Cornell University Library PR 4830.E84 Poetical works. 3 1924 013 489 988 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013489988 THE POETICAL WORKS JOHN KEATS ]ohn Keats was born in London, 1"]^$, died in Rome, 1821. His juvenile verses, pp. ^-62 of this edition, iuere published in i8iy. Ins second volume, the Endymion, pp. 6}-iyj, in 1818, and his third, containing Lamia, Lsahella, Hyperion, the Eve of St. Agnes, indeed, the greater part of his best work, pp. i8i-2j6, in 1820. THE POETICAL PVORKS OF JOHN KEA TS EDITED BY WILLIAM T. ARNOLD LONDON KEG AN PAUL, TRENCH, &> CO., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE UDCCCLXXXIIII . Ai' 2.94-3-^ CONTENTS Pap's THE VOLUME OF 1817 To Leigh Hunt, Esq 3 i/ i stood tip-toe upon a little hill. ... 5 Specimen of an Induction to a Poem -*-. . .12 Calidorb ■-* 14 To some Ladies . -. 19 On RECEIVING A CURIOUS SHELL, AND A COPY OF VeRSES, PROM THE SAME LaDIES 20 To* * * * 22 To Hope -. 24 Imitation of Spenser 26 Woman! when i behold thee flippant, vain r^ . 28 ETISTLLS To George Fblton Mathew 30 To my Brother George 33 To Charles Cowden Clarke '48 SONNETS To MY Brother George 42 ro * * * * 43 Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison 43 How many Bards gild the lapses of Time . . 44 To a Friend who sent me some Roses ... 44 To G. A. W. 45 O Solitude ! if i must with thee dwell . . 45 To MY Brothers 4<5 VI CONTENTS THE VOLUME OF iSij— continued Keen, fitful Gusts are whispering herb and there To One who has been long in City pe^t y^ON first looking into Chapman's Homer ••^ On leaving some Friends at an early Hour Addressed to Haydon Addressed to the Same . On the Grasshopper and Cricket . To Kosciusko ^appy is England ! i could be content ^ Sleep and Poetry Page 46 47 47 48 .48 49 49 50 SO SI ENDYMION j^ Endymion, Book 1 63 ''II 93 )> >> /// 121 ., ,> iV 150 THE VOLUME OF 1820 \jf Lamia {yLSABELLA ; or, THE POT OF BASIL _ i>ff^E Eve of St. Agnes ' ^^Ude to a Nightingale ,^ . JSfODE ON A Grecian Urn Ode to Psyche . Fancy .""- . -Ode Lines on the Mermaid Tavern '"j:tJdOBiN Hood. t' ~- To Autumn ■- J_ i^^Ode on Melancholy . ■^rHYPERION. A Fragment Book 1 >» )» )> 1} // " j> >j )» HI POSTHUMOUS POEMS On On seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair The Thrush 201. 232 23s 240 243 24s 246 248 250 252 262 273 279 280 282 CONTENTS vii POSTHUMOUS POEMS— continued "^' Written from Teignmouth 283 Zv A Letter to Ha ydon 287 From the same Letter to Haydon .... 289 'Written ON May-Day 290 Meg Merrilies . 291 Walking in Scotland 293 Staffa ......... 295 A Prophecy 297 ■Song 299 Faery Song 300 iExtracts from an Opera 301 '{/■■•l-^ Pbllb Dame Sans Merci 303 ■ j^Vj^^Odb on Indolence 305 _y^ The Eve of St. Mark 308 Hyperion. A Vision 312 To Fanny ......... 326 To * * * * 328 V SONNETS Spenser! a jealous Honourbr op thine . . . 330 Oh! how I love, on a fair Summer's Eve . .331 To a young Lady who sent me a Laurel Crown . 331 After dark Vapours have oppress' d our Plains . 332 Written on the blank space of a Leaf at the end of Chaucer's Tale of " The Flowrb aad the Lbfe" 332 On Leigh Hunt's Poem, " The Story of Rimini" . 333 'On seeing the Elgin Marbles. .... 333 To Haydon . ........ 334 On a Picture of Leandbr 334 On the Sea 33S The Human Seasons 335 .» -On sitting down to read "King Lear" once again 336 "When i have Fears that i may cease to be . . 336 Answer to a Sonnet by J. H. Reynolds . . .337 To the Nile 337 To Homer ••■338 Written in Burns' Cottage 338 viii CONTENTS Page POSTHUMOUS POEMS— continued ■ ■ Sonnet ON AiLSA Rock 339 Ben Nevis 339 To J. H. Reynolds 34° Xo * * * * 340 To Sleep 34t On Fame 341 On Fame 342 Why did i laugh to-night 1 No Voice will tell . 342 On a Dream ........ 343 If by dull Rhymes our English must be cHAiitD . 343 - — -The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone . 344 i cry your mercy— pity— love ! — ay, love , . 344 J/is LAST Sonnet 345 INTRODUCTION When criticism is confronted by a phenomenon like the poetical work of Keats — work produced in the birief twenty-six years of a young man's life, but which nevertheless has at its best reached a point of perfection which compels one critic to say that its author " is with Shakspere," and another great master of our tongue to confess that " I have come to that pass of admiration for him now that I dare not read him, so discontented he makes me with my own work " — it is in a manner called upon to give such explana- tion of it as may be had. A full explanation is of course im- possible. The vision and the faculty divine always remain in the last resort inexplicable and unexplained. But it is possible to consider more closely than has perhaps hitherto been done the external influences that did much to mould the faculty of Keats — the country he knew, the art he studied, the poets whom in his early work he sought to imitate, and whose influence, " full alchemized " and twice distilled, has contributed something to the noble style of his maturer work. In an article which was to have formed a reply to Bowles strictures on Pope, Lord B3nron takes occasion to fall foul of the " Cockney School " to which, in his view, Keats belonged. After speaking of the Lakists, he goes on : "I can understand the pre- tensions of the aquatic gentiemen of Windermere to what Mr. B calls entusumusy, for lakes and mountains and daffodils and buttercups ; but I should be glad to be apprized of the foundation of the London propensities of ,their imitative brethren to the same 'high argument.' Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge have rambled over half Europe, and seen Nature in most of her varieties INTRODUCTION (although I think that they have occasionally not used her very well) ; but what on earth— of earth and sea and Nature have the others seen ? Not a half nor a tenth part so much as Pope. While they sneer at his Windsor Forest, have they ever seen anything of Windsor except its brick ?" Byron here of course puts aside the /real question, which is, not so much what a poet sees, but how he '' sees it — whether, in Wordsworthian phrase, he has had his eye upon the object. But it may be admitted that if poetry of the class to which that of Keats belongs had been composed by a man who had never been beyond the sound of Bow Bells it could not but possess an unreal, bookish, and factitious element. As a matter of fact, Keats was at school for some years at Enfield, made no doubt many an excursion thence into Epping Forest, afterwards lived, '-"- during his apprenticeship, in the same neighbourhood at Edmonton, and, even after he had come to London and settled in Hampstead, found time tor many a flight to Surrey, or Devonshire, or the Isle of Wight, or Oxford, or Winchester, or the English lakes, or the Scotch Highlands. Moreover the Hampstead of 1816-1820 was not the Hampstead of to-day. The lines to the Thrush were written at an open window in Hampstead, and the Ode to a Nightingale was suggested by the song of the bird that, in the spring of 18 19, had built its nest close to Mr. Brown's house in the ffeame old-world suburb. The bird's song " often threw Keats," says his biographer, " into a sort ol trance of tranquil pleasure} One morning he took his chair from the breakfast-table, placed if on the grass plot under a plum-tree, and sat there for two or three hours with some scraps of paper in his hands." It was then and there that the ode was written. The neighbourhood of Ham£stead„ also suggested to Keats the charming juvenile verses, " I stood tip- toe upon a little hill," and Mr. Cowden Clarke relates that the passage on the stream and the, minnows in that little poem — one of the most delicately touched to be found an)fwhere in Keats' work — " was the recollection of our having frequently loitered, over the rail of a foot-bridge that spanned (probably still spans, notwitli- standing the intrusive and shouldering railroad) a little brook in the last field upon entering Edmonton." The fact is, that though INTRODUCTION xi Keats did not see anything that could be called a mountain till, late in his short life, he made that tour with his friend Brown through the North of England and Western Scotland, he was yet from his early boyhood familiar with the average, unspoilt country of the southern English Midlands, and must have seen the sea long before his first visit to the Isle of Wight. His biographer gives so few details of his life before the publication of the volume of 1817, that it is impossible to say where Keats first saw the sea, but it is clear that the man who wrote these lines— As when ocean Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothness o'er Its rocky marge, and balances once more The patient weeds ; that now unshent by foam Feel all about their undulating home — or these — I see the lark down dropping to his nest And the broad-wing'd sea-gull never at rest ; For when no more he spreads his feathers free, His breast is dancing on the restless sea, — had other than a merely bookish knowledge of what he is describing. In the same way we may be assured that the poet to whom occurred the simile — ■ Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes Between two hills — had seen a Surrey or a Sussex down, and the " pigeon tumbling in clear summer air" is not the picture of a man who knew nothing outside of London brick. Before Keats pubhshed his Endymion we know that he had stayed, in some cases for weeks, in others for days, in the Isle of Wight, at Leatherhead in Surrey, and at Oxford. He had not penetrated northwards, and the very interesting reference to Skid- daw in the third book of the poem is a reminiscence, not of Skiddaw, but of Wordsworth. The first book of Endymion appears to have been written in the Isle of Wight. It was continued at Margate, Oxford, and Hampstead, and finished at Burford Bridge xii INTRODUCTION in Surrey. Mrs. Owen * rightly suggests a comparison between the first hundred lines of the poem and that delightful description of the island, in a letter to Reynolds from Carisbrooke. " But the sea, Jack, the sea, the little waterfall, then St. Catherine's Hill, ' the sheep in the meadows, the cows in the corn ' ... I see Carisbrooke Castle from my window, and have found several delightful wood alleys, and copses, and quiet freshes ; as for prim- roses, the island ought to be called Primrose Island, that is, if the nation of Cowslips agree thereto, of which there are divers clans just beginning to lift up their heads." Perhaps it was in the Isle of Wight that Keats conceived the first idea of that picture of a wave breaking, as it nears the shore, — Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar, Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence — which Mr. Ruskin has called "quite perfect, as an example of the modern manner," and perhaps it was in that southern chalk country of bright colour and undulating down that his eye caught the beauty of those — Swelling downs, where sweet air stirs Blue hare bells lightly, and where prickly furze Buds lavish gold — or that he — Linger'd in a sloping mead To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed Our idle sheep. For the rest, the landscape of Endymion is essentially an English landscape, whether the poet takes us — Through the green evening, quiet in the sun. O'er many a heath, through many a woodland dun. Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams The summer time away ; or tells us how — Rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun ; * " Keats. A Study." By F.' M. Owen— a charming and enthusiastic book. Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co. --^ INTRODUCTION xiii The lark was lost in him ; cold springs had run To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass ; or how — Clear summer has forth walk'd Unto the clover-sward, and she has talk'd Full soothingly to every nested finch ; or calls to mind his explorations* of those "sedged brooks" which are "Thames' tributaries," and gives us this picture of the willow — And as a willow keeps A patient watch over the stream that creeps Windingly by it, so the quiet maid Held her in peace : so that a whispering blade Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling Down in the blue bells, or a wren light rustling Among sere leaves and twigs, might all be heard. The flowers of the Endymion are the wild rose and the pansy ; its birds are the lark, the nightingale, the wren, the linnet, and the thrush. In a word, Keats in the Endymion is writing, so far as the background of his story is concerned, about what he knows and not about what he pretends to know, and he both knew and felt the beauty of the English land, and of the sky over it, and of the sea en- compassing it, far better than it was ever known or felt by Byron. Between the publication of Endymion in 1818 and that of the volume containing Lamia, Hyperion, St. Agnes' Eve, and other pieces, in 1820, Keats spent some months in Devonshire, where he was kept in faithful attendance upon his brother Tom, who finally died at Teignmouth. He also stayed at Winchester for the best part of the autumn of 18 19, and spent the spring of the same year with Armitage Brown in the Isle of Wight. Winchester is the only one of these places which can certainly be connected • " Life and Letters," i. 55. (Written from Oxford.) "For these last five or six days we have had regularly a boat on the Isis, and explored all the streams about, which are more in number than your eye-lashes. We some- times skim into a bed of rushes, and then become naturalized river-folks. There is one particularly nice nest, which we have christened ' Reynold's Cove,' in which we have read Wordsworth, and talked as may be." xiv INTRODUCTION with any particular poem. He speaks of it as " an exceedingly pleasant town, enriched with a beautiful cathedral, and surrounded by a fresh-looking country." The cathedral is probably partly responsible for the Eve of St. Mark, that strange and beautiful poem which was indeed begun before Keats went to Winchester, but which a casual allusion in one of his Winchester letters^ shows to have been in his mind while he was staying in the old cathedral city.* The " frest-looking country" supplied the inspiration of the Ode to Autumn. " How beautiful the season is now," he writes from Winchester, on the 22nd of September, i8ig. " How fine the air — a temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather — Dian skies. I never liked stubble fields so much as now — ay, better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble field looks warm, in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it." And then follows the " Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." But neither Winchester, nor Teignmouth, nor the Isle of Wight was capable of introducing Keats to country of a kind which he had never seen before. The tour through the English Lakes and the Scotch Highlands was on the other hand an entirely new ex- perience. The two friends — Keats and Armitage Brown — walked on foot from Lancaster as far north as Inverness. . They saw Winder- mere, Grasmere, Derwentwater, the country of Bums, Jona, Staffa, and went up Skiddaw and Ben Nevis. " Mr. Brown has recorded," writes Lord Houghton, "the rapture of Keats, when he became sensible for the first time of the full eff'ect of mountain scenery. At .* See "Life and Letters," ii. 24, where in a letter dated "Winchester, 22nd of September, 1^19/^ Keats uses the words "kepen in solitarinesse " from that poem. It is possible that he had kept the poem by him, and added some touches to it at Winchester. But in the letter to his brother and sister, dated February 14th, 1819, and written shortly after his return from Chichester, he expressly says that he , wrote St. Agnes' Eve in that ancient city, and adds :— "Iij my next packet I shall send you my Pot of Basil, St. Agnes' Eve, and if I should have finished it, a little thing, called the Eve of St. Mark." This looks as if Chichester had the better claim to be regarded as the place which suggested the background to the poem. INTRODUCTION xv a turn of the road above Bowness, where the Lake of Windermere first bursts on the view, he stopped as if stupefied with beauty." One result of this tour is the amount of purely local poetry— poetry absolutely identified with, and descriptive of, some particular place which it produced. The verses on Meg Merrilies, on Staffa, the sonnets on Ailsa Rock, Ben Nevis, and Burns' Cottage are only some of the instances of this. But the tour left traces in his poetry less obvious, but even more interesting than these. Most readers of Keats are familiar with that passage in which Mr. Ruskin speaks of the Ode to Psyche. " Keats," says Mr. Ruskin, "as is his way, puts nearly all that may be said of the pine into one verse, though they are only figurative pines of which he is speaking. I have come to that pass of admiration for him now, that I dare not read him, so discontented he makes me with my own work ; but others must not leave unread, in considering the influence of trees upon the human soul, that marvellous Ode to Psyche. Here is the piece about pines." Mr. Ruskin then quotes / the lines beginning, " Yes, I will be thy priest and let the warm n( Love in," italicizing the words "fledge the wild-ridged mountains," as those to which he desires to call the reader's particular attention. In a letter from Keswick, Keats describes a clamber he had about Lodore. " There is no great body of water, but the accompani- ment is delightful ; for it oozes out from a cleft in perpendicular rocks, all fledged with ash and other beautiful trees." This is the first occurrence in Keats' work of the use of the verb which so fascinated Mr. Ruskin in the exact sense in which it is used in the passage from the Ode to Psyche, and it is perhaps not fanciful to put the two passages together.* The same letter suppUes another interesting parallel to a passage in Hyperion. "On our return from the circuit," writes Keats, " we set forth about a mile and a half on the Penrith road to see the Druid temple. We had a fag * The etters supply several interesting parallelisms of usage. I have quoted another of these on p. xxxiii., and it is worth while to put the words in a letter to Fanny Brawne, — " The last two years taste like brass upon my palate " — side by side with the " savour of poisonous brass and metal sick " of Hyperion. \ xvi INTRODUCTION up-hill, rather too near dinner-time, which was rendered void by the gratification of seeing those aged stones on a gentle rise in the midst of the mountains, which at that time darkened all round, except at' the fresh opening of the Vale of St. John." The passage in Hyperion is descriptive of " that sad place Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn'd." This is Keats' simile for the Titans — Scarce images of life, one here, one there. Lay vast and edgeways ; like a dismal cirque Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor. When the chill rain begins at shut of eve. In dull November, and their chancel vault, The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night. It is surely a natural suggestion that the " cirque of Druid stones" which Keats t>ad in mind was that known as the Druidical Stones near Keswick, the position of which has been described as " com- manding nearly all the summit ranges of the district detached from the human culture and occupation of their lower slopes, which are wholly out of sight from the high table-ground formed by the field," and which his own letter proves to have made so strong an impression upon his mind. This is a subject which might easily be continued further. A comparison, for instance, of Keats' letter descriptive of Staffa, with a line in Hyperion — "Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern" — makes it certain that in writing that line Keats was thinking of Fingal's Cave. But enough has perhaps been said to indicate that Keats knew his native land unusually well for a young man in the days before railways, that the touches of natural beauty so frequent in the poems were derived from real impressions of the writer's own, and that the landscape of the poems is a thoroughly English landscape. Keats' impressions of natural beauty were implanted early, and they retained their freshness all his life. Most readers of Keats will remember that pathetic passage in a letter written just a year before his untimely death, in which he notes " how astonishingly does the chance of leaving this world impress its natural beauties upon us ! Like poor FalstafF, though I do not INTRODUCTION xvii ' babble,' I think of green fields ; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known from my infancy — their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with a super- human fancy. It is because they are connected with the most thoughtless and the happiest moments of our lives. I have seen foreign flowers in hothouses, of the most beautiful nature, but I do not care a straw for them. The simple flowers of our Spring are what I want to see again." But though the landscape which Keats knew, and which he painted in as the background to his poetry, is an English landscape, he does not look at it with purely English eyes. He sees it through the glamour of the Greek mythology. His use of thi Greek gods and goddesses, "not dead," as he says himself, "buj : in old marbles ever beautiful," is not a mere literary affectation! It is not a tradition picked up from Chaucer, Browne, and Fletcher. , It is something vital and personal to Keats himself.* He is not content to philosophise about Uature as did Wordsworth-;- he is not content with the " something .far_ more -deeply- interfused ; " he demands a conception of Nature such as will satisfy his highest sense of beauty, and touch a chord of almost persoijal affection. " Scenery is fine," he says, "but human nature is finer ; the sward is richer for the tread of a real nervous English foot ; the eagle's nest is finer for the mountaineer having looked into it." To Keats I the highest^ beauty is that of a beautiful human being. Here he differs from Wordsworth, who feels nothing of Keats' desire to read human into natural beauty, and in a manner to interpenetrate and combine the two. ., Wordsworth at his best, reaches a" height of spiritual insight, in dealing with the relations of man and Nature, which is beyond Keats; Keats at his best, attains a beauty " full- form' d, like Venus rising from the sea," which is beyond Words- worth ; the inferior manner of the one is marked by the lapse into mechanical theorising, that of the other by the lapse into a sensuousness over rich and even morbid. If Keats had never heard of the Greek mythology, he would still probably have sought to give a half-human, half-divine personality to the sun, and moon, and sea. "Bot^ as a matter of fact, he became acquainted with the xviii INTRODUCTION ■whole pantheon of gods and goddesses in his early boyhood. He knew no Greek, but he worked diligently through the jEneid at school, and Tooke, Spence, and Lemprifere did the rest. Mr. Cowden Clarke says of Lemprifere's Dictionary that Keats " ap- peared to learn " that book, and indeed only the most continuous and delighted poring over its pages could have given Keats that familiarity with Greek legend which he displays at every turn. There are occasional slips. Thus Keats makes Venus say, " Visit my Cytherea," when he means " Cythera," and, " Tellus feels her forehead's cumbrous load," which thus correctly appears in the text of the first edition of Endymion, is altered by the change of " her" to " his " in the list of errata prefixed to the volume. But even this is set right later. We find "TeUus and her briny robes " in the volume of 1820. These, however, are the only mis- takes made in hundreds of allusions to the classical mythology. Keats must indeed have known much of Lemprifere positively by heart. It is worth while to put one or two passages side by side. In the second book of Endymion Keats writes — At this, witli 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. Lemprifere narrates, under "Deucalion," how the vessel in which Deucalion took refuge from the deluge was "tossed about during nine successive days, and at last stopped on the top of Mount Parnassus, where Deucalion remained till the waters had sub- sided ; " and under "Orion," how " CEnopion intoxicated his illustrious guest, and put out his eyes on the sea-shore, where he had laid himself down to sleep. Orion, finding himself blind when he awoke, was conducted by the sound to a neighbouring forge, where he placed one of the workmen on his back, and by his directions went to a place where the rising sun was seen to the greatest advantage. Here he turned his face towards the luminary, and, as it is reported, immediately recovered his eyesight, and hastened to punish the perfidious cruelty of CEnopion." Any one who cares to pursue this subject for himself, and wiU, for instance, INTRODUCTION xix look out the Glaucus, Scylla, Hermes of Endymion, or the whole body of the dramatis persona of Hyperion in Lemprifere, wiU easily convince himself of the far from recondite source of the great majority of Keats' classical allusions. This reliance upon Lempri^re descends to small minutia^. Thus it is the Pason which Keats found in Lemprifere — "Endymion married Chromia, daughter of Honus, or, according to some, Hyperipne, daughter of Areas, by whom he had three sons, Pseon, Epeus, and jEoIus " — and not, as might conceivably be suggested, the Psana of Spenser (F. Q, iv. 8, 49) which in all probability is responsible for his Peona. Was then B)nron right in speaking of Keats as "versifying Lemprifere ? " He was right in the letter and wrong in the spirit. The remark is true in the sense in which it is true that Shakspere versified Holinshed. Here is what Lemprifere says about Saturn and the golden age. "Saturn, unmindful of his son's kindness, conspired against him when he heard that he raised cabals against him, but Jupiter banished him from his throne, and the father fled for safety into Italy. Janus, who was then King of Italy, received Saturn with every mark of attention, and made him his partner on the throne ; and the King of Heaven occupied himself in civilising the barbarous manners of the people of Italy, and the teaching them agriculture and the useful and liberal arts. His reign there was so mild and popular, so beneficent and virtuous, that mankind have called it the ' golden age,' to intimate the happiness and tranquillity which the earth then enjoyed." The reader who will compare this passage with Hyperion, i. 106-112 will better understand out of what sand Keats sifted the fine gold of his verse. In the same way a prosy sentence of Lemprifere's about Pan as "the emblem of fecundity," and " the principle of all things," was probably the germ of that great ode to Pan in the first book of Endymion, wherein the poet interprets the Greek idea in a way at once so S3rmpathetic and so modem, and personifies in Pan the spirit that informs the lonely places of the earth, that is half seen in its mysterious sights, and is the — Strange ministrant of .undescribed sounds That come a swooning over hollow grounds And wither drearily on barren moors. ^ ^ XX INTRODUCTION But this natural bent and instinct of Keats to personify Nature, to^' see it in the Greelc way, is perhaps most clearly traceable in thei' many passages on the moon scattered throughout his poems. Of course Endymion depends on one long identification of the moon with the " Silver huntress, chaste and fair." But even in the juvenile volume of 1817 the mythological turn which Keats alwajrs shows in speaking of the moon is already strongly marked. The single passage in which he is content to dwell on the purely physical appearances of the moon, without importing some idea of personality, is that in which he speaks of — the moon lifting her silver rim Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim Coming into the blue with all her light. The other passages are — Or the coy moon, when in the waviness Of whitest clouds she does her beauty dress, And staidly paces higher up and higher. Like a sweet nun in holy-day attire, and — To see high, golden corn wave in the light When Cynthia smiles upon a summer's night, And peers among the cloudlets jet and white. As though she were reclining in a bed Of bean blossoms, in heaven freshly shed. E'en now, dear George, while this for you I write, Cynthia is from her silken curtains peeping So scantly that it seems her bridal night. And she her half-discover'd revels keeping. These passages strike the note which is struck stiU more strongly in the Endymion. Thus Keats makes Endymion say— What is there in thee. Moon 1 that thou shouldst move My heart so potently? When yet a child I oft have dried my tears when thou hast smiled. Thou seem'dst my sister : hand in hand we went From eve to morn across the lirmament. No apples would I gather from the tree. Till thou hadst cool'd their cheeks d&ciously : and — INTRODUCTION xxi No tumbling water ever spake romance, But when my eyes with thine thereon could dance : No woods were green enough, no bower divine, Until thou liftedst up thine eyelids fine. And here is the passage in which the identification of the goddess and the moon is carried to the fiirthest possible point, a passage, moreover, which contains three lines which rank among the most beautiful in the poem — Full facing their swift flight, from ebon streak, The moon put forth a little diamond peak, No bigger than an unobserved star. Or tiny point of fairy scimetar ; Bright signal that she only stoop'd to tie Her silver sandals, ere deliciously She bow'd into the heavens her timid head. Slowly she rose, as though she would have fled, AVhile to his lady meek the Carian turn'd. To mark if her dark eyes had yet discern'd This beauty in its birth — ^Despair I despair I He saw her body fading gaunt and spare In the cold moonshine. Straight he seized her wrist ; It melted from his grasp ; her hand he kiss'd, And, horror 1 kiss'd his own — ^he was alone. The mjrthologizing vein of Keats was then something natural and proper to the man. It was mainly fed upon a prosy classical dictionary, a schoolboy's knowledge of the ^neid, and Chapman's translation of Homer. But Greek art also helped Keats to come near to Greek life. His sonnets on the Elgin Marbles show how he studied the greatest existing monuments of Greek art, and his friendship with Haydon was here a most fortunate thing for him. Haydon was perhaps the first Englishman who rightly understood the fuU beauty and importance of the Elgin Marbles, and Keats saw them under the most competent possible direction. It is to be noted also in this connection that the Greek Vase which inspired Keats was no figment of his imagination, but had a real existence, and is now, it is said, under the arcade at the south front of xxii INTRODUCTION Holland House.* Given the nature of Keats, his passionate ardour for beauty, his profound conviction that poetry should be as far as possible objective and impersonal, f and given on the other hand such knowledge of Greek life, Greek art, and the Greek con- ception of Nature as he possessed, and we begin to understand how it was that the young Londoner was at heart a Greek. The fact is that there are Greeks in all ages. A nature so different from Keats' as that of Heine felt the same irresistible attraction ; even the serious Wordsworth has once or twice succumbed to it ; and Shelley, though the intense modemness of his S)Tnpathies * In answer to my inquiry as to the existence of any such urn in the British Museum, Mr. A. S. Murray kindly wrote to me as follows, under date 12 August, 1880 : — " Keats was, of course, thinking of a marble urn ; but the Museum has only two specimens which could be said to have any- thing in common with the ode, and that is very little. On the other hand, Piranesi (published in 1750) gives an engraving firom a large marble urn, then belonging to Lord Holland here, and you will see at once how perfectly one side of the urn illustrates the lines — Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? To what altar, etc. A small throng of people come from the left towards a veiled priest who stands beside an altar, beside which also a youth plays on pipes. On the right a heifer (and an unpoetic pig) is being led to be sacrificed. Here and there is a tree. Piranesi does not give the other side of the vase, and in &ct I don't know if there were designs on the other side. The urn must exist still, one would think, in Holland House. But supposing Keats to have got his knowledge from Piranesi's work, which must have been common enough in this country, one might imagine that having failed to find the other side of the Holland urn, he had taken in its stead another engraving in the same volume, from an urn in the Borghese gallery, which admirably illustrates the Hnes — What men or gods are these ? * ♦ * * Bold lover, never, never canst thon kiss. Both the engravings I speak of will be found in Piranesi, vol. xiii. (Vasi e Candelabri). The plates are not numbered, or I would give you a more exact reference." t " Life and Letters," i. 84, 221, 222. INTRODUCTION xxiii prevented him from being fully mastered by it, was not invul- nerable against the charm. Thus far I have been endeavouring to point out " how exqui- sitely" (to use a phrase of Wordsworth's) " the external world was fitted to the mind " of Keats, with what intimate knowledge and affection he approached it, and how a guiding conception of that ex- ternal world was supplied to a mind naturally receptive of such ideas by the Greek m5rthology. But it is one thing to have ideas, and another to have the power to express them. The necessary comple- ment of any inquiry into the formation of a poet's modes of thought is an enquiry into the formation of his style. It is impossible to understand the work of Pope without some knowledge of at least , Dryden, and Boileau, and it is impossible to understand Keats withoutj fsome knowledge of at least Spenser, Milton, and Leigh Hunt. The; influence of Chapman, Brownej_and_C|iattexton, was also consider-^ \ able, and it is not difficult to point out certain obligations, either in' 1 diction or in idea, to Chaucer, Shakspere, Lander, and Words- ' \ worth. Every reader of Keats, particularly of the two earlier volumes published in 1817 and 1818, must have been struck by the [richness, and sometimes also, it must be allowed, by the strangeness! I of the vocabulary. One's first impression is that Keats invented' outright words of which the sound pleased him, and that his diction is to a very large extent vicious and arbitrary. A detailed examination of the text of Keats' favourite poets will however show that the new and arbitrary element in Keats' diction is a good deal less than might easily be supposed. Such an examination will also make it possible to reach one or two generaUsations, which repose perhaps on something more than a merely personal impression of Keats' style. We shall be able to disengage the Spenserian, the Miltonic, the Leigh Huntish influence in Keats' work from a merely schoolboyish element on the one hand and from the perfect work- manship of his finest poems on the other. ; The strongest literary influence exercised by any one writer upon [ the mind of Keats was that exercised by Spenser. Leigh Hunt's' influence is strongly marked only in his earliest, that of Milton only in his latest work ; but not only is Spenser everywhere both in the xxiv INTRODUCTION volume of juvenile poems and in Endymion, but one of Keats' latest and most beautiful poems, St. Agnes' Eve, is perhaps the finest example of the use of the Spenserian stanza, out of Spenser, in the whole range of English verse. Spenser was his first love in poetry and even Milton and Shakspere did not cause him to be forgotten in Keats' maturer years. Mr. Cowden Clarke read the Epithalamion to him when he was sixteen, and also lent him his copy of the Faerie Queene, "through which he went," writes Mr. Clarke, " as ii young horse would through a Spring meadow — ramping." One of Keats' earliest sonnets is that to Spenser, which I have printed among the Posthumous Poems. The motto of the volume of 1817 is taken from the Muiopotmos. One of the poems in it is entitled Calidore, and is full of reminiscences of incident and de- scription in the Faerie Q.ueene. In the Epistle to George Felton Mathew, Keats transfers Spenser's beautiful Hne-r And made a sunshine in a shady place (F. Q. i. 3, 4) almost verbatim into his poem. The little river MuUa of Spenser's Irish home, which is so often mentioned in the Faerie Queene (iv. 11, 41 ; vii. 6, 40) and the minor poems (Colin Clout and Epithalamion) finds its place among other Spenserian allusions, in the Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke. Keats' imitation of Spenser descends even to points of spelling, and the following words were undoubtedly derived from him — " perceant," " raught," " libbard," " seemlihed," " espial," "shent" and " unshent," " wox," "besprent," "grisly" (spelt by Keats, after the manner of Spenser, " griesly "), and " daedal." I should point to the same source for "beadsman," "passioned," "covert" (a characteristic Spenserian word) "sallows" and " eterne." In St. Agnes' Eve we have the curious form " tinct" — " and lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon." The only other instance I know of this word is in the Shepherd's Calendar for November— " the blew in black, the greene in gray is tinct." There is a curious past participle in the first book of Endymion ('• 334)— "and the raft Branch down sweeping from a tall tree top." "Byraft" occurs in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, "beraft" INTRODUCTION xxv twice in the Shepherd's Calendar, and the actual participle " raft," without the prefix, in Chapman's Homer (II. xi. 332) — Tydides from his breast had spoil'd, and from his shoulder raft His target and his solid helm. Keats had probably noted the use in all three authors. For Keats' frequent use of the word "imageries" in the plural the only parallel I can find is in Spenser's Ruines of Time. Sure gates, sweete gardens, stately galleries. Wrought with faire pillours and fine imageries. Such details are not altogether trifling, for they establish two points which are worth establishing; firstly Keats' very accurate' i knowledge of Spenser's text, secondly the fact that in nine-tenths of \ his strange words he reproduces rather than invents. But Keats'* debt to Spenser was by no means hmited to such borrowings as these. The Faerie Queene was a school of high thinking and healthy emotion to him, as it has been to many a reader, and the unmatchable ease and sweetness of Spenser's versification were not lost upon so apt a pupil. These, however, are matters which the discerning reader of both poets wiU feel readily enough and which it is hardly possible to formulate. Keats' own feeling on the latter point is touched in the couplet in the Epistles — Spenserian vowels, that elope with ease And float along like birds o'er summer seas — and a living critic has expressed his sense of the relation between the two poets in the passage in which he speaks of "the one modem inheritor of Spenser's beautiful gift ; the poet who evidently caught from Spenser his sweet and easy-slipping movement, and who has exquisitely employed it ; a Spenserian genius, nay, a genius by natural endowment richer probably than even Spenser ; that light which shines so unexpected and without fellow in our century, an Elizabethan born too late, the early lost and admirably gifted Keats." A romantic movement, such as that in the English literature of the first quarter of this century, is essentially based upon two ideas. xxvi INTRODUCTION There is, in the first place, the return to n ature, the reaction, that is, from a conventional and academic treatment of human and external nature, and the endeavour to see the object as it really is. There is in the second place the return to the_ earlier, more racy, more vital products of the national mind. One great side of the French romantic movement was its insistance upon the fact that there was a great French literature, a literature full of life and colour and exquisitely shaped, before ComeiUe. In England the re-action against Pope and all his works led straight to the study of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspere, and many another minor light of EngHsh song. In every romantic movement there is then a prophet and a man of letters. "Wordsworth was the prophet ; the work of the man of letters was not exhausted by any single man. To mention only three names out of a list which might easily be extended, something was done by Coleridge, something by Charles Lamb, something also by Leigh Hunt. To Leigh Hunt's position as the typical man of letters justice has hardly perhaps been done-y jHe had a wide knowledge of literature, a cathohc judgment, and a) Ireally remarkable sureness and delicacy of appreciation. He did not himself produce work of absolutely the first order, but he leavened the minds of men like Keats and Shelley, and put them on the right way to increase their knowledge and refine their taste. On Keats especially his influence was considerable. Keats was introduced to Hunt almost directly after he had first come up to London, slept now and then at his house in the Vale of Health, compared notes with him on books, now the Italian poets, now Milton, and wrote poems on the same themes in friendly rivalry. The "loved Libertas" of Keats' first volume is of course Leigh Hunt. To Leigh Hunt the volume itself is dedicated, and the " one epithet of doubtful taste" which in Lord Houghton's view somewhat disfigures the dedicatory sonnet is in fact taken straight from the elder poet's Hero and Leander.* A motto from the Stoiy of Rimini is prefixed to the lines beginning "I stood * Lord Houghton doubtless alludes to the phrase in the sonnet, — " a free, a leafy luxury." In the Hero and Leander we have " Half set in trees and leafy luxury," INTRODUCTION xxvii tip-toe upon a little hill." The Specimen ot an Induction to a Poem, is, as noted by Dante Rossetti in his copy of Keats, throughout "Leigh Huntish," and the following lines from that early unnamed poem of Keats to which we have just referred — Who feel their arms and breasts, and kiss, and stare. And on their placid foreheads part the hair — reveal their origin when put side by side with these from the Gentle Armour : — The weeping dames prepare Linen and balms, and part his forlorn hair. And let upon his face the blessed air. It is not to be expected that it should be possible to point out direct borrowings of words from Leigh Hunt ; for such things Keats naturally went to the elder poets. Till, however, some better source can be discovered for Keats' use of the word "plashy"in "a serpent's plashy neck " (H3fp. ii. 45), I feel disposed to think that he had a vague remembrance, when he wrote the line, of the "plashy pools, half-covered with green weed" of the Story of Rimini. I should be disposed also to put Keats' "Leave the dinn'd air vibrating silverly " side by side with the " princely music, unbedinn'd with drums " of the same poem of Leigh Hunt. A more subtle point of likeness between the two poets is the/ / frank, almost naif way both have of expressing their pleasure, and' calling upon the reader to share it with them. Both poets have a curious way of using " so," which can onl)| \ be described as a sort of appeal to the reader, a tacit question, whether he has not noted the same thing, and felt the same pleasure from it. Leigh Hunt for instance (Story of Rimini) has — With orange, whose warm leaves so finely suit. And look as if they shade a golden fruit. Keats has (Calidore) — Shadowy trees that lean So elegantly o'er the water's brim xxviii INTRODUCTION and (" Places of nestling green for poets made ") — Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters, The spreading blue bells ; and (Calidore)^ White swans that dream so sweetly. Another point in this kind, that is very characteristic of both poets, is their use of the word " delicious." They use it far oftener than any other English poet. Leigh Hunt has quite a theory on the subject. In one of his prefaces he quotes Chaucer's — Hearing his minstralles their thinges play Before him at his board deliciously — and adds, in a note: — "The word 'deliciously' is a venture of animal spirits vi^hich in a modern vwiter some critics would pro- nounce to be affected or too familiar ; but the enjoyment, and even incidental appropriateness and relish of it, will be obvious to finer senses." Lest practice should lag behind theory, Leigh Hunt uses the word in the Story of Rimini — A lurking contrast, which, though harsh it be. Distils the next note more deliciously ; and the word is indeed characteristic of that " disengagement of his pleasure " (Prof. Dowden) which is the constant and characteristic effort of Leigh Hunt. I find the word used sixteen times, and always with emphasis, indeed as the keynote of the sentence, in Keats. Thus of the moon : — and — No apples would I gather from the tree, Till thou hadst cool'd their cheeks deliciously ; Bright signal that she only stooped to tie Her silver sandals, ere deliciously She bow'd into the heavens her timid head. INTRODUCTION xxix Another very beautiful passage in which the word occurs is in the Ode to Psyche : — Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers ; Nor Yirgin> '^l!-^ uiTq'i psqddns aABq Xbhi (ajtqsuoASQ jo sssqanQ 'BUBiSjoag oj spo puE •;: 'siaunos a]Tn3Anf) aSpusp^ „'p,»iso,, siq lyaoi XjqBqdid sjBag; (suoqps -aadng puBjqgijj) suqio^ uiojj ./p^aoiSai ,, ajimoABj siq pajsaSSns ssapqnop uoqij^ JO ^p.uojpBnbs ,, sqj poB '(„33BjS s^^poq pauoom -lapjiui laq \[e ,,) „ pauoom ,, '(,, sSuiav p^3[SBnjBp-daap s,qioui-iaSp 3V)0 <I-JpM. 3qjQ „"P'"H iSq^WH Sq' JO ^3UBJ iiA'^xx NOiZDnao)izNi xxviii INTRODUCTION where he also makes it clear how heartily he took sides with Wordsworth against Pope ; and in the sonnet to Haydon— Great spirits now on earth are sojourning. But the subjective and moralising element in Wordsworth's work was too large for the two poets to remain in abiding sympathy, and Keats once went so far as to express the heretical desire that Wordsworth " had a little more taste." There are no such evident traces of the study of Wordsworth in Keats as are to be found in Shelley, in the first hundred lines for instance of Alastor, but Meg Merrilies has a Wordsworthian tone in it, and there is a line in the early Sleep and Poetry,—" the blue bared its eternal bosom," — which may safely be referred to the "yon sea that bares its bosom to the moon," of Wordsworth. Shakspere was read by Keats with a passionate ardour of admiration and delight, but tlie study of Shakspere hardly leaves other traces in a disciple's work than a general elevating and quickening of his matter and of his style. In the view of Keats, to know Shakspere was like knowing Nature. One was just as indispensable as the other. " I am very near agreeing with Hazlitt," he writes, " that Shakspere is enough for us ; " and again, "Thank God, I can read, and perhaps under- stand, Shakspere to his depths." But the two most characteristic passages are those in which he asks, " Which is the best of Shak- spere's plays ? I mean in what mood and with what accompani- ment do you like the sea best ? " and that classification of things into "things real, semi-real, and nothings; things real, such as existences of sun, moon, and stars, and passages of Shakspere; things semi-real, such as love, the clouds, etc., which require a greeting of the spirit to make them whoUy exist ; and nothings, which are made great and' dignified by an ardent pursuit." One can say in a general way that Shakspere moulded Keats' mind as the English landscape moulded it, but there is hardly any direct imitation or adaptation of Shakspere in detail.* * It is perhaps worth mentioning, that the motto to Endymion, — " the stretched metre of an antique song " — is taken from the 17th of Shakspere's sonnets. See Life and Letters, i. 70. No doubt also Keats took the word INTRODUCTION xxxix The case of Chaucer is different. Keats' study of Chaucer began early. Sundry allusions scattered through the letters and early poems show Keats to have been familiar with the Canterbury Tales, the Troilus and Creseide, and the minor poems. But he evidently had a special affection for a poem which Chaucerian students are now unanimous in denying to Chaucer — the Flowre and the Lefe. A motto from that poem is prefixed to the Sleep and Poetry, and one of the most charming of the early sonnets is that written at the end of the poem in the copy of Chaucer lent him by his friend Mr. Cowden Clarke, now in the hands — it could be in no better — of Mr. Alexander Ireland. The same poem probably supphed him with the word " brede," as used by him in the Ode on a Grecian Urn, and as Collins used it before him in the Ode to Evening, and a comparison of Chaucer's — The knightes swell for lack of shade — with a line in Isabella — And for them many a weary hand did swelt In torched mines and noisy factories — probably suggests the true origin of a word which Keats picked out of Chaucer's text, and applied in a sense which was not the sense intended by the older poet. Another word which is certainly Chaucerian is the "ghittem,"in Isabella. But Chaucer's diction was not esteemed highly enough by Keats for him to draw largely from it. He considered that it was spoilt by Gallicisms, and an5rthing rather than a well of English undefiled. Chaucer's versification had its influence upon Keats' work, but the influence came, I imagine, for the most part indirectly, filtered through Leigh Hunt. Keats is a child of the English Renaissance, " an Eliza- bethan born too late," as Mr. Matthew Arnold says ; he is not a child of the middle ages. " amort " (St. Agnes' Eve) from Shakespere, and the " pleach'd " of Endy. mion can be referred with tolerable certainty to Keats' study of Much Ado about Nothing. xl INTRODUCTION One of the poets of that Renaissance with whom Keats early became acquainted, and who has had an influence, not always a good one, upon his style, is the poet, dramatist, and translator, a great but most unequal genius — George Chap man. Every one knows Keats' magnificent tribute to Chapman's memory, the sonnet On first looking into Chapman's Homer, and Mr. Cowden Clarke has told us, that indeed might have been made out from internal evidence, that Keats had studied not only Chapman's Iliad, but the Odyssey, and the Hymns. One trace of such study is to be found in Keats' fondness for compound adjectives. His "chilly- finger'd spring " may safely be put beside Chapman's (Od. vi. i6i) " delicious-finger'd morning." Keats has "break-covert blood- hounds," Chapman (II. xiii. 440) has " strength-rel3ring boar." Keats has " oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars," which is queer enough English in all conscience,* but not so queer as Chapman's (II. xxiv. 307) "fair young prince, first-down chinn'd." One of Keats' favourite and curious words is the verb to " sphere." Thus in Endymion, — " When this planet's sphering time shall close;" in Lamia, — "Twelve sphered tables, by silk seats insphered;" in Hyperion — "Open thine eyes eteme, and sphere them round." A word could hardly be used in a more arbitrary and fantastical manner. Chapman, I fancy, supplied him with the word. Thus (II. xviii. 185) "a tovra is sphered with siege;" (II. xxii. 23), "sphered round with beams;" (Od. xviii. 297), "that accomphshed virtue sphered In my lov'd lord;" and (Od. xvii. 178), " He told me that an island did ensphere . . . great Laertes' son." It will be seen that compared with the usage of Keats that of Chapman is regularity and simplicity itself. A singular licence in Keats' diction is the use of words as nouns, which outside his text are only known as verbs. Thus he * Cf. Lamia, part ii. 217 — Garknds of every green and every scent From vales deflower'd, or forest-trees branch-rent. Mr. Swinburne expresses this " branch-rent " differently and better in his " Undisbranch'd of the storms that disroot us." INTRODUCTION xli has "voices of soft proclaim," "no mad assail," "with glad exclaim," " hush ! no exclaim," " the amorous promise of her lone complain." In the same way Chapman (II. xi. 183) has "he breathed exhorts ;" (II. xvi. 358) " pour'd on exhorts ;" (II. xiv. 314) "will suffer some appall," and (II. xxiv. 637) "exclaims began to aU." A somewhat slipshod usage of Keats, noticed by Dante Rossettiwith the words "alas! Cockneyish" is in fact previously employed not only by Chapman, but even Milton.* Keats has "Enceladus's eye," " Oceanus's lore." The doubling of the s is ugly enough, but it is not necessarily Cockneyish. Milton has "ass's jaw," though elsewhere " Nereus' wrinkled look," and "Glaucus' spell," and Chapman (Od. viii. 359), whom Keats very possibly had in mind, has " and fetch Demodocus's soundful lyre." But the traces which the study of Chapman has left upon Keats' diction are not exhausted by these slight details. Every reader of Keats must have noticed the frequent occurrence of rare, sometimes unprecedented adjectives in y. The soul of Dante Rossetti was so vexed by some of these that he has written, opposite the line, " Now I begin to feel thine orby power," in his copy of En- djmiion : — " ' orby,' ' sphery,' and all such forms are execrable, and disfigure the poem throughout." I may point out by the way that " sphery " has the authority both of Shakspere and of Milton, though I by no means maintain that that fact is conclusive in its favour. Keats, however, has adjectives of this termination stranger than either of these. Besides " sphery " which occurs twice, and "orby," he has "lawny," " moonbeamy," "sunbeamy," " bloomy," " sluicy," "pipy," "streamy," "surgy," " spermy," "sea-foamy," " slumbery," "vapoury" (as well as "slumberous" and "vaporous"), "towery," "bowery," "nervy," "ripply," "spangly," "paly," "scununy," "pillowy," "oozy," "wormy," * See Prof. Masson's edition of Milton's Poetical Works, iii. 172. Where Keats is really, perhaps, " Cockneyish " is in his use of such rhymes as " higher — ^IPhaUa," " water — shorter," " dawning — morning," " ear — Cytherea," "monitors — laws," and Dante Rossetti might not unreasonably have quarrelled with such an expression as " these like accents " in Hyperion. xlii INTRODUCTION "liny," "sparry," "fenny" and "rooty." They are indeed so numerous as to be a distinct feature in Keats' style. Such adjec- tives are to be found in all the poets. Even Wordsworth has " branchy " and " foamy ; " Tennyson has "branchy," "hoyfery," " towery," " firry," " piney," and "ripply." Shelley has "wormy," "piny," "oozy," "moony;" Leigh Hunt has "piny," "glary," "flamy ; " Coleridge has " paly," " flamy," " beamy," " steamy," "elmy," "tressy," "lawny," "vapoury," and even "bladdery." "Paly" is also used by Raleigh and Collins, the latter of whom has moreover "viny"'(Ode to the Passions V, "sheety" (Ode to Evening); "gleamy" (Highland Superstitions). But the great inventors of such words before Keats were Milton, who has "sphery," " mooiy," "cany," "bloomy," "corny," "oozy," "bossy," "wormy," and " oary," and, above aU, Chapman, whose affection for this easy fashion of making epithets out of nouns amounts to a monomania. Chapman has "gleby" (II. iii. 8l), "planky" (II. xii. 422), " gulfy " (II. ii. 583 and often), "spiny" (II. iii. 161), "foody" (II. xi. i04),"orby" (II. iii. 357),"barky" (II. xvi. 701), "rooty" (II. xvii. 654), "oxy" (II. iv. 138) "nervy" (II. xvii. 253), "herby" (II. v. 39), "spurry" (II. xix. 637), "cloddy" (II. V. 49), "plumy" (II. xii. 158),* "bossy" (II. xii. 161), "yoky" (II. xvii. 382), "shrubby" (11. xxii. 158), "seedy" ("seedy reeds," II. xxiv. 402), "flamy" (II. vii. 69), "yieldy" (II. ix. 544), "foamy" (Od. iv. 541), "dwarfy" (Od. ix. 692), "cavy" (Od. ix. 57), "difiy" (Od. x. 533), and "beamy" (Od. vi. 225). Coleridge's opinion of such forms may be gathered from the appearance in that sonnet f which he wrote "to excite a good-natured laugh ... at the recurrence of favourite phrases, with the double defect of being both trite and licentious," of the words "dampy" and "paly." There is not, of course, much to be said for such mere variants of established forms as these, but Coleridge's own practice shows that he felt the unreadiness of our tongue to form new adjectives to be a difficulty * Also used by Thomson — " The plumy people streak their wings -with oil." t Biographia Literaria, i. 26. Pickering, 1847. INTRODUCTION xliii to a poet, and that he was glad to avail himself of almost any means of turning it. The ideal language for a poet to work in would be that in which there would be a corresponding adjective to every noun. The attempt of Chapman, Milton, Coleridge, and Keats to increase the epithet-power of our tongue by the simple expedient of adding the termination y to any and every noun has proved a failure. Experience has shown that they were working on lines not reaUy congenial to the language. But the tendency of our tongue to stereotype itself, and to refuse a welcome to all but the most essential innovations is not a matter for satisfaction, and the strict limitations of this epithet-power have naturally provoked all kinds of efforts on the part of the poets, some well directed and some very much the contrary, to enlarge it. Another poet of Chapman's age, and indeed a friend and admirer of Chapman, who has left some trace on the poetry of Keats, is WiUiam Browne . A motto from Browne's Britannia's Pastorals (Book ii. song 3) is prefixed to the Epistles. I do not think that any one can read the lines of Browne,* beginning, " And as a lovely maiden pure and chaste," without being con- vinced that Keats had them in mind when he wrote the lines on Madeline in St. Agnes' Eve. The description of the priest of Pan in Britannia's Pastorals (Book i. song 4) beginning — As when a holy father hath hegan To oiFer sacrifice to mighty Pan, probably suggested some touches in the picture of the same per- sonage in the first book of Endymion. It is worth noting too that next to Leigh Hunt and perhaps Keats himself, no EngUsh poet abounds so greatly in dissyllabic rhymes as Browne. He has all Keats' passion for a fine phrase, and something of Keats' firm and rounded beauty of expression. What more charming picture of old England could there be than that suggested by — These homely towns Sweetly environ'd with the daisied downs — Quoted in Ward's English Poets, ii. 74 xlvi INTRODUCTION " wide-spreaded,"— and a not particularly commendable invention it is. " Sea-spry," as a variant of " sea-spray," owes its origin, I fear, to nothing more respectable than the necessities of the rhyme. "Psalterian" and "piazzian" are also inventions, but fairly good ones. " Shelve," in the singular, I find only in Keats, and what Keats meant by "a Lampit rock" (unless, indeed, "lampit" means nothing more than " limpet ") * is yet to be discovered. By " far-spooming ocean" Keats doubtless means "far-spuming," or "far-foaming" — he has adopted the word "spume" from Milton in another place — and is evidently unconscious of the fact that the word " spooming" has a recognized place in English poetry, in a quite different sense, however, and is used by Dryden. The conclusion of the whole matter seems to be that Keats invented in accordance with analogy a good deal ; for instance, that having Chapman's " spiny," and Collins' " viny" before him, he had no hesitation in producing " liny " — that he invented arbitrarily and without some such guide as this very little, and that most often he does not invent at all, but reproduces. Whether a poet does wisely in reproducing forgotten words to the extent to which it is done by Keats is another question. Gray t defends the practice, but it is one which can only be condemned or justified in detail. Each word must prove its separate and in- dividual right to exist, and the presumption, in cases where the word has been invented or exhumed, is not so much for it as against it. It is noteworthy that the unusual and far-fetched element in Keats' diction is strongest in his first volume, and weakest in tthe volume of 1820. In his most perfect work, the great odes and\ the best of the sonnets, there is no oddity at all. In the first volume, besides relying to an excessive extent upon Spenser and Leigh Hunt, Keats sometimes writes like a clever schoolboy. He does so even in Endymion. What can be worse than such a line as — O sweetest essence ! sweetest of all minions I • In this case the phrase, though odd, would perhaps not be odder than the " atom darkness" of Isabella, stanza xli. t "Works. Edited by Mason, i. 258. (Edition of 1807.) INTRODUCTION xlvii by way of an address to Cupid ? or the description ot " a nymph of Dian's"— Weaving a coronal of tender scions — which means, I imagine, that the nymph was making a wreath of flowers ? or the apostrophe to sleep as — O magic sleep I O comfortable bird — which is as a bad as the "exploratory bird" of Wordsworth? or the apostrophe of Circe to Glaucus as " sea-flirt I Young dove of the waters ! " or Glaucus' description of Scylla as "timid thing? " There is a kind of fond and foolish naivete in such expressions, a fantastical baldness, which is by no means "a baldness full of grandeur," such as out of Keats is to be found only in Leigh Hunt. How again is one to construe such an expression as "the tenting swerve of knee from knee ? " * or — and blaze Of the dome pomp reflected in extremes Globing a golden sphere ? I dwell upon such things because they make one understand what Keats meant by saying that a certain critic was " quite right about the ' slip-shod Endymion.' " But there is little or no trace of this obscurity, and none at all of this immaturity and naif ingenuousness in Keats' later work. His End3rmion was his Lake Constance, into which his style ran turbid and impure, with streaks of unassimUated and alien influence in it still plainly visible, but wherein it was gradually cleansed aad * Endymion, ii. 400. But cf. the line in the Ode on p. 243 — " Under- neath large blue-beUs tented " — and Lamia, part ii. 178. Each by a sacred tripod held aloft. Whose slender feet wide-swerved upon the soft Wool-woofed carpets. The passage in Endymion probably means that the knees had fallen apart, leaving a tent-like space. xlviii INTRODUCTION strengthened, emerging pure and beautiful at its close. The poet who wrote the great odes and the later sonnets and Lamia, and Isabella and St. Agnes' Eve, and much of Hyperion had the com- mand of one of the finest and most individual styles in the whole range of English poetry. Spenser, Chauce r, Chapma n, ^Uton, Leigh Hu nt and many more had contributed each something to the colour and depth and brightness of the stream. But all these tributaries had been in turn assimilated, their virtue extracted and their beauty caught, till at the last we find the young poet who at twenty-three was still capable of " O sweetest essence 1 sweetest of aU minions " shaping into words at twenty-five, that solemn image of- The moving waters at their priestlike task, Of pure ablation round earth's human shores — or interpreting the inmost beauty of the English landscape in those lines to Autumn : — Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they ? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, — While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day. And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinldng as the light wind lives or dies ; And full-grown lambs loud bleat ftom hilly bourn ; Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft ; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. NOTE ON THE TEXT* This edition of Keats' Poetical Works does not contain every poem written, or even every poem published hy Keats. At the same time it is not, in the ordinary sense of the word, a volume of selections. Every poem which appears in the three volumes of poetry published in Keats' lifetime is here reprinted. But a strict selection is made among the poems which were either found in manuscript after his death, or which had been already printed in different periodicals, but not collected and issued in a permanent form. It is a little hard that all the verses, good, lad, or indifferent, which a poet may have written, should be brought up against him after his death, and my object has been to make such a selection among these posthumous poems as Keats would have made himself. It has been my aim to omit nothing which contained even a trace of Keats' finest manner. Thus the verses on Claudes Enchanted Castle, though perhaps interesting and significant enough to claim insertion on other and more general grounds, have a right to a place, if only for that lovely picture of the " untumultuous fringe of silver foam ; " and the first draft of Hyperion, though decidedly inferior to the great poem which was built upon it, yet contains blank verse of too large and rare an utterance to allow an editor to pass it by.\ Otho * This edition was arranged and planned in all its essential features in 1880. Its appearance has teen delayed iy unforeseen causes, of which the fire at the publishing offices was the chief. t Mr. ^Rjchard Gamett writes that he has seen a MS. hooTi, written ly 'Richard Woodhouse, " containing many particulars respecting Keats, and among other things, unless I greatly mistaTie, the distinct statement that the Vision was the second draft." This look was unfortunately hurnt. Mr. Garnett is also inclined to " contend far the later date of the Vision, even on critical grounds." Mr. Garnett's judgment will weigh strongly with readers of Keats on such a point. I confess, however, that, though the Vision abounds in heautiful things, e 1 NOTE ON THE TEXT the Great, King Stephen, and the Cap and Bells, I have on the other hand considered myself at liberty to neglect. Such poems as the Eve of St. Mark, La Belle Dame sans Merci, the Thrush, the fragment Written on May-Day, and the Last Sonnet, are, of course, inserted. They rank among Kmts' very finest work. But though L do not think that anything is here printed among the posthumous poems which Keats would not have liked to see remembered, I have yet thought it essential to separate as clearly as possible the work for which Keats nude himself responsible, from that which he did not print or did not collect himself. The poems of this latter class are therefore separated from the rest, and printed at the end of the volume, under the general title of " Posthumous Poems." They are printed in chronological order, except so far as the sonnets are printed by themselves, also, however, in that order. The sonnets gain too much from being read together to be scattered among the other poems, and L have thought it best to follow the example set by Keats himself in his first volume, where the sonnets, though of varying dates, and on varying themes, nevertheless foi-m a definite section by themselves. The rest of the volume is an exact reprint, except so far as certain minutia of spelling and punctuation are concerned, of the three volumes published in iSl"], 1818, and 1S20. The order of Keats has been religiously maintained ; and it may he safely said that nothing can be more absurd or injurious to the understanding of Keat^ work than to print Endymion first, as has hitherto been done in the great majority of editions, and to leave such foreshadowings and anticipations of it as the Sleep and Poetry, Calidore, and " Places of nestling green for poets made," to follow. The competition for these first editions among the readers of Keats is, I am persuaded, largely due, not merely to their rarity, or even to their direct connection with the poet, but also to the fact that in them alone are the poems arranged rationally, and as Keats himself arranged them. A it seems hardly conceivable to me that the introductory and, so to speah, explanatory matter it contains, should have been added on second thoughts, whereas it is on the other hand probable and natural that when the poet came to revise his wori he should have brushed aside all this needless scaffolding, and plunged at once in. medias res. To my mind also the slight textual differences between the Vision and the Fragment in those passages which both poems have in common, are almost invariably to the advantage of the latter. NOTE ON THE TEXT li close examination of these original three volumes has moreover convinced me that, though it is impossible to reprint them verbatim et [literatim, they yet deserve to he copied more closely than has been the case in the editions. I believe, for instance, that the very sparing use of notes of exclamation is deliberate, and that the editors, by liberally peppering them over the text, have lost something of the unobtrusiveness of Keats' manner. The punctuation of the volumes is not impeccable, but it is seldom careless, and should not be departed from without good reason. In writing to his publisher about the forthcoming Endymion, Keats says : " Your alteration strikes me as being a great improvement. And now I will attend to the punctuation you speak of. The comma should be at soberly, and in the other passages the comma should follow quiet." This does not look like carelessness about these matters. Among the pencil notes to Dante Rossetti's copy of Keats * is an interesting suggestion which would not have been made if that fine critic had had the first edition of Endymion before him at the time. He suggests that the stanza beginning " I saw Osirian Egypt kneel down " (p. IS7), should stop at the eleventh line, and that a new stanza should begin with the line " Into these regions came I, following him." Now there really is a certain turn in the sense and pause in the verse at this point, and Rossetti's hint is a proof as well of his close study of Keats as of his extraordinary delicacy of perception. But a reference to the first edition at once justifies the suggestion and puts it out of court. Keats has felt the break which Rossetti's fine ear felt, and has marked it to the eye by the use of a full stop and a dash. Tlie dash is omitted by all the editors, but it really settles the point. Keats wanted to mark a slight pause, but he did not want to begin a new stan-^a. Another point on which I have not thought it loss of time to bestmu some trouble is thefiml " ed." Thus, in line 40 j of the second book of Endymion, Lord Houghton has — But rather giving them to the jilVd sight Officiously. But the first edition has "filled," and I feel sure that "filled" is what * Now in the possession of Mr. W. A. Turner, who has very kindly put the volume at my disposal for the purposes of this edition. Almost all 'Rossetti's ' marginalia will he found in an admiraUe little paper contriiuted by Mr. George Milner to the Manchester Quarterly for fanuary, 188}. m NOTE ON THE TEXT Keats wrote. 4 wore indubitable error is in the second took of Hyperion, where Lord Houghton has — Their clmch'd teeth still cknch'd and all their limhs. It should of course be " their clenched teeth," as in the first edition. Only a few lines further on Lord Houghton has — Far from her moon bad Phceie wander'd.' Rossetti's ear sufficed to tell him that it should be "wandered," and in his copy of the poem he added the missing "e." It is of course "wandered" in the first edition. In the same hook of Hyperion occurs the line (as printed by Lord Houghton) — By noUe vnng'd creatures he hath made. It should of course be "winged." In other more doubtful cases I have replaced the readings of the first edition. This, in the obscure passage in Sleep and Poetry, which contains, as I believe, an allusion to Byron, the first edition runs — These things are, doubtless ; yet in truth w^ve had Strange thunders from the potency of song ; Mingled indeed with what is sweet and strong From majesty : hut in clear truth the themes Are ugly clubs, the Poets Folypbemes Disturbing the grand sea. Lord Houghton reads "cubs" for "clubs," and "poets'." But Keats is thinking of Odyssey ix. 481, foil., which he had read in Chapman's version, and he compares the poets he has in his mind to Polyphemes, who utilise their subjects as the Cyclops utilised the rocks which he Imrled against Ulysses. The reference to " trees uptom " a few lines further on shows the kind of thing Keats had in mind. The whole turn of expression is to the last degree vicious and far-fetched, but Lord Houghton's alteration is certainly no improvement. In the case of other differences between the first form in which a poem appears and the form in which it is given in the Aldine edition, there is always the possibility NOTE ON THE TEXT liii that Lord Houghton has had before him an improved copy of the poem in Keats' s own handwriting. But in view of the fact that Lord Houghton has omitted altogether, and without notice, the third stanza of the little posthumous poem " Where he you going, you Devon maid 7 " (first printed in Taylor's Life of Haydon), and with such an example hefore us as is furnished by Rossetii's emendations of Blake of the liberties which even the best of editors have allowed themselves, I have thought it safer to adhere in every case to the readings either of the volumes of i8iy, 1818, and 1S20, or (in the case of the posthumous poems) to those of the first edition of the Life and Letters* In the little poem which is plated first among the posthumous poems in this edition — " Tlnnh not of it, sweet one, so " — these differences are not inconsiderable. In the case of another posthumous poem I have felt myself obliged to make an emendation of Lord Houghton's text. This is in the penultimate stanza of the lines To Fanny. Lord Houghton, both in the Life and Letters and in the Aldine edition, prints the stanza as follows : — I Jmow it — and to Tmcw it is despair To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny ! If ''hose heart goes flutt'ring for you everywhere, Nor when away you roam. Dare keep its wretched home, Lcfue, love alone his pains severe and many ; Then, loveliest I hep me free From torturing jealousy, I have put a colon at "home," a semi-colon at "many," and changed "his" in the fifth line of the stanza to "has." Over and above these perhaps disputable points a reference to the first editions will correct the Aldine text in certain minor matters. Thus on p. IS (this edition) the Aldine text has "the joy out- springs," for "jay;" p. ij. the comma after "went by" is an addition which nmkes the passage unintelligible; p. }6, "mad" is omitted before "ambition;" p. 99, "described" is printed for "descried;" p. 104, "tramell'd" for trammell'd;" p. 106, " claimant word" for "clamant;" p. us, "complexion of thy face" * A few otvious typographical blunders in the Life and Letters of course excepted. liv NOTE ON THE TEXT for "completion ;" p. 114, "while every eye saw me my hair uptying" for "eve" — a misprint which entirely ruins a charming picture;" p. up, " should please" for " shouldst ;" p. 147, "O shell-lorn king sublime " for shell-borne ; " p. 181, " sometimes " for "sometime ;" p. 208, " straighten' d for " straiten' d,-" p. 257, "soft-couched ear" for " soft-conchei ; " and p. joy, "first green" for "first seen," and p. ^34 "month" for "mouth."* So far I have perhaps adduced some reasons for a more respectful treatment of the text of the first editions. But as tins edition is not and does not profess to be an exact reprint of that text, it is incumbent on me to show how and why I have departed from it. In the first place I have modernised such spellings as " ballancing" " clift," " steifast," " chacing" "lymnings," "choaking," "prophecyings," "ttythe," "lillies," "gulph" (substantive), " griesly," " centinel," "hyrtlei," "lythe," "tythe," " pannels," "flaggon," " ha^le," "cyder," and " farewel.' I am quite aware that in so doing I sacrifice something. These spellings are not absolutely insignificant. Many of them on the contrary are taken from the older poets, Spenser above all, with whom Keats was most familiarly acquainted, and are either deliberate, or, if unconscious, even more significant, as showing the extent to winch his mind was steeped in the diction of Ms favourite writers. Spenser always spells " stedfast," "chacing," "lilly," and "griesly." " Ballance" occurs twice in the Faerie Queene; "clift" for "cliff," seven times in the same poem ; " blyth " occurs four times in the Faerie Queene, and "blythe" once in Virgil's Gnat ; "blyth" occurs once in Virgil's Gnat and once in the Shepherd's Calender; "gulph" is the regular usage of all the older poets, and even lingers on in Landor ; "centinel," or "centonel," is the spelling both of Spenser, and of a less known poet whom I believe Keats to have studied carefully, William Browne. If the usage of Keats were consistent, it would be a nice point for an editor whether these spellings should be retained. But though "ballancing," occurs in Calidore, we have "balance" at the end of Sleep and Poetry, in the same volume of 1817, and " balances " in the * On p. 61 (this edition) Lord Houghton alters "liny" to "liney." Tennyson also (CEnme) spells " piney." But the spelling is against all analogy, and though "liny" does not occur elsewhere, both Leigh Hunt and Shelley have "piny." NOTE ON THE TEXT Iv first edition oj Endymion (Booh II. 644). " Clift " occurs in the first edition of the Epistle to my Brother George, hut everywhere else Keats spells "cliff." "Choaking" occurs in the first edition of Sleep and Poetry, but "choking" in the first edition of Endymion (ii. }i8), and "choke" in Lamia. "Chacing" is used in Sleep and Poetry and in the first edition of Endymion (Hi. 140); but in the very same book of the same poem (Hi- jg-}) we have "I chase." " Blythe" occurs in Endymion (ii. gjg), but elsewhere in the same poem (Hi. iS8) we have "blithly," while " blithe" is used in the twenty-first stanza of the first edition of Isabella, and towards the end of the third book of Hy- perion. So also we find the spellings "honor" as well as "honour," " splendour" and " splendor," "spherey" and " sphery," "naught" and "nought" "canvass" and "canvas," "ought" and "aught," " seism " and "schism," " ancle " and " ankle," " lilies " and " lillies," "crystaline" and "crystalline," "kyrtle" and "kirtle," " ha^el" and "ha:(le," " chesnuts " and "chestnuts," "chaunting" and " chanted," " farewel" and "farewell," "loath" and "loth," "Aurorian" and " Aurorean." With this variety in view, I have not hesitated to adopt the only logical and consistent plan, that of modernising the spelling throughout. Apart from these points of spelling, the following readings of the first editions are obviously untenable. The sonnet to Kosciusko as first printed was — And now it tells me that in worlds unknown The names of heroes hurst from clouds concealing, And changed to harmonies jor ever stealing Through cloudless Hue, and round each silver throne. Lord Houghton is undoubtedly right in reading "are changed," &c. In the first edition of Sleep and Poetry occur the lines — Will not some say ... . That whining hoyhood should with reverence low Ere the dread ihunderiolt could reach ? How I — it is difficult not to concur with Lord Houghton's insertion of "me" after "reach." In Endymion, Hi, Siy, "though" should be "through;" in iv. //J, "■ lei " should probably be " led ; " in iv. 6j6, "too " should Ivi NOTE ON THE TEXT of course he "to" ; and iniv. g6o, "I" should le "he." All these changes are made in the Aldine edition of Lord Houghton. I have also followed Lard Houghton in changing the word " lighten" in the lines on the sunset (Endymion, I. S47-SS2) — And I could witness his most Ungly hour. When he doth lighten up the golden reins. And paces leisurely down amber plains His snorting four— to " tighten." The somewhat parallel passage in Endymion, ii. jaj — 5i!o« were the white doves plain, with nech stretch'd out And silken traces tighten'd in descent — makes the change perhaps less certain than it would otherwise appear. But it is difficult to see what sense can he given to the "up" in the first passage, if " lighten " is -retained. There are also a few necessary changes of punctuation which I have followed Lord Houghton in maMng. But it is clear that, all taken together, these changes do not amount to much, and the reader may feel assured that, apart from them, and apart from the modernij^ation of the spelling, he has in this edition as exact a reprint as possible of the precious volumes of 1817, 1818, and 1820. The portrait prefixed to this edition is an etching hy Mr. S. H. Llewellyn, after a painting hy Wm. Hilton, R.A., based on aminiature hy foseph Severn. The painting is in the National Portrait Gallery, having been purchased hy the Trustees in March, 186} ; its dimensions are 2 feet / inches by 2 feet. My best thanks are due for help and advice of different kinds in the preparation of this edition to Mr, Richard Garnett, Mr. Alexander Lreland, and Mr. St, Lae Strachey, THE VOLUME OF I8I7 What more felicity can fall to creature Than to enjoy delight with liberty ? "Fate of the Butterfly." — SPENSER, TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ. Glor^_ and loveliness have pass'd away ; For if we wander out in early morn. No wreathed incense do we see upborne Into the east, to meet the smiling day : No crowd oj nymphs soft voiced and young and gay, In woven baskets bringing ears of corn, Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn The shrine of Flora in her early May. But there are left delights as high as these, And I shall ever bless my destiny, That in a time when under pleasant trees Fan is no longer sought, I feel a free, A leafy luxury, seeing I could please With these poor offerings, a man like thee. 77k Short Pieces in the middle of the Booh, as well as some of the Sonnets, were written at an earlier period than the rest of the Poems. Places of nestling green for poets made. ^ — '^ Story of Rimini.*' I STOOD tip-toe upon_ a little hill, TKe air was cooling, and solrery~still, That the sweet buds which with a modest pride PuU droopingly, in slanting curve aside, Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, 5 " Had not yet lost those starry diadems Caught from the early sobbing of the morn. The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn. And fresh from the clear brook ; s weetly they sle pt Qn the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept J ^ [ A Uttle noiseless noise'among the leaves7l — .^ ■ ^ Born of the very sigh that" siletice heaves" ^- For not the faintest motion could be seen' "■" ' Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green. There was wide wandering for the greediest eye. To peer about upon variety ; Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim, And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim ; To picture out the quaint and curious bending Of a fresh woodland alley, never ending ; Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves, Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves. I gazed awhile, and felt as light and free As though the fanning wings of Mercury Had play'd upon my heels : I was light-hearted, And many pleasures to my vision started ; THE VOLUME OF 1 8 17 So I straightway began to pluck a posy Of luxuries bright, milky, soft, and rosy. '^ A bush of May flowers with the bees about them ; Ah, sure no tastefurnooirwoiin3''Be'without them ; And let a lush laburnum oversweep them, And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them Moist, cool and green ; and shade the violets, i That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. I t A filbert hedge with wild briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summS~ttirones ; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethren shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots : Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters. Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters. The spreading blue bells : it may haply mourn That such fair clusters should be rudely torn From their fresh beds, and scatter'd thoughtlessly By infant hands, left on the path to die. ■ ^ Open afresh your round of starry folds. Ye ardent marigolds 1 Dry up the moisture from your golden lids, For great ApoUo bids That in these days your praises should be sung On many harps, which he has lately strung ; And when again your dewiness he kisses. Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses : So haply when I rove in some far vale. His mighty voice may come upon the gale. i^^ Here are swe et pea s, on tip-toe for a flight : With wings oTgentTe flush o'er deUcate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings. v„ Linger awhile upon some bending planlvs That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings : They wiE be found softer than ring-dove's cooings. How silent comes the water round that bend ; t? Not the minutest whisper does it send To the o'erhanging sallows : blades of grass Slowly across the chequer'd shadows pass. Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds ; Where swarms of minnows show their Httle heads. Staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, To taste the luxury of sunny beams Temper' d with coolness. How they ever wrestle With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand. If you but scantily hold out the hand, That very instant not one wiU remain ; But turn your eye, and they are there again. The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses, And cool themselves among the em'rald tresses ; The while they cool themselves, they freshness give, And moisture, that the bowery green may live : So keeping up an interchange of favours. Like good men in the truth of their behaviours. Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From low hung branches ; little space they stop ; But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek ; Then off at once, as in a wanton freak : Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings. Pausing upon their yellow flutterings. -', Were 1 in such a place, I sure should pray That nought less sweet might call my thoughts away. Than the soft rustle of a maiden's gown Fanning away the dandehon's down ; Than the light music of her nimble toes Patting against the sorrel as she goes. THE VOLUME OF 1817 How she would start, and blush, thus to be caught Playing in all her innocence of thought. O let me lead her gently o'er the brook, Watch her half-smiling lips, and downward look ; O let me for one moment touch her wrist ; Let me one moment to her breathing list ; And as she leaves me, may she often turn Her fair eyes looking through her locks aubume. \ <:■ '^ What next ? A tuft of evening primroses, O'er which the mind may hover till it dozes ; O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep. But that 'tis ever startled by the leap Of buds into ripe flowers ; or by the flitting Of diverse moths, that aye their rest are quitting ;' Orb y the moon lifting her silver r im Above a cloud, and with a gra duallwim Commg into the blue with all her light . (J Maker ot sweet poets, dear delight Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers ; Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers, Mingler with leaves, and dew and tumbling streams, 'pioser of lovely eyes to lovely dreams, i -^ ' Lover of lonehness, and wandering, /Of upcast eye, and tender pondering ! Thee must I praise above i\ other glories IGrhat smile us on to tell delightful stories. ^w what has made the sage or poet write put the fair paradise of Nature's light ? 1 In the calm grandeur of a sober line, IWe see the waving of the mountain pine ; IjAnd when a tale is beautifully staid, e feel the safety of a havrthorn glade : hen it is moving on luxurious wings, he soul is lost in pleasant smotherings : [Fair dewy roses brush against our faces, And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases ; O'er head we see the jasmine and sweet briar, | And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire ; While at our feet, the voice of crystal bubbles Charms us at once away from all our troubles : So that we feel uplifted from the world, Walking upon the white clouds wreathed and curl'd. So felt he, who first told how Psyche went On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment ; What Psyche felt, and Love, when their fuU lips First touch'd ; what amorous and fondling nips They gave each other's cheeks ; with aU their sighs, And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes : The silver lamp, — the ravishment — the wonder — The darkness, — loneliness,— the fearful thunder ; Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown, To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne. So did he feel, who pull'd the boughs aside, That we might look into a forest wide, To catch a glimpse of Fauns, and Dryades Coming with softest rustle through the trees ; And garlands woven of flowers wild, and sweet, t Upheld on ivory wrists, or sporting feet : Telling us how fair trembling Syrinx fled Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread. Poor nymph, — poor Pan, — how he did weep to find Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind Along the reedy stream ; a half heard strain. Full of sweet desolation — balmy pain. I i ■ What first inspired a bard of old to sing '^ Narcissus pining o'er the untainted spring ? In some delicious ramble, he had found A Httle space, vwth boughs all woven round ; And in the midst of all, a clearer pool Than e'er reflected in its pleasant cool The blue sky, here and there serenely peeping. Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping. And on the bank a lonely flower he spied, A meek and forlorn flower, with nought of pride. 10 THE VOLUME OF 1817 Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness, To woo its own sad image into nearness : Deaf to light Zephyrus, it would not move ; But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love. So while the Poet stood in this sweet spot, Some fainter gleamings o'er his fancy shot ; Nor was it long ere he had told the tale Of young Narcissus, and sad Echo's bale. '] '-^yj Where had he been, from whose warm head out-flew That sweetest of aU songs, that ever new. That aye refreshing, pure dehciousness, Coming ever to bless The wanderer by moonlight ? to him bringing Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing From out the middle air, firom flowery nests, And from the pillowy silkiness that rests Full in the speculation of the stars. Ah ! surely he had burst our mortal bars ; Into some wond'rous region he had gone, ^ To search for thee, divine Endymion ! 1 ^^ He was a Poet, sure a lover too. Who stood on Latmus' top, what time there blew Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below ; And brought, in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow, A hymn from Dian's temple ; while upswelling. The incense went to her own starry dwelling. But though her face was clear as infant's eyes, Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice, The Poet wept at her so piteous fate. Wept that such beauty should be desolate : So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won. And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion. t ; ' Queen of the wide air ; thou most lovely queen Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen 1 II A,s thou exceedest all things in thy shine, So every tale, does this sweet tale of thine. O for three words of honey, that I might Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night ! ■' L- Where distant ships do seem to show their keels, Phoebus awhile delay'd his mighty wheels. And turn'd to smile upon thy bashful eyes, Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize. The evening weather was so bright, and clear, That men of health were of unusual cheer ; Stepping Hke Homer at the trumpet's call, Or young Apollo on the pedestal : And lovely women were as fair and warm As Venus looking sideways in alarm. The breezes were ethereal, and pure. And crept through half closed lattices to cure The languid sick ; it cool'd their fever'd sleep, And soothed them into slumbers full and deep. t Soon they awoke clear eyed : nor burnt with thirsting, Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting : And springing up, they met the wondering sight Of their dear friends, nigh foolish with dehght ; Who feel their arms, and breasts, and kiss, and stare. And on their placid foreheads part the hair. Young men and maidens at each other gazed With hands held back, and motionless, amazed To see the brightness in each other's eyes ; And so they stood, fill'd with a sweet surprise, Until their tongues were loosed in poesy. Therefore no lover did of anguish die : I But the soft numbers, in that moment spoken, I Made silken ties, that never may be broken. 1 ' Cynthia ! I cannot tell the greater bhsses. That follow'd thine, and thy dear shepherd's kisses : Was there a Poet born ?— but now no mor e, jilywan3ering sp irit must no f urther soar.— k / SPECIMEN OF AN INDUCTION TO A POEM LO ! I must tell a tale of chivalry ; For large white plumes are dancing in mine eye. Not like the formal crest of latter days : But bending in a thousand graceful ways ; So graceful, that it seems no mortal hand. Or e'en the touch of Archimago's wand, Could charm them into such an attitude. We must think rather, that in playful mood Some mountain breeze had turn'd its chief delight To show this wonder of its gentle might. Lo ! I must tell a tale of chivalry ; For while I muse, the lance points slantingly Athwart the morning air : some lady sweet, Who cannot feel for cold her tender feet. From the worn top of some old battlement Hails it with tears, her stout defender sent : And from her own pure self no joy dissembling, Wraps round her ample robe with happy trembling. Sometimes, when the good Knight his rest would take, It is reflected, clearly, in a lake. With the young ashen boughs, 'gainst which it rests. And the half seen mossiness of linnets' nests. Ah ! shall I ever tell its cruelty, When the fire flashes from a warrior's eye, And his tremendous hand is grasping it. And his dark brow for very wrath is knit ? Or when his spirit, with more calm intent, Leaps to the honours of a tournament, And makes the gazers round about the ring Stare at the grandeur of the balancing ? .r SPECIMEN OF AN INDUCTION TO A POEM 13 No, no ! this is far off: — then how shall I Revive the dying tones of minstrelsy, Which linger yet about lone gothic arches, In dark green ivy, and among wild larches ? How sing the splendour of the revelries. When butts of wine are drunk off to the lees ? And that bright lance, against the fretted wall. Beneath the shade of stately banneral. Is slung with shining cuirass, sword, and shield ? Where ye may see a spur in bloody field. Light-footed damsels move with gentle paces Round the wide hall, and show their happy faces ; Or stand in courtly talk by fives and sevens : Like those fair stars that twinkle in the heavens. Yet must I tell a tale of chivalry : Or wherefore comes tliat knight so proudly by ? Wherefore more proudly does the gentle knight Rein in the swelling of his ample might ? Spenser ! tliy brows are arched, open, kind, And come like a clear sun-rise to my mind ; T^d always does my heart with pleasure dance. When I think on thy noble countenance : Where never yet was aught more earthly seen Than the pure freshness of thy laurels green. Therefore, great bard, I not so fearfully Call on thy gentle spirit to hover nigh My daring steps : or if thy tender care. Thus startled unaware, Be jealous that the foot of other wight Should madly follow that bright path of light Traced by thy loved Libertas ; he will speak, And tell thee that my prayer is very meek ; That I wiU foUow with due reverence. And start with awe at mine own strange pretence. Him thou wilt hear ; so I will rest in hope To see wide plains, fair trees, and lawny slope : The morn, the eve, the light, the shade, the flowers ; Clear streams, smooth lakes, and overlooking towers. CALIDORE A Fragment YOUNG Calidore is paddling o'er the lake ; His healthful spirit eager and awake To feel the beauty of a silent eve, Which seem'd full loth this happy world to leave ; The light dwelt o'er the scene so lingeringly. He bares his forehead to the cool blue sky, And smiles at the far clearness all around. Until his heart is well nigh over wound, And turns for calmness to the pleasant green Of easy slopes, and shadowy trees that lean So elegantly o'er the waters' brim And show their blossoms trim. Scarce can his clear and nimble eye-sight follow The freaks and dartings of the black-wing'd swallow. Delighting much to see it, half at rest. Dip so refreshingly its wings and breast 'Gainst the smooth surface, and to mark anon The widening circles into nothing gone. And now the sharp keel of his little boat Comes up with ripple and with easy float, And glides into a bed of water lilies : Broad leaved are they, and their white canopies Are upward tum'd to catch the heavens' dew. Near to a little island's point they grew ; Whence Calidore might have the goodliest view CALIDORE 15 Of this sweet spot of earth. The bowery shore Went off in gentle windings to the hoar And light blue mountains : but no breathing man, With a warm heart, and eye prepared to scan Nature's clear beauty, could pass lightly by Objects that look'd out so invitingly On either side. These, gentle Calidore Greeted, as he had known them long before. The sidelong view of swelling leafiness. Which the glad setting sun in gold doth dress Whence, ever and anon, the jay outsprings. And scales upon the beauty of its wings. The lonely turret, shatter'd and outworn, Stands venerably proud ; too proud to mourn Its long lost grandeur : fir trees grow around. Aye dropping their hard fruit upon the ground. The little chapel, with the cross above, Upholding wreaths of ivy ; the white dove, That on the windows spreads his feathers light, And seems from purple clouds to wing its flight. Green tufted islands casting their soft shades Across the lake ; sequester'd leafy glades, That through the dimness of their twilight show Large dock leaves, spiral foxgloves, or the glow Of the wild cat's eyes, or the silvery stems Of deUcate birch trees, or long grass which hems A little brook. The youth had long been viewing These pleasant things, and heaven was bedewing Tne mountain flowers, when his glad senses caught A trumpet's silver voice. Ah ! it was fraught With many joys for him : the warder's ken Had found white coursers prancing in the glen : Friends very dear to him he soon will see ; So pushes off his boat most eagerly, And soon upon the lake he skims along, i6 THE VOLUME OF I8I7 Deaf to the nightingale's first under-song ; Nor minds he the white swans that dream so sweetly. His spirit flies before him so completely. And now he turns a jutting point of land, Whence may be seen the castle gloomy and grand : Nor will a bee buzz round two swelling peaches, Before the point of his light shallop reaches Those marble steps that through the water dip : Now over them he goes with hasty trip, And scarcely stays to ope the folding doors : Anon he leaps along the oaken floors Of halls and corridors. Delicious sounds ! those little bright-eyed things That float about the air on azure wings, Had been less heartfelt by him than the clang Of clattering hoofs ; into the court he sprang, Just as two noble steeds, and palfreys twain. Were slanting out their necks with loosen'd rein ; While from beneath the threatening portcuUis They brought their happy burthens. What a kiss. What gentle squeeze he gave each lady's hand ! How tremblingly their delicate ankles spann'd ! Into how sweet a trance his soul was gone, While whisperings of affection Made him delay to let their tender feet Come to the earth ; with an incUne so sweet From their low palfreys o'er his neck they bent: And whether there were tears of languishment, Or that the evening dew had pearl'd their tresses. He feels a moisture on his cheek, and blesses, With lips that tremble, and with glistening eye, All the soft luxury That nestled in his arms. A dimpled hand, Fair as some wonder out of fairy land. Hung from his shoulder like the drooping flowers Of whitest Cassia, fresh from summer showers : CALIDORE 17 And this he fondled with his happy cheek, As if for joy he would no further seek : When the kind voice of good Sir Clerimond Came to his ear, like something from beyond His present being : so he gently drew His warm arms, thrilling now with pulses new, From their sweet thraU, and forward gently bending, Thank'd heaven that his joy was never ending ; While 'gainst his forehead he devoutly press'd » A hand heaven made to succour the distress'd ; A hand that from the world's bleak promontory Had lifted Calidore for deeds of glory. Amid the pages, and the torches' glare. There stood a knight, patting the flowing hair Of his proud horse's mane : he was withal A man of elegance, and stature tall : So that tlie waving of his plumes would be High as the berries of a wild ash tree, Or as the winged cap of Mercury. His armour was so dexterously wrought In shape, that sure no living man had thought It hard, and heavy steel : but that indeed It was some glorious form, some splendid weed, In which a spirit new come from the skies Might Uve, and show itself to human eyes. "Tis the far-famed, the brave Sir Gondibert, Said the good man to Cahdore alert ; While the young warrior with a step of grace Came up, — a courtly smile upon his face. And mailed hand held out, ready to greet The large-eyed wonder, and ambitious heat Of the aspiring boy ; who as he led Those smiling ladies, often turn'd his head To admire the visor arch'd so gracefully Over a knightly brow ; while they went by The lamps that from the high-roof d hall were pendent, And gave the steel a shining quite transcendent. THE VOLUME OF I8I7 Soon in a pleasant chamber they are sealed, The sweet-Hpp'd ladies have aheady greeted All the green leaves that round the window clamber, To show their purple stars, and bells of amber. Sir Gondibert has doff d his shining steel, Gladdening in the free and airy feel Of a light mantle ; and while Clerimond Is looking round about him with a fond And placid eye, young Calidore is burning To hear of knightly deeds, and gallant spurning Of all unworthiness ; and how the strong of arm Kept oflF dismay, and terror, and alarm From lovely woman : while brimful of this. He gave each damsel's hand so warm a kiss, And had such manly ardour in his eye. That each at other look'd half staringly ; And then their features started into smiles Sweet as blue heavens o'er enchanted isles. Softly the breezes from the forest came, Softly they blew aside the taper's flame ; Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower ; Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower ; Mysterious, wild, the far heard trumpet's tone ; Lovely the moon in ether, all alone : Sweet too the converse of these happy mortals, As that of busy spirits when the portals Are closing in the west ; or that soft humming We hear around when Hesperus is coming. Sweet be their sleep. * * * * TO 50ME LADIES I WHAT though, while the wonders of nature exploring, I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend ;, Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring. Bless C)Tithia's face, the enthusiast's friend : Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes, With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove ; Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes, Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews. Why linger you so, the wild lab3n:inth strolling ? Why breathless, unable 5'our bliss to declare ? Ah ! you list to the nightingale's tender condoling. Responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air. 'Tis mom, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping, I see you are treading the verge of the sea : And now ! ah, I see it — you just now are stooping To pick up the keep-sake intended for me. If a cherub, on pinions of silver descending, Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven ; And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending. The blessings of Tighe had melodiously given ; It had not created a warmer emotion Than the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you ; Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean. Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw. For, indeed, 'tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure, (And blissful is he who such happiness finds,) To possess but a span of the hour of leisure In elegant, pure, and aerial minds. c 2 ON RECEIVING A CURIOUS SHELL, AND A COPY OF VERSES, FROM THE SAME LADIES HAST thou from the caves of Golconda, a gem Pure as the ice-drop that froze on the mountain ? Bright as the humming-bird's green diadem, When it flutters in sun-beams that slaine through a fountain? Hast thou a goblet for dark sparkling wine ? That goblet right heavy, and massy, and gold ? And splendidly mark'd with the story divine Of Armida the fair, and Rinaldo the bold ? Hast thou a steed with a mane richly flowing ? Hast thou a sword that thine enemy's smart is ? Hast thou a trumpet rich melodies blowing? And wear'st thou the shield of the famed Britomartis ? What is it that hangs from thy shoulder, so brave, Embroider'd with many a spring peering flower ? Is it a scarf that thy fair lady gave ? And hastest thou now to that fair lady's bower ? Ah ! courteous Sir Knight, with large joy thou art crown'd ; Full many the glories that brighten thy youth I I will tell thee my blisses, whichjrichly abound In magical powers to bless and to soothe. ON RECEIVING A CURIOUS SHELL 21 On this scroll thou seest written in characters fair A sun-beamy tale of a wrealh, and a chain ; And, warrior, it nurtures the property rare Of charming my mind from the trammels of pain. This canopy mark : 'tis the work of a fay ; Beneath its rich shade did King Oberon languish, When lovely Titania was far, far away, And cruelly left him to sorrow and anguish. There, oft would he bring from his soft sighing lute Wild strains to which, spell-bound, the nightingales listen'd The wondering spirits of heaven were mute, And tears 'mong the dewdrops of morning oft glisten' d. In this Uttle dome, all those melodies strange. Soft, plaintive, and melting, for ever will sigh ; Nor e'er wiR the notes from their tenderness change ; Nor e'er will the music of Oberon die. So, when I am in a voluptuous vein, 1 pillow my head on the sweets of the rose. And Ust to the tale of the wreath, and the chain, Till its echoes depart ; then I sink to repose. Adieu, valiant Eric ! with joy thou art crown'd ; Full many the glories that brighten thy youth, I too have my bhsses, which richly abound In magical powers to bless and to soothe. TO ^■^^■-%'^Jf'^-^' HADST thou lived in days of old, O what wonders had been told ' Of thy lively countenance, And thy humid eyes, that dance In the midst of their own brightness. In the very fane of lightness. Over which thine eyebrows, leaning, Picture out each lovely meaning : In a dainty bend they lie. Like to streaks across the sky, Or the feathers from a crow. Fallen on a bed of snow. Of thy dark hair, that extends Into many graceful bends : As the leaves of Hellebore Turn to whence they sprung before. And behind each ample curl Peeps the richness of a pearl. Downward too flows many a tress With a glossy waviness ; FuU, and round like globes that rise From the censer to the skies Through sunny air. Add too, the sweetness Of thy honied voice ; the neatness Of thine ankle lightly turn'd : With those beauties scarce discern'd, Kept with such sweet privacy. That they seldom meet the eye Of the little loves that fly Round about with eager pry. Saving when, with freshening lave. TO * * * * 23 Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave ; Like twin water lilies, born In the coolness of the morn. O, if thou hadst breathed then, Now the Muses had been ten. Couldst thou wish for lineage higher / Than twin sister of Thalia ? I' ~^ At least for ever, evermore, Will I call the Graces four. Hadst thou lived when chivalry Lifted up her lance on high. Tell me what thou wouldst have been ? Ah ! I see the silver sheen Of thy broider'd, floating vest Covering half thine ivory breast ; Which, O heavens ! I should see. But that cruel destiny Has placed a golden cuirass there, Keeping secret what is fair. Like sunbeams in a cloudlet nested. Thy locks in knightly casque are rested : O'er which bend four milky plumes Like the gentle lily's blooms Springing from a costly vase. See with what a stately pace Comes thine alabaster steed ; Servant of heroic deed I O'er his loins, his trappings glow Like the northern lights on snow. Mount his back ! thy sword unsheath ! Sign of the enchanter's death ; Bane of every wicked spell ; Silencer of dragon's yell. Alas ! thou this wilt never do ; Thou art an enchantress too. And wilt surely never spill Blood of those whose eyes can kill. TO HOPE WHEN by my solitary hearth I sit, And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom ; When no fair dreams before my " mind's eye" flit, And the bare heath of life presents no bloom ; Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head. Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night, Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray. Should sad Despondency my musings fright, And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away. Peep with the moon-beams through the leafy roof, And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof. Should Disappointment, parent of Despair, Strive for her son to seize my careless heart ; When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air, Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart : Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright. And fright him, as the morning frightens night ! Whene'er the fate of those I hold most dear Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow, O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer ; Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow : Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head ! TO HOPE 25 Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain, From cruel parents, or relentless fair ; O let me think it is not quite in vain To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air I Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed. And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head ! In the long vista of the years to roll. Let me not see our country's honour fade : O let me see our land retain her soul, Her pride, her freedom ; and not freedom's shade. From thy bright eyes unusual brightoess shed — Beneath thy pinions canopy my head ! Let me not see the patriot's high bequest. Great Liberty ! how great in plain attire ! With the base purple of a court oppress'd. Bowing her head, and ready to expire : But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings That fill the skies with silver glitterings ! And as, in sparkling majesty, a star Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud ; Brightening the half veil'd face of heaven afar : So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud. Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed, Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head. IMITATION OF SPENSER NOW Morning from her orient chamber came, And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill ; Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame, Silvering the untainted gushes of its rill ; Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distil. And after parting beds of simple flowers. By many streams a little lake did fiU, Which round its marge reflected woven bowers, And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers. There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright. Vying with fish of brilliant dye below ; Whose silken fins' and golden scales' light Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow : There saw the swan his neck of arched snow, And oar'd himself along with majesty ; Sparkled his jetty eyes ; his feet did show Beneath the waves like Afric's ebony. And on his back a fay reclined voluptuously. Ah ! could I tell the wonders of an isle That in that fairest lake had placed been, I could e'en Dido of her grief beguile ; Or rob from aged Lear his bitter teen : For sure so fair a place was never seen, Of all that ever charm'd romantic eye : It seem'd an emerald in the silver sheen Of the bright waters ; or as when on high, Through clouds of fleecy white, laughs the ccerulean sky. IMITATION OF SPENSER 27 And all around it dipp'd luxuriously Slopings of verdure through the glossy tide, Which, as it were in gentle amity, Rippled delighted up the flowery side ; As if to glean the ruddy tears it tried, Which fell profusely from the rose-tree stem ! Haply it was the worldngs of its pride. In strife to throw upon tlie shore a gem Outvying all the buds in Flora's diadem. WOMAN ! when I behold thee flippant, vain. Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies; Without that modest softening that enhances The downcast eye, repentant of the pain That its mild light creates to heal again ; E'en then, elate, my spirit leaps and prances. E'en then my soul with exultation dances. For that to love, so long, I've dormant lain : But when I see thee meelc, and kind, and tender. Heavens ! how desperately do I adore Thy winning graces ; — to be thy defender I hotly burn — to be a Calidore — A very Red/3ross ^ight — a stout Leander — Might I be loved by thee like these of yore. Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair ; Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast, Are things on which the dazzled senses rest Till the fond, fixed eyes forget they stare. From such fine pictures, heavens ! I cannot dare To turn my admiration, though unpossess'd They be of what is worthy, — though not drest In lovely modesty, and virtues rare. Yet these I leave as thoughtless as a lark ; These lures I straight forget, — e'en ere I dine. Or thrice my palate moisten : but when I mark „ Such charms with mild intelligences shine. My ear is open like a greedy shark. To catch tlie tunings of a voice divine. 29 Ah I who can e'er forget so fair a being ? Who can forget her half retiring sweets ? God ! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats For man's protection. Surely the All-seeing, Who joys to see us with his gifts agreeing, Will never give him pinions, who intreats Such innocence to ruin, — who vilely cheats A dove-Uke bosom. In truth there is no freeing One's thoughts from such a beauty ; when I hear A lay tliat once I saw her hand awake. Her form seems floating palpable, and near ; Had I e'er seen her from an arbour take A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear. And o'er my eyes the trembling moisture shake. EPISTLES Among the rest a shepheard (though hut young Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill His feiu yeeres could, began p fit his quill. "■ Britannia's Pastorals." — BROWNE. TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW SWEET are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song ; Nor can remembrance, Mathew ! bring to view A fate more pleasing, a delight more true Than that in which the brother Poets joy'd. Who, with combined powers, their wit employ'd To raise a trophy to the drama's muses. The thought of this great partnership diffuses Over the genius loving heart, a feeling Of all that's high, and great, and good, and healing. Too partial friend ! fain would I foUow thee Past each horizon of fine poesy ; Fain would I echo back each pleasant note. As o'er Sicilian seas clear anthems float 'Mong the light skimming gondolas far parted. Just when the sun his farewell beam has darted : But 'tis impossible ; far different cares Beckon me sternly from soft " Lydian airs," And hold my faculties so long in thrall, That I am oft in doubt whether at all TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW 31 I shall again see Phcebus in the morning : Or flush'd Aurora in the roseate dawning I Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream ; Or a rapt seraph in a moonlight beam ; Or again witness what with thee I've seen, The dew by fairy feet swept from the green, After a night of some quaint jubilee Which every elf and fay had come to see : When bright processions took their airy march Beneath the curved moon's triumphal arch. But might I now each passing moment give To the coy muse, with me she would not live In this dark city, nor would condescend 'Mid contradictions her delights to lend. Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind. Ah ! surely it must be whene'er I find Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic, That often must have seen a poet frantic ; Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing, And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing ; Where the dark-leaved laburnum's drooping clusters Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres, And intertwined the cassia's arms unite, With its own drooping buds, but very white. Where on one side are covert branches hung, 'Mong which the nightingales have always sung In leafy quiet; where to pry, aloof, Atween the pillars of the sylvan roof. Would be to find where violet beds were nestling. And where the bee with cowslip bells was wrestling. There must be too a ruin dark and gloomy. To say " joy not too much in all that's bloomy." Yet this is vain — O Mathew ! lend thy aid To find a place where I may greet the maid — Where we may soft humanity put on. And sit, and rhyme, and think on Chatterton ; 32 THE VOLUME OF 1817 And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him Four laurell'd spirits, heaven-ward to entreat him. With reverence would we speak of all the sages Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages : And thou shouldst moralise on Milton's blindness, And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness To those who strove with the bright golden wing Of genius, to flap away each sting Thrown by the pitiless world. We next could tell Of those who in the cause of freedom feU ; Of our own Alfred, of Helvetian Tell ; Of him whose name to every heart's a solace. High-minded and unbending William Wallace. While to the rugged north our musing turns, We well might drop a tear for him, and Burns. Felton ! without incitements such as these, How vain for me the niggard Muse to tease : For thee, she will thy every dwelling grace, And make " a sun-shine in a shady place : " For thou wast once a flow'ret blooming wUd, Close to the source, bright, pure, and undefiled, Whence gush the streams of song : in happy hour Came chaste Diana from her shady bower. Just as the sun was from the east uprising ; And, as for him some gift she was devising Beheld thee, pluck'd thee, cast thee in tlie stream To meet her glorious brother's greeting beam. I marvel much that thou hast never told How, from a flower, into a fish of gold Apollo changed thee : how thou next didst seem A black-eyed swan upon the widening stream ; And when thou first didst in that mirror trace The placid features of a human face : That thou hast never told thy travels strange, And all the wonders of the mazy range O'er pebbly crystal, and o'er golden sands ; Kissing thy daily food from Naiads' pearly hands. TO MY BROTHER GEORGE "pULL many a dreary hour have I past, A My brain bewilder'd, and my mind o'ercast With heaviness ; in seasons when I've thought No sphery strains by me could e'er be caught From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays ; Or, on the wavy grass outstretch'd supinely. Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely : That I should never hear Apollo's song, Though feathery clouds were floating aU along The purple west, and, two bright streaks between, The golden lyre itself were dimly seen : That the still murmur of the honey bee Would never teach a rural song to me : That the bright glance from beauty's eyeUds slanting Would never make a lay of mine enchanting. Or warm my breast with ardour to unfold Some tale of love and arms in time of old. But there are times, when those that love the bay. Fly from all sorrowing far, far away ; A sudden glow comes on them, nought they see In water, earth, or air, but poesy. It has been said, dear George, and true I hold it, (For knightly Spenser to Libertas told it,) That when a Poet is in such a trance, In air he sees white coursers paw, and prance, D 34 THE VOLUME OF 1817 Bestridden of gay knights, in gay apparel, Who at each other tilt in playful quarrel ; And what we, ignorantly, sheet-lightning call, Is the swift opening of their wide portal, When the bright warder blows his trumpet clear. Whose tones reach nought on earth but Poet's ear. When these enchanted portals open wide. And through the light the horsemen swiftly glide. The Poet's eye can reach those golden halls, And view the glory of their festivals : Their ladies fair, that in the distance seem Fit for the silvering of a seraph's dream ; Their rich brimm'd goblets, that incessant run. Like the bright spots that move about the sun ; And, when upheld, the wine from each bright jar Pours with the lustre of a falling star. Yet further off are dimly seen their bowers. Of which no mortal eye can reach the flowers ; And 'tis right just, for well Apollo knows 'Twould make the Poet quarrel with the rose. All that's reveal'd from that far seat of blisses. Is, the clear fountains' interchanging kisses, As gracefully descending, light and thin. Like silver streaks across a dolphin's fin, When he upswimmeth from the coral caves. And sports with half his tail above the waves. These wonders strange he sees, and many more, Whose head is pregnant with poetic lore. Should he upon an evening ramble fare With forehead to the soothing breezes bare. Would he nought see but the dark, silent blue. With all its diamonds trembling through and through ? Or the coy moon, when in the waviness Of whitest clouds she does her beauty dress. And staidly paces higher up, and higher. Like a sweet nun in holy-day attire ? TO MY BROTHER GEORGE 35 Ah, yes ! much more would start into his sight — The revelries and mysteries of night : And should I ever see them, I will tell you Such tales as needs must with amazement spell you. These are the living pleasures of the bard ; But richer far posterity's award. What does he murmur with his latest breath, WhUe his proud eye looks through the film of death ? " What though I leave this dull and earthly mould, Yet shall my spirit lofty converse hold With after times. — The patriot shall feel My stern alarum, and unsheath his steel ; Or in the senate thunder out my numbers, To startle princes from their easy slumbers. The sage will mingle Vidth each moral theme My happy thoughts sententious ; he will teem With lofty periods when my verses fire him, And then I'll stoop from heaven to inspire him. Lays have I left of such a dear delight That maids will sing them on their bridal night. Gay villagers, upon a morn of May, When they have tired their gentle limbs with play, And form'd a snowy circle on the grass, And placed in midst of all tWat lovely lass Who chosen is their queen,— with her fine head Crowned with flowers purple, white and red : For there the lily and the musk-rose, sighing, Are emblems true of hapless lovers dying : Between her breasts, that never yet felt trouble, A bunch of violets full blown, and double, Serenely sleep :— she from a casket takes A little book,— and then a joy awakes About each youthful heart,— with stifled cries, And rubbing of white hands, and sparkling eyes : For she's to read a tale of hopes and fears ; One that I foster'd in my youthful years : D 2 36 THE VOLUME OF I8I7 The pearls, that on each glistening circlet sleep, Gush ever and anon with silent creep, Lured by the innocent dimples. To sweet rest Shall the dear babe, upon its mother's breast, Be luU'd with songs of mine. Fair world, adieu ! Thy dales and hiUs are fading from my view : Swiftly I mount, upon wide spreading pinions. Far from the narrow bounds of thy dominions. Full joy I feel, while thus I cleave the air, That my soft verse wiU charm thy daughters