and sceptry. A full list will be found in the Glossary.' 
 
 All these features of Keats's early style, some of them showing traces 
 of survival even in his maturer poems, were natural to him, and would 
 have had their place in his work if he had never read a line of poetry, 
 supposing, for the moment, that lie would in that case have written any 
 himself But it must be remembered that in every case he had a prece- 
 dent or an analogy by which he could have defended himself. Slumbery 
 may be, as Mr. Arnold remarks, " a very vile word," but it is used by 
 Shakespeare and Milton : paly by the side of pale is a totally unjustifiable 
 formation, but it is found in Shakespeare, Collins and Coleridge. So 
 that the study of Keats's idiosyncrasies of diction leads naturally to a 
 consideration of the influence upon him of other authors, from whom 
 he learnt both good and bad, though only as he developed was he able to 
 discriminate the good from the bad. Our next duty therefore is to 
 examine the points of affinity between the vocabulary of Keats and that 
 of those authors whom he read most assiduously, remembering at the 
 same time no one author can be viewed entirely apart from the rest. An 
 exact chronological treatment of these influences is impossible, as in many 
 cases they were contemporary with one another ; in tracing the develop- 
 ment of his style, however, it is obviously the proper course to begin by a 
 discussion of those who encouraged him in his own evil tendencies. 
 
 The worst of these is Leigh Hunt. Of the general vulgarity of Hunt's 
 influence enough has been said in the General Introduction ; it will be 
 sufficient now to show how he encouraged by example, if not always by 
 precept, the worst elements in Keats's vocabulary. In The Story of 
 
 ' Mr. Bridges criticises Mr. W. T. Arnold's reference to Keats's predilection for -y 
 adjectives in the witty remark, " I never heard of any one objecting to Shakespeare's 
 ' I can call spirits from the vasty deep." Indeed what is in question is very much the 
 same with the words as with the spirits, whether they do come when you do call for 
 them." Exactly, and the point which Mr. Arnold proves, 1 think, conclusively, is that 
 in many cases they do not come, but that the words produced carry no more con- 
 viction than the spirit rapping of the modern exorcist.
 
 APPENDIX C 577 
 
 Rimini ^1816; we have the same love of abstract nouns to express a 
 concrete thing ; especially abstract nouns formed from present parti- 
 ciples, e.g. smearings, measurings, doings ; the same love of adverbs from 
 present participles — thrillingly, smilingly, crushingly , preparingly ; the 
 same delight in the use of -y adjectives which have no good authority, 
 or are obscure in their meaning, scattery, glary, flamy. In Foliage 
 published in 1818 (but much of it written somewhat earlier; Hunt draws 
 on the same vocabulary ; of pres. part, adverbs we have, glancingly, pout- 
 ingly, kneadingly , of -y adjectives we have leafy and rooty, strawy, surfy and 
 laycry. It must be remembered, moreover, that such words would pro- 
 bably be found in undue excess in Hunt's familiar conversation and that 
 Keats, in associating with Hunt, would have them continually before him. 
 In both of Hunt's volumes, as would be expected, words abound which 
 express a sense of luxury and ill-defined delight, nor are we surprised to 
 find as common to both Keats and Hunt the word tiptoe'^ used metaphori- 
 cally, but without poetic effect (in Hunt's tiptoe looks), stare in the offensive 
 sense already referred to, and twice, the objectionable /e^/ as a noun. 
 
 But before a personal acquaintance with Hunt had come to swell the 
 force of distant admiration, another influence had begun to work which 
 in itself would lend support to the dangerous idiosyncrasies of the un- 
 trained poet. This was Chapman. In our reverence for the greatest 
 of Elizabethan translators and our gratitude to him for the inspiration 
 which he gave to Keats we should remember also that no writer of his 
 eminence ever took grosser liberties with the language, or bent it more 
 remorselessly to fit the Procrustean bed of his ideas. And just as in his 
 Odyssey he illustrated all those laxities of form for which the early versi- 
 fication of Keats has been condemned, so it was with his use of diction. 
 If he did not find a word bearing the required metrical value, in which 
 to express his conception of Homer's meaning, he had no hesitation in 
 coining a new form, and he did this in the same manner as did Keats in 
 a later day. In him we find : — 
 
 (a) The excessive use of the abstract noun formed either in -ing or 
 -ment, e.g. emhracings for embraces, deservings for deserts, murmurings, 
 deplorings, etc., designments, procurement, intendment, etc. Mr. Colvin 
 attributes to Chapman Keats's use of abstract nouns in -ness and refers to 
 the Hymn to Pan, where we find cliffy highnesses and wat'ry softnesses. 
 These are indeed in the manner of Keats, and Keats doubtless knew the 
 Hymn to Pan well, but it is right to add that in reading through the whole 
 of Chapman I have found no other examples of this particular formation. 
 
 (b) Excessive use of -y adjectives, some of them felicitous but many 
 of them strange and even awkward, e.g. beamy, cavy, cliffy, cloddy, gleby, 
 gulf y, foody, flamy , barky, nervy, orby, oxy, rooty, spiirry. 
 
 • Mr. Bridges attributes Keats's use of tiptoe to Shakespeare. Of such a passage 
 as End. i. 831 this statement is obvio'isly correct, but Keats's earlier employment of 
 it, in the 1817 volume, as well as certain of its uses in Endymion, betray a far different 
 origin. 
 
 37
 
 578 JOHN KEATS 
 
 (c) The vulgar use of so, e.g. so languishingly (Od. i. 97), so weak 
 and wan (Od. vi. 2). 
 
 (d) An occasional familiarity of phrase which seems singularly incon- 
 gruous in a heroic poem. Can we wonder at the banality of some of 
 Endymion's language to Peona or to Cynthia when Keats found in his 
 great epic model Calypso thus addressing Odysseus : — 
 
 O ye are a shrewd one, and so habited 
 In taking heed thou know'st not what it is 
 To be unwary, nor use words amiss. 
 How hast thou charm'd me, were I ne'er so sly ! 
 Ill all this we can see how Chapman would seem to Keats to lend 
 support to some of his natural tendencies of style. But that the influence 
 of Chapman continues far beyond this early period, is evident in Hyperion, 
 and though there is little that can be attributed to the influence of Chap- 
 man only, there can be no doubt that his translations contributed con- 
 siderably to the vein of Elizabethanism which runs through the work of 
 the maturer Keats. For example, the interchange of the difi"erent parts 
 of speech is common to all Elizabethan writers, but certain of Keats's 
 verb-nouns have a distinct ring of Chapman about them. Such are ex- 
 claim, proclaim, pierce. Cf. Chapman's use of impair, upbraids, manage. 
 Again, the love of abstracts in the plural. This is a feature of Keats's 
 latest work and by it he obtains at times the most successful effects. The 
 form imageries, indeed, is rightly attributed to Spenser, but the peculiar 
 musical effect obtained by words of this kind, especially when placed at 
 the end of the line, is extremely common in Chapman, e.g. : — 
 in his effeminacies {II. vi. 347). 
 
 Never war gives Troy satieties (II. xiii. 575). 
 
 Grace this day with fit transparences {II. xvii. 561). 
 
 But Ithacus our strongest phantasies (Od. iv. 391). 
 
 In pleasure of their high fed fantasies {Od. xx. 13). 
 
 Where, after, we will prove what policies {Od. xxiii. 107). 
 Keats has the following : — 
 
 Poured into shapes of curtain 'd canopies 
 
 Spangled, and rich with liquid broideries (End. ii. 618, 619). 
 
 Her silk had play'd in purple phantasies {Is. xlvii.). 
 
 So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries {Lam. i. 54). 
 
 And with the larger wove in small intricacies {Lam. ii. 141). 
 
 The space, the splendour of the draperies {Lam. ii. 206). 
 
 All garlanded with carven imag'ries {St. Ag.). 
 'mong thousand heraldries {St. Ag.). 
 
 And daz'd with saintly imageries {St. Mark). 
 
 Among its golden broideries {St. Mark). 
 
 With its many mysteries {St. Mark). 
 
 And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries {Ode to Fanny, ii.). 
 
 Bigger than stags, — a moon, — with other mysteries {Cap and Bells). 
 
 And all the smooth routine of gallantries {Cap and Bells).
 
 APPENDIX C 579 
 
 There can be uo doubt that Mr. Arnold is right in attributing to 
 Chapman's influence Keats's love of the word sphere both in usual and 
 unusual senses. I have noticed it about twenty times in Chapman and 
 its use often seems somewhat strained. He is particularly fond of apply- 
 ing it to the eyes, e.g. spheres of eyes (Od. xiii. 535), visual spheres, let mine 
 eyelids close their spheres {Od. xix. 801). It was passages such as these 
 which suggested to Keats (Hyp. i. 117), "Open thine eyes eterne, and 
 sphere them round." The line, "Twelve sphered tables, by silk seats 
 insphered" {Lamia, ii. 183) employs the word in a more natural sense, and 
 is also paralleled in Chapman. C/. also note to Hyperion, ii. 79. The follow- 
 ing old words would also be known to him in Chapman as in Spenser and 
 other Elizabethans, beldame, battailous, disparted, gaze (in phrase at gaze) 
 horrid, sallows? On the other hand Mr. Arnold can hardly be right in 
 attributing to Chapman Keats's use of wicker = basket (End. i. 137). 
 Chapman's phrase is "press of wicker" {Od, ix. 350), i.e. of wickerwork, 
 which is exactly the modern use. Keats is more likely adopting a modern 
 colloquialism, to be found in many parts of England at the present day. 
 
 The seventeenth-century poet who may be ranked next to Chapman 
 in his effect upon Keats's style and vocabulary is William Browne of 
 Tavistock. A quotation from Britannia's Pastorals, which heads the 
 early Epistles, shows that Keats must have read Browne soon after he had 
 become familiar with the translation of Homer, whilst reminiscences of 
 Browne which are to be found in the Ode to the Nightingale and La Belle 
 Dame sans Merci suggest that either Keats continued to read him, or, as is 
 more likely, that at an early period he had studied him in such detail as 
 to make a permanent impression on him. Certainly there was much in 
 Browne which would have attracted Keats at that time ; his freshness of 
 mind, his rambling delight in nature, find expression in a versification 
 which has all the laxity of Keats's immature couplets and in a vocabulary 
 with many of the features which mark the 1817 volume. There is the 
 same love of abstract nouns in -ment and- ing(8), languishment , embrace- 
 ment, dreariment, procurement, famishment, sonnetings, banqtietings, shading 
 (shade), mutterings, fondlings ; and the same licentious use of adjectives 
 in -y, many of them forms quite unjustifiable except for purposes of metre, 
 e.g. calmy, greeny, scaly, pitchy, lawny, plumy, flaggy, rushy, swarty ; 
 the same love also of compound adjectives of a kind especially dear to 
 Keats at an early period, e.g. lily-silken, silver-seeming, silver-circling. 
 Of words and forms rare or archaic common to the vocabulary of Browne 
 and Keats one may notice the following : mew, y-pight, freshet, writhen, 
 raught, rillets, teen, undersong. None of them, except perhaps writhen, 
 would he owe entirely to Browne, but this fact does not make the in- 
 fluence of Browne by any means unimportant. 
 
 A similar influence, as far as vocabulary, at least, is concerned, was 
 
 ^The spelling "chace" for "chase" is more likely to be due to the influence o( 
 Chapman than to that of Somerville, whom we do qot know that Keats ever read,
 
 580 JOHN KEATS 
 
 doubtless exerted by Saudys's translation of Ovid, which Keats must have 
 been continually reading in 1817-18. We have the evidence of Wood- 
 house to the effect that the somewhat strange use of the word brawniest 
 in Hyp. ii. 21 "^the brawniest in assault" was suggested by Sandys, /ig- 
 brawned Mgaon, and Mr. Forman has pointed out that the only known 
 literary use of the word bowse before Keats is to be found in Sandys. 
 Similarly the form spry {End. iv. 157), which some have taken to be an 
 unfortunately Cockney mispronunciation of spray, whilst others, e.g. Mr. 
 Arnold, have asserted that it has nothing to justify it except the necessity 
 of a rhyme (which would indeed have been quite a sufficient justification 
 in the eyes of Spenser), was traced by Mr. Forman (following Woodhouse) 
 to Sandys, " who, he remarks, will certainly do as an authority in default 
 of a better." It is interesting to be able to add, as a further justification 
 of Keats in its use, that he was not merely drawing upon a form which he 
 had noticed in one passage. In the early editions of both Defoe and 
 Smollett, both of whom we have evidence that Keats knew, the word is 
 spelt sprye. Apparently, therefore, the form was by no means as un- 
 common as has been supposed, and Keats, having met it in several places, 
 would feel perfectly well justified in employing it. Other rare words which 
 a study of Sandys would familiarise to him are disparted, embracements , 
 covert, sallows, spume, nervy, spumy. 
 
 As a whole, however, the influence of Leigh Hunt and of the seventeenth- 
 century poets (Chapman and Browne especially) was rather to encourage 
 the natural tendencies of the immature Keats than to add to the resources 
 of his vocabulary in a manner which would be permanently useful to him. 
 Hence it has seemed best to discuss them first. The other authors who 
 may have left traces upon the work of Keats will be considered in their 
 chronological order. 
 
 First of these was Spenser. 
 
 As I have already implied, there has been, in my opinion, a tendency 
 to overrate the predominance of the influence of Spenser on both the 
 thought and the language of Keats. The reason of this is partly because 
 it has been the subject of the most thorough and scholarly investigation, 
 first by Mr. Arnold and then quite exhaustively by Mr. Read, partly also 
 because the well-known story of Keats's first acquaintance with Spenser, 
 as told by Clarke, has something arrestingly dramatic about it. It was 
 the first influence to make itself felt upon him, but, in spite of its great 
 attraction, at no period of his literary life can it be said to have been the 
 foremost influence. Almost at once it was subordinated to the phraseology 
 of the eighteenth century, then to the seventeenth century and Leigh 
 Hunt, then to Shakespeare and then to Milton. After this Keats's style is 
 more truly eclectic, and Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton and Spenser all 
 are laid under contribution, so that it would be difficult to assign the 
 mastery to any one of them. At the same time it must be recognised that 
 Spenser's vocabulary has left its mark upon all the work of Keats, and 
 even though it is not the sole o;- principal source of many of the words
 
 APPENDIX C 581 
 
 which have been attributed to it, there is no doubt that in many cases Keats 
 saw them first in Spenser, so that when he met them afterwards in other 
 writers that he happened to be studying; at the time more closely, he was 
 already familiar with them. Almost certainly the ioUow'mg came to Keats 
 from Spenser, daedale, elf (for man), lifeful, loiUed, needments, tinct ; whilst 
 Spenser shared with other writers in familiarising Keats with a large 
 number of words, among which I should regard as the most justly associ- 
 ated with his name, beldame, beadsman, bedight, covert, dreariment, raft, 
 shallop. A full list will be found in the Glossary. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the great literary force which freed or 
 rather was freeing Keats from idiosyncrasies of vocabulary, and giving him 
 a firm grasp of the richness and the strength of the English tongue, just 
 as it freed him from undue subservience to any one master, was Shake- 
 speare. In Shakespeare he found many of those qualities which in their 
 exaggeration in Keats and others have been mentioned for censure, 
 but here he found them in their due proportion and used with that 
 easy mastery which proclaims the consummate artist. A glance at the 
 Glossary will prove, what has, 1 think, been overlooked before, not 
 only how many words Keats undoubtedly learnt from Shakespeare,^ but 
 also how many, whose presence in his work has been attributed solely to 
 others, and generally to Spenser, are to be found in Shakespeare also ; and 
 that too at a time when we know that Shakespeare was forming the princi- 
 pal object of his study. And as the great dramatist became daily a greater 
 wonder to him and he came to understand him to his very depths, he 
 caught something of that power over language, which is indefinable, 
 because it cannot be analysed into mannerisms, and is only called Shake- 
 spearian from its inevitable fitness and its supreme felicity. It is difficult, 
 for example, to avoid associating with Shakespeare's influence some of 
 those compound adjectives, characteristic of Keats's maturer work, which 
 suggest a far fuller meaning than is afforded by regarding the first part of 
 the compound as in purely adverbial relation with the second. In his 
 early poems, doubtless, Keats had formed his compounds on the analogy 
 of the looser Elizabethan writers such as Browne and Chapman, but for 
 any parallel to the wealth and the subtlety of meaning carried by Keats's 
 dark-clustered, wild-ridged, soft-conched, soft-lifted, high-sorrowful, and others 
 of the same pregnant force, we must turn, 1 think, to Shakespeare. Cf. 
 for example, deep-contemplative {As You Like It, ii. 7. 31) and three which 
 occur in Troilus and Cressida, a play studied by Keats with peculiar care, 
 
 1" There is hardly any direct imitation or adaptation of Shakespeare in detail" 
 (Arnold, A'eats, xxxviii.). "Spenser, Leigh Hunt and Milton, these then are the three 
 names which I think a student of Keats has constantly to bear in mind " (id. xxxvi.). 
 Mr. Read, indeed, duly records the presence of many of his Spenserian words in 
 Shakespeare also ; he differs from me in his estimate of the importance of this fact, 
 whilst any mention of the Shakespearian words which do not occur in Spenser is beyond 
 the immediate scope of his inquiry. Yet only in the light of these can a judgment upon 
 the whole question of the relative importance of Keats's debt to these two authors be 
 arrived at.
 
 582 JOHN KEATS 
 
 subtle-potent (iii. 2. 25), dumb-discoursive (iv. 4. 92), momentary-swift (iv. 
 2. 14). 
 
 Undoubtedly Shakespearian in Keats are a-cold, amort, angerly, close 
 (embrace), dibble, coverture, pleached, rubious, ruddy (drops), sliver, snail-paced, 
 throe ^ (as a verb), and to the influence of Shakespeare with that of others 
 the words, beldame, beadsman, bruit, capable, daft, darkling, dight, eld, 
 ebon, honey dew, libbard, lush, park, pight, rack (of clouds), tiptoe ; phantasy, 
 yerk, pleasure, scandal and quire as verbs, and the adjectives fenny, mealy, 
 paly, slumbery. {Cf. also General Introduction, p. xxxiii, Introduction 
 to End. bk. ii. p. 429.) 
 
 It is a curious fact that the influence of Milton (more especially in the 
 early poems) whilst it is as prominent as that of any other author, is 
 shown far more in allusion and reminiscence of Miltonic cadence, than by 
 the borrowing of definitely Miltonic words." But before Hyperion we 
 have alp, argent, capable (of an ear), delectable (also in Shakespeare, though 
 with difl^erent stress), drear, and dight, the one often attributed solely to 
 Chatterton and the other to Spenser, dulcet, lave (also in Chatt.), eld (also 
 Shak.), monstrous {i.e. peopled with monsters), eclipsing (in a sense definitely 
 reminiscent oi Paradise Lost, ii. 666), snuff (verb), bloomy, oozy, and wormy, 
 and contemporary or later than Hyperion, besprent (with dew), adjectives 
 in -ant, formed on the analogy of the Miltonic adjective of the same 
 formation (which, however, can be paralleled in Chatterton also-^) e.g. 
 adorant, aspirant, couchant ; lucent (also a favourite word in Gary's Dante), 
 parte (also Shak. and Marston), rhomb, sciential, slope, syllabling, sooth, and 
 the form foughten. The Miltonisms of Hyperion are noticed in the intro- 
 duction to that poem. Mr. Arnold has pointed out that the immense 
 increase of adjectives in -ed, which in Keats's later work supplant the -y 
 adjectives, is also chiefly due to the study of Milton. A full list of these is 
 not given in the Glossary, because, as the N. E. D. points out, the termina- 
 tion -ed is now added without restriction to any substantive from which it 
 is desired to form an adjective with sense " possessing, provided with, 
 characterised by." Hence only those are given which are distinctly 
 participial rather than adjectival, or which afford an interesting literary 
 parallel within the known limits of Keats's reading. 
 
 The influence of the eighteenth century upon the vocabulary of Keats 
 was, as Mr. Colvin has pointed out, predominant in the poet's fuvenilia. 
 This was partly no doubt because he read the eighteenth-century Spen- 
 serians without being able to discriminate between their work and that of 
 Spenser himself, but it was also due to the fact that the poetic diction in 
 
 1 " I believe that Keats invented the verb ' to throe'" (Arnold, xlv.). 
 
 * These are pointed out in the noies passim. Keats probably borrowed more from 
 Comus than from any other poem (or part of a poem) of the same length, and he drew 
 upon the minor poems of Milton continually all through his literary life. The influence 
 of Paradise Lost, too, began earlier than has often been supposed. Cf. notes to End. 
 iii. and iv. passim. It is interesting to know upon the authority of Severn that Keats's 
 next poem, which he would discuss with his friend on his voyage to Italy, was to be 
 upon the subject of Sabrina. 
 
 3 And in Shakespeare, as Professor Bradley has pointed out to me. Cf. Timon of 
 Athens, iv. 3. 5, dividant ; \v . 3. 25, operant ;\w. 3. 115, trenchant ; iv. 3. 135, tnountant. 
 
 I 
 
 J
 
 APPENDIX C 583 
 
 vogue in the eighteenth century was still the language of verse in Keats's 
 own day, and before he began to have definite theories about his art he 
 would naturally accept its recognised medium of expression. We find 
 accordingly such eighteenth-century phrases as, verdant hill, laurelled 
 peers, tuneful thunders, ravished heavens, tremblingly expire, renovated eyes, 
 melt the soul, radiant fires, delicious tear, romantic eye, etc. ; together with 
 a typically eighteenth-century personification, Disappointment, parent of 
 Despair, Despondence, miserable bane, etc. These and such phrases it would 
 be a mistake to attribute to any definite influence, they were the poetical 
 stock-in-trade of the period ; but certain authors of the eighteenth century 
 made a less transient appeal to Keats and are worthy of a sliort notice in 
 this connection. These are Thomson, Collins and Chatterton. 
 
 From Thomson Keats certainly took the word clamant, his phrase 
 athwart the gloom is repeated by Keats in Sleep and Poetry, his famous line 
 And hold high converse with the mighty dead is more than once adapted by 
 Keats, and his line The blackbird whistles from the thorny brake is at least 
 echoed in the last stanza of the Ode to A utmnn. Another word, used in Keats 
 with peculiar lingering effect, is also a favourite of 'T\\on\i^oi\ ■a— gradual. 
 Where, i^d^ng gradual, life at length goes out {Winter, 890). 
 
 larger prospects of the beauteous whole 
 Would, gradual open on our opening minds {Winter, .580). 
 gradual sinks the breeze 
 Into a perfect calm. 
 A similar efi'ect is gained by Keats in his exquisite description of the sea : — 
 Down whose green back the short-liv'd foam, all hoar, 
 bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence {End. ii. 349, 3.50). 
 I cannot parallel this use exactly in any other author. 
 
 Probably from Thomson also is the phrase horizontal sun, and the 
 a.di]&ct\v& plumy as applied to birds, though this is found in other authors, 
 whilst Thomson helped to familiarise him with tlie words disparted, drear, 
 citied, herbaged, sleeked (of wings), spume, spumy, and umbrageous, which 
 in previous investigations have either been left unnoticed in his vocabulary, 
 or attributed with too much confidence to another writer. 
 
 The influence of Collins is slighter, but it is not unimportant, and, if 
 we remember the small bulk of CoUins's work, as large as could be ex- 
 pected. The word brede has been attributed to Chaucer ' in whom it means 
 breadth and to Waller in whom it means embroidery. There is no evidence 
 that Keats ever read Waller, nor is it easy to see why he should ever have 
 been induced to do so, and though the meaning " breadth " will fit in with 
 the passage in the Grecian Urn, it will not fit in with the passage in Lamia ; 
 and it is very unlikely that Keats would use an extremely i-are word in 
 two different senses. He therefore meant by it in both cases embroidery , 
 and his mind was turning back, consciously or unconsciously, to the Ode 
 to Evening "with brede etherial wove." It can hardly be doubted either 
 
 1 Speaking more accurately the poet of Tke Flowre and the Leafe, in which brede is 
 found in line 43.
 
 584 JOHN KEATS 
 
 that chilly finger'd spring (End. iv, 971) owes something to Collins's 
 Spring, with dewy fingers cold, and though his lines Heard melodies are 
 sweet but those unheard Are sweeter may owe a more direct debt to Words- 
 worth, Keats knew also their original in the Ode to the Passions, "In 
 notes by distance made more sweet." Adjectives formed both in -y and 
 -ed are used in Collins to a fault : common to both poets are pillared, 
 laurelled, honied, curtained, shouldered, paly, though they are found else- 
 where, and Collins's love of Spenser and Milton would continually recall 
 to Keats the language and tone of his two greatest masters.^ 
 
 But the poet of the eighteenth century who influenced Keats most 
 deeply was that one who least of all partook of the qualities of his age. 
 Chatterton appealed to Keats in his earliest years of the poetic life ; to 
 him Endymion was dedicated, and in revulsion from the classicalism of 
 Milton he turned to Chatterton as his model. Apart from the unfortu- 
 nately Rowleian old English of the Eve of St. Mark (99-114) there is 
 nothing in his vocabulary which owes its presence exclusively to Chatter- 
 ton ; at the same time there are many words which gained an additional 
 hold upon him through Chatterton's use of them, which, as we know, 
 would convince him perhaps more than it would convince us of their 
 unimpeachable integrity. Of these I should especially call attention to 
 amate, argent, darkling, drear, eterne, languishment , lave ; mickle, dight and 
 pight (great favourites with Chatterton), ope, perceaimt, shent, shoon, sith, 
 teene, paly. He would also find in Chatterton engine used as a verb, 
 whilst the same authority was joined, as we have seen, with what to Keats 
 seemed the essentially antagonistic authority of Milton, in suggesting to 
 him the -ant adjectives. 
 
 Of the influences of Keats's contemporaries it is not necessary to say 
 much here. A glance at the Glossary will show that he did not stand 
 alone in his age in his love of words which were already either obsolete 
 or rare in common speech. The great characteristic of the whole 
 literary movement of which he was a member was its recognition of the 
 glories of the past, and he would have found ample corroboration of his 
 own piactice in Coleridge, in Southey, in Scott,* in the Essays of Hazlitt 
 and Lamb, even in the poems of Wordsworth. But in Keats less than any 
 of them was this practice studied. Limited as was the vocabulary of his 
 everyday life, it sought reinforcement in that language in which alone 
 the poetic side of his nature could find full expression. Naturally and 
 without conscious eff"ort, he adapted that language to his own needs, and 
 in those poems which are most essentially original and characteristic of 
 his genius he resumed that flexibility, that beauty, that " old vigour," 
 which have made it a worthy vehicle for the richest literature of the 
 world. 
 
 1 In Collins these are blended with the conventional poetic diction of the day, and 
 some of its phrases also are common to Collins and Keats. 
 
 2 Dr. Murray has pointed out to me the interesting fact that a large number of 
 good Elizabethan words, which are absent from our literature in the later seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, reappear in the pages of the iVaver/ey Novels.
 
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 INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS 
 
 Text. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever 
 Acrostic : Georgiana Augusta Keats 
 Addressed to Haydon. Sonnet 
 Addressed to the Same .... 
 After dark vapours have oppress'd our plains 
 Ah, vi'hat can ail thee, wretched wight . 
 Ah ! who can e'er forget so fair a being ? 
 Ah ! woe is me ! poor silver-wing ! 
 Ailsa Rock, To. Sonnet 
 And what is love ? It is a doll dress'd up 
 Another sword ! And what if I could seize 
 Apollo, Hymn to 
 
 Ode to 
 
 As from the darkening gloom a silver dove 
 As Hermes once took to his feathers light 
 As late I rambled in the happy fields 
 Asleep ! O sleep a little while, white pearl 
 Autumn, To ....... 
 
 Bards of Passion and of Mirth 
 
 Belle Dame sans Merci, La . 
 
 Blue ! 'Tis the life of heaven, — the domain 
 
 Brawne, vide Fanny .... 
 
 Bright star ! would I were steadfast as thou art 
 
 Brother George, To my. Epistle . 
 
 Brother George, To my. Sonnet . 
 
 Brothers, To my. Sonnet 
 
 Brown, Charles Armitage, Spenserian Stanzas on 
 
 Burns, Sonnet on Visiting the Tomb of . 
 
 Sonnet written in the Cottage where Burns 
 
 Byron ! how sweetly sad thy melody ! . 
 Byron, To. Sonnet .... 
 
 Calidore. A Fragment .... 
 
 Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream 
 
 Cap and Bells, The; or. The Jealousies. A 
 
 Castle Builder, The, Fragment of 
 
 Cat ! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric 
 
 Chapman. On first looking into Chapman's 
 
 Chatterton, To. Sonnet. 
 
 Chief of organic numbers ! 
 
 Clarke, Epistle to Charles Cowden . 
 
 Come hither all sweet maidens soberly . 
 
 Faery 
 
 was 
 
 Tale 
 
 Homer. Sonnet 
 
 born 
 
 53 
 
 420 
 
 357 
 
 557 
 
 37 
 
 399 
 
 37 
 
 399 
 
 273 
 
 540 
 
 245 
 
 526 
 
 20 
 
 393 
 
 259 
 
 535 
 
 282 
 
 547 
 
 352 
 
 557 
 
 344 
 
 556 
 
 350 
 
 556 
 
 348 
 
 556 
 
 351 
 
 556 
 
 . 285 
 
 549 
 
 33 
 
 397 
 
 261 
 
 535 
 
 205 
 
 482 
 
 20I 
 
 481 
 
 244 
 
 526 
 
 279 
 
 545 
 
 288 
 
 551 
 
 24 
 
 395 
 
 31 
 
 396 
 
 34 
 
 398 
 
 . 361 
 
 558 
 
 281 
 
 546 
 
 . 283 
 
 547 
 
 347 
 
 556 
 
 347 
 
 556 
 
 10 
 
 391 
 
 347 
 
 556 
 
 363 
 
 559 
 
 352 
 
 557 
 
 353 
 
 557 
 
 t 36 
 
 398 
 
 348 
 
 556 
 
 257 
 
 533 
 
 27 
 
 395 
 
 275 
 
 540 
 
 Daisy's Song 
 
 260 
 
 534
 
 602 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Paolo 
 
 and 
 
 Dear Reynolds ! as last night I lay in bed 
 Death, On . • .... 
 
 Deep in the shady sadness of a vale 
 Draught of Sunshine, A . . . ■ • 
 Dream, On a, after reading Dante's Episode of 
 Francesca. Sonnet .... 
 
 Elgin Marbles, On seeing the. Sonnet . 
 
 Emma, To • • 
 
 Endymion : a Poetic Romance. Book I 
 
 ,, .. ,. Book II . 
 
 Book III . 
 
 :; „ ,. Book IV . 
 
 Epistles (published 1817) .... 
 
 Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds 
 
 Eve of St. Agnes, The 
 
 Eve of St. Mark, The 
 
 Ever let the Fancy roam .... 
 Extempore, An 
 
 " Faerie Queene, The," Spenserian Stanza written at the close 
 of Canto II., Book v., of 
 
 Faery Songs 
 
 Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel ! . . . 
 Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy . 
 Fame, On. Two Sonnets .... 
 Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave 
 
 Fancy 
 
 Fanny, Ode to . . . • • 
 
 Fanny, Lines to . . . • • • 
 Fanny, Sonnet to . . ... 
 
 Fill for me a brimming bowl .... 
 " Flowre and the Lefe," Sonnet written in the 
 
 Folly's Song 
 
 Four Fairies, Song of .... . 
 Four Seasons fill the measure of the year 
 Fresh morning gusts have blown away all fear 
 Full many a dreary hour have I past 
 
 Give me a golden pen, and let me lean . 
 Give me your patience Sister while I frame . 
 Glocester, no more. I will behold that Boulogne 
 Glory and loveliness have passed away . 
 Go no further ; not a step more. Thou art . 
 God of the golden bow .... 
 Good Kosciusko, thy great name alone . 
 Grasshopper and Cricket, On the. Sonnet 
 Great spirits now on earth are sojourning 
 
 Grecian Urn, Ode on a 
 
 Grievously are we tantalised, one and all 
 
 Had I a man's fair form, then might my sighs 
 Hadst thou liv'd in days of old 
 Happy, happy glowing fire ! . . 
 Happy is England I I could be content 
 Hast thou from the caves of Golconda, a gem 
 Haydon ! forgive me that I cannot speak 
 
 Text. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 270 
 
 537 
 
 347 
 
 556 
 
 207 
 
 495 
 
 353 
 
 557 
 
 285 
 
 549 
 
 275 
 
 540 
 
 385 
 
 562 
 
 53 
 
 420 
 
 75 
 
 429 
 
 98 
 
 436 
 
 122 
 
 443 
 
 22 
 
 394 
 
 270 
 
 537 
 
 180 
 
 464 
 
 241 
 
 525 
 
 198 
 
 479 
 
 359 
 
 558 
 
 359 
 
 558 
 
 259 
 
 534 
 
 164 
 
 460 
 
 285 
 
 550 
 
 285 
 
 550 
 
 229 
 
 515 
 
 198 
 
 479 
 
 251 
 
 530 
 
 253 
 
 532 
 
 287 
 
 551 
 
 383 
 
 562 
 
 274 
 
 540 
 
 355 
 
 557 
 
 267 
 
 537 
 
 280 
 
 545 
 
 349 
 
 556 
 
 24 
 
 395 
 
 36 
 
 399 
 
 357 
 
 557 
 
 345 
 
 555 
 
 2 
 
 387 
 
 330 
 
 555 
 
 350 
 
 556 
 
 38 
 
 402 
 
 38 
 
 402 
 
 37 
 
 402 
 
 194 
 
 476 
 
 335 
 
 555 
 
 31 
 
 396 
 
 16 
 
 392 
 
 267 
 
 537 
 
 39 
 
 403 
 
 15 
 
 392 
 
 274 
 
 540
 
 INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS 603 
 
 Text. Notes, 
 
 Haydon, To. Sonnets . 
 He is to weet a melancholy carle . 
 Hearken, thou craggy ocean-pyramid I 
 Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port 
 Here all the summer could I stay . 
 Highlands, Lines written in the 
 Highmindedness, a jealousy for good 
 Homer, To. Sonnet 
 
 Hope, To 
 
 How fever'd is the man, who cannot look 
 How many bards gild the lapses of time ! 
 Human Seasons, The. Sonnet .... 
 Hunt, Leigh, Dedication of 1817 Volume to . 
 
 Sonnet written on the day he left Prison 
 
 On his Poem "The Story of Rimini ". Sonnet 
 
 Hush, hush ! tread softly ! hush, hush my dear ! 
 Hyperion. A Fragment. Book I . 
 „ „ Book n 
 
 „ Book HI 
 
 Hyperion, The Fall of. A Vision 
 
 I cry your mercy — pity— love ! — aye, love ! 
 
 I had a dove and the sweet dove died 
 
 I stood tip-toe upon a little hill 
 
 If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd 
 
 If shame can on a soldier's vein-swoll'n front 
 
 Imitation of Spenser 
 
 In a drear-nighted December . 
 
 In after-time, a sage of mickle lore 
 
 In midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool 
 
 In thy western halls of gold . 
 
 Indolence, Ode on . 
 
 Induction to a Poem, Specimen of an 
 
 Isabella or the Pot of Basil 
 
 It keeps eternal whisperings around 
 
 Just at the self-same beat of Time's wide wings 
 
 Keats, George, Epistle to ... . 
 Sonnet to 
 
 Keats, George and Thomas, Sonnet to . 
 Keats, Georgiana Augusta. Acrostic 
 Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there 
 " King Lear," On sitting down to read, once again. 
 
 King of the stormy sea ! 
 
 King Stephen. A Dramatic Fragment . 
 Kosciusko, To. Sonnet 
 
 Sonnet 
 
 Ladies, To some 
 
 Lady, To a, seen for a few moments at Vauxhall. Sonnet 
 
 To a Young, who sent me a Laurel Crown. Sonnet 
 
 Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems 
 
 Lamia. Part I 
 
 Part II . ..... 
 
 Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair . 
 Lo ! I must tell a tale of chivalry . 
 Love in a hut, with water and a crust 
 
 274 
 
 540 
 
 361 
 
 558 
 
 282 
 
 547 
 
 353 
 
 557 
 
 356 
 
 557 
 
 358 
 
 558 
 
 37 
 
 399 
 
 281 
 
 546 
 
 18 
 
 393 
 
 286 
 
 550 
 
 32 
 
 397 
 
 280 
 
 545 
 
 2 
 
 387 
 
 32 
 
 396 
 
 276 
 
 541 
 
 266 
 
 537 
 
 207 
 
 495 
 
 215 
 
 504 
 
 224 
 
 512 
 
 229 
 
 515 
 
 287 
 
 551 
 
 266 
 
 537 
 
 3 
 
 388 
 
 286 
 
 550 
 
 341 
 
 555 
 
 19 
 
 393 
 
 265 
 
 536 
 
 359 
 
 558 
 
 363 
 
 559 
 
 348 
 
 556 
 
 249 
 
 529 
 
 8 
 
 391 
 
 164 
 
 460 
 
 276 
 
 541 
 
 215 
 
 504 
 
 24 
 
 395 
 
 31 
 
 396 
 
 34 
 
 398 
 
 357 
 
 557 
 
 35 
 
 398 
 
 277 
 
 541 
 
 119 
 
 441 
 
 341 
 
 555 
 
 3« 
 
 402 
 
 14 
 
 392 
 
 279 
 
 544 
 
 349 
 
 556 
 
 145 
 
 452 
 
 147 
 
 453 
 
 156 
 
 457 
 
 20 
 
 393 
 
 8 
 
 391 
 
 X56 
 
 457
 
 604 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Lovers, A Party of 
 
 Maia, Fragment of an Ode to . . 
 
 Many the wonders I this day have seen , 
 Mathew, George Felton, Epistle to 
 
 Meg Merrilies 
 
 Melancholy, Ode on .... 
 
 Mermaid Tavern, Lines on the . . ^ . 
 Milton. Lines on seeing a lock of Milton's hair 
 Modern Love • • . " ' 
 
 Mortal, that thou mayst understand aright 
 Mother of Hermes! and still youthful Maia ! . 
 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold 
 Muse of my native land ! loftiest Muse ! 
 My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
 My spirit is too weak ; mortality . 
 
 Nature witheld Cassandra in the skies . 
 
 Nightingale, Ode to a . 
 
 Nile, To the. Sonnet . . 
 
 No more advices, no more cautioning , 
 
 No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist . 
 
 No I those days are gone away 
 
 Not Aladdin magian 
 
 Now, Ludolph ! Now, Auranthe ! Daughter fair ! 
 Now may we lift our bruised vizors up . 
 Now Morning from her orient chamber came 
 Nymph of the downward smile, and sidelong glance 
 
 O Chatterton ! how very sad thy fate ! . 
 
 O come my dear Emma I the rose is full blown 
 
 O Goddess ! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung 
 
 O golden tongued Romance with serene lute ! 
 
 O, my poor boy ! My son ! My son ! My Ludolph 
 
 O Peace ! and dost thou with thy presence bless 
 
 O soft embalmer of the still midnight ! . 
 
 O Solitude ! if I must with thee dwell . 
 
 O Sorrow ...... 
 
 O sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm 
 
 O that a week could be an age, and we . 
 
 O that the earth were empty, as when Cain 
 
 O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind 
 
 O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang 
 
 O ! were I one of the Olympian twelve . 
 
 O what can ail thee. Knight at arms 
 
 Oft have you seen a swan superbly frowning 
 
 Oh ! for enough life to support me on 
 
 Oh ! how I love, on a fair summer's eve 
 
 Oh, I am frighten'd with most hateful thoughts ! 
 
 Old Meg she was a Gipsy 
 
 On a Picture of Leander. Sonnet . 
 
 On first looking into Chapman's Homer. Sonnet 
 
 On the Grasshopper and Cricket. Sonnet 
 
 On leaving some Friends at an early Hour. Sonnet 
 
 On receiving a curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses 
 
 On seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time. Sonnet 
 
 On sitting down to read " King Lear " once again. Sonnet 
 
 One morn before me were three figures seen . 
 
 Text. 
 362 
 
 248 
 
 31 
 
 22 
 261 
 206 
 202 
 257 
 352 
 239 
 248 
 
 36 
 
 122 
 191 
 275 
 
 283 
 191 
 278 
 
 303 
 206 
 203 
 262 
 314 
 342 
 19 
 33 
 
 348 
 
 385 
 196 
 
 277 
 334 
 384 
 284 
 
 34 
 125 
 
 75 
 280 
 
 312 
 258 
 
 58 
 354 
 244 
 
 27 
 
 331 
 
 273 
 355 
 261 
 
 275 
 36 
 38 
 36 
 
 15 
 275 
 277 
 249 
 
 Notes. 
 559 
 
 529 
 396 
 394 
 535 
 482 
 481 
 
 533 
 
 557 
 524 
 529 
 398 
 
 443 
 472 
 
 . 540 
 
 548 
 472 
 542 
 
 553 
 482 
 482 
 535 
 553 
 555 
 393 
 397 
 
 556 
 562 
 
 477 
 541 
 555 
 562 
 548 
 
 397 
 446 
 
 429 
 
 545 
 553 
 533 
 422 
 
 557 
 526 
 
 395 
 555 
 54t> 
 556 
 535 
 540 
 398 
 402 
 
 399 
 
 392 
 540 
 541 
 529
 
 INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES OF POEMS 605 
 
 Opera, Extracts from an . 
 Otho the Great : a Tragedy in Five Acts 
 Over the Hill and over the Dale 
 Oxford, On 
 
 Pan, Hymn to ..... 
 
 Party, A, of Lovers .... 
 
 Peace, On. Sonnet .... 
 Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes 
 Physician Nature ! let my spirit blood ! . 
 Picture of Leander, On a. Sonnet 
 Posthumous and Fugitive Poems . 
 
 ,, ,, j» ^* • 
 Prophecy, A ; to George Keats in America 
 Psyche, Ode to 
 
 Read me a lesson. Muse, and speak it loud 
 Reynolds, John Hamilton — 
 
 Epistle to ...... 
 
 Sonnet in answer to one by . • . 
 
 Sonnet to ...... 
 
 Robin Hood 
 
 Ronsard, Translation from Sonnet of 
 
 St. Agnes' Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was ! 
 
 St. Mark, The Eve of 
 
 Sea, On the. Sonnet ..... 
 Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness . 
 Shed no tear ! oh shed no tear ! . . . 
 
 Sleep, To. Sonnet 
 
 Sleep and Poetry ..... 
 
 Small, busy flames play through the fresh laid coal 
 So, I am safe emerged from these broils ! 
 Son of the old moon-mountains African ! 
 
 Song of Four Fairies 
 
 Songs and Lyrics ...... 
 
 Sorrow, Ode to 
 
 Souls of Poets dead and gone 
 Specimen of an Induction to a Poem . 
 Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine 
 Spenser, Imitation of .... . 
 
 Sonnet to ..... • 
 
 Spenserian Stanza written at the close of Canto II 
 
 of the " Faerie Queene " . 
 Spenserian Stanzas on Charles Armitage Brown 
 Spirit here that reignest ! . . . . 
 
 StafiFa 
 
 Standing aloof in giant ignorance . 
 
 Stay, ruby-breasted Warbler, stay . 
 
 Still very sick, my lord ; but now I went 
 
 " Story of Rimini," by Hunt, Sonnet on the . 
 
 Superstition, Vulgar, On. Sonnet . 
 
 Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong . 
 
 The church bells toll a melancholy round 
 The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone I 
 The Gothic looks solemn .... 
 
 Book V, 
 
 Text. 
 
 Notes 
 
 354 
 
 557 
 
 291 
 
 551 
 
 357 
 
 557 
 
 351 
 
 556 
 
 58 
 
 422 
 
 362 
 
 559 
 
 384 
 
 562 
 
 362 
 
 559 
 
 251 
 
 530 
 
 275 
 
 540 
 
 228 
 
 515 
 
 347 
 
 556 
 
 264 
 
 536 
 
 196 
 
 477 
 
 282 
 
 547 
 
 270 
 
 537 
 
 279 
 
 545 
 
 280 
 
 545 
 
 203 
 
 482 
 
 283 
 
 548 
 
 180 
 
 464 
 
 241 
 
 525 
 
 276 
 
 541 
 
 205 
 
 482 
 
 259 
 
 534 
 
 284 
 
 548 
 
 40 
 
 403 
 
 34 
 
 398 
 
 291 
 
 553 
 
 278 
 
 542 
 
 267 
 
 537 
 
 255 
 
 532 
 
 125 
 
 446 
 
 202 
 
 481 
 
 8 
 
 391 
 
 278 
 
 543 
 
 19 
 
 393 
 
 278 
 
 543 
 
 359 
 
 558 
 
 361 
 
 558 
 
 355 
 
 557 
 
 262 
 
 535 
 
 281 
 
 546 
 
 384 
 
 562 
 
 326 
 
 555 
 
 276 
 
 541 
 
 351 
 
 556 
 
 22 
 
 394 
 
 351 
 
 556 
 
 287 
 
 550 
 
 351 
 
 556
 
 606 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 in 
 
 The poetry of earth is never dead . 
 
 The stranger lighted from his steed 
 
 The sun, with his great eye . 
 
 The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun 
 
 There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men . 
 
 There is a charm in footing slow across a silent pla: 
 
 Think not of it, sweet one, so 
 
 This living hand, now warm and capable 
 
 This mortal body of a thousand days 
 
 This pleasant tale is like a little copse 
 
 Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness 
 
 Thrush, What the, said . 
 
 Thus in alternate uproar and sad peace 
 
 Time's sea hath been five years at its slow ebb 
 
 'Tis the witching hour of night 
 
 To **** (Georgiana Augusta Wylie) 
 
 To *•****. Sonnet 
 
 To G. A. W. Sonnet . 
 
 To-night I'll have my friar— let me think 
 
 To one who has been long in city pent 
 
 Unfelt, unheard, unseen . 
 
 Upon a Sabbath-day it fell 
 
 Upon a time, before the faery broods 
 
 Vauxhall, To a Lady seen for a few moments at. Sonnet 
 
 Was ever such a night ? .... 
 
 Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow 
 
 Well, well, I know what ugly jeopardy . 
 
 What can I do to drive away .... 
 
 What is more gentle than a wind in summer ? 
 
 What the Thrush said. Lines from a letter to John Hamilton 
 
 Reynolds 
 
 What though, for showing truth to flatter'd state 
 
 What though while the wonders of nature exploring 
 
 When by my solitary hearth I sit . 
 
 When I have fears that I may cease to be 
 
 When they were come into the Faery's Court 
 
 When wedding fiddles are a-playing 
 
 Where be ye going, you Devon maid ? . 
 
 Where is my noble herald ? . . . . 
 
 Where's the Poet ? show him ! show him 
 
 Where — where — where shall I find a messenger ? 
 
 Who loves to peer up at the morning sun 
 
 Who, who from Dian's feast would be away ? 
 
 Why did I laugh to-night ? No voice will tell 
 
 Woman ! when I behold thee flippant, vain . 
 
 Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition. Sonnet 
 
 Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison. Sonnet 
 
 Written on a Blank Page in Shakespeare's Poems, facing " A 
 
 Lover's Complaint ". Sonnet . . . . . 
 
 Written upon the top of Ben Nevis. Sonnet 
 
 You have my secret ; let it not be breath'd . . . . 
 Young Calidore is paddling o'er the lake 
 
 Text. 
 
 38 
 260 
 260 
 281 
 
 98 
 
 358 
 
 255 
 
 254 
 283 
 
 274 
 
 194 
 
 258 
 
 224 
 
 279 
 
 264 
 16 
 31 
 33 
 
 352 
 35 
 
 255 
 241 
 
 147 
 279 
 
 333 
 256 
 
 321 
 
 253 
 40 
 
 258 
 32 
 
 14 
 
 i8 
 
 277 
 359 
 355 
 261 
 295 
 256 
 308 
 276 
 
 134 
 
 284 
 
 20 
 
 351 
 32 
 
 288 
 282 
 
 300 
 10 
 
 Notes. 
 402 
 534 
 534 
 546 
 436 
 
 558 
 532 
 532 
 
 547 
 540 
 476 
 
 533 
 512 
 
 544 
 536 
 392 
 396 
 397 
 557 
 398 
 
 532 
 
 525 
 453 
 
 544 
 
 555 
 532 
 554 
 532 
 403 
 
 533 
 396 
 392 
 393 
 542 
 558 
 557 
 535 
 553 
 532 
 553 
 541 
 450 
 
 549 
 393 
 556 
 396 
 
 551 
 547 
 
 553 
 391
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 Annals of the Fine Arts, 476. 
 
 Arabian Nights, The, 424, 507. 
 
 Ariosto, xxvi, Iviii. 
 
 Arnold (Matthew), his criticism of Keats's sensuousness discussed, xxxvii, xxxviii. 
 
 Arnold (VV. T.), [Poems of Keats (1883)], misjudges Keats, 437, 441 ; on Keats's 
 
 use of Lempriere, 499; work on Keats's vocabulary, 570, 571, 573-6, 579- 
 
 82. 
 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 423. 
 Auctores Mythographi Latlni, vide Hyginus. 
 
 Bacchus and Ariadne, vide Titian. 
 
 Bailey (Benjamin), entertains Keats at Oxford, 566; interests him in Words- 
 worth, xxxviii ; in Milton, 437, 489 ; in Dante, 436 ; his criticism of Endymion, 
 413 ; Letters to, xxxviii, 394, 412, 455, 485, 489, 533, 545, 558. 
 
 Beattie, xxiii. 
 
 Beaumont (Francis), Letter to Ben Jonson, 481. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, vide Fletcher. 
 
 Beauty, Keats's passion for, 419, 473 ; its relation with Truth, xxxiv, xxxvii, 195 ; 
 to be found in the world, Iviii ; its immortality in art, 476 ; cf. also 53, 206, 
 etc. 
 
 Bible, Keats's use of, 408, 436, 452, 462, 520, 521, 524. 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 412, 413. 
 
 Blake (William), Keats's debt to, 534. 
 
 Boccaccio, liv, 168 ; his Decameron the source o{ Isabella, 460. 
 
 Boileau, his Art of Poetry, 408. 
 
 Brawne (Fanny), described by Keats, 530; poems written to, 251-4, 287; Keats's 
 relations with, 530-2 ; cf. also Chronological Table, 567. 
 
 Bridges (Mr. Robert), interpretation of Sleep and Poetry, 406 ; on Ode to a 
 Nightingale, 475 ; on influence of Dante, 516 ; on Miltonism of Hyperion, 
 519; on Keats's vocabulary, 573, 576, 577; cf. also 397, 438, 544, etc. 
 
 Brown (Charles Armitage), xxii, Ixii, 559,566, 567; Letters to, y^, 452; Spen- 
 serian Stanzas on, 361 ; on composition of Ode to a Nightingale, 472 ; and 
 of Hyperion, 484 ; on remodelling of Hyperion, 515 ; on Otho, 551 ; on King 
 Stephen, 555. 
 
 Browne (William of Tavistock), general influence upon Keats, xxiii, xxix, xlviii, 
 394 ; on Keats's vocabulary, 579 ; cf. also 571 and Glossary ; Britannia's 
 Pastorals, 394, 396, 420, 470, 473, 527. 
 
 Browning (Robert), 463, 534. 
 
 Burns (Robert), 395, 546, 547. 
 
 Burton, Anatomy of Melancholie source of Lamia, xlvi, 163, 453 ; suggests the Eve 
 of St. Agnes (?), 465 ; cf 455, 465, 478, 482, 531. 
 
 Byron (Lord), criticises Keats, 403, 493, 494 ; Keats's criticisms of, 347, 409 ; cf. 
 also xxiii, 413, 460, 539, 553, 559, 561. 
 
 Campbell (Thomas), The Soldier's Dream, 435 ; The Rainbow, 459.
 
 608 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Gary, vide Dante. 
 
 Chalmers, English Poets, 423, 485, 526. 
 
 Chamberlayne, Pharonnida, 415. 
 
 Chapman (George), general influence upon Keats, xxiii, xxix, xlv, xlvi, 36, 39H, 
 399 ; upon Keats's vocabulary and style, 577-9 ; cf. also 571, 580 and Glossary, 
 585-600; his Homer's Iliad, 485, 495, 499, 555 ; as a source for Hyperion, xlvi ; 
 his Odyssey, 394, 409, 440; Hymn to Apollo, 434, 518; Hymn to Pan, 420, 
 426 ; The Works and Days of Hesiod, 485, 499. 
 
 Chatterton (Thomas), xix, xxiii, li, Iv, 395, 408, 419, 451, 526, 556; Endymion 
 dedicated to, 417; Mlla, 535; Excellent Ballad of Charitie, 465, 495; in- 
 fluence upon Keats's vocabulary, 584; cf. also 571, 580-4 and Glossary. 
 
 Chaucer, xxiv, 56, 274, 409, 463, 469, 570, 571, 575, 583; The Canterbury Tales, 
 versification of, 575 ; Troiliis and Crcsseyde, 429 ; The Flowre and the Leafe 
 (pseudo-Chaucerian), 389, 405, 540, 583 ; cf. also Glossary. 
 
 Clarke (Charles Cowden), Epistle to, 27-30; influence on Keats, ib., xxi-xxiii, 
 395 ; his Recollections of Writers, etc., the source of much information upon 
 Keats, 387, 388, 392, 397, 398, 402, 441, 448, 470, 540; cf. also 564, 565, 
 568, 569. 
 
 Classics, vide Greek. 
 
 Claude, Enchanted Castle, 475, 537. 
 
 Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Ancient Mariner, 447 ; Ballad of Dark Ladye, ib. ; 
 Christabel, 409, 467, 469, 526; Essays on the Fine Arts, position therein 
 compared with Keats's in / Stood Tip-toe, 389; Lectures on Shakespeare, 
 424; The Nightingale, 438, 461, 474; cf. also 527, 572, 576. 
 
 Collins (William), Ix, 478, 576 ; How sleep the brave, 452 ; Ode to Evening, 583 ; 
 influence on Keats's vocabulary, 583, 584 ; cf. also Glossary. 
 
 Colvin (Mr. Sidney), debt of present editor to, x ; his Life of Keats (English Men 
 of Letters Series) and Letters of John Keats quoted passim ; A Morning's 
 Work in a Hampstead Garden, 473 ; on sources of Endymion, 415, 416, 420 ; 
 and of Hyperion, 485 ; criticisms oi Lamia, xlii, 459; Isabella, 463 ; Ode to 
 a Nightingale, 475 ; Eve of St. Mark, 526; etc. 
 
 Cortez, 36 ; substituted by Keats for Balboa, 399 ; Titian's portrait of, ib. 
 
 Courthope (Mr. W. J.), attack on Keats in Liberal Movement in English Litera- 
 ture, 429. 
 
 Cowper (William), On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture, 395. 
 
 Crewe (Lord), discovery of MS. of Fall of Hyperion and other poems, xi, 515. 
 
 Criticism, attitude of Keats to, 413, 414, 418, 419; Keatss powers of, ix, xxxi, 
 396, 454, 461, etc., etc. 
 
 Dante, Keats's interest in, aroused by Bailey, 436, 445 ; Cary's translation of, 
 
 445, 465, 466, 550, 567; influence of, on Fall of Hyperion, 516. 
 Defoe, 580. 
 Dilke (C. Wentworth), 565 ; Letter to, 448 ; his view of America contested by 
 
 Keats, 536. 
 Drama, Keats's desire to excel in, Iviii ; possibilities of his ultimate success in, 
 
 lix ; cf. also 551, 552, 554, 555. 
 Drayton (Michael), Matt in the Moon, its influence on Endymion, 4 15, 416, 420. 
 Drummond (of Hawthornden), 414, 415, 441. 
 Dryden (John), Annus Mirabilis, 462; influence of The Fables upon Lamia, 
 
 lii, liii, 453. 
 Dunlop, History of Fiction, 468. 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 412, 453, 493. 
 
 Elgin Marbles, xliii, Iviii, 274, 275, 400, 410, 422, 476, 540. 
 
 Elizabethans, Keats's affinity with, xlv-xlvii; his debt to, notes, />ajsjw». 
 
 Emotion, its antagonism with Reason, xxxvii, xii, xlii, 459, 533, 538, 539 ; the guide 
 
 to Truth, xxxvii. 
 Endymion, original title of / Stood Tip-toe, 388.
 
 GENERAL INDEX 609 
 
 Endymion, a Poetical Romance, Preface, 51 ; Rejected Preface and Dedication, 
 417; critical introduction to, 410, 419; its sources, 414-6; its style and 
 versification, 411 ; criticisms of, 412, 413 ; Keats's views of, 413, 414 ; signi- 
 ficance of the allegory, xl, 428, 443, 448. 
 
 Examiner, The (ed. by Leigh Hunt), -go, 395, 403, 413, 540; influence on 
 Keats, xxiii. 
 
 Fall of Hyperion, The, a Vision, allegory of, 516 ; attempt to eliminate Miltonisms 
 
 from, 519 ; newly discovered passage in, 518 ; changes from Hyperion, 520-4 ; 
 
 its place in the development of Keats's theories of life and poetry, xli, 516-9. 
 Fletcher, xxiii, 456, 479 ; Fair Maid of the Inn, 481 ; Faithful Shepherdess, 390, 
 
 394, 415, 420, 450, 479; Humourous Lieutenant, 441 ; Maid's Tragedy, 415, 
 
 440; Philaster, 396. 
 Forman (Mr. H. Buxton, C.B.), debt of present editor to, x ; his edition of the 
 
 Works of Keats (5 vols., 1900-01) quoted passim ; his valuable work upon 
 
 the text of Keats referred to, ix. 
 Frere (Hookham), The Monks and the Giants, xxvi, 460. 
 
 Genty The, a Literary Annual, ed. by T. Hood, 540. 
 
 Glaucus, episode of, its significance in the allegory of Endymion, xl, 428. 
 
 Gray, Letters of, 497 ; Odes of, Ix, 478; Progress of Poesy, 445. 
 
 Greek myth and legend, Keats's early love for, xxi ; his debt to the Elizabethans 
 rather than to Lempriere, xliv-xlvi, and cf. notes, passim ; his appreciation of 
 Elgin Marbles, xliii, etc. ; his association of Nature with, xliii, xlv, 390, 529 ; 
 his sympathy with the spirit of, xliii, etc. ; his divergence irom the spirit of, 
 xliv, xlvi, 1, etc.; Shelley on Keats's attitude to, xliv ; Wordsworth helps him 
 to understanding of, 390, 475. 
 
 Haydon (Benjamin Robert), 399, 565, 566; Autobiography (ed. by T. Taylor), 
 Ixiii, 458, 535, 557 ; its slanders on Keats, 401 ; his influence on Endymion, 
 412 ; he interprets to Keats the Elgin Marbles, xliii ; Letters to, xxxiv, 
 xxxviii, 402, 411, 431, 540. 
 
 Hazlitt (William), xxxiv, 397, 565, 566; admiration of Keats for, 431; Keats 
 attends his lectures, 566 ; On a Landscape of N. Poussin, 430 ; On Gusto, 
 
 539- ^ . 
 
 Heroic couplet, the, Hunt's views of, xxiv ; Keats's early use of, xxix, 394, 405 ; 
 
 in Endymion, 411 ; in Lamia, 453. 
 
 Hesiod, Theogony, 485, 499, 506-8; Works and Days, vide Chapman. 
 
 Hessey (James Augustus), Letter to, on Endymion, 413. 
 
 Homer, vide Chapman. 
 
 Hood (Thomas), The Gem, a Literary Annual, 540; Hood's Magazine, 535, 544. 
 
 Hoops (Professor J.), Keats's Jugend und jfugendgedichte, 568, ^dg; edition of 
 Hyperion, 571. 
 
 Houghton (Lord) (R. Monckton Milnes), Life, Letters and Literary Remains of 
 Keats quoted in notes, passim ; his mistake as to the sources of Keats's 
 vocabulary, 570. 
 
 Humanity, growing feeling for, in the poetry of Keats, xxxix-xli, Iviii, 407, 423, 
 444, 513, 517, 519. 
 
 Hunt (James Henry Leigh), 564-7 ; date of Keats's first meeting with, 568 ; 
 dedication of 1817 volume to, 2, 387; influence on the mind and art of 
 Keats, xxiii-xxx, xxxix ; influence on his vocabulary, 576, 577 ; association with 
 Spenser in mind of Keats, xxiv, 395 ; Keats has " something in common 
 with," 418 ; called Libertas, 395 ; criticism of Wordsworth, xxv ; of the 1817 
 volume, 390, 403 ; of Endymion, 412 ; of Lamia, etc., 453 ; of Hyperion, 
 493, 512 ; his Examiner, q.v. ; Feast of the Poets, xxiv, 392 ; Literary Pocket 
 Book, 545, 547, 561 ; Sonnet on Nile, 543; Story of Rimini, xxiv, 391, 394, 
 427 ; cf. also 397, 400, 402, 410, 413, 465. 
 
 Hyginus, Keats's use of, 450, 50*5. 
 
 39
 
 (510 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Hyperion, general introduction to, 4S4-94 ; date of composition, 484 ; newly 
 discovered autograph MS. of, 494; criticisms of, 493, 494; Miltonism of, 
 489-93 ; original design of, 486 ; how far adhered to, 487, 488 ; relation with 
 the Fall of Hyperion, 515 ; significance of, in development of Keats's mind 
 and art, xli ; sources of, xlvi, 485. 
 
 Imagination, Keats's views of the, xxxvii. 
 
 Indicator, The, poems of Keats published in, 526, 549, 561 ; Lamia, Hyperion, 
 etc., reviewed by Hunt in, 453, 493, 512. 
 
 Jeffrey, his criticism of Keats, 412, 453, 493. 
 Jeffrey (Miss), Letter to, 530. 
 Johnson (Samuel), xlvii. 
 
 Jonson (Ben), xlvii, 420; Epithalattiion, ^^g; Hymn to Diana, 449; The Satyr, 
 465 ; cf. also Glossary. 
 
 Keats (Fanny), 565; Letters to, 411, 551. 
 
 Keats (George), 387, 564-7; Epistle to, 24; Sonnet to, 31; Letters to, xxxiv, 
 
 409, 411, 453, 477; jfournal Letters to and Georgiana Keats, xxxvi, 
 
 xxxvii, 479, 481, 525, 526, 528, 536, 539, 549, 552. 
 Keats (Georgiana nee Wylie), 392, 564, 566 ; Poems to, 16, 33 ; Letters to, vide 
 
 Keats (George). 
 Keats (John), vide Chronological Table, 564-9. 
 Keats (Thomas), 512, 547, 564-6; Sonnet to, 34; Letters to, 479, 498, 505, 535, 
 
 546, 547- 
 Kirke White, 408. 
 
 Lamb (Charles), at Haydon's dinner party, 458, 566; criticism of Isabella, 463 ; 
 oi Lamia, 456, 463 ; of the Eve of St. Agnes, 469; Essays of Elia, 447. 
 
 Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems, 1820, its character and 
 reception, 452, 453 ; Keats on, 452. 
 
 Landor (Walter Savage), Gf&/r, 496, 514; on Koskiusko, 403. 
 
 Lempriere, Classical Dictionary, Keats's early reading of, xxi ; limited extent of 
 its influence upon Keats, xliv, 499 ; cf. also 390, 423, 424, 447, 485, 486, 506. 
 
 Love, treatment of, in Keats's early poetry, 391, 393 ; influenced by the associa- 
 tion in his mind of Spenser and Leigh Hunt, xxvii-xxix ; later development 
 of Keats, liv-lvii. 
 
 Lyly, Endimion, 414. 
 
 Manchester Quarterly, The (1883), article by G. Milner, On some Marginalia 
 made by D. G. Rossetti in a copy of Keats's Poems, vide Rossetti. 
 
 Marlowe (Christopher), Hero and Leander, 437. 
 
 Marston (John), The Fawn, 418; Antonio and Mellida, 422. 
 
 Massinger (Philip), 590, 595. 
 
 Mathew (George Felton), 22, 394, 395. 
 
 Medijevalism, Keats's affinity with the spirit of, Iv-lviii, 469, 526, 527. 
 
 Meredith (George), 475. 
 
 Milner (George), On some Marginalia tnade by D. G. Rossetti in a copy of 
 Keats's Poems, vide Rossetti. 
 
 Milnes (R. Monckton), vide Houghton. 
 
 Milton (John), early influence upon Keats, xxiii ; influence upon Hyperion, xlvi, 1, 
 489-93 ; influence on Keats's style and vocabulary, 574, 576, 580, 582, 584 ; 
 cf. also Glossary, 585-600 ; Keats's criticisms of, li ; his enthusiasm for, 489 ; 
 his Notes on, 455, 497, 503, 512, 546; Comus, 401, 405, 429, 432, 435, 
 440, 446, 448, 456, 471, 493, 535, 552, 554, 555 ; Death of a Fair Infant, 
 474; II Penseroso, 429, 433, 437, 457, 482, 520; L' Allegro, 390, 395, 437, 
 448, 457. 479. 556; Lycidas, 388, 397, 402, 422, 433, 435, 439, 446,478, 
 493, 512, 536, 570; Ode on the Nativity, 446, 451, 478; Paradise Lost, 
 393, 398, 403. 431. 434-40, 448, 449, 455-7, 467, 471, 485, 488-512, 520, 
 521, 524, 533, 539, 554, 556, 560; Paradise Regained, 433, 451, 511, 561; 
 Samson Agonistes, 492 ; Sonnets, 557 ; cf. also, 453, 458.
 
 GENERAL INDEX 611 
 
 Moneta, source in Keats, and her relation with Mnemosyne, 517. 
 Morning Chronicle, The, 412. 
 Morning Post, The, xxiv, 396. 
 Moore (Thomas), xxiii, xxviii, 392. 
 Music, Keats's susceptibility to, 396. 
 
 Napoleon, xxxvi, 402. 
 
 Nature, treatment of, in Keats's poetry, Ixii-lxviii ; Keats's sui-ceptibility to the 
 beauty of, Ixii, Ixiii, etc.; how far inspiration of his poetry, xx, 389 ; its asso- 
 ciation in his mind with classical legend, Ixiii, 389, 390, 497, 529, etc. ; with 
 literature, 479, etc. ; with romance, Ixvi, 497, 541, etc. ; cruelty of, felt by 
 Keats, 539 ; eternity of contrasted with mutability of human life, 475 ; realism 
 in Keats's delineation of, Ixiii, Ixiv, 541. 
 
 New Times, The, vide Lamb. 
 
 Ode, Keats's success in the, lix ; cf. also notes to the several odes. 
 
 Olliers, the, 387. 
 
 Orion, source of Keats's picture of, 430. 
 
 Ovid, Metamorphoses, vide Sandys. 
 
 Owen (Mrs. Frances), yohn Keats, a Study, x, 449. 
 
 Palgrave (Francis Turner), Poetns of Keats (Golden Treasury Series), 394, 398, 
 
 462, 467. 
 Pan, Hymn to, 58 ; its source, 390, 420. 
 Peona, source of name, 424 ; significance of the part she plays in Endymion, 
 
 424. 425. 444. 445- 
 
 Poetical character, Keats's view of, lix, 533 {cf. also, 443, 444) ; its contrast with 
 the practical, 516, 517, 519. 
 
 Poetry, Keats's chief dicta on, xxxiv, xxxv, Ixiv, Ixvii, 525, 545 ; his debt to pre- 
 decessors in English, xx ; his early conception of, xxvi ; his later conception 
 of, xxxi ; his passion for, 541 ; its relation with Nature, 389, 390. 
 
 Politics, Keats's, 32, 98, 359, 500; influenced by Hunt, xxiii; by Wordsworth, 
 xxxvi. 
 
 Pope (Alexander), xxiv ; Keats's criticism of, 44 ; Byron's reply, 404 ; the Essay 
 on Criticism, 408 ; Essay on Man, 395. 
 
 Poussin (Nicolas), 430. 
 
 Quarterly Review, The, 412, 413, 494. 
 
 Raphael, 399. 
 
 Read (W. T.), Dissertation on Keats and Spenser, 392, 472, 571, 580, 581. 
 
 Realism, growing feeling for, in Keats, Iviii. 
 
 Reason, its antagonism to emotion, xli, xlii, 459, 533, 538, 539. 
 
 Religion, Keats's views on, xxxvi, 282, 545. 
 
 Reynolds (John Hamilton), 270, 537, 565-7 ; cf. also li, 399, 482 ; criticises 
 
 Endymion, 413; Robin Hood written to, 4S2 ; Letters io, xxxii, xxxiii, xxxviii, 
 
 406, 411, t27, 450, 453, 482, 485, 489, 533, 541, 542. 
 Reynolds (Sir Joshua), Discourses on the Grand Style in Painting, 400. 
 Rice (James), Letter to, 529. 
 Robertson, History of America, 398. 
 Romanticism of Keats's genius, lii-lvi, Ixvi, Ixvii. 
 Rossetti (Dante Gabriel), criticism of Keats quoted from Marginalia made in a 
 
 copy of Keats's poems by, 472, 525, 534, 546, 550, 556. 
 
 Salvator, 399. 
 
 Sandys, Translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, its interpretation of Ovid, 416 ; 
 edition of, used by Keats, 391, 505 ; Keats's study of, discussed and illus- 
 trated, xlv, 390, 391, 410, 420-39, 442, 447-53, 454-57. 461. 481, 485. 499. 503. 
 505, 506, 508, 511 ; its influence on the plot oi Endymion, 416, 417; on the 
 Style and vocabulary of Keats, 580 ; cf. also 571 and Glossary.
 
 612 JOHN KEATS 
 
 Saturn, Keats's conception of the character, debt to Milton's Satan, 502; to King 
 Lear, 496 ; weakening of his character in the Fall of Hyperion, 523. 
 
 Scott (Sir Walter), xxviii. 424, 468, 535, 584. 
 
 Sea, Keats's feeling for the, 541. . . ^ ^, . 
 
 Severn (Joseph), 564, 568; influences Keats in his appreciation of Elgin 
 Marbles, 540 ; influences Keats in his appreciation of Milton, 489 ; Life 
 and Letters (ed. W. Sharp), Ixiii, 414, 551, 552. 
 
 Shakespeare, extent and character of his influence on Keats, xxxn-xxxv ; influ- 
 ence on' Keats's vocabulary, 581 ; cf. also Glossary, 585-600 ; as Keats's 
 inspiring genius, 410; reality of, to Keats, 544; All's Well that Ends Well, 
 513 ; Ant. and Cleo., 553 ; As You Like It, xxxiii, 388, 445 ; Coriolamis, 553 ; 
 Cymbeline, 429; Hamlet, 423, 452, 470, 546, 553; Henry F., 513; fulitis 
 Ccesar, 440 ; Kitig Lear, xxxiii, xxxiv. 542, 558 ; influences Keats's conception 
 of Saturn, 496 ; Macbeth, 467, 470, 500, 555 ; Merchant of Venice, 414 ; Mid- 
 summer-Nighfs Dream, xxxiii, 392, 395, 397, 431 ; Much Ado, 429, 441 ; 
 Othello, lix, 431; Pericles, 424, 437. 527; Richard IL, 554; Richard 
 IIL, 437 ; Romeo and Juliet, 391, 429, 558 ; Sonnets, xxxiii, supply motto for 
 Endymion, 417 ; Tempest, xxxiii, 424, 427, 554 ; Timon of Athens, 500, 582 ; 
 Titus Androniciis, 500; Troilus and Cressida, xlii, 429,430, 571; Twelfth 
 Night, 430; Venus and Adonis, lix, 432; Winter's Tale, 421, 437, 455 ; cf. 
 also 409, 410, 521, 570, 576, 580. 
 
 Shelley (Percy Bysshe), 565, 566, 568 ; his conception of poetry compared with 
 Keats's, 389; his criticisms on Endymion, 413 ; on Hyperion, 494; mistakes 
 as to Keats's character, 401 ; Adonais, xix, 407; Defence of Poetry, 389; 
 Love's Philosophy, 429 ; Sonnet on Nile, 542 ; cf. also 387, 423, 424. 
 
 Smith (Horace), 397. 
 
 Smollett, Peregrine Pickle, 580, 594. 
 
 Sonnet, Keats's early use of Italian form and later preference for Shakespearian, 
 xxxiii, 543, 544; his experiments in sonnet form, 548, 549. 
 
 Spence, Polymetis, xxi, xlv, 390, 433, 478. 
 
 Spenser (Edmund), Keats first introduced to, by C. C. Clarke, xxi ; he associates 
 Spenser with Leigh Hunt, xxviii ; the influence of Spenser upon his genius 
 as a whole, xxi, xxii, xxxiv; on Endymion, xlv; on the Eve of St. Agnes, 
 Ivii ; on his vocabulary, 570, 571, 578. 579, and cf. Glossary, 585-600 ; 
 Keats's debt in Endymion, bk. iii., to Marriage of the Medway, 442, 443 ; 
 Colin Clout's come home againe, 395, 421, 422; Epithalamiitm, xxi, 392, 
 395 ; the Faerie Queene, xxii, xlvii, 390-5, 397, 421-7, 430, 432, 434, 441, 
 442, 450, 455, 457, 468, 472, 485, 508, 526, 544, 558, 560; Muiopotmos, 
 387 ; Nuptial Odes, influence of, 388 ; Prothalamium, 421 ; Shepherd's 
 Calendar, 392, 471. 
 
 Spenserians (17th century), influence on Endymion, xlviii 411 ; (i8th century), 
 influence on early work of Keats, xxiii, 393, 558, 582, 583. 
 
 Stephens, Reminiscences of Keats {Houghton MSS.), xxvii. 
 
 Tasso, 392. 
 
 Taylor (John), Letters to, xxxii, xxxiv, Iviii, 428, 464, 466. 
 
 Tennyson (Alfred, Lord), 398. 
 
 Thomson (James), influence on Keats's vocabulary, 583, and cf. Glossary; The 
 
 Seasons, 420, 449, 556; The Castle of Indolence, 529. 
 Tighe (Mrs.), xxiii; Psyche, or the Legend of Love, 390, 392, 478. 
 Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, i^io, ^^1, 446, 447, 455, 461, 474; his portrait of 
 
 Cortez, 399. 
 Tooke, Pantheon, xxi, xlv, 485. 
 
 Vergil, 393, 436, 439, 491, 500, 508; Keats's translation of, xxi. 
 
 Versification of 1817 volume, xxix, 405 ; of early Epistles, 394; of Endymion, 
 
 411 ; of Lamia, Iii, 453 ; of Isabella, 460 ; of Eve of St. Agnes, Iv; of Eve of 
 
 St. Mark, 526 ; of Epistle to Reynolds, 538.
 
 GENERAL INDEX 613 
 
 Vocabulary, Keats's poetic, its sources and character, 570-84. 
 
 Vulgarity, taint of, in surroundings of Keats's early life, xix ; its effect upon his 
 
 art and style fostered by Leigh Hunt, xxviii, xxix, xlviii, liii ; its traces in his 
 
 vocabulary, 572. 
 
 Wells (Charles), 397. 
 
 Woodhouse (Richard), his annotated copy of the Poems of 1817, xi, 391-8, 401- 
 405, 410, 540, 570 ; his MS. Commonplace Book, 393, 461, 494, etc., 536, 544 ; 
 his corrections oi Lamia proof-sheets, 454 ; gives original design of Hyperion, 
 486; refers to Sandys's Ovid as an authority of Keats's, 391, 505 ; Letters to, 
 lix, 473, 484; his transcript of the Fall of Hyperion and other poems, xi, 515, 
 562. 
 
 "Wordsworth (William), nature and extent of influence upon Keats, xxxv-xl, 390, 
 451, 475, 476, etc. ; helps Keats to understand Greek mythology, 390, 475 ; 
 but differs from Keats in his appreciation of it, xliii ; his " wise passiveness " 
 compared with Keats's " indolence," 534 ; Keats's criticisms of, xxxv, 406, 
 482; Leigh Hunt's criticism of, xxv ; To the Cuckoo, ^75; To the Daisy, 
 405; Dtiddon Sonnets, 476; Excursion, xxxvii, xxxviii, 390, 451, 475, 477, 
 507 ; Fidelity, 492 ; / am not one who much or oft delights, 398, 477 ; In- 
 dependence and Liberty Sonnets, xxxvi ; Intimations of Immortality, etc., 
 xxxvii; Idiot Boy, 561; Moods of my Mind, 539; Poet's Epitaph, 459; 
 Prefaces, 459 ; Redbreast and Butterfly, 540 ; Resolution and Independence, 
 561; Li7ies written above Tintern Abbey, xxxix, compared with Sleep and 
 Poetry, 406, 474 ; The White Doe of Rhylstone, 437 ; The World is too much 
 with us, 408, 421 ; Written at the Foot of Brother's Water, 557 ; cf. also 
 402, 424, 448, 573, 584. 
 
 THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED
 
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 WORLDWIDE FUND DRIVE BEGUN 
 
 House Where Keats Died May Close 
 
 BY BEVERLY GILMORE 
 
 Niwhousi News Servict 
 
 ROME— The Keats-Shelley Mem- 
 orial House in Rome stands next to 
 the famed Spanish Steps on the Piaz- 
 za di Spagna, but few tourists are 
 aware of the historic house or its con- 
 tents. 
 
 Sir Joseph Cheyne, the English 
 curator, said the house where the ro- 
 mantic poet John Keats died in 1821 
 soon would close unless a worldwide 
 appeal for funds is successful. There's 
 not enough money to maintain it in 
 these days of spiraling inflation. 
 
 • For three centuries, the Piazza di 
 Spagna has been the foreigners' 
 neighborhood in Rome. Hans Chris- 
 
 tian Andersen, Stendhal, Balzac, 
 Liszt, Goethe, Byron, Shelley and 
 Keats all are recalled as area lodgers. 
 
 The Keats-Shelley Memorial House 
 at No. 26 Piazza di Spagna overlooks 
 the piazza, the steps and a famous 
 fountain. The Old Barge, a work of 
 Bernini the Elder. 
 
 A small brass plaque identifies the 
 house and hsts the public hours (9:30 
 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 to 5:30 
 p.m., closed weekends). Admission is 
 500 lire (about 65 cents). 
 
 Miraculously, the house survived 
 two world wars and the threat of de- 
 molition early in this century, when it 
 wa"S rescued by a group of British and 
 American residents of Rome who, 
 
 with help from Italian friends, raised 
 the money to buy it. 
 
 Since 1909, when it was formally 
 opened by King Victor Emmanual of 
 Italy, maintenance funds have come 
 from renting apartments on floors not 
 used by the memoriaL 
 
 Cheyne, who became curator after 
 he retired from the diplomatic press 
 corps in Rome, said: "We're not well 
 known. Word of the house still goes 
 by chance, by accident, by word of 
 mouth. We get the passersby who see 
 the plaque." 
 
 Cheyne took a visitor out to the 
 tiny terrace adjacent to his office. 
 "See that," he pointed to the roof 
 
 Please Turn to Page 4, Col. 1 
 
 mm
 
 loi 3ngrlt£e ^imti 
 
 Thurs., Dec. 8, 1977— Part VII 3 
 
 
 tonight till -10PM* ■ 
 
 1lXl\/L^'PM. 
 
 m 
 
 *t^asadena. Downtown till 9 P.M. 
 
 k 
 
 
 #;*;.iiS. 
 
 IK 
 
 
 
 "^'^ 
 
 Hffiir nil 
 
 Jii;®;
 
 1 
 
 4\Party|l— ThurJ..'Dec.8,1977 Xoi ^n^tki Himti 
 
 KEATS-SHELLEY HOUSE 
 
 Continued from Third Page 
 
 overhang. "It's badly in need of re- 
 pair. The entire roof needs redoing." 
 
 The curator also worried about se- 
 curity. "There is no alarm system and 
 that is a priority"— to protect the 
 books (many of them first editions) 
 and priceless materials in the open 
 ^splays. 
 
 Last spring an appeal for the house 
 was mounted by the new curator and 
 association to raise $50,000 as an en- 
 dowment for the "continued existence 
 of the memorial." Otherwise, Cheyne 
 says, it will close. 
 
 Patrons of the appeal include for- 
 midable names in the English art 
 world, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Sir John 
 Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness, Sir John 
 Pope-Hennessy, Sir Ralph Richard- 
 
 son, Sir Sacheverell Sitwell. Cheyne 
 hopes Americans also will come to 
 the aid of thehouse. 
 
 The Keats -Shelley Memorial Assn. 
 in London owns the house and con- 
 tents, under the patronage of the 
 Queen Mother. Contributions may be 
 sent to: The Keats -Shelley Memorial 
 Appeal, 24 Wilton St., London SW 1, 
 England. 
 
 Cheyne himself is a Keats-Shelley 
 scholar and speaks to groups of as 
 many as 40 persons in the house 
 rooms. "All I require is some advance 
 notice," he said. Tour groups can 
 write to Sir Joseph Cheyne at No. 26 
 Piazza di Spagna, Rome, Italy. 
 
 The house is invaluable to the Eng- 
 lish-speaking world as a repository of 
 Lord Byron's, Percy Bysshe Shelley's 
 1 
 
 and John Keats's associations with 
 Italy. 
 
 The two rooms rented by Keats and 
 his artist friend Joseph Severn in 
 November, 1820, are on the "piano 
 nobile," or what Americans would 
 call the third floor. One can contem- 
 plate a shght young man (5-foot-3) 
 climbing the stairs after a walk or a 
 carriage ride during his first weeks in 
 Rome, when he still was able to go 
 about. 
 
 Scholars, professors and serious 
 students of Keats and Shelley might 
 be aware of the house with its 10,00( 
 volumes of related materials, rich dis- 
 play cases full of letters, life anc 
 death cast masks of Keats, fragment; 
 of Shelley's bones, the famous draw- 
 ing (or tracing) by Keats of the Gre 
 cian urn, paintings and manuscripts 
 But to the tourist, removed fron 
 19th-century romantic English litera 
 ture courses, the richness of the con 
 tents comes as a surprise. 
 
 • 
 
 i
 
 Here, Severn sketched the dying 
 Keats on Feb. 23, 1821, and recorded 
 his lastwords: "Don't be frightened." 
 
 From the two windows in his long, 
 narrow bedroom, the poet could look 
 out ai the Spanish Steps and the Ber- 
 nini fountain. There is a small white 
 marble fireplace in the room. 
 
 And there is the notable blue ceil- 
 ing with white and gold painted flow- 
 ers, carved in wood, exactly as Keats 
 saw them from his bed. Severn re- 
 corded Keats's impression of the ceil- 
 ing the day before the poet died: "He 
 assured me that he already seemed to 
 feel the flowers growing over him." 
 
 Here, too, Keats directed his death 
 preparations: to place the letter from 
 his fiancee, Fanny Brawne, which he 
 could not bring himself to open or 
 read, "mside his winding-sheet on his 
 heart"— and to inscribe his tombstone 
 without his name, "Here lies one 
 v/hose name was writ in water." 
 
 Severn arranged it so in the 
 
 Protestant Cemetery in Rome, where 
 Keats (and Shelley and Severn) are 
 buried. The artist who tended his 
 friend in Rome added the symbol of a 
 broken lyre to the tombstone. 
 
 All was not darkness in the rooms. 
 Severn wrote a marvelous description 
 of Keats' handling of the poor-quality 
 meals the two were being served. 
 Days of wretched food inspired the 
 poet. He dumped the evening meal 
 out the window into the piazza. 
 
 The food immediately improved, 
 Severen noted, their landlady public- 
 ly embarrassed by Keats' act. 
 
 Keats, who was a medical student 
 before he became a poet, recognized 
 in himself the tuberculosis that al- 
 ready had claimed his brother Tom. 
 Keats escaped the English winter by 
 coming to Rome, but not death. 
 
 Shelley and his family were living 
 in Pisa, Italy, in the winter of 1820-21 
 and Keats promised the Shelleys he 
 would visit them in the spring. Shel- 
 
 ley, too, had lived in Rome; he wrote 
 "Prometheus Unbound" in 1819 in the 
 ruins of the Roman baths of Caracalla. 
 Keats's death inspired Shelley's 
 "Adonais." But little more than a year 
 later, in July, 1822, Shelley wa3 
 drowned while sailing in a storm of( 
 Viareggio, Italy. A volume of Sopho-- 
 cles in one pocket and Keats's poems 
 in another were washed ashore with 
 Shelley's remains. He was a month 
 short of his 30th birthday. . . . 
 
 Mary Shelley wanted her husband 
 buried in Rome, near his friend Keats 
 and their infant son, William Shelley. 
 Quarantine laws presented a problem. 
 Only ashes could be transported. So 
 in August. Shelley's pyre was torched 
 in Greek style, his body (disinterred 
 for the ceremony) sprinkled with 
 frankincense, salt and wine, and on it 
 the copy of Keats's poems. 
 
 By 1824. Byron, aged 36, was dead 
 in Greece, the last of the three giant 
 romantic poets.
 
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