(IJunicU ^utucrGiti] IGibrarii 3lthaca. 5Jcni ^ork WORDSWORTH COLLECTION MADE BY CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN ITHACA. N. Y. THE GIFT OF VICTOR EMANUEL CLASS OF 1919 1925 Wor4 sw^ r^\/ 4-no .<^^ '< Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 9241 041 03977 THE Poetical Works OF JOHN KEATS. WITH A MEMOIR, By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, NEW YORK: JAMES MILLER, 779 BROADWAY. H KS^^^'i^ cj^ Entered according to Act of Congress, in tliA rear 1854, bj Little, Brown and CoMPANr, 9a the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Mas aachusetts. Ui CONTENTS. — ^^— PAGI Thb Life of Keats 7 Endymion: a Poetic Romance 35 Lamia 149 Isabella, or the Pot of Basil: A Story, from Boccaccio 170 The Eve of St. Agnes 189 Hyperion 208 Miscellaneous Poems. Dedication to Leigh Hunt, Ei^q * , 230 " I stood tiptoe upon a little Hill " 231 Specimen of an Induction to a Poem 238 Calidore : A Fragment 240 To some Ladies, on receiving a curious Shell.. . . 245 On receiving a Copy of Verses from the same Ladies 246 To 248 To Hope 250 Imitation of Spenser 251 " Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain ". . 252 Ode to a Nightingale 254 Ode to a Grecian Urn 256 Ode to Psyche 258 Fancy 260 Ode 262 To Autumn 264 Ode on Melancholy '. 265 Lines on the Mermaid Tavern 266 Robin Hood 267 Sleep and Poetry 269 Stanzas..... 280 Iv CONTENTS. Epistles. pagb To George Felton Mathew 285 To my Brother George 287 To Charles Cowden Clarke 292 Sonnets. To a Friend who sent me some Roses 299 To my Brother George 300 To 300 *' Solitude ! if I must with thee dwell " 301 " How manj^ Bards gild ^he lapses of Time! ".. . 3ul To G. A. W 302 Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison 302 To my Brother 303 Addressed to Haydon 303 the Same 304 On first looking into Chapman's Homer 304 On leaving some Friends at an early Hour 305 *' Keen fitful gusts are whispering here and there " 305 " To one who has been long in city pent " 306 On the Grasshopper and Cricket 3<)6 To Kosciusko 307 *' Happy is England ! I could be content " 307 The Human Seasons 308 On a Picture of Leander 308 To Ailsa Rock 309 On seeing the Elgin Marbles 309 '^'"-^o Haydon: with the preceding sonnet. 310 Written in the Cottage where Bums was born. . 310 To the Nile 312 On sitting down to read " King Lear '' once again 312 *' Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud '\, . 813 Posthumous Poems. FingaVs Cave 815 To 316 Hymn to Apollo 313 Lines 319 Song 320 Faery Song 32i La Belle Dame Sans Merci: A Ballad 322 The Eve of St. Mark. (Unfinished) 324 To Fanny 327 Sonnets. ** Oh ! how I love, on a fair summer's eve " 330 CONTENTS. t Posthumous Poems. {Continued.) pagb {bonnets. To a Young Lady who sent me a Laurel Crown . 831 " After dark vapors have oppressed our plains " . 331 Written on the Blank Space of a Leaf at the End of Chaucer's Tale of "- The Flowre and the Lefe '' 332 On the Sea 332 On Leigh Hunt's Poem, the '' Story of Rimini ". 333 *' When I have fears that I may cease to be '' . . . 333 To Homer 334 Answer to a Sonnet by J. H. Reynolds 834 To J. H. Reynolds 335 To 335 To Sleep 336 On Fame 336 On Fame 337 " Why did I laugh to-night ? No voice will tell " 337 On a Dream 338 " If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd " 338 " The daj'' is gone, and all its sweets are gone " . 339 " I cry your mercy — pity — love — ay, love "... 339 Keats's Last Sonnet 34O \ THE LIFE OF KEATS. There are few poets whose works contain slight* er hints of their personal history than those of Keats ; yet there are, perhaps, even fewer, whose real lives, or rather the conditions upon which they lived, are more clearly traceable in what they have written. To write the life of a man was formerly understood to mean the cataloguing and placing of circumstances, of those things which stood about the life and were more or less related to it, but were not the life itself. But Biography from day to day holds dates cheaper and facts dearer. A man's life (as far as its outward events are concerned) may be made for him, as his clothes are by the tailor, of this cut or that, of finer or coarser material, but the- gait and gesture show through, and give to trap- pings, in themselves characterless, an individuality that belongs to the man himself. It is those essen- tial facts which underlie the life and make the individual man, that are of importance, and it is the cropping out of these upon the surface, that gives us indications by which to judge of the true nature hidden below. Every man has his block given him, and the figure he cuts will depend very much upon the shape of that — upon the knots and twists which existed in it from the beginning. We were designed in the cradle, perhaps earlier, and it is in finding out this design, and shaping our- selves to it, that our years are spent wisely It is 8 TEE LIFE OF KEATS. the vain endeavor to make ourselves Tvhat we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough. Keats hardly lived long enough to develop a well-outlined character, for that results commonly from the resistance made by temperament to the many influences by which the world, as it may happen then to be, endeavors to mould every one in its own image. What his temperament was we can see clearly, and also that it subordinated itself more and more to the discipline of art. John Keats, the second of four children, like Chaucer, was a Londoner, but, unlike Chaucer, he was certainly not of gentle blood. Mr. Monckton Milnes, who seems to have had a kindly wish to create him gentleman by brevet, says that he was *' born in the upper ranks of the middle class.'* This shows a commendable tenderness for the nerves of English society, and reminds one of Northcote's story of the violin-player who, wishing to compliment his pupil, George III., divided all fiddlers into three classes, those who could not play at all, those who played very badly, and those who played y^vy well, assuring his majesty that he had made such commendable progress as to have al- ready reached the second rank. The American public will perhaps not be disturbed by knowing that • the father of Keats (as Mr. Milnes had told us in an earlier biography) "' was employed in the estab- lishment of Mr. Jennings, the proprietor of large livery-stables on the Pavement in Moorfields, near- ly opposite the entrance into Finsbury Circus.'' So that, after all, it was not so bad ; for, Jirs% Mr. Jennings was a proprietor ; second^ he was the proprietor of an establishment; thirds he was the proprietor of a large establishment ; and, fourth^ this large estabhshment was nearly opposite Fins- THE LIFE OF KEATS. 9 bury Circus, — a name which vaguely dilates the imagination with all sorts of conjectured. gi^ndeurs. It is true, Leigh Hunt asserts that Keats " was a little too sensitive on the score of his oriofin/' * but we can find no trace of such a feelino; either in his poetry, or in such of his letters as have been print- ed. We suspect the fact to have been that he resented with becoming pride the vulgar Black- wood and Quarterly standard which measured genius by genealogies. It is enough that his poeti- cal pedigree is of the best, tracing through Spenser to Chaucer, and that Pegasus does not stand at livery even in the largest establishments in Moor- fields. As well as we can make out, then, the father of Keats was a groom in the service of Mr. Jennings, ^ and married the daughter of his master. Thus, on the mothers side, at least, we find a gi^andfather ; on the father's there is no hint of such an ancestor, and we must charitably take him for granted. It is of more importance that the elder Keats was a man of sense and energy, and that his wife was a lively and intelligent woman, who hastened the birth of the poet by her passionate devotion to amusement, bringing him into the world, a seven months* child, on the 29th October, 1795, instead of the 29th December, as would have been con- ventionally proper. Mr. Milnes describes her as " tall, with a large oval face, and a somewhat satur- nine demeanor." f This last circumstance does not agree very well with what he had just before told us of her liveliness ; but he consoles us by adding that '' she succeeded, hoicever^ in inspiring her children with the profoundest affection.'* This was particularly true of John, who once, when between four and five years old, mounted guard at her * HunVs Autobiography^ (American edition,) vol. ii. p. 86- t Milnes 'fl Life of Keats^ (American edition,) p. 15' ' 10 THE LIFE OF KEATS. chamber-door with an old sword, when she was ill, and the doctor had ordered her not to be dis- turbed.* In 1804, Keats being in his ninth year, his fa- ther was killed by a fall from his horse. His mother seems to have been ambitious for her chil- dren, and there was some talk of sending John to Harrow. Fortunately this plan was thought too expensive, and he was sent instead to the School of Mr. Clarke at Enfield with his brothers. A maternal uncle, who had distinguished himself by his courage under Duncan at Camperdown, was the hero of his nephews, and they went to school resolved to maintain the family reputation for cour- age. John was always fighting, and was chiefly noted among his school-fellows as a stranw com- pound of pluck and sensibility. He attacked an usher who had boxed his brother's ears, and when his mother died, in 1810, was moodily inconsolable, (in spite, it seems, of her " saturnine demeanor,") hiding himself for several days in a nook under the master's desk, and refusing all comfort from teacher or friend. He was popular at school, as boys of spirit al- ways are, and impressed his companions with a sense of his power. They thought he would one day be a famous soldier. This may have been ow- ing to the stories he told them of the heroic uncle, whose deeds, we may be sure, were properly fa- moused by the boy Homer, and whom they proba- bly took for an admiral at the least, as it would have been well for Keats's literary prosperity if he had been. At any rate, they thought John would be a great man, which is the main thing, for the pub- lic opinion of the playground is truer and more dis- cerning than that of the world ; and if you tell us * Haydon tells the story diflferently, but we think Mr. Milnes^fl rersion the best. TEE LIFE OF KEATS. H what the boy was, we will tell you what the man lon^s to be, however he may be repressed by ne- cessity or fear of the police reports. Mr. Millies has failed to discover anythinsf else especially worthy of record in the school-life of Keats. He translated the twelve books of the iEneid, read Robinson Crusoe and the Incas of Peru, and looked into Shakspeare. He left school in 1810, with little Latin and no Greek, but he had studied Spence's Polymetis, Tooke's Pantheon, and Lempri^re's Dictionary, and knew gods, nymphs, and heroes, which were quite as good company as aorists and aspirates. It is pleasant to fancy the horror of those respectable writers if their pages could suddenly have become alive under their pens with all that the young poet saw in them.* On leaving school, he was apprenticed ^or five years to a surgeon at Edmonton. His master was a Mr. Hammond, " of some eminence " in his pro- fession, as Mr. Milnes takes care to assure us. The place was of more importance than the master, for its neighborhood to Enfield enabled him to keep up his intimacy with the family of his former teacher, Mr. Clarke, and to borrow books of them. * There is always some one willing to make himself a sort of accessory after the fact in any success ; always an old woman or two, ready to remember omens of all quantities and qualities in the childhood of persons who have become distinguished. Ac- cordingly, a certain "Mrs. Grafty of Craven Street, Finsbury," assures Mr. George Keats, when he tells her that John is deter- mined to be a poet, " that this was very odd, because when he could just speak, instead of answering questions put to him, he would always make a rhyme to the last word people said, and then laugh." The early histories of heroes, hke those of na- tions, are always more or less mythical, and we give the story for what it is worth. Doubtless there is a gleam of intelligence in it, for the old lady pronounces it odd that any one should determine to be a poet, and seems to have wished to hint that the matter was determined earlier and by a higher disposing power. There are few children who do not soon discover the charm of rhyme, and perhaps fewer who can resist making fun of the Mrs. Graftys of Craven Street, Finsbury, when they have the chance. Siee Haydon's Autobiography^ vol. i. p. 361. 12 THE LIFE OF KEATS. In 1812, when he was in his seventeenth year Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke lent him the Faerie Queene. Nothing that is told of ^ Orpheus or Amphion is more wonderful than this miracle of Spenser's, transforming a surgeon's apprentice into a great poet. Keats learned at once the secret of his birth, and henceforward his indentures ran to Apollo instead of Mr. Hammond. Thus could the Muse defend her son. It is the old story, — the lost heir discovered by his aptitude for what is gentle and knightly. Before long we find him studying Chaucer, then Shakspeare, and afterward Milton. That he read wisely, his comments on the Paradise Lost are enough to prove. He now also commenced poet himself, but does not appear to have neglected the study of his profession. He was a youth of energy and purpose, and, though he no doubt penned many a stanza when he should have been anato- mizing, and walked the hospitals accompanied by the early gods, nevertheless passed a very credita- ble examination in 1817. In the spring of this year, also, he prepared to take his first degree as poet, and accordingly published a small volume containing a selection of his earlier essays in verse. It attracted little attention, and the rest of this year seems to have been occupied with a journey on foot in Scotland, and the composition of En- dymion, which was published in 1818. Milton'a Tetrachordon was not better abused ; but Milton's assailants were unorojanized, and were obliired each to print and pay for his own dingy little quarto, trusting to the natural laws of demand and supply to furnish him with readers. Keats was arraigned by the constituted authorities of literary justice. They might be, nay, they were JefFrieses and Scroggses, but the sentence was published, and the penatty inflicted before all England. The difier- THE LIFE OF KEATS. 13 cnce between his fortune and Milton's was that be- tween being pelted by a mob of personal enemies, and being set in the pillory. In the first case, the annoyance brushes off mostly with the mud ; in the last, there is no solace but the consciousness of suffering in a great cause. This solace, to a certain extent, Keats had ; for his ambition was noble, and he hoped not to make a great reputation, but to be a great poet. Haydon says that Wordsworth and Keats were the only men he had ever seen who looked conscious of a lofty purpose. It is curious that men should resent more fiercely what they suspect to be good verses, than what they know to be bad morals. Is it because they feel themselves incapable of the one, and not of the other ? However it be, the best poetry has been the most savagely attacked, and men who scrupu- lously practised the Ten Commandments as if there were never a not in any of them, felt every senti- ment of their better nature outraged by the Lyrical Ballads. It is idle to attempt to show that Keats did not suff'er keenly from the vulgarities of Black- wood and the Quarterly. He suffered in propor- tion as his ideal was high, and he was conscious of falling below it. In England, especially, it is not pleasant to be ridiculous, even if you are a lord ; but to be ridiculous and an apothecary at the same time, is a4most as bad as it was formerly to be ex- communicated. A prioriy there was something absurd in poetry written by the son of an assistant in the livery-stables of Mr. Jennings, even though they were an establishment, and a large establish- ment, and nearly opposite Finsbury Circus. Mr. Giffbrd, the ex-cobbler, thought so in the Quar^ terly, and Mr. Terry, the actor,* thought so even more distinctly in Blackwood, bidding the young * Haydon {Autobiography^ vol. i. p. 379) says that he " Etrong" ^y suspects " Terry to have written the articles in Blackwood. 14 THE LIFE OF KEATS. apothecary ** back to his gallipots ! *' It is not pleasant to be talki^ down upon by your inferiors who happen to have the advantage of position, nor to be drenched with ditch-water, though you know it to be thrown by a scullion in a garret. Keats, as his was a temperament in which sensi- bility was excessive, could not but be galled by this treatment. He was galled the more that he was also a 'man of strong sense, and capable of understanding clearly how hard it is to make men acknowledge solid value in a person whom they have once heartily laughed at. Reputation is in itself only a farthing-candle, of wavering and un- certain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit. Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it. Thrillinor with the electric touch of sacred leaves, he saw in vision, like Dante, that small procession of the elder poets to which only elect centuries can add another laurelled head. Might he, too, deserve from posterity the love and reverence which he paid to those antique glories ? It was no unworthy ambition, but everything was against him, — birth, health, even friends, since it was partly on their account that he was sneered at. His very name stood in his way, for Fame loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue, like Spenserian, Shakspearian. In spite of Juliet, there is a great deal in names, and when the fairies come with their gifts to the cradle of the selected child, let one, wiser than the rest, choose a name for him from which well-sounding deriva- tives can be made, and best of all with a termina- tion in on. Men judge the current coin of opinion by the ring, and are readier to take without ques- tion whatever is Platonic, Baconian, Newtonian, Johnsonian, Washingtonian, JeflTersonian, Napol- eonic, and all the rest. You cannot make a o-ood THE LIFE OF KEATS. 15 adjective out of Keats, — the raore pity, — and to say a thing is Keatsy is to contemn it. Fate likes fine names. Ilaydon tells us that Keats was very much de- pressed by the fortunes of his book. This was nat- ural enough, but he took it all in a manly way, and determined to revennre himself by writing better poetry. He knew that activity, and not despon- dency, is the true counterpoise to misfortune. Haydon is sure of the change in his spirits, because he would come to the painting-room and sit silent for hours. But we rather think that the conversa- tion, where Mr. Haydon was, resembled that in a young author's first play, where the other inter- locutors are only brouoht in as convenient points for the hero to hitch the interminable web of his monologue on. Besides, Keats had been continu- ing his education this year, by a coarse of Elgin marbles and pictures by the great Italians, and might very naturally have found little to say about Mr. Haydon's extensive works, which he would have cared to hear. Mr. Milnes, on the other hand, in his eagerness to prove that Keats was not killed by the article in the Quarterly, is carried too far toward the opposite extreme, and more than hints that he was not even hurt by it. This would have been true of Wordsworth, who, by a constant companionship with mountains, had acquired some- thing of their manners, but was simply impossible to a man of Keats's temperament. On the whole, perhaps, we need not respect Keats the less for having been gifted with sensibil- ity, and may even say what we believe to be true, that his health was injured by the failure of hig book. A man cannot have a sensuous nature and be pachydermatous at the same time ; and if he be imaginative as well as sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the amount of his imagination. Tt is 16 THE LIFE OF KEATS. perfectly true that what we call the world, in these affairs, is nothing more than a mere Brocken spec- tre, the projected shadow of ourselves ; but as long as we do not know it, it is a very passable giant. We are not without experience of natures so purely intellectual that their bodies had no more concern in their mental doings and sufferings than a house has with the good or ill fortune of its occupant. But poets are not built on this plan, and especially poets like Keats, in whom the moral seems to have so perfectly interfused the physical man, that you might almost say he could feel sorrow with hia hands, so truly did his body, like that of Donne's mistress, think and remember and forebode. The healthiest poet of whom our civilization has been capable says that when he beholds -" desert a beggar bom, And strength by limping sway disabled, -u And art made tongue-tied by authority," (alluding, plainly enough, to the Giffords of hia day,) " And simple truth miscalled simplicity," (as it was long afterward in Wordsworth's case,) *' And Captive Good attending Captain III,'* that then even he, the poet to whom of all others life seems to have been dearest, as it was also the fullest of enjoyment, " tired of all these," had noth- ing for it but to cry for '^ restful Death/' Keats, as we have said, accepted his ill fortune courageously. On the 9th of October, 1818, he writes to his publisher, Mr. Hessey, '' I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to get 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 THE LIFE OF KEATS. l? severe critic of his own works. My own domestic criticism has oriven me pain without comparison be- yond what * Blackwood ' or the ' Quarterly ' could inflict : and also, when I feel I am right, no exter- nal praise can give me such a glow as my own soli- tary reperception and ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly right in regard to ' the slipshod Endymion/ That it is so is no f^ult 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 trembled over every page, it would not have been written ; for it is not in my nature to fumble. I will write inde- pendently. I have written independently without judgment. I may write independently and with judgment^ hereafter. The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself. In ' Endymion ' I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better ac- quainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of fail- ure ; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest. ' * This was undoubtedly true, and it was naturally the side which a large-minded person would dis- play to a friend. This is what he thought ; but whether it was what he felt^ we think doubtful. We look upon it rather as one of the phenomena of that multanimous nature of the poet, which makes him for the moment that which he has an intellect- ual perception of Elsewhere he says something which seems to hint at the true state of the case. ♦ Milnes's Life and Letters of Keats ^ pp. 145-6. 2 18 THE LIFE OF KEATS. "I must think that difficulties nerve the spirit of a man : they make our prime objects a refuge as well as a passion.'*' One cannot help contras*ting Keats with Wordsworth ; the one altogrether poet, the other essentially a Wordsworth with the poetic faculty added ; the one shifting from form to form, and from style to style, and pouring his hot throb- bing life into every mould ; the other remaining al- ways the individual, producing works, and not so much living in his poems as memorially recording his life in them. When Wordsworth alludes to the foolish o-riticisms on his writings, he speaks serenely and generously of Wordsworth the poet, as if he were an unbiassed third person, who takes up the argument merely in the interest of literature. He towers into a bald egotism which is quite above and beyond selfishness. Poesy was his employment ; it was Keats's very existence : and he felt the rough treatment of his verses as if it had bften the wound- ing of a limb. To Wordsworth, composing was a \ healthy exercise ; his slow pulse and unimpressible I nature gave him assurance of a life so long that he could wait ; and when we read his poems we should never suspect the existence in him of any sense but V that of observation, as if Wordsworth the poet were only a great sleepless eye, accompanied by Mr. Wordsworth, the distributer of stamps, as a rever- ential scribe and Baruch. But every one of Keats's poems was a sacrifice of vitality ; a virtue went away from him into every one of them ; even yet, ws we turn the leaves, they seem to warm and thrill our fingers with the flush of his fine senses, and the flutter of his electrical nerves, and we do not wonder he felt that what he did was to be done swiftly. In the mean time, his younger brother languished and died ; his elder seems to have been in some way unfortunate, and had gone to America, and \ THE LIFE OF KEATS. 19 Keats himself showed symptoms of the hereditary disease which caused his death at last. It is in October, 1818, that we find the first allusions to a passion, which was, ere long, to consume him. It is plain enough beforehand, that those were not moral or mental graces that should attract a man like Keats. His intellect was satisfied and ab- sorbed by his art, his books, and his friends. He could have companionship and appreciation from men ; what he craved of woman was only repose. That luxurious nature, which would have tossed uneasily on a crumpled rose-leaf, must have some- thing softer to rest upon than intellect, something less ethereal than culture. It was his body that needed to have its equilibrium restored, the waste of his nervous energy that must be repaired by deep draughts of the overflowing life and drowsy tropical force of an abundant and healthily-poised womanhood. Writing to his sister-in-law, he says of this nameless person : '' She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at least, a Charmian ; she has a rich eastern look ; she has fine eyes^ and fine manners. When ghe comes into a room, she makes the same impres- sion as the beauty of a leopardess. She is too fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any man who may address her. From habit, she thinks that nothing ]mrticula7\ I always find myself at ease with such a woman ; the picture before me always gives me a life and animation which I cannot pos- sibly feel with anything inferior. I am at such times too much occupied in admiring, to be awk- ward, or in a tremble. I forget myself entirely, because I live in her. You will by this time think I am in love with her, so, before I go any farther, I will tell you that I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a tune of Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation \ 20 THE LIFE OF KEATS. With an imperial woman, the very yes and no of whose life is to me a banquet I like hef and her like, because one has no sensation ; what we both are, is taken for granted She walks across a room in such a manner that a man is drawn toward her with magnetic power. I believe, though, she has faults, the same as a Cleopatra or a Charmian might have had. Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way ; for there are two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things : the worldly, theat- rical, and pantomimical ; and the unearthly, spirit- ual, and ethereal. In the former, Bonaparte, Lord Byron, and this Charmian hold the first place in our minds ; in the latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker, rocking his child's cradle, and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings. As a man of the world, I love the rich talk of a Charmian ; as an eternal being, I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, and I should like you to save me/' It is pleasant always to see Love hiding his head with such pains, while his whole body is so clearly visible, as in this extract. This lady, it seems, is not a Cleopatra, only a Charmian ; but presently we find that she is imperial. He does not love her, but he would just like to be ruined by her, nothing more. This glimpse of her, with her leopardess beauty, crossing tlae room and drawing men after her magnetically, is all we have. She seems to have been still living in 1848, and, as Mr. Milnes tells us, kept the memory of the poet sacred. '^ She is an East Indian,'' Keats says, "and ought to be her grandfather's heir." Her name we do not know. Between this time and the spring of 1820, he seems to have worked assiduously. Of course^ worldly success was of more importance than ever. THE LIFE OF KEATS. 21 He began Hyperion^ but had given it up in Septem- ber, 1819, because, as he said, ''there were too many Miltonic inversions in it." He wrote Lamia after an attentive study of Dryden's versification. This period also produced the Eve of St. Agnes^ Isahella^ and the odes to the Nightingale^ and to the Grecian Urn. He studied Italian, read Ariosto, and wrote part of a humorous poem, The Cap and Bells. He tried his hand at tragedy, and Mr. Mihies has pub- lished among his '' Remains," Otho the Greatj and all that was ever written of King Stephen, We think he did unwisely, for a biographer is hardly called upon to show how ill his hiographee could do anything. In the winter of 1820, he was chilled in riding on the top of a stage-coach, and can>e home in a state of feverish excitement. He was persuaded to go to bed, and in getting between the cold sheets, coughed slightly. " That is blood in my mouth," he said. '' Bring me the candle ; let me see this blood." It was of a brilliant red, and his medical knowledge enaWed him to interpret the augury. Those narcotic odors that seem to breathe seaward and steep in repose the senses of the voyager who is driftino- toward the shore of the mysterious Other World, appeared to envelop him, and, looking up with sudden calmness, he said, '^ I know the color of that blood ; it is arterial blood ; I cannot be deceived in that color. That drop is my death warrant ; I must die." There was a slight rally during the summer of that year, but toward autumn he grew worse again, and it was decided that he should go to Italy. He was accompanied thither by his friend, Mr. Severn, an artist. After embarking, he wrote to his friend, Mr. Brown. We give a part of this letter, which is so deeply tragic that the sentences we take almost seem to break away from the rest with a 22 THE LIFE OF KEATS. cry of anguish, like the branchei of Dante's lamen table wood. *' I wish to write on subjects that will not agitate nae much. There is one 1 must mention and have done with it. Even if my body would recover of itself, this would prevent it. The very thing which I want to live most tor will be a great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it ? Were I in health it would make me ill, and how can I bear it in my state ? I dare say you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping : } ou know what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at your house. 1 wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those pains, which are better than nothing. Land and sea, weakness and decline, are great separators, but Death is the great divorcer forever. When the pang of this thought has passed through my mind, 1 may say the bitterness of death is passed. I often wish for you, that you mijjht tiatter me with the best. I thiuk, witl>out my mentioning it, for my sake, you would be a friend to Miss when I am dead. You think she has many faults, but for my sake think she has not one. If there is anything you can do for her by word or deed, I know you will do it. I am in a state at present in which woman, merely as womaji, can have no more power over me than stocks and stones, and yet the ditlferen ;e of my sensations with respect to Miss and my sister is amazing : the one seems to absorb the other to a degree incredible. I seldom think of my brother and sister in America ; the thought of leaving Miss is beyond everything horrible, — the sense of darkness coming over me, — I eternally see her figure eternally vanishing ; some of the phrases she was in the habit of using during nijr THE LIFE OF KEATS. 23 last nursing at Wentworth Place riiig in my ears Is there another Hfe? Shall I awake and find all this a dieam ? There must be, — we cannot be created for this sort of suffering." To the saaie friend he writes again from Naples, (1st November, 1820) : ^' The persuasion that I shall see her no more will kill me. My dear Brown, I should have had her when 1 was in heahh, and I should have re- mained well. I can bear to die ; I cannot bear to leave her. Oh, God ! God ! God ! Everything I have in my trunks that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear. The silk lining she put in my travelling-cap scalds my head. My imagination is horribly vivid about her ; 1 see her — 1 hear her. There is nothing* in the world of sufficient interest to divert me from her a moment. This was the case when I was in England ; I can- not recollect, without shuddering, the time that I was a prisoner at Hunt's, and used to keep my eyes fixed on Hampstead all day. Then there was a good hope of seeing her again — Now ! — O that I could be buried near where she lives ! I am afraid to write to her — to receive a letter from her — to see her handwriting would break my heart — Even to hear of her anyhow, to see her name written, would be more than I can bear. My dear Brown, what am I to do ? Where can I look for consola- tion or ea-se ? If I had any chance of recovery, this passion would kill me. Indeed, through the whole of my illness, both at your house and at Kentish Town, this fever has never ceased wearing me out.'' The two friends went almost immediately from Naples to Rome, where Keats was treated with great kindness by the distinguished physician, Dr. (after- ward Sir James) Clark.* But there was no hope "^ The lodgiug of Keats was on the Fiazza di Spagtuij iu th« 24 THE LIFE OF KEATS, from the first. His disease was beyond remedy, as his li^eart was beyond comfort. The very fact that life might be Imppy deepened his despair. He might not have sunk so soon, but the waves in which he was struggling looked only the blacker that they were shone upon by the signal-torch that promised safety, and love, and rest. It is good to know that one of Keats's last pleas- ures was in hearin^^ Severn read aloud from a vol- ume of Jeremy Taylor. On first coming to Rome, he had bought a copy of Alfieri, but finding ou the second page these lines, Misera me ! sollievo a me non resta Altro Che il piaato, ed il pianto e delitto, he laid down the book and opened it no more. On the 14th February, 1821, Severn speaks of a change that had taken pkice in him toward greater quietness and peace. He talkell much, and fell aX last into a sweet sleep, in which he seemed to have happy dreams. Perhaps he heard the soft footfall of the angel of Death, pacing to and fro under his win- dow, to be his Valentine. That night he asked to have this epitaph inscribed upon his gravestone, '' HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN WATER." On the 23d, he died, without pain and as if falling asleep. His last words were, ^' I am dying ; I shall die easy ; don't be frightened ; be firm and thank God it has come ! '' He was buried in the Protestant burial-ground at Rome, in that p-art of it which is now disused and secluded froui the rest. A short time before his death, he told Severn that he thoug-ht his intensest pleasure in life had been to watch the growth of flowers ; and once, after lying peacefully awhile, he first house on the ripjht hand in going up the Scalinata. Mr Severn's Studio is said to have been in the Cancelio over the gar* den-gattj of t\w Villa Ne^onL pleasantly familiar to all x\n3eri- cans as the Human home of their countryman Crawford. ♦ THE LIFE OF KEATS. 2fl Baid, *^ I feel the flowers growing over me/' Hia grave is marked by a little head-stone, on which are carved somewhat rudely his name and age, and the epitaph dictated by himself. No tree or shrub has been planted near it ; but the daisies, faithful to their buried lover, crowd his small mound with a galaxy of their innocent stars, more prosperous than those under which he lived. In person, Keats was below the middle height, with a head small in proportion to the breadth of his shoulders. His hair was brown and fine, falling in natural ringlets about a face in which energy and sensibility were remarkably mixed up. Every feat- ure was delicately cut ; the chin was bold ; and about the mouth something of a pugnacious expres- sion. His eyes were mellow and glowing, large, dark, and sensitive. At the recital of a noble ac- tion, or a beautiful thought, they would suffuse with tears, and his mouth trembled.^ Haydon says that his eyes had an inward Delphian look that was per- fectly divine. The faults of Keats's poetry are obvious enough ; but it should be remembered that he died at twenty- four, and that he offends by superabundance and not poverty. That he was overlanguaged at first there can be no doubt, and in this was implied the possibility of falling back to the perfect mean of diction. It is only by the rich that the costly plain- ness, which at once satisfies the taste and the imag- ination, is attainable. Whether Keats was orimnal or not we do not think it useful to discuss until it has been settled what originality is. Mr. Milnes tells us that this merit (whatever it is) has been denied to Keats, because his poems take the color of the authors he happened to be reading at the time he wrote themi * Li)igh Hunt's Autobiography^ ii. 48. 26 THE LIFE OF KEATS. But men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashinjT out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several generations. In the parliament of the present, i*very man represents a constituency of the past. It is true that Keats has the accent of the men from whom he learned to speak, but this is to make originality a mere ques- tion of externals, and in this sense the author of a dictionary might bring an action of trover against every author who used his words. It is the man behind the words that gives them value ; and if Shakspeare help himself to a verse or a phrase, it is with ears that have learned of him to listen that we feel the harmony of the one, and it is the mass of his intelleet that makes the other weighty with meaning. Enouo^h that we reco^-nize in Keats that undefinable newness and unexpectedness that we call genius. The sunset is original every evening, though for thousands of years it has built out of the same light and vapor its visionary cities with domes and pinnacles, and its delectable mountains which- night shall utterly abase and destroy. Three men^ almost contemporaneous with each other, Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron, were the great means of bringing back English poetry from the sandy deserts of rhetoric, and recovering for her her triple inheritance of simplicity, sensuous- ness, and passion. Of these, Wordsworth was the only conscious reformer ; and his hostility to the existing formalism injured his earlier poems by tingeinnr them with somethint sense, of the greatnesses of the one, and the many littlenesses of the other, while Wordsworth was iso- lated in a feeling of his prophetic character, and Bvron had only an uneasy and jealous instinct of contemporary merit. The poems of Wordsworth, as he was the most individual, acco^rdingly reflect the moods of his own nature ; those of Keats, from sensitiveness of oro^anization, the moods of his own taste and feeling; and those of Byron, who was im- pressible chiefly through the understanding, the in- tellectual and moral wants of the times in which he lived. Wordsworth has influenced most the ideas of succeeding poets; Keats their forms; and Byron, interestino[ to men of imagination less for his writ- ings than for what his writings indicate, i^eappears no more in poetry, but presents an ideal to youth made restless with vague desires not vet regulated by experienoe nor supplied with motives by the duties of life. As every young person goes through all the world-old experiences, fancying them something peculiar and personal to himself, so it is with every new generation, whose youth always finds its repre- sentatives in its poets. Keats redis'covered the delight and wonder that lay enchanted in the dic- tionary. Wordsworth revolted at the poetic diction which* he found in vogue, but his own language rarely rises above it except when it is upborne by the tho\io'ht. Keats had an instinct for fine words, which are in themselves pictures and ideas, and had more of the power of poetic expression than any modern English poet. And by poetic expression we do not mean merely a vivid Resi> in particulars, but the right feeling which heightens or subdues a passage or a whole poem to the proper tone, and gives entireness to the effect. There is a great deal more than is commonly supposed in this choice of words. Men's thoughts and oi»inions are in a gn»at 28 THE LIFE OF KEATS. degree vassals of him who inveivts a new phrase Of reapplies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated, becomes his at last who utters it best. This power of language is veiled in the old legends which make the invisible powers the servants of some word. As soon as we have discovered tbe word for our joy or sorrow, we are no longer its serfs, but its lords. We reward the discoverer of an anaesthetic for the body and make him member of all the societies, but him who finds a nepenthe for the soul we elect into the small academy of the immortals. The poems of Keats mark an epoch in English poetry ; for, however often we may find traces of it in others, in them found its strongest expres- sion that reaction against the barrel-organ style which had been reigning by a kind of sleepy divine right for half a century. The lowest point was in- dicated when there was such an utter confoundins of the common and the uncommon sense that Dr. Johnson wrote verse and Burke prose. The most profound gospel of criticism was, that nothing was good poetry that could not be translated into good prose, as if one should say that the test of sufficient inoonlio'lit was that tallow-candles could be made of it. We find Keats at first o^oino^ to the other extreme, and endeavoring to extract green cucum- bers from the ravs of tallow ; but we see also incon- testable })roof of the greatness and purity of his poetic gift in the constant return toward equilib- rium and repose in his latter poems. And it is a repose always lofty and clear-aired, like that of the eagle balanced in incommunicable sunshine. In him a vigorous understanding developed itself in equal measure with the divine faculty; thought emancipated itself from expression without becom- ing its tyrant ; and music and meaning floated together, accordant as swan and shadow, on the THE LIFE OF KEATS. 29 fimooth element of his verse. Without losing its sensuousness, his poetry refined itself and grew more inward, and the sensational was elevated into the typical by the control of that finer sense which underlies the senses and is the soirit of them. T R. L. ENDYMION : A POETIC ROMANCE tHSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS CHATTERTON. THE STRETCHED METRE OF AN ANTIQUE SOHO PREFACE. Knowing within myself the manner in wnicb this Poem has been produced, it is not without a fueling 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 denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sen- sible 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 honor of Eng- lish literature. The imagination of a boy is healthy, ana tne mature imagination of a man is healthy ; but there is *A space of life between, in which the soul is in a S4 PRE FA CE. ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted; thence pro- ceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in ^oing 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 farewell. TuGNMOUTH, April 10, 1818. ENDYMION. BOOK 1 A THING of beauty is a joy for ever : Its loveliness increases ; it will never Pass into nothingness ; but still v^ill keep A bovver quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breath- ing. 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-darken'd ways 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 rilla 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 We have imagined for the mighty dead ; All lovely tales that we have heard or read: An endless fountain of immortal drink, Pourino- 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, 36 ENDYMION. The passion poes}% glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast. That, wLether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast, They alway must be with us, or we die. Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I Will trace the story of Endymion. The very m'usic of the name has gone Into my being, and each pleasant scene Is growing fresh before me as the green Of our own valleys: so I will begin Now while I cannot hear the city's din; 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, Hide in d.eep 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-finish'd : but let Autumn bold, With universal tinoe of sober irold. 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 My uncertain path with green, that I may speed Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed. Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread A mighty forest ; for the moist earth fed ENDYMION. 87 So plenteou-sly all weed-hidden roots Into o'erchanging boughs, and precioup^fruits. And it had gloomy shades, sequester'd deep, Where no man went ; and if from shepherd's keep A lamb stray'd far a-dovvn those inmost glens, Never again saw he the happy pens Whither his brethren, bleatinij 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 any wolf, or pard with prying head, Until it came to some unfooted plains Where fed the herds of Pan : av, m-eat his trains Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many, Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny, And ivy banks ; all leading pleasantly To a wide lawn, whence one could only see Stems throno^ing: all around between the swell Of tuft and slanting branches : who could tell The freshness of the space of heaven above, Edged round with ^^ark tree-tops ? through whicb 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 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 claud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fiae 38 END TMION. Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun ; The lark was lost In him ; cold springs 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 pulsed 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 ; Who gathering round the altar, seem'd 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 even then Fill'd out its voice, and died away again. Within a little space again it gave Its airv swellinixs, with a o;entle wave, To lioht-hun": leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking Through copse-clad valleys, — ere their death, o'ertaking The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea. And now, as deep into the wood as we Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmer'd light Fair faces and a rush of garments white, Plainer and i)lainer showing, till at last Into the widest alley they all past, Makinir directlv for the woodland altar. O kindly muse ! let not my weak tongue falter In telling of this goodly company, Of their old piety, and of their glee : 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 sinsr* END YMl ON. 39 Leading the way, young damsi^ls danced along. Bearing the burden of a shepherd's song; Each having; a white wicker, overbrimmed 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; 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 trail'd their sheep-hooks on the ground, And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound With ebon-tipped flutes : close after these, Now coming from beneath the forest trees, A venerable priest full soberly. Begirt with ministering looks : alway his eye Steadfast 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 Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud Their share of the ditty. After them appeared, Up-follow'd 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, Showing like Ganymede to manhood grown ; And, for those simple times, his garments were 4 3 END TMi ON. A chieftain king's ; beneath his breast, half bare, Was huncT a silver bui2:le, 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 idU^ness in groves Elysian : But there were some who feelingly could scan A lurking trouble in his nether lip, And see that oftentimes the reins would slip 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 ranged, Stood silent round the shrine : each look waa changed To sudden veneration : women meek Beckon'd their sons to silence ; while each cheek Of virgin bloom paled gently for sHght fear. Endymion too, without a forest peer, Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face, Among his brothers of the moun'tain 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 2:uard a thousand flocks : Whether descended from beneath the rocks That overtop your mountains ; whether come From valleys where the pipe is never dumb ; Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs Blue harebells lightly, and where prickly furze Buds lavish gold ; or ye, whose precious charge Nibble their fill at ocean's ^ery marge. Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn : ENDYMION. 4 J 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 Will put choice honey for a favoured youth : Yea, every one attend ! for in good truth Our vows are wantino- to our ijreat ^^od Pan. Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than Night-swollen mushrooms ? Are not our wide plains 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 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 honour 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 Spread grayly eastward, thus a chorus sang : " O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang From iao^Q^ed trunks, and overshadoweth Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness ; Who lovest 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 42 END YM I ON. 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 ^nong myrtles, What time thou wanderest at eventide Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side Of thine enmossed realms : O thou, to whom Broad-leaved fio:-trees even now foredoom o 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 All its completions — be quickly near, By every wind that nods the mountain pine, O forester divine 1 ^^ Thou, to whom every faun 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 Bewilder'd shepherds to their path again ; Or to tread breathless round the frethy main. 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 leapino-, The while they pelt each other on the crown With silvery oak-apples, and fir-cones brown — END YMION. 4J« By ^'/l the echoes that about thee rinsr. Hear us, O satyr king ! ^* O Hearkener to the loud-clapping shears, While ever and anon to his shorn peers A ram goes bleating : Winder of the horn, When snouted wild-boars routino- tender corn Anger our huntsman : Breather round our farms, To keep off mildews, and all weather harms : Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds. That come a-swoonino* over hollow orounds. And wither drearily on barren moors: Dread opener of the mysterious doors Leading; to universal knowledo^e — see, Great son of Dry ope. The many that are com^e to pay their vows With leaves about their brows 1 *' Be still the unimao-inable lodo:e 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; An element filling the space between ; An unknown — but no more: we humbly screen With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending. And oivinu out a shout most heaven-rcndinff, Conjure thee to receive our humble Pa^an, Upon thy Mount Lycean ! *' Even while they brought the burden to a close. A shout from the whole multitude arose, That linger'd in the air like dying rolls Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine. 14 END YMION Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine, Young companies nimbly began dancing To the swift treble pipe, and humming string. Ay, those fair living forms swam heavenly To tunes forootten — out of memorv : 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 cu«ll Time's sweet first-fruits — they danced to weariness, And then in qu»iet 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^ Fondles the flower amid the sobbino^ 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, Caird 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 o:one, and her caressing tongue Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip. And very, very deadliness did nip Her motherly cheeks. Aroused 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, X END TMION. 45 Until, from the horizon's vaulted side, There shot a golden splendour far and wide, 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 increased The silvery setting of their mortal star. There they discoursed upon the fragile bar That keeps us from our homes ethereal ; And what our duties there : to nightlv call Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather ; To summon all the downiest clouds together For the sun's purple couch ; to emulate In ministering the potent rule of fate With speed of fire-tail'd exhalations ; To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these, A world of other unguess'd offices. Anon they wander'd, by divine converse, Into Elysium ; vying 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 : Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind. 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 46 ENDYMION. Their fellow-huntsmen o'er the wide champaign In times long past ; to sit with them, and talk Of all the cJiances in their earthly walk ; Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores Of happiness, to when upon the moors. Benighted, close they huddled from the cold, And shared their famish'd scrips. Thus all outtold 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 His faintino: 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, Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms, Or maiden's sio-h, that ixi^ief itself embalms : But in the selt-same fixed trance he kept, Like one who on the earth had never stept. Ay, 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 frie'nds, the dearest. Hushing signs she made^ And breathed a sister's sorrow to persuade A yielding up, a cradling on her care. Her eloquenc*e 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 twehead, 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. Into a river, clear, bi'imful, and llush With crystal mocking of the trees and sky. END TMION. 47 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 cruidino-, throuijh the water straicrht, Towards a bowery island opposite ; Which gaining presently, she steered light Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove. Where nested was an arbour, overwove By many a summer's silent fingering ; To whose cool bosom she was used to brinor 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, And the tann'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 Windingiy by it, so the quiet maid Held her in peace : so that a whispering blade Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling Down in the bluebells, 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 unconfined Restraint ! imprison'd liberty ! great key To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy. Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves, 48 ENDYMION. Echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves And moonlight ; ay, to all the mazy world Of silvery enchantment ! — who, upt'urrd Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour, But renovates and lives V — 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, As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray From those kind eyes, — the very home and haunt Of sisterlv 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 Around the breathed boar : again 1% poll The fair grown yew-tree, for a chosen bow : And, when the pleasant sun is getting low, Again TU linger in a sloping mead To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered, sweet! And, if thy lute is here, softly entreat My soul to keep in its resolved course/* Hereat Peona, in their silver source, Shut her pure sorrow-droi)S with glad exclaim, 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, ufove forest wild Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child • ENDYMION. 43 And nothing since has floated in the air So mournful strange. Surely some intluence i-dre Went, spiritual, through the damsePs hand , For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd The quick invisible strings, even though she saw Endymion's spirit 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 k__ jw of things mysterious, Immortal, starry ; such alone could thus Weigh down thy nature. Hdst thou sinn'd ill aught Offensive to the heavenly powers ? Caught A Paphian dove upon a message sent? 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 I 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 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 haiDpen. Rightly have they done : I, who still saw the horizontal sun 4. 50 END Y MI ON. Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the world, Out-foeinii Lucifer, and then had hurl'd My spear aloft, as signal for the chase — I, who, for very sport of heart, would race With my own steed from A.raby ; pluck down A vulture from his towery perching ; frown A lion into ^rowlino^, loth retire — To lose, at once, all my toil-breedmg 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, 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 unwillinix leaves So dear a picture of his sovereign power. And I could witness his most kini2:lv hour, When he doth tighten up the golden reins, And paces lei.^'urely down amber plains His snc^rtinu^ four. Now when his chariot last Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast. There blossom'd suddenlv a ma^ic bed Of sacred dittany, and poppies red : At winch I wonder'd oreatlv, knowino^ well That but one night had wrought this flowery spell And, sittinu' down close by, beii^an to muse What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Mor» pheus, In passing here, his owlet pinions shook; Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook Her ebon urn, vounii Mercury, bv stealth, Had dipp'd his rod in it: such garland wealth Came not by common growth. "Thus on I thought^ END YMION. 51 Until my head was dizzy and distraught. Moreover, throirgh the dancing poppies stole A. breeze most softly lulling to my soul ; 4nd shaping visions all about my sight Of colors, wings, and bursts of spangly light ; The which became more strange, and strange, and dim, And then were gulf'd in a tumultuous swim: And then 1 fell asleep. Ah, can I tell The enchantment that afterwards befell ? 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 All I beheld and felt. Methouoht I lay Watching the zenith, where the milky way Among the stars in virgin splendour pours ; 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 steadfast 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 dropp'd my vision to the horizon's verge ; And lo 1 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 raised My sight right upward : but it was quite dazed 62 ENDYMION. 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 sweet ness ? Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, where Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair? Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun; Not — thv 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 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, 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 flutterino; pavilion; *Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million Of little eves, as thouMi thou wert to shed, Over the darkest, lushest bluebell bed, Handfuls of daisies." — '' Endymion, how strange! Dream within dream ! " — *' She took an aii'y rano'e, 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; ENDTMION. 5S Methoi^ht I fainted at the [^harmed touch, Yet held my recollection, even as one Who dives three fathoms where the waters ruu Gurgling in beds of coral : for anon, 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 aye muster where gray time has scoop'd Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side: There hollow sounds aroused me, and I sio^h'd To faint once more by looking on my bliss — I was distracted; madly did I kiss The wooino; arms which held me, and did give My eyes at once to death : but 'twas to live. To take in drauo:hts of life from the i>'old 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. Ah, desperate mortal ! I even dared 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 hmes, Loiter'd around us ; then of honey cells, Made delicate from all white-flower bells ; And once, above the edges of our nest. An arch face peep'd, — an Oread as I guess'd. " Why did I dream that sleep o'erpower'd me In midst of all this heaven ? Why not see, 54 ENDYMION. 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 Keflects upon a di-auiond, my sweet dream Fell into nothing — into stupid sleep. And so it was, until a gentle creep, A careful moving cauglit my waking ears, And up I staited : 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 tease With wayward melancholy ; and I thought, Mark me, Peona ! that sometimes it brought Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus ! — Away I wander'd — all the pleasant hues Of heaven and earth had faded : deepest shades Were deepest dungeons ; heaths and sunny gladiia Were full of pestilent light ; our taintless rills Seem'd sooty, and o'erspread with upturned gills Of dying fish ; the vermeil rose had blown In frio'htful scarlet, and its thorns outorowa Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd In little journeys, I beheld in it A disguised demon, missioned to knit My soul with under darkness; to entice My stumblings down some monstrous precipice : Therefore 1 eao;er tbllowM, and did curse The disappointment. Tune, that aged nurse, Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven These thinirs, with all their comfortinos, are given To my down-sunken houi^, and with thee, Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea Of weary life/' ENDYMION. 55 Thus ended he, and both 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 or grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps, And wonders : stru^iz-les to devise some blame ; To put on such a look as would say, Shame On this poor weakness ! but, for all her strife. She could as soon have crushed away the life From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause, She said with tremblinc; chance : ^' Is this the cause ? This all ? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas 1 That one who through this middle earth should pass Most like a sojourning demi-^od, 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 used to stray He knew not where : and how he would say, nay^ If any said 'twas love : and yet 'twas love ; 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 sio'hs, and an alas ! — Endymion ! Be rather in the trumpet's mouth, — anon Amono' the winds at laroe — that all may hearken I Although, before the crystal heavens darken, I watch and dote upon the silver lakes Pictured in western cloudiness, that takes The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands^ Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands AVith horses prancing o'er them, palaces And towers of amethyst, — would I so tease My pleasant days, because I could not mount Into those regions ? The Morphean fount 56 END YM I ON, Of that fine element that visions, dreams, And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams Into its airy channels with so subtle, So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle, Circled a million tunes 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 mora slio^ht Than the mere nothing that eno-enders them ! Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem Of high and noble life with thou^jhts so sick ? Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick For nothing but a dream ? " Hereat the youth Look'd up : a conflicting of shame and ruth Was in his plaited brow : yet his eyelids Widen'd a little, as when Zephyr bids A little breeze to cr.eep 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, No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepared — Though now 'tis tatter'd ; leaving my bark bared 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 alchemized, and free of space. Behold The clear religion of heaven 1 Fold A rose-leaf round thy finger's taperness. And soothe thy hps : hist ! when the airy stress ENDYMION. 5t 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 sii^-h above their father's fjrave : Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot; Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, Where lon^; ago a iriant battle was : And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass In every place where infant Orpheus slept. Feel we these things ! — that moment have w« stept Into a sort of oneness, and our state Is hke 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 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 unseen film, an orbed drop Of light, and that is love : its iniiuence Thrown in our eyes genders a novel sense, At which we start and fret: till in the end, Melting into its radiance, we blend. 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 nourished by its pi'oper pith. And we are nurtured hke a pelican brood. Ay, so dehcious is the unsating food. That men, who might have towerVi in the van Of all the conorreofated world, to fan And winnow from the coming step of time All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime 68 ENDYMION. Left by men-sluofs and human serpen try, Have been content to let occasion die, Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysiuna. And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb, Than speak against this ardent listlessness : For I have ever thought that it mio-ht bless The world with benefits unknowingly ; As does the nightingale, up-perched high. And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves — She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-gray hood. Just so may love, although 'tis understood The mere coaimingling of passionate breath. Produce more than our searchino^ 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. Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, If human souls did never kiss and oreet ? " Now, if this earthly love has power to make Men's being mortal, immortal ; to shake Ambition Irom 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 are true, And never can be born of atomies Tiiat 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. Unless it did, though fearfully, espy END YM I ON. 59 A hope beyonxl the shadow of a dream. My sayings will the less obscured seem When I have told thee how my waking sight Has made me scruple whether that same night Was pass'd in dreamincf. Hearken, sweet Peonal Beyond the matron-temple of Latona, Which we should see but for these darkening boughs, Lies a deep hollo w,^ 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, Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye Kight 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 beat. 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 ; So reaching back to boyhood : 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 lovelorn 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 The happy chance : so happy, I was fain To follow it upon the open plain. And, therefore, was just going; when, behold! CO ENDYMION. 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 def)th. — It moved as i£.to fli30— < I started up, when lo ! refreshfully, There came upon my face, in plenteous showers. Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers^ Wrapping all objects from my smother'd sight, Bathing my spirit in a new delight. Ay, 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 scared away by slow returning pleasure. How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure Of weary days, made deeper exquisite, By a foreknowledge 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 With the conquering sun of spring, and left tbf skies Warm and serene, but yet with moisten'd eyes In pity of the shatter'd infant buds, — That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs, My hunting-cap, because I laughM and smiled, Chatted with thee, and many days exiled All torment fi'om my breast ; — 'twas even then, Straying about, yet coop'd up in the den Of helpless discontent, — hurling my iance From place to place, and following at chance, END YM I ON, 61 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 Httle falls through reeds a-nd 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 blithe adieus, to mock Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead, Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph's home. Ah ! impious mortal, whither do I roam ! ' Said I, low-voiced : ' 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 thorouo;h silence, till her wits Are gone in tender madness, and anon, Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone Of sadness. O that she would take my vo^s, 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-whisi>era Kound every leaf, that all those gentle lisjers 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, 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 62 END YM I ON. And trembles through my labyrinthine hair/ At that oppress^, I hurried in. — Ah ! where Are those swift moments I Whither are they lied ? ril smile no more, Peona ; nor will wed Sorrow, the way to death ; but patiently Bear up agains-t it: so farewell, 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-forojetfulness in mountain wind Blustering about my ears: ay, 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 1 look : but yet, I'll say 'tis nought — And here I bid it die. Have not I cauo^ht, Already, a more healthy countenance ? By this the sun is setting ; we may chance Meet some of our near-dwellers wi*th my car." This said, he rose, faint-smiling, like a star Throuo;h autumn mists, and took Peona 's hand! They stept into the boat, and launched from land. / BOOK 11. O SOVEREIGN power of love ! O grief! O balm I 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. ENDYMION. 63 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 fadea Into some backward corner of the brain ; Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain The close of Tro'ilus and Cre-ssid sweet. Hence, pageant history ! hence, gilded cheat 1 Swart planet in the universe 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. And golden-keerd, 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 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 luead, Who, thus far, discontent, has dared to tread, AV^itliout one muse's smile, or kind behest, The path of love and poesy. But rest, In chafing restlessness, is yet more drear Than to be crush'd, in striving to uprear Love's standard on the battlements of song. So once more days and nights aid me along^ Like legion'd soldiers. 64 ENDYMION. Brain-sick shepherd-prince Wh'at 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 wavs: Through wilderness, and woods of mossed oaks; Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes Of the lone wood-cutter; and listening still, Hour after hour, to each lush-leaved rill. Now he is srtting 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 sot\ly pight A golden butterfly ; upon whose wings There must be surely charactered strange thirgs, For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft. Lio;htlv this little herald flew aloft, Follow'd by glad Endymion's clasped hands: Onward it flies. From languor's sullen bands His limbs are loosed, 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 Through the green evening quiet in the sun, O'er many a heath, through many a woodland dun, Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreamn The summer time away. One track unseams A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue Of ocean fades upon him ; theo, anew, He sinks adown a sohtary glen, Where there was never sound of mortal meQp Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences END YMTON. 65 Melting to silence, when upon the breeze 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 awsplashing 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, 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, disturbed 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. To him her dripping hand she softly kist, And anxiously began to plait and twist Her ringlets round her fingers, saying : " Youth J Too long, alas, hast thou starved on the ruth, The bitterness of love : too long indeed, Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I weed Thy soui of care, by heavens, I would offer AH the bright riches of my crystal coffer To Amphiti'ite ; all my clear-eyed fish, Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish, Vermilion-tailM, or finn'd with silvery gauze; Yea, or my veined pebble-fl.oor, that draws A viro-in-light to the deep ; my grotto-sands, Tawn'y and gold, oozed 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 5 66 ENDYMION. Meander gave me, — for T bubbled up To fainting creatures in a desert wild. But woe is me, I am but as a child 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 fa2 In other regions, past the scanty bar To mortal steps, before thou canst be ta'eu From every wasting sigh, from every pain, Into the gentle bosom of thy love. Why it is thus, one knows in heaven above : But, a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewell 1 I have a ditty for my hollow cell." 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 Glowworms began to trim their starry lamps, Thus breathed he to himself: '' Whoso encampi To take a fmcied city of delight, O what a wretch is he ! and when 'tis his, After lon^T 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-bead of doubt That he will seize on tricklino; honey-combs : 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, ENDYMION. 67 Imagination's struggles, far and nigb, All human ; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence, and to show- How quiet death is. Where soil is, men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers ; but for me, 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 I From thy blue throne, now filling all the air, Glance but one little beam of temper'd light Into my bosom, that the dreadful might And tyranny of love be somewhat scared ! Yet do not so, sweet queen ; one torment spared, 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, Too keen in beauty, for thy silver prow Not to have dippVl 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, How lithe ! When this thy chariot attains Its airy goal, haply some bovver veils 68 END YM J ON. Those twilight eye» ? Those eyes ! — my spirit fails ; Dear goddess, help ! or the wide gaping air Will gulf me — help V — 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 ; Nor sigh of his, nor plaint, nor passion'd moan Had more been heard. Thus swelled 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 chiilv sheen Of icy pinnacles, and dipp'dst thine arms Into the (leadening ether that still charms Their marble being : now, as deep profound As those are hig^h, descend ! 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 !^^ 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 mad- ness. 'Twas far too strange, and wonderful for sadness; Sharpening, by degrees, his appetite 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 ; ENDTMION. 69 One faint eternal eventide of gems. Ay, 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 autre ; then the metal ^oof 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 breeda Vexing conceptions of some sudden change ; Whether to silver grots, or giant range Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge Now fareth he, that o'er the vast beneath Towers like an ocean-clifF, and whence he seeth A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb His bosom grew, when first he, far away, Described 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 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 sacrccc 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, And, just beyond, on light tiptoe divine, A quiver'd Dian. Stepping awfully, 70 END YMION. The youth approached ; oft turningf his veiPd eye Down sidelonoj aisles, arid into niches old : And, when more near ao^ainst the marble cold He had touch'd his forehead, he began to thread All courts and passages, where silence dead, Roused by his whispering footsteps, murmur'd faint And long he traversed to and fro, to acquaint Himself with every mystery, and awe ; 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 ceased 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-brier, Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire, Into the bosom of a hated thino^. What misery most drownino;ly doth sins: In lone Endymion's ear, now he has caught The goal of consciousness ? Ah, 'tis the thought, The deadly feel of solitude : for lo ! He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-piled, The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west, Like herded elephants; nor felt, nor prest Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air; But far from such companionship to wear An unknown time, surcharged with grief, away. Was now his lot. And must he patient stay, Tracing fantastic figures with his spear ? *' No ! '^ exclaim'd be, " 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 END YMION. 71 Of help from Dian : so that when again 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 Avhat dark tree Glimmers thy crescent ? Wheresoever it be, *Tis in the breath of heaven : thou dost taste Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste 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 exiled mortal, sounds its pleasant name ! Within my breast there lives a choking flame — O let me cool it zephyr-boughs among ! A homeward fever parches up my tongue — O let me slake it at the running springs! 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 with 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 ! — Younir goddess ! let me see my native bowers I 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 72 ETJDYMION. 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 To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied, And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowni Upheaping through the slab : refreshment drowns 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 heaved anew Old ocean rolls a lengthen'd wave to the shore, Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar. Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence. Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense, Upon his fairy journey on he hastes ; So anxious for the end, he scarcelv wastes One moment with his hand amono^ the sweets : Onward he goes — he stops — his bosom beats As plainly in his ear as the faint charm Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm, This sleepy music, forced him walk tiptoe : For it came more softly than the east could blow Arion's magic to the Atlantic isles ; Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles Of throned Apollo, could breathe back the lyre To seas Ionian and Tyrian. O did he ever live, that lonely man. Who loved — and nmsic 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 blessinors in a curse. Half-happy, by comparison of bliss, END YM I ON. 78 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 heavenlv ouide benio;nant led To where thick myrtle branches, 'gainst his head Brushing, awaken'd : then the sounds again Went noiseless as a passing noontide rain Over a bower, where little space he stood ; For as the sunset peeps into a wood, So saw he pantipg light, and towards it went Through winding alleys ; and lo, wonderment I Upon soft verdure saw, one here, one there, Cupids a-slumbering on their pinions fair. After a thousand mazes overo-one, At last, with sudden step, he came upon A chamber, myrtle-wall'd, embower'd high, Full of hght, incense, tender minstrelsy. And more of beautiful and stranoe 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 siofhs 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 Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light; But rather, giving them to the fiird sight Officiously. Sideway his face reposed On one white arm, and tenderly unclosed. By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth To slumbery pout ; just as the morning south Disparts a dew-hpp'd rose. Above his head, 74 END TMTON. Four lily stalks did their white honours wed To make a coronal ; and round him grew All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue, Tooether intertwined and trammelPd fresh • The vine of jrlossy sprout; the ivy mesh, Shading its Ethiop berries; and woodbine, Of velvet-loaves 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, 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, He forthright pass'd, and lightly treading went To that same feather'd lyrist, who straightway, Smiling, 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 hicrh-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. ENDYMION. 7 J Sent me by sad Vertumnus, when his fears Were high about Pomona : here is cream, Deepening to richness from a snowy gleam; Sweeter than that nurse AmaUhea skimm'd For the boy Jupiter : and here, undimm'd By any touch, a bunch of blooming plums 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 pined For a mortal youth, and how she strove to bind Him all in all unto her doatino; self Who would not be so prison'd ? but, fond elf, ^ He was content to let her amorous plea Faint throug^h his careless arms ; content to see An unseized 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 born Of diverse passion ; when her lips and eyes Were closed in sullen moisture, and quick sighs Came vex'd and pettish through her nostrils small Hush ! no exclaim — yet, justly might'st 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 reared Each summer-time to life. Lo ! this is he, That same Adonis, safe in the privacy Of this still region all his winter-sleep. Ay, sleep; for when our love-sick queen did weep Over his waned corse, the tremulous shower 76 EN DY MI ON. HeaVd up the wound, and, with a balmy power, Medicined death to a lengtheu'd 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 throuo-h. 'Tis well niofa pass'd, Even to a moment's filling^ up, and fast She scuds with summer breezes, to pant through The first long kiss, warm firstling, to renew Embower'd sports in Cytherea's isle. Look, how those winged listeners all this while Stand anxious : see ! behold ! " — This clamant word Broke through the careful silence ; for they heard A rustling noise of leaves, and out there fluttered Pigeons and doves : Adonis something muttered, The while one hand, that erst upon his thigh Lay dormant, moved convulsed and gradually Up to his forehead. Then there was a hum Of sudden voices, echoing, '' Come ! come ! Arise ! awake ! Clear summer has forth walked Unto the clover-sward, and she has talk'd Full soothingly to every nested finch : Rise, Cupids ! or we'll give the bluebell pinch To your dimpled arms. Once more sweet life b^ gin ! " At this, from every side they hurried in, Rubbing their sleepy eyes with lazy wrists, And doublinor overhead their little fists In backward yawns. But all were soon alive : 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 enliveniiw ; makino- 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 EN DY MI ON. 77 Blue heaven, and a silver car, air-borne. Whose silent wheels, fre$h wet from clouds of morn, Spun off a drizzling dew, — which falling chill On soft Adonis' shoulders, made him still Nestle and turn uneasily about. Soon were the white doves plain, with necka stretch'd out. And silken traces lisjhten'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. But meetino; 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 sitjht can bear the li^htnins^ of his bow : His quiver is mysterious, none can know What themselves think of it ; from forth his eyes 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 Thou know'st the deepness of his misery. Ah ! smile not so, my son : I tell thee true, That when through heavy hours I used to rue I 78 END YM ION. The endless sleep of this new-born Adon', This stranger aye I pitied. For upon A dreary morning once I fled away Into the breezy clouds, to weep and pray For this my love : for vexing Mars had teased Me even to tears : thence, when a little eased, Down-looking, vacant, through a hazy wood, I saw this youth as he despairing stood : Those same dark curls blown vagrant in the wind Those same full frin^^ed 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 moved, Yet mutter'd wildly. I could hear he loved Some fair immortal, and that his embrace Had zoned her through the night. There is na trace Of this in heaven : I have mark'd each cheek, 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 I Here must we leave thee." — At these words up flew The impatient doves, up rose the floating car, Up went the hum celestial. High afar The Latmain saw them minish into nouo^ht: And, when all were clear vanished, still he caught A vivid lio;htnino; from that dreadful bow. When all was darkened, with iEtnean throe The earth closed — gave a solitary moan — And left him once again in twilight lone. He did not rave, he did not stare aghast, For all those visions were o'ergone, and past. END YMION. 79 And lie in loneliness : he felt assured Of happy times, when all he had endured Would seem a feather to the mighty prize. So, with unusual gladness, on he hies Through eaves, and {)alaces 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 subterranean tease their granite beds ; Then heightened 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 inclose His diamond path with fretwork streaming round Alike, and dazzling cool, and with a sound, Haply, like dolphin tumults, when sweet shells Welcome the float of Thetis. Lono; he dwells On this delight ; for, every minute's space. The streams with changed magpie interlace: Sometimes like delicatest lattices, Cover'd with crystal vines; then weeping trees, Movino; about as in a oentle wind. Which, in a wink, to watery gauze refined, Pour'd into shapes of curtain'd canopies. Spangled, and rich with liquid broideries Of flowers, peacocks, swans, and naiads fair. Swifter than lio-htning; 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 loath farewell To these founts Protean, passing gulf, and dell, 80 ENDYMION. And torrent, and ten thousand jutting shapes, Half seen through deepest gloom, and grisly gape^ Blackening on every side, and overhead A vaulted dome like heaven's far bespread With starlight gems : ay, all so huge and strange, The solitary felt a hurried change Working within him into something dreary, — 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 — In sombre chariot ; dark foldino-s thrown About her majesty, and front death-pale, With turrets crownM. Four maned lions hale The sluggish wheels ; solemn their toothed maws, Their surly eyes brow-hidden, heavy paws Uplifted drowsily, and nervy tails Cowering 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 ? Art thou wayworn, or canst not further trace The diamond path ? And does it iadeed 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 bow'd, and there crest Towards him a laro^e ea2:l6, 'twixt whose winofs. Without one impious woixJ, himself he flings. Committed to the darkness and the gloom : Down, down, uncertain to what pleasant doom, Swift as a fathoming plummet down he fell Through unknown things ; till exhaled asphodel, END Y MI ON, 81 And rose, with spicy fannings interbreathed, Came swelling forth where little caves were wreathed So thick with leaves and mosses, that they seemed Large honeycombs of green, and freshly teem'd With airs delicious. In the greenest nook The eagle landed him, and farewell took. It was a jasmine bower, all bestrown 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 stirrM them faintly. Verdant cave and cell He wander'd through, oft wonderinir at such swell Of sudden exaltation : but, "Alas ! " Said he, '' will all this gush of feeling pass Away in solitude V And must they wane, Like melodies upon a sandy plain. Without an echo ? Then shall I be left So sad, so melancholy, so bereft! Yet still I feel immortal ! O my love. My breath of life, where art thou ? High above, Dancin:h- voiced war a<2:ainst the doomin