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THlE COMIPLETE WORKS
OFr
JOHN KEAT'S
In2 FIVE VOLUMES.VOL. I




Agent for London.
R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON,
8 York Buildings,
Adelphi, W.O.






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PoUIS PIUDLU511E Itl 1817
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CONTENTS OF VOLUME I


Preface by the Editor........
List of Principal Works consulted........
Memoir..................
Poems [published in 1817]
Editor's Note before Poems of 1817.......
Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq........
"I stood tip-toe upon a little hill".......
Specimen of an Induction to a Poem
Calidore. A Fragment........
To Some Ladies.........
On receiving a curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the same
Ladies
To * * * * ["Hadst thou liv'd in days of old"]..
To Hope..........
Imitation of Spenser
"Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain".


Page
vii
xvii
xxiii


3
5
7
14
16
20
21
22
25
26
27


Epistles
To George Felton Mathew...
To my Brother George...
To Charles Cowden Clarke
Sonnets
L To my Brother George......
II. To * * * * * * [" Had I a man's fair form"].
III. Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison
IV. "How many bards gild the lapses of time!".
V. To a Friend who sent me some Roses
VI. To G. A. W. [Georgiana Augusta Wylie]
VIL " 0 Solitude! if I must with thee dwell"
VIIL To my Brothers
416270


29
31
35


39
40
40
41
42
43
43
44;




vi                      CONTENTS.
Page
IX. "Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there" v..  45
X. "To one who has been long in city pent"..  45
XI. On first looking into Chapman's Homer... i..  46
XIL On leaving some Friends at an early Hour.   47
XIIL Addressed to Haydon........   48
XIV. Addressed to the same........  48
XV. On the Grasshopper and Cricket......  49
XVI. To Koscinsko........   50
XVII. "Happy is England!"........  50
Sleep and Poetry..........     51
Endymion: A Poetic Romance
Editor's Note before Endymion........  65
Preface by Keats..........  69
Book I..............  71
Book II........104
Book...........  142
Book IV..........173
List of Words altered by the Editor so as to consist with Keats's rule or
practice...........  206
Addenda..........  207




PREFAOE.
BY THE EDITOR.
In the present edition of Keats's whole writings, the main features of my Library
edition are reproduced. The voluminous illustrative appendices are not given;
but so much of their substance as is necessary for general use is extracted and
distributed under other heads; and in all essential matters this edition is the
Library edition brought up to date.
The principles of editorship are thus the same as in my large edition of Shelley
in eight volumes. The plan has been to gather together everything which could
be found from the hand of the poet, to establish the text as nearly as possible
in accordance with what he wrote or meant to write, to make no changes without
record, to set out fully in foot-notes all authoritative variations of text, rejected
passages, &c., and to elucidate and illustrate from such printed and manuscript
sources as were open to me.
The three volumes of poetry published during Keats's life have been reproduced
upon this plan; and their contents have been collated with all available manuscripts and printed issues of authority, the variations being given in foot-notes.
The posthumous and fugitive poems in order of date (as exactly as that order
can be ascertained) follow the contents of the three printed volumes.
The literary fragments and notes in prose naturally follow the posthumous
poetry; and the letters come last, also in order of date as exactly as that
order can be ascertained,-for they are by no means invariably dated.
In the minor matters of orthography, punctuation, &c., I have thought it proper
to let the author have the principal voice, rather than to apply any external
standard. To ascertain Keats's deliberate preferences as far as possible, and carry
them out consistently, seems to me the best procedure.  In applying such a
principle to those works which were printed in his life-time, it is necessary to
record all deviations from the text even when they are in pursuance of the poet's
own rules; but in reprinting the posthumous works it is allowable to move a little
more freely, because the text of those works as given by earlier editors is
certain to have been revised in minor detail from a different point of view. I
have therefore endeavoured to accommodate the orthography &c. of the posthumous poems to that of the others without recording in all cases the particular
forms adopted in previous editions.
In many instances Keats adopted, no doubt deliberately, the orthography of
vii




vili


EDITOR'S PREFAOE.


Spenser,-as in lilly, ballance, pavillion, and I have not thought it advisable to
interfere with a preference of this kind. Even for but instead of butt he had the
authority of elder writers; and I presume no one will dispute the orthography
chace, seeing that Somerville, to whom the word belongs of right, spelt it so.
These are but samples of a great many words which Keats used with a different
spelling from that commonly employed; but there is no occasion to discuss the
vocabulary farther here.
The most difficult matter to deal with from the point of view of the poet's
intention has been that of words inflected in the past participle.  There is
evidence both internal and external that Keats attached importance to the way in
which his past participles in ed or 'd were printed. The external evidence takes
the form of an instruction for the printer, written upon the manuscript of
'Endymion' in his own handwriting:
"Attend to the punctuation in general as marked, and to the Elisions in the
last syllables of the participles as they are written."
This makes it abundantly clear that he had a set intention in regard to the
participles; and there is ample internal evidence that that intention, expressed
broadly, was to print ed when that syllable was to be pronounced and to replace
the e by an apostrophe in the opposite case. This sounds at first quite simple;
and Keats himself had clearly no notion how difficult a task he had set himself,
and how partially the ardent mood of poetic composition admits of carrying out
any such rule in detail. The three books which he got printed all betray the
intention to follow this rule; and each is inconsistent in itself as to the
carrying out of the rule; while the manuscripts of Keats which I have
examined in connexion with my editions are naturally still more wayward. The
difficulty of now carrying the poet's own rule out for him arises from several
circumstances.  In regard to the great majority of words ending with ed in
his works there is no doubt whatever, upon metrical grounds, that the syllable
is to be pronounced. But in many instances the e in the final ed is left standing,
both in manuscript and in print, when metrical considerations make it absolutely
certain that it was meant to be replaced by an apostrophe; while in a not inconsiderable number of cases, where the question is rather rhythmical than metrical
it is by no means certain whether the e was left in by accident or on purpose.
Cases in which an apostrophe replaces an e that is peremptorily wanted for rhyme
or metre or rhythm are comparatively uncommon; but they exist; and in one or
two uassages the author's manuscript shows a curious exception,-an B (accented
in a manner beyond all dispute) when the verse is such that the real need was an
apostrophe instead of an e. If these were all the points one had to consider the
matter would still be a simple one enough to settle: one would say without
hesitation, "leave the e in when it is quite clear it is to be sounded; replace
it by an apostrophe when it is quite clear it is mute; and when there is a doubt
give it the benefit of the doubt and leave it in." For it is obviously of little consequence whether we read ('Endymion,' Book I, line 10)
Of all the unhealthy and o'erdarkened ways




EDITOR'S PREFACE.


ix


Of all the unhealthy and o'erdarken'd ways:
the rhythm is easy and noble in either case: if we sound the e, the richness of
the redundant second foot has an echo of redundancy in the fifth foot: if we leave
the e out, it has not; and in the manuscript and first edition of ' Endymion ' the e
stands,-according to the rule, to be pronounced.  Similarly, it is of no great
moment whether we read ('Sonnet to * * * * *')
Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell
or
Be echo'd swiftly through that ivory shell.
On the other hand it is of some consequence whether we read ('Endymion,'
Book I, line 111)
Who gathering round the altar seemed to pry
or
Who gathering round the altar seem'd to pry:
the e has clearly no business there; but there it is both in the manuscript and in
the first edition,-to be pronounced, according to the rule, and therefore to be
expelled for an apostrophe by an editor desirous of carrying the poet's rule into
effect for him. Just as important is it that we should read in the Sonnet
'On First looking into Chapman's Homer'
That deep-brow'd Homer rul'd as his demesne;
and not
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
but ruled Keats wrote and printed, though in the same sonnet he wrote and
printed star'd not stared. And unfortunately the words ending in ed are not
all or nearly all of a class thus easy to deal with: there is a host of words
which are infected, not by the addition of ed, but by the addition of d to an
e which they have already, as place, face, love, move, range, change, pile, wile,
charge, force, rouse, twine, use, scare, dance, pulse, picture; and many of
these, especially those in which the e has an influence upon the value of the
consonant it follows, have a disguised, I had almost said an emasculated look,
when the e is replaced by an apostrophe: you take something away from them
that was theirs; and this is not the same thing as withholding something
that you might or might not give them     in inflecting them.  Then again
there are the words which change a letter when inflected with ed, such as bury,
marry, tarry, dry, descry, reply; and these are the hardest of all to deal with.
Dried according to Keats's rule is a dissyllable; the elision of the e makes
an ugly word enough, dri'd; and I have not met with it in Keats's poetry;
but I do find in his manuscript dry'd, and I also find descry'd; and this, I
take it, would have been his way of settling the number of syllables to be given
to each of the words of that class. Honied, he writes for a dissyllable; but




EDITOR'S PREEACE


he would doubtless have put honey'd, had he thought about the spelling of the
uninfected word.  As regards the words which change their feature and complexion when written with an apostrophe instead of an e, I can only say thus
much,-Keats wrote and printed, often over and over again, puls'd, danc'cd
rang'd, increas'd, discours'd, shar'd, unconfin'd, rais'd, arous'd, disguis'd,
smil'd, surcharg'd, heav'd, lov'd, pin'd, clos'd, seiz'd, convuls'd, and even
pictur'd; but that he treated these words thus with some compunction, even
were it an unconscious or slumbering undercurrent of compunction, may perhaps
be fairly deduced from the fact that he very often left them with the e, in cases in
which it was of precisely the same importance to excise that vowel as it was
in the cases in which he did excise it.
"Therefore" 'twas not "with full happiness that I" set hand to the task of
carrying out in detail the rule which Keats evidently meant to follow. It was a
stern duty, not to be shrunk from, to disfeature several more words in order to
conform to the practice of an author who has found such disfeaturement generally
necessary. With a living author one would argue in the hope of persuading him
to leave every e in and put an accent or two dots on every one that is to be
sounded, if the reader cannot be trusted to sound them for himself. But for one
who is among the immortals we must work as far as may be after his proper
fashion.  It is necessary to make the text consistent with its own rules,-to
consider the ease of the reader in the manner in which the poet intended to con.
sider it, and no other. So much by way of apology for the many lovely words
printed in this edition otherwise than one would wish to see them printed.  Lists
of altered words, made with the view of relieving the foot-notes, will be found
appended to the first and second volumes.
The materials used for the present edition include, I believe, all that is important. The late Lord Houghton allowed me to make free with all his Keats
publications, and kindly offered to let me go over again the papers at Pryston
Hall which served as the basis of his many editions: I regret that circumstances
prevented me from availing myself of that privilege; but Professor Sidney Colvin
has since done so; and I have had the benefit of his results.
Sir Charles Dilke's collections include many things of the utmost consequence,
both to the text of the writings of Keats and to the completeness of illustrative
detail. Letters from the poet, books formerly possessed by him, numerous letters
from George Keats, Severn, and Brown, and a great mass of related documents,
were placed unreservedly in my hands by Sir Charles, and figure conspicuously
throughout the volumes both of the present and of the Library edition.
Important papers of Severn fell some eighteen years ago into the hands of
Mr. Henry Sotheran of Piccadilly; and I had the advantage of going over them
all and making full collations, either by Mr. Sotheran's kindness or by that of
later owners of such as passed from the Piccadilly establishment before I examined
the collection.
A document of exceptional interest used at that time was a copy-book into
which Tom Keats had copied, before publication, a number of the poems forming




EDITOR'S PREFACE.


xi


the 1817 volume.    This book contained transcripts of the 'Specimen of an
Induction,' 'Calidore,' 'On receiving a Curious Shell, 'Imitation of Spenser,'
and several of the Sonnets. It had passed into the hands of John Scott, editor
of ' The London Magazine,' who was killed in a duel with a Mr. Christie arising
out of the abominable 'Cockney School' articles in 'Blackwood's Magazine.'
Tom Keats had visited Scott in Paris; and it may have been on that occasion
that the copy-book passed into Scott's possession.
A more important document acquired by myself about the same time, and still
in my collection, was a curious volume originally used for writing fair copies
of poems in-poems from various hands. At a later stage it was converted into
a scrap-book,-newspaper cuttings and other curiosities being stuck over pages of
George Keats's writing; and in one part several of George's copies from John's
poems are inserted, having at their head the autograph manuscript of the sonnet
to Mrs. George Keats (when Miss Wylie), whom I suppose to have been the
owner of the book, seeing that it contains among its curiosities the original
parchment commission of James Wylie, as adjutant of the Fifeshire Regiment
of Pencible Infantry, signed by George II. in 1794.
The numerous letters to and from Haydon, preserved in the journals of the
painter, filled up important blanks and supplied a great nnmber of additions and
corrections.
The manuscripts of 'Endymion,' 'Lamia,' 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' 'Isabella,'
'Otho the Great,' and 'The Cap and Bells,' may be mentioned as especially
fruitful of various readings and cancelled passages; but most of Keats's principal
works and a great mass of the minor poems have been revised from manuscript
sources; and not the least of the fortunate chances attending my efforts was the
discovery of Richard Woodhouse's copy of the published 'Endymion,' in which
were noted, not only the variations of the final manuscript from the printed text,
but also those of the first draft, which had not itself come to the surface. Woodhouse seems to have been an ardent admirer of Keats and an enthusiastic student
of his works, as well as an excellent scholar; for his copy of 'Endymion' was
interleaved, seemingly while Keats was still alive, and the textual differences
were noted down in the most business-like and elaborate manner, while the pages
bear many remarks and hints of a learned and acute kind, whereof I have not
scrupled to avail myself. So far as regards the largest of Keats's poems, this
book has been of more service than either of the other printed copies of
'Endymion' I have used, namely Sir Charles Dilke's copy and one in my own
possession with a number of autograph corrections. But Sir Charles Dilke's copy
has a quantity of manuscript poems bound up at the end; and these have yielded
a good deal of assistance in textual work.
The letters of Keats to his sister, which form so large a proportion of the letters
first published by me in 1883, threw a flood of new light on his character. We
knew him in nearly all relations except that of a protecting brother to a younger
sister; and it is this hiatus in his fascinating personality that these delightful
letters fill.




xii                        EDITOR'S PREFACE.
After the Library edition was published, there appeared an American issue of
Lord Houghton's edition of the poetry, together with a volume of letters, superintended by Mr. J. G. Speed, who, being a grandson of George Keats, had access to
some of the papers formerly preserved at Louisville in Kentucky, and was enabled
to publish one new letter of considerable interest as well as several passages
omitted from previous printed versions.
Later still Mr. Colvin's admirable volume for the Men of Letters Series was
written and brought out. It first appeared in 1887. Not only is it, as an appreciation of Keats's character and works, highly valuable; but it is based
upon material of which much had not then (and some has not yet) been published.
Of much of this material Mr. Colvin gave me the benefit of consultation at first
hand for the purposes of a revision of my Library edition published in 1889
and of the volume entitled 'Poetry and Prose of John Keats' published the
next year.
The following is Mr. Colvin's own account of his special material:
"In addition to printed materials I have made use of the following unprinted, viz.:"I. Houghton MSS. Under this title I refer to the contents of an album
from the library at Fryston Hall, in which the late Lord Houghton bound up a
quantity of the materials he had used in the preparation of the 'Life and Letters,'
as well as of correspondence concerning Keats addressed to him both before and
after the publication of his book. The chief contents are the manuscript memoir
of Keats by Charles Brown, which was offered by the writer in vain to Galignani,
and I believe other publishers; transcripts by the same hand of a few of Keats's
poems; reminiscences or brief memoirs of the poet by his friends Charles Cowden
Clarke, Henry Stephens, George Felton Mathew, Joseph Severn, and Benjamin
Bailey; together with letters from all the above, from John Hamilton Reynolds,
and several others. For the use of this collection, without which my work
must have been attempted to little purpose, I am indebted to the kindness
of its owner, the present Lord Houghton.'
"II. Woodhouse MSS. A       A common-place book in which Richard Woodhouse, the friend of Keats and of his publishers Messrs. Taylor and Hessey,
transcribed-as would appear from internal evidence, about midsummer 1819 -the chief part of Keats's poems at that date unpublished. The transcripts are in
many cases made from early drafts of the poems: some contain gaps which Woodhouse has filled up in pencil from later drafts: to others are added corrections, or
suggestions for corrections, some made in the hand of Mr. Taylor and some in
that of Keats himself.
"IL.   Woodhouse MSS. B. A note-book in which the same Woodhouse has
copied-evidently for Mr. Taylor, at the time when that gentleman was meditating a biography of the poet-a number of letters addressed by Keats to Mr.
Taylor himself, to the transcriber, to Reynolds and his sisters, to Rice, and


1 Now the Earl of Crewe.




EDITOR'S PREFACE.


Bailey. Three or four of these letters, as well as portions of a few others,
are unpublished.1
"Both the volumes last named were formerly the property of Mrs. Taylor,
a niece by marriage of the publisher, and are now my own. A third note-book
by Woodhouse, containing personal notices and recollections of Keats, was unluckily destroyed in the fire at Messrs Kegan Paul and Co's. premises in 1883...
"IV. Severn MSS. The papers and correspondence left by the late Joseph
Severn, containing materials for what should be a valuable biography, have been
put into the hands of Mr. William Sharp, to be edited and published at his discretion.2 In the meantime Mr. Sharp has been so kind as to let me have access
to such parts of them as relate to Keats.  The most important single piece,
an essay on 'The Vicissitudes of Keats's Fame,' has been printed already
in the 'Atlantic Monthly'..., but in the remainder I have found many interesting details, particularly concerning Keats's voyage to Italy and life at
Rome.
"V.   Rawlings v. Jennings.     When Keats's maternal grandfather, Mr.
John Jennings, died in 1805, leaving property exceeding the amount of the
specific bequests under his will, it was thought necessary that his estate should
be administered by the Court of Chancery, and with that intent a friendly suit
was brought in the names of his daughter and her second husband (Frances
Jennings, m. 1st Thomas Keats, and 2nd William Rawlings) against her mother
and brother, who were the executors. The proceedings in this suit are referred
to under the above title. They are complicated and voluminous, extending over
a period of twenty years, and my best thanks are due to Mr. Ralph Thomas, of
27 Chancery Lane, for his friendly pains in searching through and making
abstracts of them."
By 1889 Mr. Colvin had in his hands the holographs of some of the most
important of Keats's letter. to George and Georgiana Keats in America, showing
portentous variations from published texts and a surprising mass of unpublished or
imperfectly published matter. Of these also I had the use in 1889. Since then
(1891) Mr. Colvin has used the same material in his Letters of John Keats
to his Family and Friends; and I myself published in a single volume in 1895
the whole of Keats's then known letters, chronologically arranged.  These included several discovered after 1891.
In the Athenmum for the 23rd of January 1891, Professor Jenks of Melbourne
in Victoria announced the discovery of a highly important volume of Keats
manuscripts, formerly belonging to George Keats; and this volume is now in the
1 This statement still stands, no doubt through oversight, in the current issue of
Mr. Colvin's book; but both he and I have published the letters and passages
referred to since 1887; and they will be found in the present edition.
2 Mr. Sharp's book came out in 1892 under the title 'The Life and Letters of
Joseph Severn.' The Severn manuscripts were of course not used by me in any
way. The printed book is, equally of course, among the works consulted for the
present edition.




xiv                       EDITOR'S PREFACE.
'British Museum.' It contains holograph copies, by the poet, of Isabella,' the
Mermaid Tavern lines, and 'The Eve of St. Mark,' and also transcripts of
'Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port,' 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' the Odes on
Melancholy, to a Nightingale, and on a Grecian Urn, 'Welcome Joy, and
Welcome Sorrow,' 'Where's the Poet?' the Ode to Autumn, the Robin Hood
lines, some lines by L. E. L. on a portrait of Keats, three stanzas of 'Adonais,'
and a sonnet by the Honourable Mrs. Norton. Placed loosely in the volume are
a transcript of the 'Lines written in the Scotch Highlands' and some verses
addressed by " an unknown bard " to one of George Keats's daughters. The book
has proved on careful collation to be most valuable.
Of work attributed to Keats in former editions and rejected from the present
volumes there is very little; but of such rejection as has been necessary an
account should be rendered. The poem and sonnet given in Lord Houghton's
Aldine edition (and others) as of doubtful authenticity are both omitted because
I do not think that Keats had anything more to do with the poem than with the
sonnet, which is to be found among Laman Blanchard's works, and is assigned to
that author in several anthologies, as for instance in Leigh Hunt's 'Book of the
Sonnet,' Dr. Mackay's 'A Thousand and One Gems of English Poetry,' and Mr.
John Dennis's 'English Sonnets.' Lord Houghton has recorded his belief that the
sonnet was "one of George Byron's forgeries " (Aldine edition, page 493); but at
page 326, the poem commencing with the words " What sylph-like form before my
eyes," is introduced by a suggestion that there were genuine pieces among the
forgeries sold at the George Byron " autograph " auction. My own belief is that,
so far as the actual documents are concerned, all were forged; but that many of
them were copies, in assumed hands, of genuine documents. Some of the Shelley
letters certainly were; and I think it is only a question of time how soon this particular piece of verse shall be traced to the source outside Keats's work from which
George Byron copied it. The letter beginning "My dear Spencer" which was
printed at pages 27 and 28 of the edition of Keats's Life and Letters published in
1867, and the letter beginning "My dear Haydon," printed at pages 49-51 of the
same volume, are omitted on similar grounds. Both seem to me unlike Keats in
all respects; and both are from the George Byron sale, the Haydon one being
moreover addressed to "W. Haydon" instead of "B. R. Haydon." The song
"Stay, ruby-breasted warbler, stay," given at page 6 of the Aldine edition, was
probably sent to Lord Houghton from America.  I omit it because, in the scrapbook mentioned at page xi containing a mass of transcripts by George Keats
from his brother's poetry, this poem is not only written in George's hand but
signed " G.K." instead of "J.K."; and indeed it reads more like one of the effusions which George is recorded to have produced than an early poem by John.
From the same scrap book a sonnet attributed by George Keats to his brother
John was extracted for the Library edition in 1883. It is the sonnet beginning
with the line
Brother belov'd if health shall smile again,
and passed without public challenge as Keats's till I discovered it by chance




EDITOR'S PREFACE.


among Mrs. Tighe's posthumous poems, and of course withdrew it at once from
my current editions of Keats and made confession of the mistake into which
George Keats had unwittingly lured me. No doubt Keats had copied it at some
time from the volume containing 'Psyche' (which he greatly admired) and some
minor poems, and so deceived his brother without intending to do so.
Another piece which I was led to attribute to Keats was a delightful set of
couplets issued by Leigh Hunt in 'The Indicator' for the 19th of January 1820,
headed 'Vox et Praterea Nihil.' After a long discussion with the late Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, I concluded that these beautiful lines had been written by Keats
as a part of 'Endymion,' in one of the foot-notes to which I inserted them with
the suggestion that they had been intended to come between lines 853 and 854 of
Book EI, and had been rejected by Keats as overweighting the passage. This
suggestion also passed unchallenged for thirteen years, after which, through the
courtesy of Mr. Bryan Charles Waller, author of 'The Twilight Land' and
'Perseus with the Hesperides,' I was made aware that 'Vox et Praeterea Nihil'
was to be found in a volume of poetry by his uncle Bryan Waller Procter (" Barry
Cornwall").1  Of this false ascription also due confession was made, and the
couplets were cancelled in the current edition of Keats's poetry. How they had
betrayed me and others may be judged from the single sampleLike the low voice of Syrinx when she ran
Into the forests from Arcadian Pan;
strongly resembling a couplet in ' Endymion 'Telling us how fair, trembling Syrinx fled
Arcadian Pan, with such a horrid dread.
It is believed that the five volumes, of which the first goes forth next month,
contain everything of Keats's which has come to the surface since 1883, and that
this edition, besides a great mass of work that is not in any other, embodies all
that is elsewhere in print, whether in published editions, lives, or essays.
In the last quarter of the present expiring century the estimation in which
Keats has been held has increased very greatly; and it has seemed desirable to
make his whole writings accessible to all classes at the opening of the new century,
and that in a form at once handy and compact and having all the essential advantages of a Library edition.
Regarded as pure literature, the work of Keats has qualities which place it close
to that of Shakespeare. It is not claimed for him that he is the greatest English
poet since Shakespeare: such a claim were impious to the memory of Milton,
of Wordsworth, of Shelley, of Byron,-not to mention others who have followed
Shakespeare in the long and glorious roll of our poets. The term " great poet" is
comprehensive: before using it one weighs the claimant's intellect, his imagination,
his psychic energy, his powers of creation generally. It could not be maintained
1 ' Marcian Colonna an Italian Tale with Three Dramatic Scenes and other
Poems,' published by John Warren and C. & J. Oilier in 1820.       In this
volume the title is enlarged to 'A Voice-Vox et Praeterea Nihil.'




xvi                       EDITO'8S PREFAOE.
that in all these points Keats was supreme, even in his generation; but it might
well be conceded that, in the differentia of his mind and style, there is a magic,
a majesty, a power of realizing conceptions wholly poetic in a manner wholly
poetic, such as no English poet since Shakespeare had possessed, unless indeed it
were Milton,
H. B. F.
46 Marlborough Hill, St. John's Wood, London,
November 1900.




LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED.


Under this head it is not proposed to attempt a bibliography of Keats's works and
of related books, or even to set down all the works to which passing references
are made in the editorial portions of the present volumes. But as it has been
necessary to draw more or less largely on a considerable number of substantive
works, it seems desirable to supplement, by means of a list of the principal
or most notable of these, the information given in the preface as to the sources
of this edition.
Keats's three volumes published in his life-time, in 1817, 1818, and 1820, do
not head this list, as each is fully described in the note prefixed to its contents as
printed in the present edition.  No second edition of the 'Poems,' 'Endymion,'
or 'Lamia, &c,' was published during the poet's life: hence the sources of
"various reading" are either manuscripts or prints occurring in periodical and
other works not by Keats. Such works will be found fully referred to in the
foot-notes.
1. Annals of the Fine Arts, for MDCCCXVI... London... Sherwood, Neely, and
Jones... 1817.
2. Annals of the Fine Arts, for MDCCXVII... London... 1818.
3. Annals of the Fine Arts, for MDCCCXVIII... London... 1819.
4. Annals of the Fine Arts, for MDCCCXIX... London... 1820.
6. Annals of the Fine Arts, for MDCCCXX... London... 1820.
These five octavo volumes were edited by James Elmes; but the ruling
spirit and chief contributor to the work was Haydon, although Keats,
Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Lamb, and Southey, all figure in its pages. Three
numbers appeared in 1816, four each in 1817, 1818, and 1819, and two in
1820,-seventeen in all. One of Haydon's many fine dissertations, that,
namely, on Visconti's mistake as to the action of the Ilissus in the Elgin
collection appeared as an octavo pamphlet in French,-so determined was the
learned painter to make his voice heard throughout Europe on this subject.
6. Erreur de Visconti relative a l'Action de la Statue de l'Ilissus dans la
collection d'Elgin, au Museum Britannique. Par B. R. Haydon, Peintre d'Histoire.
Londres: Imprime par Bulmer et Oie. Cleveland-Row, St. James's. 1819.
7. The Literary Pocket-Book; or, Companion for the Lover of Nature and Art.
1819.  (To be continued annually.) London:... Oilier, Vere-Street,... (where
communications will be received.)... [1818].
8. The Literary Pocket-Book... 1820... London [1819].
9. The Literary Pocket-Book... 1821... London [1820].




PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED.


10. The Literary Pocket-Book... 1822... London [1821].
11. The Literary Pocket-Book... 1823... London [1822].
12. Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries; with Recollections of the
Author's Life, and of his Visit to Italy. By Leigh Hunt... London... Colburn...
1828 [one volume, quarto].
13. Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries... Second Edition. In two
volumes [8vo.]... London... Colburn... 1828.
14. The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Complete in one
volume [royal 8vo.]. Paris... Galignani... 1829.
15. Leigh Hunt's London Journal. To Assist the Inquiring, Animate the
Struggling, and Sympathize with All... London... Knight... 1834 and 1835 [two
volumes, folio].
16. Smith's Standard Library. The Poetical Works of John Keats. London...
MDCCCXL [one volume, royal 8vo.].
17. The Poetical Works of John Keats. London... Smith... MDCCCXLI [one
volume, foolscap 8vo.].
18. The Philosophy of Mystery. By Walter Cooper Dendy, Fellow and Honorary Librarian of the Medical Society of London: Senior Surgeon to the Royal
Infirmary for Children, &c., &c. London... Longmans... 1841 [one volume, 8vo.],
19. Imagination and Fancy; or Selections from the English Poets, illustrative
of those First Requisites of their Art; with Markings of the best Passages, Critical
Notices of the Writings, and an Essay in Answer to the Question, 'What is
Poetry?' By Leigh Hunt... London... Smith, Elder and Co... 1844 [one volume
crown 8vo.].
20. Imagination and Fancy... Third Edition... 1852.
21. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Thomas Medwin. In Two Volumes
[crown 8vo. ]... London... Newby... 1847.
The copy used is one (penes me) profusely corrected and annotated by
Medwin and described by him as " corrected for a new edition just about to
appear"; but it has certainly not been handled as "copy" by a printer;
and I am unable to ascertain that any such edition as was thus prepared
by the author ever really appeared.
22. Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats. Edited by Richard
Monckton Milnes. In Two Volumes [foolscap 8vo. ]... London... Moxon... 1848.
The particular copy used originally in preparing the Library edition was
one in Sir Charles Dilke's collection, largely annotated in manuscript by
his grandfather, Charles Wentworth Dilke, the friend of Keats. As Sir
Charles allowed me to copy the whole of the notes, I have been able to refer
to them again when necessary in preparing the present edition.
23. The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt; with Reminiscences of Friends and
Contemporaries... In Three Volumes [crown 8vo.]... London: Smith, Elder and
Co.... 1850.




PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED.


24. The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt... A New Edition, Revised by the
Author; with farther Revision, and an Introduction, by his Eldest Son [Thornton
Hunt]... London: Smith, Elder and Co.... MDCCCLX [one volume, crown 8vo.].
25. The Poetical Works of John Keats. A new Edition. London... Moxon...
1851 [one volume foolscap 8vo. ].
26. Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter, from his Autobiography
and Journals. Edited and Compiled by Tom Taylor... In Three Volumes [crown
8vo.]... London... Longmans... 1853.
27. Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon... By Tom Taylor... Second Edition... in
three Volumes [with additions]... London... Longmans... 1853.
28. The Poetical Works of John Keats.  With a Memoir by Richard Monckton
Milnes. London... Moxon... 1854 [one volume, foolscap 8vo.].
29. The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt. Edited by his Eldest Son... In Two
volumes [crown 8vo.]... London... Smith, Elder & Co.... MDCCCLXIL
30. Essays and Poems. Selected from the Literary Remains of F. Hinde, M.A.,
Oxon. Liverpool: Gilbert G. Walmsley... 1864.
This little post 8vo. volume contains a notable appreciation of Keats's
Life and Works, said to have been read before the Liverpool Philomathic
Society in 1862.
31. The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a Memoir by Richard Monckton
Milnes. A New Edition. London... Moxon... 1863 [one volume, foolscap 8vo.].
32. The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a Memoir, by Lord Houghton.
A new, revised, and enlarged edition. London... Moxon... 1865 [one volume,
foolscap 8vo. ].
33. The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a Memoir by the Right Hon.
Lord Houghton.    Illustrated by... George Scharf... London... Moxon... 1866
[one volume, 8vo., first published in a very handsome form in 1854].
34. The Life and Letters of John Keats. By the Right Hon. Lord Houghton.
A new Edition. London... Moxon... 1867 [one volume, crown 8vo.].
35. On the Study of Celtic Literature.  By Matthew Arnold, Professor of
Poetry in the University of Oxford. London: Smith, Elder and Co... 1867 [one
volume, 8vo. ].
36. The Poetical Works of John Keats. Edited with a Critical Memoir, by
William Michael Rossetti. Illustrated by Thomas Seccombe. London... Moxon
[no date, one volume, post 8vo., " Moxon's Popular Poets"].
37. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays. By David Masson, MA.,
LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh. London: Macmillan and Co., 1874 [one volume, post 8vo.].
38. The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the Writings of the Late Charles
Wentworth Dilke. With a Biographical Sketch by his Grandson, Sir Charles
Wentworth Dilke, Bart., M.P... In Two Volumes [8vo.]... London... Murray...
1875.




xx                  PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED.
39. Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk. With a Memoir
by his Son, Frederic Wordsworth Haydon. With Facsimile Illustrations from his
Journals. In Two Volumes [8vo.]... London: Chatto and Windus... 1876.
40. The Poetical Works of John Keats. Chronologically arranged and edited,
with a Memoir by Lord Houghton, D.C.L., Hon. Fellow of Trin. Coll. Cambridge.
London: George Bell and Sons... 1876. [Aldine edition, one volume, foolscap 8vo.]
41. Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall). An Autobiographical Fragment
and Biographical Notes, with Personal Sketches of Contemporaries, Unpublished
Lyrics, and Letters of Literary Friends. London: George Bell and Sons... 1877
[one volume, 8vo.].
42. Clarendon Press Series  Keats   Hyperion, Book I   Edited with Notes
W. T. Arnold, B.A.... Oxford... MDCCCLXXVIII [pamphlet, crown 8vo.].
43. Recollections of Writers. By Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke... London:
Sampson Low... 1878 [one volume, crown 8vo.].
44. Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne Written in the Years MDCCCXIX
and MDCCCXX and now given from the Original Manuscripts with Introduction and
Notes by Harry Buxton Forman... London... Reeves & Turner... MDCCCLXXVIII
[one volume, foolscap 8vo.].
45. Lives of Famous Poets. By William Michael Rossetti. A Companion
Volume to the Series Moxon's Popular Poets.  London... Moxon... 1878 [one
volume, crown 8vo.].
46. The Poetical Works of John Keats. Chronologically arranged and edited,
with a Memoir, by Lord Houghton... Second Edition [of the Aldine edition]...
1879.
47. John Keats   A Study   By F. M. Owen... London C. Kegan Paul & Co...
1880 [one volume, crown 8vo.].
48. The English Poets Selections with Critical Introductions by various Writers
and a General Introduction by Matthew Arnold edited by Thomas Humphrey
Ward, M.A.    London  Macmillan and Co. 1880 [four volumes, crown 8vo.].
The fourth volume, "The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Dobell,"
includes, of course, a selection from Keats's works. This is preceded by an
Essay from the pen of Matthew Arnold.
49. English Literature by the Rev. Stopford Brooke, M.A. London: Macmillan
and Co. 1880 [one volume, medium 8vo.].
This book was originally issued as a "Primer of English Literature "which title it bears as a " dropped head " above Chapter L
50. The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats now first brought
together including Poems and numerous Letters not before published edited with
Notes and Appendices by Harry Buxton Forman in Four Volumes [demy 8vo.]...
London Reeves & Turner... 1883.
This was the first attempt to collect and set out the whole of Keats's
Writings. The volumes contained in addition to all the Writings of




PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED.


XX1


Keats known at that time, everything judged of importance from the
numerous earlier works cited in the present list, except, of course, Lord
Houghton's Memoirs, which were, and are still, accessible in his own
editions of Keats. Keats's letters in this first Library edition numbered
196,-157 to his family and friends and 39 to Fanny Brawne.
51. The Letters of John Keats edited by Jno. (ilmer Speed... New-York Dodd,
Mead & Company 1883 [one volume, medium 8vo.].
52. The Poems of John Keats with the Annotations of Lord Houghton and a
Memoir by Jno. Gilmer Speed... New York Dodd, Mead & Company 1883 [two
volumes, medium 8vo.].
These three volumes were issued together with half-titles worded ' The
Letters and Poems of John Keats. In Three Volumes.' There are 15
letters to his brothers, 62 to his friends, and 37 to Fanny Brawne, 114 in
all. Whatever is new is very inaccurately printed; and the arrangement of
the Poetry does not correctly represent Lord Houghton's editions. The
typography of this selection is handsome.
63. The Poetical Works of John Keats given from his own Editions and other
Authentic Sources and Collated with many Manuscripts Edited by Harry Buxton
Forman    London   Reeves & Turner... 1884 [one volume, crown 8vo.].
This is an unannotated edition in large type, with a collection of Cancelled Passages from 'Endymion' at the end, full subject index, and index
of first lines.  There is no Memoir; but the Preface attempts an "Appreciation" on a small scale, and is supplemented by a Chronology of Events,
Compositions, and Publications.
54 The Poetical Works of John Keats edited by William T. Arnold. London
Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.... MDCCCLXXXnl [one volume, crown 8vo.].
This edition is of course incomplete; but it has a valuable introduction
and contains most of Keats's best poetry. Mr. Arnold has treated in a full
and systematic way the subject of the Sources of Keats's diction,-a subject on which Woodhouse began while Keats was still alive, as shown in the
notes to the Library edition.  Mr. Arnold has added a good deal to what
Woodhouse and others had done in this way.
55. The Poetical Works of John Keats Reprinted from the Original Editions
with Notcs by Francis T. Palgrave London Macmillan and Co. 1884 [A Selection
in one volume of the "Golden Treasury" Series, pott 8vo.].
56. The Asclepiad.  A Book of Original Research and Observation... By
Benjamin Ward Richardson, M.D., F.R.S.... published quarterly... London.
April 1884 [octavo].
This contains an important article entitled "An Esculapian Poet-John
Keats."
57. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Edward Dowden, LL.D.... In Two
Volumes [demy 8vo.]... London... Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.... 1886.
58. Keats  by Sidney Colvin  London: Macmillan and Co... 1887 [one volume
of the " English Men of Letters " Series edited by John Morley, crown 8vo.].
59. Life of John Keats by William Michael Rossetti. London Walter Scott..,
1887 [one volume, medium 8vo.].
C




xxii


PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED.


60. The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats edited with Notes
and Appendices by H Buxton Forman In Four Volumes [demy 8vo.] Reissue
with Additions and Corrections... London Reeves & Turner... 1889
61. Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne with Introduction and Notes
by H   Buxton Forman     Second   Edition Revised and Enlarged    London
Reeves & Turner... 1889
62. Poetry and Prose by John Keats A Book of Fresh Verses and New Readings
-Essays and Letters lately found-and Passages formerly suppressed Edited by
H Buxton Forman and forming a Supplement to the Library edition of Keats's
Works    London   Reeves & Turner... 1890 [one volume, demy 8vo.].
This volume, designed to put those who owned the Library edition of
1883 in the same position as those who owned the Reissue of 1889,
contained also some little material special to itself.
63. Letters of John Keats to his Family and Friends Edited by Sidney Colvin
London Macmillan and Co... 1891 [one volume, large foolscap 8vo.].
This edition, which does not include the Letters to Fanny Brawne,
contains 164 letters in all. The poetry inserted by Keats in the originals
is given in full, though in a type smaller than that used for the body of
the Letters. The editor has added valuable notes.
64. The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn by William Sharp... London
Sampson Low.. 1892 [one volume, royal 8vo.].
65. Excursions in Criticism Being some Prose Recreations of a Rhymer By
William Watson    London:... Mathews &... Lane... MDCCCXCII.
66. John Keats A Critical Essay by Robert Bridges Privately Printed
MDCCCOXV [one volume, post 8vo.].
67. Keats' Jugend und Jugendgedichte. Von J. Hoops. Sonderabdruck aus
Englische Studien XXI. band, 2. heft. 1895 [Leipzig, 8vo. pamphlet.].
68. The Letters of John Keats complete revised edition with a Portrait not published in previous editions and twenty-four contemporary views of places visited
by Keats. Edited by H Buxton Forman     London    Reeves & Turner... 1895
[one volume, crown 8vo.].
This edition contains every letter of Keats known to be extant at the
time including those to Fanny Brawne, which take their place in order
of date among the rest, not as a separate group. There are 214 letters in
all; and these are given with the transcribed poetry in full, set in the
same large type as the body of the letters.
69. The Poetical Works of John Keats... Edited by H. Buxton Forman... Sixth
Edition with Seven Portraits and Ten other Illustrations  London... Reeves and
Turner... 1898.
This is a new edition of No. 53, illustrated and brought up to date.
70. Keats' Hyperion Mit Einleitung herausgegeben von Johannes Hoops...
Berlin Verlag von Emil Felber 1899 [one volume, crown 8vo.].
This little book is No. 3 in a series, namely the "Englische Textbibliothek Herausgegeben von Johannes Hoops a. o. Professor an der
Universitat von Heidelberg."




MEMOIR.
Of John Keats whether as man or as poet the best biography was written by
himself all unconscious of what he was doing. It is preserved in his letters. No
doubt the conviction that this was the case led the late Lord Houghton to give the
form he did to his work when he dealt with the mass of material entrusted to him
by Charles Armitage Brown, supplemented by contributions from other sources
assiduously sought out while the 'Life, Letters and Literary Remains' were
being embodied in those two small volumes issued by Moxon in 1848 and still
treasured by Keats's lovers.  With new generations new needs arise; and the
selection made by Lord Houghton from his materials with so much taste and
feeling, if with a somewhat more liberal allowance of editorial discretion than
accords with present views, has long ceased to suffice for the requirements
of Keats's always growing audience. Not only have the poet's known writings
doubled in bulk since 1848; but a considerable Keats literature has grown up;
and, while Lord Houghton's memoirs and notes in their several forms will always
be among the choice acquisitions of those readers who go a little further afield
than the current book-shops, the letters of Keats taken alone, or even with the extraneous matter published by Lord Houghton, do not give enough information
about the poet and his surroundings to satisfy the needs of the present generation.
It is for this reason that, apart from the notes and elucidations to be found
in their appropriate places in the pages of these five volumes, the present brief
biography is prefixed.
John Keats was the eldest of the five children of Thomas Keats and his wife
Frances, born Jennings: it was on the 31st of October 17951 that John was born
1 The evidence which I discovered in 1882 in the register of baptisms at the
Church of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, that Keats's birthday was the 31st of October,
not the 29th as he himself seems to have thought, appears to me to be conclusive;
but, as Professor Colvin is not fully satisfied on the point, I give the following
note from his 'Keats' (page 221):-" As to the exact date of Keats's birth the
evidence is conflicting. He was christened at 8t Botolph's, Bishopsgate, Dec. 18,
1795, and on the margin of the entry in the baptismal register (which I am
informed is in the handwriting of the rector, Dr. Conybeare) is a note stating that
he was born Oct. 31. The date is given accordingly without question by Mr.
Buxton Forman ('Works,' vol. L p. xlviii). But it seems certain that Keats
himself and his family believed his birthday to have been Oct. 29. Writing on
that day in 1818, Keats says, 'this is my birthday.' Brown (in Houghton M8S.)
gives the same day, but only as on hearsay from a lady to whom Keats had
mentioned it, and with a mistake as to the year. Lastly, in the proceedings in
Xmii




xiv                              MEMOIR.
at the Swan and Hoop Livery stables in Finsbury,-Finsbury Pavement, facing
Lower Moorfields, at that time an open space, but now occupied by Finsbury
Circus, the London Institution, and the east side of Finsbury Pavement. This
Livery stable was kept by Keats's grandfather, John Jennings, who had taken
into his employ Thomas Keats, a young man from the West Country, of whose
antecedents nothing is known. He is said to have been still under twenty years
of age when he became head ostler at the Swan and Hoop; and in the fulness of
time he married his master's daughter and took charge of the business, Mr.
Jennings retiring and taking up his residence at Ponder's End. The birth of
John Keats is recorded to have been premature, and probably hastened by some
imprudence on the part of his mother, who is said to have been somewhat addicted
to pleasure-seeking.
On the 28th of February 1797 Keats's brother George was born. His brother
Thomas was born on the 18th of November 1799; and on the 28th of April 1801
the fourth son of this marriage came into the world. He was christened Edward,
and died in infancy. On the 3rd of June 1803 a daughter was born: she was
christened Frances Mary. By this time the growing family had moved away
from the Swan and Hoop and were occupying a house in Craven Street, off the
City Road. In the following year a catastrophe befell them. On the 15th of
April Thomas Keats went to dine at Southgate, and at a late hour mounted his
horse and started for home. As he passed down the City Road, his horse fell with
him, and he was thrown and fractured his skull. It was about one o'clock in the
morning when the watchman found him. He was then alive, but speechless; the
watchman got assistance, and took him to a house in the neighbourhood, where he
died about eight o'clock on the morning of the 16th of April 1804.
Within a year of the untimely and violent death of Keats's father, the widow
married a Mr. William Rawlings " of Moorgate in the City of London, StableKeeper," assumed by Mr. Colvin on the ground of this description to have been
her first husband's successor in the management of her father's business. Mr. and
Mrs. Rawlings did not live happily together, and were soon separated, Mrs. Rawlings and the young Keatses taking up their abode with Mrs. Jennings, who also
was left a widow by the death of Mr. John Jennings on the 8th of March 1805.
The question of education had not been by any means neglected. Mr. and Mrs.
Thomas Keats had wished to send their sons to Harrow; but, concluding that the
expense would be disproportionate to their means, they wisely decided to adopt
Rawlings v. Jennings, Oct. 29 is again given as his birthday, in the affidavit of
one Anne Birch, who swears that she knew his father and mother intimately.
The entry in the St Botolph's register is probably the authority to be preferred."
The early circumstances of Keats's family life did not tend to a very accurate
knowledge on these points.  When I first corresponded with his sister, Mrs.
Llanos, she was under a wrong impression about her own age, based on an
inaccurate tradition as to the year of her father's death. The interval between
the two dates she had correctly; but it was not until I discovered the record of
the accident in 'The Gentleman's Magazine' that she was convinced of her own
birth having taken place in 1803.




MEMOIR.


XXV


more moderate counsels, and John was sent, shortly before his father's death, to the
school at which his uncles Jennings had been educated, namely that of Mr. John
Clarke of Enfield. This is not the only fact to be laid to heart by any who might
too hastily assume from what has been said that Keats was sprung of quite ordinary
people of the commercial middle-class.  Mr. John Jennings himself is said to
have been " extremely generous and gullible "; but he knew a man of parts, and
did not entrust his daughter's happiness and his stable-yard to a common fellow
when he consented to the marriage between Thomas Keats and Frances Jennings.
Thomas Keats, Devonian or Cornishman-who shall say which?-Thomas Keats,
like his illustrious eldest son, was a brisk little man who impressed people with his
personality.  Frances Jennings was a somewhat notable young woman; Mr.
Richard Abbey had not perhaps had great experience of talented women; but
George Keats has recorded of that gentleman (his sometime guardian) that he
regarded Frances Jennings as the one woman of his acquaintance who excelled her
mother Alice Jennings in "talents and sense." And Abbey was at the least a
shrewd man. It would be a pleasant task, if material enough existed, to reconstruct the several personalities; but it must suffice to add that, among the
traditions of this middle-class family, was that of the valour of Captain Midgley
John Jennings, R.N., Keats's mother's brother, who had served gallantly under
Duncan at Camperdown, and who died on the 8th of October 1808, and further
that Keats's mother herself is credited with a passionate attachment to her eldest
son, which he fully reciprocated.
One of the prettiest stories in the records of Keats's young days is that of the
drawn sword. His mother being ill and ordered to be kept quiet, the child constituted himself guardian of her chamber, at the door of which he posted himself,
armed with an old sword, and suffered no one, on pain of death, to approach her.
Benjamin Robert Haydon, ever in extremes, though a true admirer of Keats, has
spoilt the flavour of this record or legend by giving it a vicious turn; 1 but those to
whom Keats is dear will believe the tale as told above-indicative of that tenderness and intrepidity which we know to have been blended in the character of Keats.
Another tale for which Haydon is as far as I am aware the sole authority is
particularly well worth preserving among the few characteristic scraps about
Keats's childhood. It is this:
"An old lady (Mrs. Grafty, of Craven Street, Finsbury) told his brother
George,-when in reply to her question, 'what John was doing,' he told her
he had determined to become a poet-that this was very odd, because when he
could just speak, instead of answering questions put to him he would always make
a rhyme to the last word people said, and then laugh."
1 Here is what Haydon says in his Autobiography:
" He was when an infant a most violent and ungovernable child. At five years
of age or thereabouts, he once got hold of a naked sword and shutting the door
swore nobody should go out.  His mother wanted to do so, but he threatened her
so furiously she began to cry, and was obliged to wait till somebody through the
window saw her position and came to her rescue."




xxvi


MEMOIR.


Here there is nothing to lead the imaginative painter to stray into the paths
of decoration; and it helps us to piece out the picture of the little boy who, like
many other little boys, was fond of dabbling in brooks and taking home small
live fish. Of the child Keats it is recorded by the poet Keats in a letter to
his sister that
There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he
He kept little fishes
In washing tubs three
In spite
Of the might
Of the Maid
Nor afraid
Of his Granny-goodHe often would
Hnrly burly
Get up early
And go
By hook or crook
To the brook
And bring home
Miller's thumb,
Tittlebat
Not over fat,
Minnows small
As the stall
Of a glove,
Not above
The size
Of a nice
Little Baby's
Little fingers...
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the same brook was in his mind when
he penned in 1817 that charming reminiscence which he puts in the mouth of
Endymion, making confessions to his sister Peona, about Diana's face looking up
at him from the water of a wellAnd there in strife no burning thoughts to heed,
I'd bubble up the water through a reed;
So reaching back to boyhood: make me ships
Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips,
With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be
Of their petty ocean.
This is much more like experience than invention; and probably both it and




MEMOIE.


xxvii


the record of childish habits, written in 1818 in Scotland, refer to those years of
the poet's life divided between Enfield and Edmonton-between, that is to say, his
grandmother's house at Edmonton, and Mr. Clarke's school at Enfield.  There it
was, as recorded by Charles Cowden Clarke, that Keats " all but commenced and
did complete his school education."  Clarke adds-"he was one of the little
fellows who had not wholly emerged from the child's costume upon being placed
under my father's care... perhaps the youngest individual in a corporation of
between seventy and eighty youngsters." Clarke says "he had a brisk, winning
face, and was a favourite with all, particularly my mother;" and of Keats's father
he records that he was "Ia man of so remarkably fine a common-sense, and native
respectability, that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his demeanour
used to be canvassed by my parents after he had been to visit his boys.1 John
was the only one resembling him in person and feature, with brown hair and
dark hazel eyes... His two brothers... were like the mother, who was tall, of good
figure, with large oval face, and sensible deportment."
In the early part of his school-life John gave, according to Clarke, no extraordinary indications of intellectual character; but it was remembered of him
afterwards, that there was ever present a determined and steady spirit in all his
undertakings: Clarke " never knew it misdirected in his required pursuit of study.
He was a most orderly scholar."... The narrator adds-"My father was in the
habit, at each half-year's vacation, of bestowing prizes upon those pupils who had
performed the greatest quantity of voluntary work; and such was Keats's indefatigable energy for the last two or three successive half-years of his remaining
at school, that, upon each occasion, he took the first prize by a considerable
distance. He was at work before the first school-hour began, and that was at
seven o'clock; almost all the intervening times of recreation were so devoted;
and during the afternoon holidays, when all were at play, he would be in the
school-almost the only one-at his Latin     or French translation; and so
unconscious and regardless was he of the consequences of so close and persevering
an application, that he never would have taken the necessary exercise had he not
been sometimes driven out for the purpose by one of the mastera
"It has just been said that he was a favourite with all. Not the less beloved
was he for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of the
most picturesque exhibitions-off the stage-I ever saw. One of the transports of
that marvellous actor, Edmund Kean-whom, by the way, he idolized-was its
nearest resemblance; and the two were not very dissimilar in face and figure.
Upon one occasion, when an usher, on account of some impertinent behaviour, had
boxed his brother Tom's ears, John rushed up, put himself in the received posture
of offence, and, it was said, struck the usher-who could, so to say, have put him
into his pocket. His passion at times was almost ungovernable; and his brother
George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to hold him
down by main force, laughing when John was in 'one of his moods,' and was
1 rom this it is to be assumed that George went to the school near about the
same time as John. Clarke thought John was the younger.




xxviii


MEMOIER.


endeavouring to beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw conflagration;
for he had an intensely tender affection for his brothers, and proved it upon the
most trying occasions. He was not merely the 'favourite of all,' like a pet prizefighter, for his terrier courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness
of a mean motive, his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in
his behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one, superior or
equal, who had known him."
Mr. Colvin ('Keats,' page 8) has drawn on the papers in the Houghton
Collection for the following extract from an account furnished by one of Keats's
school-fellows, Edward Holmes, who lived to write a Life of Mozart:"Keats was in childhood not attached to books. His penchant was for fighting.
He would fight any one-morning, noon, and night, his brother among the rest.
It was meat and drink to him....His favourites were few; after they were known
to fight readily he seemed to prefer them for a sort of grotesque and buffoon
humour...He was a boy whom any one from his extraordinary vivacity and
personal beauty might easily fancy would become great-but rather in some
military capacity than in literature. You will remark that this taste came out
rather suddenly and unexpectedly....In all active exercises he excelled. The
generosity and daring of his character with the extreme beauty and animation
of his face made I remember an impression on me-and being some years his
junior I was obliged to woo his friendship-in which I succeeded, but not till
I had fought several battles.  This violence and vehemence-this pugnacity
and generosity of disposition-in passions of tears or outrageous fits of laughteralways in extremes-will help to paint Keats in his boyhood.   Associated as
they were with an extraordinary beauty of person and expression, these qualities
captivated the boys, and no one was more popular."
Clarke goes on to relate that, in the latter part of the time that he remained at
school, the last year and a half or so, Keats occupied the hours during meals in
reading. He is described as having a tolerably retentive memory, and to have
read a surprising quantity. "He must in those last months," says Clarke, " have
exhausted the school library, which consisted principally of abridgments of all the
voyages and travels of any note; Mayor's collection, also his Universal History;
Robertson's histories of Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss Edgeworth's productions, together with many other works equally well calculated for
youth. The books, however, that were his constantly recurrent sources of attraction were Tooke's 'Pantheon,' Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, which he
appeared to learn, and Spence's 'Polymetis.' This was the store whence he
acquired his intimacy with the Greek mythology; here was he 'suckled in that
creed outworn;' for his amount of classical attainment extended no farther than
the Eneid."  With the _Eneid he is said to have been so fascinated that before
leaving school he had translated in writing a considerable portion.  "And yet,"
says Clarke, "I remember that at that early age-mayhap under fourteen-notwithstanding, and through all its incidental attractiveness, he hazarded the
opinion to me (and the expression riveted my surprise) that there was feebleness




MEMOUIL


xxix


in the structure of the work." Burnet's History of his Own Time and Leigh
Hunt's 'Examiner,' which Mr. Clarke's father took in, are credited with laying the
foundation of Keats's love of civil and religious liberty.
During the latter part of Keats's school-days, his mother's health failed more
and more completely. She suffered much from rheumatism for some time; and
when, finally, she was attacked by pulmonary oonsumption, it was not long before
her sufferings came to an end. Keats's devotion to her at her worst took the
form of sitting up all night to watch her, administering her medicine, giving her
(and even cooking) her food, and reading novels to her. When at length her
release came his grief was so poignant and overwhelming as to awaken "the
liveliest pity and sympathy in all who saw him." He was still at Mr. Clarke's
school-it was in February 1810, when he was fourteen years old, that she diedand under his schoolmaster's desk he would hide himself in his despair. Shortly
after this blow, Mrs. Jennings appointed Rowland Sandell and Richard Abbey to
be guardians and trustees of Keats and his brothers and sister,-making over to
the children the greater part of her property under her husband's will.
At the end of 1810, when turned fifteen, Keats left school and was apprenticed
to Mr. Thomas Hammond, a surgeon living in Church Street, Edmonton, only two
miles from Enfield.  "This arrangement," says Clarke, "evidently gave him
satisfaction... for now, with the exception of the duty he had to perform in the
surgery-by no means an onerous one-his whole leisure hours were employed in
indulging his passion for reading and translating. During his apprenticeship he
finished the ' Eneid.' 1
One little glimpse of his life at this time was given to me by my old friend the
late Richard Henry Home, author of 'Orion,' who went to Mr. Clarke's school
during Keats's apprenticeship. One winter day Hammond had driven over from
Edmonton to Mr. Clarke's with Keats; and, while the Doctor went into the
school-house, the apprentice (renowned "bruiser" in the school) sat in the gig,
head bent in a brown study, and held the reins. Horne, dared by his companions
to snowball the " old boy," of course did it. He had the luck to hit Keats in the
back and then incontinently took to his heels and got away before other arrangements could be made for the reins.2 Another glimpse we get from Clarke,
who tells us that he and Keats met about five or six times a month at this time;
and Keats rarely came to Enfield empty-handed; "either he had a book to read,
or brought one to be exchanged."
And yet another glimpse the poet himself gives us when, discoursing to his
11I do not know positively whether this means that he finished reading it or
finished translating it,-probably translating; Mr. Colvin, at all events has no
doubt upon the point; but I have not discovered whether the translation is extant.
It would probably be in prose; and it is hardly to be supposed that its interest
would be other than biographical.
2Mr. Colvin ('Keats,' page 11) gives this story somewhat differently on the
authority of Mr. Gosse, who had it from Horme: Keats is described as standing at
the horse's head in a brown study. But Home told me the tale as in the text
over a dozen times, and never varied it.




MEMOIR.


brother on the subject of the complete renewal of the body's tissues every seven
years, he says "seven years ago it was not this hand that clenched itself against
Hammond,"1 thus letting us know that it was not in entire amity that he and
Hammond parted. Briefly, they quarrelled; and in the latter part of the year
1814 the apprentice's indentures were cancelled, Keats proceeding to London to
study at St. Thomas's and Guy's hospitals.
At first he lodged at No. 8 Dean Street, in the Borough. Later on he occupied
rooms with George Wilson Maokereth and Henry Stephens, fellow medical students.
To Stephens we are indebted for some reminiscences of the poet, communicated to
Lord Houghton and others.  Even in the serious days of Keats's studentship, he
was regarded by his fellows as chiefly remarkable for scribbling doggerel verses in
the note-books of his companions; but he was certainly popular among his fellowstudents as he had been among his schoolfellows. Stephens said that "his
absolute devotion to poetry prevented his having any other taste or indulging in
any vice."
By all accounts, however, notwithstanding his addiction to verse, Keats was a
good medical student,-industrious, able, and successful,-and might have made
a career in the profession chosen for him, had there not been other influences more
powerful. He operated well; but his imagination appalled him with visions of
what might chance if he failed or stumbled. Also his life-his real life-was
abroad in the fields of romance away from the grim realities of science; and he
gradually became more and more the devotee of the Muses, less and less the son of.Esculapius. His introduction to Leigh Hunt and Haydon at length fanned into
flame the fire of imaginative creation which was ever there but had been kept
smouldering a while. At about the time when he completed his twenty-first year.
the will to live "the life poetic" took distinct shape; and, had he maintained
robustness of body, he would doubtless have found a way of living by his pen
without detriment to his eager and single-souled devotion to poetic art.  Charles
Cowden Clarke, as his early Mentor, Leigh Hunt and Haydon as his most powerful encouragers at the important epoch of adolescence, must be credited with much
of the active influence that took Keats out of the path to a medical practitioner's
life, and set his feet in the devious ways of literature.
Among his earlier friends, besides Charles Cowden Clarke, are to be named
George Felton Mathew, William   Haslam, Joseph Severn, and Charles Wells.
Of Mathew, not much is publicly known, save that his family were in trade
and showed Keats some hospitality, that Keats addressed to him the poorest of
his Epistles in verse, and that, when he wrote to Lord Houghton in 1848 his
recollections of the poet, he was "a supernumerary offial on the Poor-Law Board,
struggling meekly under the combined strain of a precarious income, a family of
twelve children, and a turn for the interpretation of prophecy." 2 These details
1 The date of this statement is the 21st of September 1819. Probably it is not
to be literally assumed that Keats threatened Hammond as early as September
1812 and yet remained with him for two years more.
2Colvin's 'Keats,' pp. 19-20.




MEMOIR.


sxxi


should have some weight in settling the degree of our acceptance of what he said
in 1848 about Keats.   "Keats and I, though about the same age, and both
inclined to literature, were in many respects as different as two individuals could
be. He enjoyed good health-a fine flow of animal spirits-was fond of company
-could amuse himself admirably with the frivolities of life-and had great confidence in himself.  I, on the other hand, was languid and melancholy-fond
of repose-thoughtful beyond my years-and diffident to the last degree....He
was of the sceptical and republican school-an advocate for the innovations which
were making progress in his time-a faultfinder with everything established.
I on the other hand hated controversy and dispute-dreaded discord and disorder.... He admired more the external decorations than felt the deep emotions
of the Muse. He delighted in leading you through the mazes of elaborate
description, but was less conscious of the sublime and the pathetic.  He used
to spend many evenings in reading to me, but I never observed the tears nor the
broken voice which are indicative of extreme sensibility."
William Haslam seems to have been a person who would never have been
heard of but that his name occurs, both pleasantly and unpleasantly, in the
letters of Keats and in related documents; but he is credited with having
introduced Keats to Joseph Severn, who at that time was a young and struggling
aspirant in art, whose fancy had conceived a high ideal of what a real live poet
might be, and who found in this particular specimen "all his fancy painted."
And no wonder; for the authentic quality of Keats's mission was quickly accepted
as an article of faith in a growing circle of friends and acquaintances even before
he had proved his title by substantive productions.
Charles Wells was a schoolfellow of Tom Keats's at Edmonton; and at this time
he lived with his people in Featherstone Buildings, Holborn. Horne told me that
there had been some unpleasantness between Keats and Wells before the wellknown incident of the roses,-probably something to do with poor Tom. Wells was
only fifteen when he made his amende for whatever the offence was by sending
Keats the bunch of roses which was the subject of the sonnet at page 42 of the
present volume.1
One of the pleasantest figures in the circle is Georgiana Augusta Wylie, the
beloved of George Keats, who clearly had his elder brother's countenance and encouragement in his love-affair, for John, besides writing verses to her himself,
helped George in the same way, and produced for him the charming Valentine 2
" Hadst thou lived in days of old."  The womanly perceptiveness of the late Mrs.
Owen was no doubt right about Georgiana Wylie's influence: referring to Keats's
attachment for this bright  rl, Mrs. Owen, in her excellent book, 'John Keats: a
Study' (1880, page 13) makes an important point of vital criticism when she says
-" There can be little doubt that this sister-in-law was one of the pure and
beautiful influences at work in his mind when he wrote 'Endymion.' It is impos1 How bitterly Keats resented another and later offence will be seen from passages in his letters to George in America (in a later volume of this edition).
2 See page 22 of this volume.




xxxii


MEMOIR.


sible not to feel the shadowy presence of a high ideal throughout the pages..."
The charm of the fraternal relations of Endymion and Peona is doubtless indebted to this happy influence.
How magnetically Keats attached men to him can scarcely be better exemplified
than by quoting Leigh Hunt's account of their first meeting. It is as follows:" Mr. Clarke, junior, his schoolmaster's son, a reader of genuine discernment, had
encouraged with great warmth the genius that he saw in the young poet; and it
was to Mr. Clarke I was indebted for my acquaintance with him. I shall never
forget the impression made upon me by the exuberant specimens of genuine
though young poetry that were laid before me, and the promise of which was
seconded by the fine fervid countenance of the writer. We became intimate on
the spot, and I found the young poet's heart as warm as his imagination. We
read and walked together, and used to write verses of an evening upon a given
subject. No imaginative pleasure was left unnoticed by us, or unenjoyed; from
the recollection of the bards and patriots of old, to the luxury of a summer rain at
our window, or the clicking of the coal in winter-time.  Not long afterwards,
having the pleasure of entertaining at dinner Godwin, Hazlitt, and Basil
Montague, I showed them the verses of my young friend, and they were
pronounced to be as extraordinary as I thought them. One of them was that
noble sonnet on first reading Chapman's Homer, which terminates with so
energetic a calmness, and which completely announced the new poet taking
possession." 1
The vivid impression made by Keats upon Hunt as upon others did not wear
off; and Hunt, like the rest had something to say about even his personal appearance,-as thus: "He was under the middle height; and his lower limbs were
small in comparison with the upper, but neat and well-turned. His shoulders
were very broad for his size: he had a face, in which energy and sensibility were
remarkably mixed up, an eager power checked and made patient by ill-health.
Every feature was at once strongly cut, and delicately alive. If there was any
faulty expression, it was in the mouth, which was not without something of a
character of pugnacity. His face was rather long than otherwise; the upper lip
projected a little over the under; the chin was bold, the cheeks sunken; the
eyes mellow and glowing; large, dark and sensitive. At the recital of a noble
action, or a beautiful thought, they would suffuse with tears, and his mouth
trembled."
The earliest known efforts of Keats to serve the Muse are much more like
exercises in the art of writing verse than poetry properly so called; and in the
transition period one notes chiefly the determination tobe a poet. Now and then,
however, come flashes of inspiration, as in the Sonnet on first looking into Chapman's Homer, and in passages of "I stood tip-toe upon a little hill."  As he mixed
more with men of letters, as for instance John Hamilton Reynolds, Cornelius
Webb, Horace Smith, Shelley, and later Wordsworth, his own true identity as a
poet grew stronger and stronger: and even by the time he decided to publish his
1 ' Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries.'




MEMOIR.


XXXiii


first volume he had accomplished a notable piece of poetic criticism in 'Sleep and
Poetry,' written after sleeping at Hunt's cottage in the Vale of Health.  In
March 1817 the little volume of 'Poems,' the contents of which stand first, in
their original order, in the present edition, was issued to the world through the
young publishing house of Charles and James Oilier, who afterwards became the
publishers of Shelley. The little book attracted hardly any notice, though it was
well reviewed by Hunt in 'The Examiner '; but its failure did but stimulate Keats
to more ambitions and strenuous effort: and it is said that he and Shelley arranged a race over the Muse's meadows.    Shelley was to write 'Laon and
Cythna' and Keats 'Endymion'; and they were to try which could finish his
work first.
On the 14th of April 1817, urged by his brothers, and more vehemently by
Haydon, Keats left London to be "alone and improve" himself,-even Shelley's
invitation to go and stay with him at Marlow being refused, in order that he
might have his "own unfettered scope." By the end of April the Olliers arranged
with George Keats for the relinquishment of the little volume of poems,-the
terms used on both sides being somewhat acrimonious; and Keats started upon
'Endymion,' working at Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight, at Margate, and at
Canterbury. Tom was with him both at Margate and at Canterbury; and, after
receiving disturbing letters from George on the subject of money matters, the two
brothers returned to London and took lodgings at postman Bentley's house in
Well Walk, Hampstead. George, it must be stated, had been in Mr. Abbey's employ, but had left it. Tom was unfit for work. Keats himself had encroached upon
his share of the capital of the Jennings property while a medical student; and
there were now difficulties with Abbey about ways and means. Keats had already
arranged for the publication of 'Endymion' (when done), and had even had
advances from the future publishers.
Installed in the Well Walk lodgings, Keats worked away at 'Endymion' through
the summer, and developed a friendship with Charles Wentworth Dilke and
Charles Armitage Brown, who lived in two houses forming a single block, known
as Wentworth Place, in John Street, Downshire Hill-now, as a single house,
called Lawn Bank. It was through Reynolds that Keats knew these two excellent
friends,-Dilke, then aged 29, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, but much occupied
with literature, and Brown, aged 31, living on his means after vicissitudes.
Brown was a good companion, with literary proclivities, and had even in his
time made ~500 by writing a successful opera on a Russian subject. Both men
were as unlike Keats as possible, and also as unlike each other. A third friend
introduced by Reynolds was Benjamin Bailey,' who was reading for the Church
at Oxford; and yet a fourth should here be mentioned, the witty and hapless
James Rice.   In the course of the summer George and Tom Keats made a
journey to Paris, and Keats went to Oxford to stay with Bailey during the
long vacation.


1 Afterwards Archdeacon of Colombo,




xxxiv                           MEMOIR.
While at Oxford he continued 'Endymibn' steadily, and finished the third book,
writing also delightful letters to his sister Fanny, who was much kept away from
him by Mr. Abbey, and to Jane and Mariane Reynolds, the sisters of his friend,
and afterwards Mrs. Thomas Hood and Mrs. Green. Keats returned to Hampstead early in October 1817. Haydon and Hunt were by this time living "jealous
neighbours" in adjoining houses in Lisson Grove, Haydon having also quarrelled
with Reynolds. Here Keats was cautioned by Haydon against showing his poem
to Hunt, lest he should claim to have done half of it! But Keats, though beginning to appraise Hunt's qualifications at a somewhat lower value than formerly
was still warmly attached to him, and knew also how to discount Haydon's statements. In the autumn he went to Burford Bridge, near Dorking, and there finished
'Endymion.' During the winter, after his return to Hampstead, he revised the
poem, did a little dramatic criticism, wrote a few small poems, and attended
occasional convivial gatherings of young men. In the meantime Tom had become
so ill (he was in a consumption) that George took him, by advice, to Teignmouth
on the south coast of Devon for the winter.
Keats still saw much of Hunt and Shelley, and also of Haydon, who made studies
of his head for a figure in his picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem then in
progress, and promised to contribute a portrait of him to 'Endymion' if the poem
should be published as a quarto volume; but, as we all know, it was decreed that
it should be an octavo, without a portrait. Keats's minor poems of this period are
always of authentic quality-no more mere exercises-though varying widely in
tone and value. And now came into discussion with Reynolds a scheme for a
joint publication of poetical tales from  Boccaccio.  From  this scheme arose
'Isabella or the Pot of Basil,' begun at once, not long after the opening of the
new year 1818.
At this time came a new disturbance. George was determined to marry and
emigrate to America, and must come to town forthwith. Tom, under the soft
influences of the Devonshire air, had somewhat rallied; and Keats determined to
release George and take up again the office of Nurse. For Teignmouth, then, he
started in the second week of March, only, however, to be in time for a fresh
relapse of the poor sufferer and a new spell of watchfulness and effort to keep Tom
in heart. During the time (nearly two months) of his Teignmouth ministrations,
he saw 'Endymion' through the press, wrote and re-wrote the preface, finished
'Isabella,' of which he had only done a few stanzas, and wrote a few more minor
poems, including his best metrical Epistle, that to Reynolds.
The outlook of the Keats family was gloomy enough by this time. John Keats
himself had not been over prudent in guarding his health: there was doubtless
congenital weakness in some sort though he had great mental and physical energy,
and his biographers never tire of telling tales about his prowess as a boxer, and
especially of his thrashing a butcher half as big again as himself for an act of
cruelty. Clearly he was not given to sparing himself and husbanding his physical
resources. George knew well enough about all this; and it was not for his own
sake only that he desired to emigrate and make, if it might be, a fortune; for




MEMOIR.


xxxv


behind his personal ambition lay ever the thought that he would fain be in a
position to maintain John if need were. Miss Wylie had consented to cast in her
lot with the manly George, just turned 21, when Keats took his poor waning
brother Tom back to London in May 1818 that they might be with George during
the preparations for his departure. He was already looking somewhat askance at
'Endymion,' just then making its public appearance, and planning new efforts in
lieu of any possible attempt to better the work accomplished.
When George Keats and Georgiana Wylie had taken the momentous decision
referred to above, another not apparently so important, but really fraught with ill
for the Keats family, was also decided on. Charles Brown and John Keats decided
to go on a walking tour to Scotland, leaving poor Tom to be taken care of at
Well Walk. George and his bride, accompanied by Keats and Brown, proceeded to
Liverpool, the party calling on the way at Redbourn near St. Albans to dine and
see Henry Stephens. At Liverpool the two tourists and the young couple parted,
George and his bride sailing for America and Keats and Brown proceeding by coach to
Lancaster. Keats's account of this trip in his letters is very vivid and full. Brown's
letters, as well as his manuscript biography of Keats in the Houghton collection
also give a detailed account. The pedestrians set out from Lancaster and went to
Windermere Lake, to Keswick, to Derwent Water, and up Mount Skiddaw; and,
having seen many of the beauties of Cumberland and Westmoreland, trudged to
Carlisle, whence they took the stage-coach to Dumfries, "which," says Brown,
"was an uninteresting distance of 36 miles." They walked all over the coast of
Kirkcudbright with great pleasure, the country being very fruitful, and the views
delightful. It was their intention to see the Giant's Causeway and they took the
Packet from Port Patrick to Donaghadee, but did not proceed further than Belfast;
for the Irish people pleased them so little, and the expence was so great that they
returned to Scotland, and proceeded up the coast to Ayrshire. Near Ayr, they
paid a visit to the Cottage in which Burns was born,-even then, it seems,
thousands went there "for no other purpose but the happiness of being under
the roof."  They visited the ruins of Kirk Alloway, because there Tam o' Shanter
saw the Witches dancing; then they saw the " banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,"
and the "auld Brig" and the "new Brig" in the Town, and every thing they
could think of that was connected with Burns's poetry. After satisfying themselves that Burns had as charming a country to live in as he himself has
described, they proceeded to Glasgow.  Then journeying by the banks of the
Clyde, they reached Dumbarton, and turned northwards by the side of Loch
Lomond. Pushing on from Loch Lomond to the top of Loch Awe, the friends
passed one of their pleasantest days in walking by its side to the south end.
They afterwards went to the rough, mountainous coast, where, to use Brown's
own words, " the sea breaks in between the hills, twenty and thirty miles up the
Country, forming what they call salt water Lakes."  Arrived at Oban, they took
the ferries, first to the Island of Kerrera, and then to the Island of Mull. Here a
Guide led them through the Country.     "No stranger," says Brown, "could
possibly find the road-for in fact road there was none, nearly for the whole




xxxvi


MEMOIR.


journey of 37 miles,-sometimes it was over smooth rock, then we had for miles
to hop from one stone to another, up hill and down hill, then to cross rivers up to
our knees, and, what was worst of all, to walk thro' bogs." From the extremity
of Mull, they crossed to lona and visited the ruins of the Cathedral, the College,
and Chapels. Here they hired a Boat to take them to Staffa,-where they explored Fingal's cave, on which Keats wrote the beautiful poem called 'Staffa.'
Returning to Oban by a different route, they proceeded to Fort William in order to
ascend Ben Nevis.  " We went," says Brown, "to the very top of it, and we had
to toil up a prodigious steep, chiefly over large loose stones, for eight miles,... and
as for the coming down, it was worse than the ascent."
All this roughing it was beginning to tell upon Keats; and the tourists now
made for Inverness, along the banks of Loch Lochy and Loch Ness, visiting the
Falls of Foyers. Brown declares that he and Keats were sometimes nearly starved;
for 3 or 4 days together they would not be able to procure a morsel of meat, and
the oat-bread they found very difficult to eat. Brown computed at 642 miles the
distance walked by him and Keats by the time they came to Inverness; and, says
he, I "shall have twice as much more to accomplish if I can, but Mr. Keats will
leave me here, and I am full of sorrow about it; he is not well enough to go on; a
violent cold and an ulcerated throat make it a matter of prudence that he should
go to London in the Packet; he has been unwell for some time, and the Physician
here is of opinion he will not recover if he journeys on foot, thro' all weathers, and
under so many privations."
In another letter he says-"I am waiting here to see him off in the smack for
London. He caught a violent cold in the Island of Mull, which, far from leaving
him, has become worse, and the physician here thinks him too thin and fevered to
proceed on our journey. It is a cruel disappointment. We have been as happy
as possible together. Alas! I shall have to travel through Perthshire and all the
counties round in solitude!  But my disappointment is nothing to his; he not
only loses my company (and that's a great loss), but he loses the country. Poor
Charles Brown will have to trudge by himself,-an odd fellow, and moreover an
odd figure; imagine me with a thick stick in my hand, the knapsack on my back,
'with spectacles on nose,' a white hat, a tartan coat and trousers, and a Highland
plaid thrown over my shoulders! Don't laugh at me, there's a good fellow,
although Mr. Keats calls me the Red Cross Knight, and declares my own shadow
is ready to split its sides as it follows me. This dress is the best possible dress,
as Dr. Pangloss would say. It is light and not easily penetrated by the wet, and
when it is, it is not cold,-it has little more than a kind of heavy smoky sensation
about it."1
The state of his brother Tom's health formed an additional call towards London;
and when, on the 18th of August, Keats reached the Thames and proceeded at once
to Hampstead, it was for a new bout of nursing rather than being nursed. Mrs.
Dilke described him on his arrival as looking " brown and as shabby as you can
1 These extracts are from 'Papers of a Critic.'




MEMOIR.


xxxvii


imagine, scarcely any shoes left, his jacket all torn at the back, a fur cap, a great
plaid, and his knapsack."
He came back to his old haunts to find a sort of literary turmoil in his set, due
to the appearance of the scurrilous "Cockney School" article in 'Blackwood's
Magazine '; and ' The Quarterly Review ' followed in September with its " savage
and tartarly " stuff. It is not to be maintained that these attacks had any very
serious effect upon him: to use his own words, he suffered much more from his
"own domestic criticism" than the ophidian utterances of Lockhart, the bucolic
brutality of Wilson, or the pestilent stuff uttered by the "noteless blot on a
remembered name" as Shelley called the Quarterly Reviewer, could possibly
inflict. Moreover, he was too wholly absorbed in his ministrations at the bedside
of poor Tom to feel these things as more than an annoyance, though one which
would recur with some bitterness as time went on. Keats would naturally feel
resentment whenever he thought of the unpunished personalities of the vilest kind
which were used for the purposes of political enmity, and helped to debauch the
public mind, and spoil his chances of immediate success. But, as George Keats
said, "John was the very soul of courage and manliness, and as much like the
Holy Ghost as Johnny Keats." 1
I am fain to mention at this point another of Keats's contemporaries who
remained staunch and indeed made some endeavour to advance into friendlier
relations with the wronged poet after the appearance of the attacks. It was
probably not at any great distance of time from this that Procter made Keats's
acquaintance.  In the Autobiography published in 1877 in that interesting
book 'Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall)' we read at page 201-" Of
Keats I have little to record. I saw him only two or three times before his
departure for Italy. I was introduced to him by Leigh Hunt, and found him
very pleasant, and free from all affectation in manner and opinion. Indeed,
it would be difficult to discover a man      with  a more bright and open
countenance.  He was always ready to hear and to reply; to discuss, to reason,
to admit; and to join in serious talk or common gossip. It has been said that
his poetry was affected and effeminate. I can only say that I never encountered
a more manly and simple young man.
"In person he was short, and had eyes large and wonderfully luminous, and a
resolute bearing; not defiant, but well-sustained."
It was Procter's widow who said in the long aftertime to which she survived, that Keats's eyes impressed her "as those of one who had been looking
on some glorious sight."
On the 1st of December Tom's release came,-in the night,-and Keats left the
death-chamber in Well Walk to impart his fresh grief to Brown at Wentworth
Place.- Brown thus records the visit:"Early one morning I was awakened in my bed by a pressure on my hand. It
was Keats, who came to tell me that his brother was no more. I said nothing, and
'A phrase of patronizing ribaldry used in ' Blackwood's Magazine.'
d




XXXViii


MEMOIER.


we both remained silent for a while, my hand fast locked in his. At length, my
thoughts returning from the dead to the living, I said-'Have nothing more to do
with those lodgings,-and alone too I Had you not better live with me?' He
paused, pressed my hand warmly, and replied,-'I think it would be better.' From
that moment he was my inmate."
Keats had begun 'Hyperion' at Tom's bedside; and during the early days of his
residence with Brown as a sharing inmate, he proceeded with its composition; but
his nervous system was certainly unhinged for some time after his loss; for he was
most fondly attached to his brothers. The tremulous melancholy of his mind at
this time is illustrated by a reminiscence of his friend Dilke's, of which the tradition was kept alive by the late Mr. John Snook of Belmont Castle. One day a
white rabbit came into the Wentworth Place Garden, and Dilke shot it. Keats declared that it was Tom's spirit; and so earnestly did he insist on this view as to
impress it on others of the cirole; and, when the creature, duly or unduly cooked,
was placed on the table, no one could look on it; and it was removed untouched.
As time softened the painful impressions of the last few months, Keats became
more and more re-absorbed in devotion to his art. But another influence which
was to prove more destructive than all past calamities was about to make itself
felt. Keats met at his neighbour Dilke's Mrs. Brawne and her daughter Fanny,2
who had hired Brown's furnished house during the Scotch tour, and were still
living in Hampstead. Keats did not altogether like Fanny Brawne's demeanour
at first; but his fate was very quickly sealed. Try as he would to persuade himself that he was not in love with her, his passion was unquestionably quick in its
advent and consuming in its nature and degree. It came upon him in the very
fulness and splendour of his power. He worked not only at 'Hyperion,' but in the
course of the winter made way with 'The Eve of St. Agnes '; and, towards the end
of January 1819, when he and Brown were visiting Dilke's father at Chichester,
and Mr. and Mrs. John Snook at Bedhampton-Mrs. Snook was Dilke's sister-he
had begun upon the priceless fragment 'The Eve of St. Mark.'
When in February he returned to Wentworth Place he seems to have gone less
into the society of his men friends than formerly and to have alternately nursed
and resisted his passion for Fanny Brawne. In April 1819 the Dilkes left
Wentworth Place; and Mrs. Brawne now took their house; so that Keats and
Brown were next-door neighbours to Fanny and her family. It was probably
early in the year 1819 that he declared his love for her and was acknowledged as
her accepted suitor. It was at all events sufficiently early to give some weight
to her opinion about the effect of the reviews on him. After avowing that the
attack was made a little before she knew him, she says that, in her opinion,
however great his mortification might have been, he was not of a character likely
to have displayed it in the weak manner sometimes depicted. Referring to the
expedition to the Highlands, from which "he was forced to return, in consequence
'Mr. Colvin's "Keats," quoted from Houghton Manuscript.
2 There were also Fanny's young brother Samuel and an ungrown sister Margaret,
afterwards Madame d'Acunha.




MEMOIR.,


xsxix


of the illness of a brother, whose death a few months afterwards affected him
strongly," she says:-"It was about this time that 1 became acquainted with
Keats. We met frequently at the house of a mutual friend...but neither then nor
afterwards did I see anything in his manner to give the idea that he was brooding
over any secret grief or disappointment. His conversation was in the highest
degree interesting, and his spirits good, excepting at moments when anxiety
regarding his brother's health dejected them."'
In the Spring of 1819, during the turmoil of his passion, Keats wrote some of the
most perfect of his works,-the Odes on Indolence, on a Grecian Urn, to
Psyche and to a Nightingale, 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' and other short
poems of great beauty and individuality. To this period belongs a decline in the
friendship between him and Haydon.   The painter inconsiderately enough borrowed ~30 raised for him with difficulty by the poet, and when Keats was
himself in dire straits, resented the expectation that it should be repaid. There
was no rupture; but Keats felt his friend to be less worthy of his friendship
than he had thought.    Brown made Keats an advance for the purposes of a
summer outing which was deemed advisable; and by the 3rd of July Keats
had bidden good-bye to Fanny Brawne for a while and arrived at Shanklin,
where he shared lodgings with James Rice-there for his irremediably declining
health. Keats also was in poor health; and although the sick man with whom
he was now in constant companionship was one of the wittiest creatures on
earth, he naturally failed to have other than a gloomy effect on the sick mind and
body of the poet. Brown joined the ailing pair at Shanklin before long; and,
shortly after the robust man's arrival, Rice left. It was now that Keats, already
occupied with 'Lamia,' accepted a scheme of Brown's for a jointly produced
tragedy, founded on the history of Otho the Great. Brown was to bring his stage
experience to bear upon the construction of the piece, inoluding the thread of the
fable; and Keats was to write the dialogue. While this work was proceeding
Keats and Brown moved to Winchester where they arrived in the second week of
August. When the fifth act of 'Otho the Great' was reached, Keats dismissed
Brown from the joint-conduct of the drama and completed the work alone. He also
finished 'Lamia,' and, on a hint from Brown, began an English historical tragedy
on the subject of King Stephen.
Brown went to Bedhampton at the beginning of September, to stay with Mr.
and Mrs. Snook; and, while he was there, Keats received an urgent letter from
George, necessitating an immediate visit to London to arrange with Abbey for
fresh supplies to be sent to America. After three days the poet returned to Winchester, without having ventured to see Fanny Brawne; and, during a fortnight's
solitude, he began to work at ' Hyperion ' once more. It was then that he made up
his mind to abandon this great attempt on account of the artificiality of its style
and its too salient resemblance to the work of Milton. While still at Winchester
he revised 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' worked a little on 'The Eve of St. Mark,' and
1 Medwin's Life of Shelley (see Vol. ii, pages 86-93).




MIEMOIR.


wrote the Ode to Autumn and the renowned Winchester letter to George and
Georgiana Keats. It was at this juncture that he determined to return to Town,
take lodgings in Westminster, and try to live by journalism. Dilke got lodgings
for him at 25 College Street from the 8th of October; and Brown returned alone
to Wentworth Place.
But indifferent health, material anxiety for himself and those he loved, and
above all the passion which Fanny Brawne had awakened in him, had by this time
wrought upon the fibre of his character. The attempt to which he had braced
himself failed disastrously and at once. Within two days he was at Wentworth Place,
at his mistress's feet-within a fortnight his resistance to the spell was disarmed,
and he was settled once more next door to her under Brown's roof.
The question of publication now presented itself again; but, instead of printing
at once the chief poems which he had completed since the publication of 'Endymion,'
he decided to abide the issue of Brown's endeavours to get ' Otho the Great' put
upon the stage. These endeavours, though at first they seemed to promise success,
ultimately failed. By the end of the year Keats was busy upon the fantastic
quasi-satirical fairy tale in ottava-rima, 'The Cap and Bells' and his extraordinary attempt to reconstruct 'Hyperion' in the form of a directly narrated
vision. Both these attempts were in different ways evidence of the decay of his
higher powers; for, although executive dexterity and nimbleness of intellect are
evidenced in abundance, and though the Vision is notable for the awakening of
high convictions on the subject of the mission and true work of poets, the judgment which characterizes Keats's best work has gone into abeyance, the flood of
true creative energy has failed at the source, and that marvellous felicity of
expression which accompanied the flood has become attenuated.
At the turn of the year George Keats paid a flying visit to London. For three
weeks in January 1820 the brothers were again together; but Keats never
attempted to unload his griefs as formerly; and George went back to Louisville in
Kentucky to his wife and child, having arranged his business matters with Abbey,
but having got no inkling of the doom overhanging his brother. It was on the
28th of January that George left London for Liverpool: on the 3rd of February
Keats's mortal illness declared itself. Brown records that on that night his friend
came into the house "in a state that looked like fierce intoxication."
"Such a state in him," says Brown, "I knew, was impossible; it therefore was
the more fearful. I asked hurriedly, 'What is the matter? you are fevered?'
'Yes, yes,' he answered, 'I was on the outside of the stage this bitter day till I
was severely chilled,-but now I don't feel it. Fevered I-of course, a little.'
He mildly and instantly yielded, a property in his nature towards any friend, to my
request that he should go to bed. I followed with the best immediate remedy in
my power. I entered his chamber as he leapt into bed. On entering the cold
sheets, before his head was on the pillow, he slightly coughed, and I heard him
say,-' That is blood from my mouth' I went towards him; he was examining a
single drop of blood upon the sheet. ' Bring me the candle, Brown, and let me see
this blood.' After regarding it steadfastly, he looked up in my face, with a calm



EMOIR.


ness of countenance that I can never forget, and said, —'I know the colour of that
blood;-it is arterial blood;-I cannot be deceived in that colour;-that drop of
blood is my death-warrant;-I must die.' I ran for a surgeon; my friend was
bled; and, at five in the morning, I left him after he had been some time in
a quiet sleep."
Fanny Brawne's account1 of the actual commencement of this mortal illness,
though less picturesque and circumstantial, has a distinct value. She says it
"began from inflammation in the lungs, from cold," and adds-"In coughing, he
ruptured a blood-vessel. An hereditary tendency to consumption was aggravated
by the excessive susceptibility of his temperament, for I never see those often
quoted lines of Dryden without thinking how exactly they applied to Keats:The fiery soul, that working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay.
From the commencement of his malady he was forbidden to write a line of poetry,
and his failing health, joined to the uncertainty of his prospects, often threw him
into deep melancholy." Referring to the often quoted Finch letter published by
Mrs. Shelley as illustrating the preface to 'Adonais,' she says that it "seems
calculated to give a very false idea of Keats. That his sensibility was most
acute, is true, and his passions were very strong, but not violent, if by that term
violence of temper is implied. His was no doubt susceptible, but his anger seemed
rather to turn on himself than on others, and in moments of greatest irritation, it
was only by a sort of savage despondency that he sometimes grieved and wounded
his friends. Violence such as the letter describes, was quite foreign to his nature.
For more than a twelvemonth before quitting England, I saw him every day,
often witnessed his sufferings, both mental and bodily, and I do not hesitate
to say that he never could have addressed an unkind expression, much less a
violent one, to any human being. During the last few months before leaving his
native country, his mind underwent a fierce conflict; for whatever in moments of
grief or disappointment he might say or think, his most ardent desire was to live
to redeem his name from the obloquy cast upon it; nor was it till he knew his
death inevitable, that he eagerly wished to die."
But to return to the exact course of the narrative:-After weeks of close confinement at Wentworth Place, he began to mend, and was so far able to get about
as to be in London on the 25th of March 1820 at the private view of Haydon's
vast picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, in which his own eager face, surmounting a figure in an ecstatic attitude, appeared to confront him with the record
of better days. Haydon records significantly in his Autobiography that the room
was full and that Keats and Hazlitt were up in a corner, really rejoicing.2 Keats
was of course unable to go with Brown on a new Scotch walking tour early in May
1820; but he accompanied his friend on board the smack for Scotland, and
descended the river as far as Gravesend.


Medwin's Life of Shelley -Vol. ii, pages 86-93.
2 Tom Taylor's Life of Haydon, first edition, volume I, page 371.




MEMOIR.


Hunt was now living in Mortimer Street, Kentish Town; and Keats, to be near
him, took a lodging in Wesleyan Place. He did no work but the revision of the
proof-sheets ofl1 'Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems' which
he had at length consented to have published; and no doubt he also read a proof of
'La Belle Dame Sans Merci,' which he had let Hunt have for 'The Indicator ' of the
20th of May 1820. He had given in to his friends by keeping back the Vision;
and the torso of ' Hyperion' abandoned at Winchester appeared in his book, which
was published at the beginning of July. The book had only a moderate success;
but Keats was beyond reach of any good that a great literary success might have
done him. Consumed by his passion for Fanny Brawne, convinced that neither
his health nor his means would admit of his marriage, he had quickly sustained a
relapse, and after fresh attacks of bleeding from the lungs on the 22nd and 23rd
of June 1820, had gone to Hunt's house for better care than he could have at
Wesleyan Place. The Doctors told him that another winter in England would be
fatal; and here was a fresh and terrible complication. No wonder that when John
and Maria Gisborne, as recorded in her manuscript journal in my possession, drank
tea at Hunt's on the 12th of July, the glory had departed! " I was much pained,"
she wrote, "by the sight of poor Keats, under sentence of death from Dr. Lamb.
He never spoke and looks emaciated."  It was perhaps immediately upon this visit
that Gisborne wrote to Shelley in such a way as to b:-ing forth his letter to Keats
dated the 27th of July 1820, inviting him to stay with him at Pisa. On the
12th of August, wounded by the act of a servant in opening one of Fanny
Brawne's letters, he then left Hunt's abruptly, and went to Mrs. Brawne's at
Wentworth Place. Here he received the aforenamed letter from Shelley whose
invitation, however, he did not accept. Keats hoped that, if he took the journey
to which he had been condemned, Brown would go with him; but his letters to
Brown failed to reach him; and when the time came to start his good friend did
not even know that he was going. Joseph Severn, who had won the Royal
Academy gold medal in 1819, determined at this juncture to accompany Keats to
Rome, and there study to fit himself for competition for the Travelling studentship.
The two young men embarked on the 18th of September on board the ship "Maria
Crowther" bound for Naples. Brown, hearing at length what was toward, took
the smack at Dundee and reached the Thames the very night of the " Maria
Crowther's " departure, so that the friends were lying in the River at the same
time, each unaware of the other's proximity.
After ten days of beating about the channel the " Maria Crowther " was still only
off Portsmouth. Keats landed and went to see Mr. and Mrs. Snook at Bedhampton,
not knowing that at that very time Brown was again close to him, namely at
the Dilkes' at Chichester.  Keats's feet were on English soil once more at Lulworth Cove, on the Dorsetshire coast, where he and Severn landed and spent a
1 While this work was in progress Shelley wrote Keats's first publisher Ollier"Keats, I hope, is going to show himself a great poet; like the sun, to burst
through the clouds, which, though dyed in the finest colours of the air, obscured
his rising."




MEMOI.                                xliii
pleasant day exploring rocks and so on; and, on returning to the ship, the dying
poet wrote in a large 8vo. Shakespeare's Poems given to him by Reynolds his
last poem-the Sonnet
Bright star would I were stedfast as thou art.
The distresses of the sea transit to Italy included a storm in the Bay of Biscay,
the company of a Miss Cotterill who, like Keats, was in a consumption and bound
for Italy, and nine days of quarantine off Naples after a four weeks' voyage.
From the harbour of Naples Keats wrote to Mrs. Brawne; and after landing, he
wrote a very painful letter to Brown on the 1st of November. Before the middle
of that month the travellers were at Rome and settled in a lodging in the Piazza
di Spagna, in the first house on the right-hand side as one ascends the beautiful
stairway of the Trinith dei Monti  Keats had rallied a little under the care of
Dr. Clark (afterwards Sir James Clark) when he wrote to Brown on the 30th of
November the last letter we have from his hand. But a sudden relapse came ten
days later, and fit after fit of bleeding from the lungs racked the enfeebled patient
and distressed the watcher-the devoted and tender friend who nursed him so
faithfully to the end. Before the end came, he was unable to bear so much as a
glance at a letter which came from her whom he was about to relinquish for ever.
Severn says-The glance of that letter tore him to pieces. The effects we[re]
on him for many days-he did not read it-he could not but requested me to
place it in his coffin together with a purse and letter (unopened) of his sisters
since which time he has requested me not to place that letter in his coffin but
only his sisters purse and letter with some hair.
This suffering existence was prolonged till the 23rd of February.  Its close
must be told in Severn's words written on the 27th.
"He is gone; he died with the most perfect ease-he seemed to go to sleep.
On the twenty-third, about four, the approaches of death came on.  Severn-Ilift me up-I am dying-I shall die easy; don't be frightened-be firm, and thank
God it has come.' I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed boiling in his
throat, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sunk into death, so quiet,
that I still thought he slept. I cannot say more now. I am broken down by four
nights' watching, no sleep since, and my poor Keats gone. Three days since the
body was opened: the lungs were completely gone. The doctors could not imagine
how he had lived these two months. I followed his dear body to the grave on
Monday with many English. They take much care of me here-I must else have
gone into a fever. I am better now, but still quite disabled.
"The police have been. The furniture, the walls, the floor, must all be
destroyed and changed, but this is well looked to by Dr. Clark.
" The letters I placed in the coffin with my own hand.
"This goes by the first post. Some of my kind friends would else have written
before."
He was buried at Rome in the Protestant Cemetery near the Pyramid of Cains
Cestius; and in the fulness of time his faithful friend Severn was laid beside
him-old and honoured.




xiv


MEMOIR.


It was not till April that Shelley heard at Pisa what had happened at Rome;
but within four months of the falling of the curtain on the tragedy of John Keats,
the great poet who had so frankly courted his more intimate friendship, and who
knew the beauty of his nature as all those who saw much of him knew it, had
poured forth and committed to the press that glowing tribute to his memory
which the world knows as 'Adonais.' Within another brief span of thirteen
months the supreme singer whose Elegy on the Death of Keats is by many
accounted to be his own most perfect and illustrious work, had joined the hapless
subject of his soaring strain in "the unapparent "-passing joyously and swiftly
through the almost painless death dealt by that sea which he so passionately
loved and hugging to his side in the moment of dissolution a certain precious
little book which he had borrowed from Hunt. This book, containing 'Lamia,'
'Isabella,' 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' 'Hyperion,' and the best Odes, was his dead
friend's clearest title to that immortality in which they were to pass along the
centuries, side by side, while all of each of them that the grave could swallow lay
beneath the grass surrounding the Pyramid of Cestius in that spot of which the
elder of them had said that "it might make one in love with death, to think that
one should be buried in so sweet a place."
Now that we look back at the mingled web of circumstance in which they
lived and passed,-look back through a vista of near eighty years,-we can speak
dispassionately of what Keats was and did.
It is impossible to read Keats's poetry closely without being struck by the
earnest single-heartedness of his devotion to his art. It is the most salient moral
quality which his writings display, and contributes more than any cultivation of
thought, study of philosophy, or adherence to the spirit of the Greek mythology,
to give to his works that stability which made certain from the first what he half
doubtingly ventured to "think" in writing to his brother,-that he should be
"among the English posts" after his death. It was perhaps this great earnestness, over-straining his super-sensitive nature, that led to most of the faults of his
more youthful productions. The line of his reading was from early times the
best calculated to invigorate and inspire his style; and although he fell at first
into some of the laxities of early English poets, the small damage here and there
effected in this way is insignificant when compared with the good he got from his
studies. Spenser very soon gained a great influence over him, as the notes to
'Endymion ' will tend to indicate; but curiously enough the early poem called an
'Imitation of Spenser' has very. little that is directly Spenserian, and is much
more like an imitation of Thomson-an echo from the Spenserian galleries of
'The Castle of Indolence.' In the opening of "I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,"
Keats makes good use of a mental phase inspired by the earlier poem ' The Floure
and the Lefe,' and if, in the same line of reading, he caught the trick of writing
such a couplet as
And glides into a bed of water lillies:
Broad leav'd are they and their white canopies
the balance is still very clearly in our favour. Now and then the debt to classic




MEMOIR


literature is a little too evident; but as a rule Keats's works are remarkably free,
from other men's thoughts. It is quite exceptional to come upon such a household word as was reset for us in the lines
To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach
A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds;
which we cannot help placing at a disadvantage beside the lines from 'As You
Like It' (Act II, Scene 1)
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
But the real wonder about Keats is what a little way into the land of his poetry
the reader carries with him the sense of shortcomings of this kind.  Endymion'
bears us along in a whirl of imaginative creation; and the beauties with which it
is lavishly strewn scarcely leave time for the thought that the construction wants
perspicacity-a thought which will intrude at last. In work later than 'Endymion'
there are probably more passages wherein the thought or feeling, whatever it may
be, is expressed with an almost absolute felicity than will be found in the like
bulk of work by any other modern English poet. The Odes to a Nightingale, on a
Grecian Urn and on Indolence, The Eve of St. Mark' and 'La Belle Dame sans
Merci,' may be named among the most sustained examples of this lofty felicity.
Perhaps it will be objected that the opening of the Ode to a Nightingale is not
really clear,-that it is not made evident at a glance how the poet's numbness
arose from being too happy in the bird's happiness,-too happy that the bird sang
" of summer in full-throated ease"; but I am not sure that the tremulous thickness of utterance arising from intense emotion is not better rendered by the means
employed, even if unconsciously employed and unintentionally rendered, than it
would have been if the thought had undergone a little more chastening; while
the prismatic line
No hungry generations tread thee down
is Dantesque in its weird vigour,-a touch of the highest genius, bringing before
us visions of many terrible things, and chiefly of multitudinous keen and cruel
faces more awful in the relentless oppressiveness of their onset upon the sensitive
among men than anything in the mighty visions of damnation and detestableness
seen five hundred years ago in Italy. The unphilosophic obliqueness of the analogy
drawn-the comparison between the lot of the individual man and that of the
general nightingale-scarcely detracts from the value, as it certainly does not
from the supreme beauty, of the poem-while we know not how much the pathos
is enhanced by this very obliqueness of analogy.
It was late in Keats's short life before he began to give birth to grand thoughts
such as those just glanced at. The mythology and poetry of the moon were perhaps
longer uppermost in his thoughts than in any other poet's.  Besides the 'Endymion ' that he speaks of in his letter to Clarke of the 17th of December 1816, a
poem now identified with "I stood tip-toe upon a little hill," there are what we




MEMOIR.


may term lunar traces throughout the early volume of Poems. Even in the poor
little poem 'To Some Ladies,' which is not even carefully finished up to its own
Tom Moorish standard, seeing that the second quatrain lacks a rhyme,-even in
this we have talk of " Cynthia's face, the enthusiast's friend."  In the Epistle to
George Pelton Mathew we read
in happy hour
Came chaste Diana from her shady bower,
and in the Epistle to George Keats there are the really admirable verses about the
poet and what he sees beside the mere moon in heavenAh, yes! much more would start into his sightThe revelries and mysteries of night:
And should I ever see them, I will tell you
Such tales as needs must with amazement spell you.
Again in the Epistle to ClarkeWhen Cynthia smiles upon a summer's night,
And peers among the cloudlet's jet and white,
As though she were reclining in a bed
Of bean blossoms, in heaven freshly shed.
Once more in the Sonnet to George KeatsCynthia is from her silken curtains peeping
So scantly, that it seems her bridal night,
And she her half-discover'd revels keeping.
And the Hecate character of the moon is clearly enough alluded to in the two
lines closing the Sonnet to ** * * * *
And when the moon her pallid face discloses,
I'll gather some by spells, and incantation.
Indeed Keats may almost be said to have made the moon and her lover hin
own,-so much so that Browning, in one of his tributes to Keats, conveys a whole
romanceful of meaning in a word, the word even in those glorious trochaics fron
'One Word More':What, there's nothing in the moon note-worthy?
Nay-for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy)
All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos)
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersmanBlank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats-him, even!
Had Keats never passed out of the lunar phase he would still have produced
book far more remarkable than Chamberlayne's 'Pharonnida,' a poem which bearl




MEMOIR.


xlvii,


a certain resemblance to 'Endymion,' and which, I think, had been read by the
modern poet (see page 164 of this volume); and much of even the 1817 volume
must perforce have been remembered; but it is the volume published in 1820 that
assures him a seat among the immortals.
Francis Turner Palgrave refers in his 'Golden Treasury' to Keats as "a
0oet deserving the title 'marvellous boy' in a much higher sense than Chatterton,"
and says that Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth would have left "poems of
less excellence and hope" than Keats has left "had their lives been closed at
twenty-five." Such was Keats's enthusiasm for Chatterton that I feel sure he
would have been the first to wish Mr. Palgrave to be reminded that the Bristol
boy really was a boy in the strictest sense, having won for himself at the hands of
Keats the proud title of " the most English of poets except Shakespeare " by a truly
wrodigious mass of work all done before he was eighteen years old-an age he never
ttained. The comparison with Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth holds; but
J is only fair to ask on behalf of Chatterton what Keats would have left had he
ailed to attain eighteen instead of twenty-six years. I think the real marvel of
Keats is best touched on by Mrs. Browning in Book I of ' Aurora Leigh':
By Keats's soul, the man who never stepped
In gradual progress like another man,
But, turning grandly on his central self,
Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years
And died, not young,-(the life of a long life,
Distilled to a mere drop, falling like a tear
Upon the world's cold cheek to make it burn..For ever;) by that strong excepted soul, ~f'
I count it strange and hard to understand
That nearly all young poets should write old;...
What is really notable is that he who had produced practically nothing as a
boy, who between the ages of twenty and twenty-five had been through so much
orrow and anguish tending to stop his work, should yet have written within
" ose five years such a body of poetry, so suddenly rising to the highest excellence
of expression and the most startling imaginative capacity, and this out of poetic
beginnings scarcely removed from the common-place.
That Keats himself was always at the very antipodes of common-place, we have
ample evidence in the various recollections of his childhood, boyhood, and youth;
in the facts of his life; and in the excellently recorded physiognomy.  In every
authentic portrait, he is a marked man; and there is scarcely an act on record.hat does not express individuality and character.
By all who really knew Keats he seems to have been greatly beloved,-one of
'he surest proofs of the nobility of his character. His devotion to his mother and
his brothers, taking practical forms, his paternal solicitude for his young orphan
ister, his readiness to assist friends from his own slender resources, his promptness,o protect the weak and oppressed, his enthusiasm for the good, the beautiful, and




xlviii                           MEMOIR.
the true, and his contempt for everything that was mean, sordid, or hollow, are all
u-halities which find, more or less, a balanced expression in his writings and his
acts.  His words and his life speak for him fully in the following volumes; and
truly of a more lovable character it would be hard indeed to find living records
such as these.  The fluctuation of his nobler qualities under premature physical
decay is one of the saddest spectacles in the history of literature; but, although
his friends had all somewhat to bear with when the hand of death was upon him,
the main stream of his life remained noble and beautiful to the last.  In the
records that relate to the times when he was between twenty and twenty-three
years of age, and in his letters even later than those times, there is a splendid
elasticity corresponding with the "fine compactness of person" which he is said to
have had. That his forces were rather volcanic and intermittent than sustained
and resistant the melancholy result showed; and however much or little prophetic
truth may have been in Coleridge's well-known utterance "there is death in that
hand," the final verdict will probably be that this noble nature, with all its male
vigour, had not the due proportion of patient stolid resistance to make head against
a dire combination of misfortunes.
Hunt in his admirable remarks upon ' The Eve of St. Agnes' points to the fainting of Porphyro at sight of Madeline as the one flaw in the poem, and apologizes
for it on the score of the poet's enfeebled state of health at the time. But I think
this is rather hard on all three-poem, poet, and disease.  If it be so important a
fault, I fear we must acquit bodily disease of any part or lot in it, for Keats's
young people always had a way of fainting, whether conceived in his more vigorous or in his less vigorous period.  Endymion after the visit of Diana (Volume I,
page 137) is described as having "Swoon'd drunken from pleasure's nipple "; and
he swoons at the thought of Diana's voice when he is in the palace of Neptune, at
the end of Book III of the poem: at the end of Book IV he is represented as
kneeling before the goddess "in a blissful swoon," which however may not be
meant quite literally; and again, in Book IV, lines 745-7, the disguised Diana
tells how as a child she gave kisses "to the void air," and how when she
imagined
the warm tremble of a devout kiss
Even then, that moment, at the thought of this,
Fainting I fell into a bed of flowers,
And languish'd there three days.
Lycius faints when he meets with Lamia at the roadside; Lamia had previously
fallen "into a swooning love of him"; and even in the very fortress of ideal
strength, the breast of the King of the Giant-gods, Keats has implanted this
liability to faint; for when in 'Hyperion' (Book II), Saturn enters among his
fallen brother-gods, it is recorded of him that he
Felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest,
But that he met Enceladus's eye,
Whose mightiness, and awe of him, at once
Came like an inspiration;




MEMOIR.


XliX


and a little further on he talks about poring
on Nature's universal scroll
Even to swooning.
Indeed the idea of swooning, especially for lovers was so familiar to the poet that,
when his own time came, he wrote to his lady, "all I can bring you is a swooning
admiration of your beauty."
To me it has always seemed that Keats's attitude towards women was that of
impassioned chivalry not wholly free from a hysterical element. The line in
"Woman! when I behold thee, "
E'en then, elate, my spirit leaps and prances,
is not inapt; and
My ear is open like a greedy shark,
To catch the tunings of a voice divine
expresses the exaggeration of sentiment perfectly.
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.
This is all more or less hysterical; and, with all its obvious charm for young
people, so, very much so, is
God! she is like a milk white lamb that bleats
For man's protection.
In one of his letters Keats describes the reactionary converse of this exaggerated
sentiment, in a passage which is an anticipation of the 'Ode on Indolence,'
and in which the phase of feeling is described as "a delightful sensation, about
three degrees on this side of faintness"; and even in the carefully finished ' Ode to
Psyche,' we have the line
And on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
applied to the mere vision of Cupid and Psyche.
This default of male robustness in one particular is a contradiction in Keats's
manly and even pugnacious character; but I do not think it ought to be regarded
with intolerance, even though it helped so valuable a life to fall into a hereditary
consumption. The fact of the matter is that, somehow or other, an Oriental as
well as a Greek and a Celtic strain had passed into the child of English parents;
and if we have the supreme advantage of a romantic coloar and warmth throughout
a great part of the poetry left by this wondrously gifted youth, we must be content
to take with it the prevalent temperament of the lovers in oriental romances and
tales, who faint as a matter of course under due provocation, very much to the
surprise of a northerly reader not previously acquainted with their customs.
Strange and occult things happen now and again in the building up of men of
genius; but I do not know that the presence, in a London child of not very




1                                 MEMOIR.
remarkable parents, of clear emanations from the spirit of Greek mythology and
the spirit of Eastern romance is more wonderful than the transfusion of the
sublimated essence of the French revolution into the veins of Shelley, the scion of
a long line of Sussex squires, or the perfect intuition of medieval romance life
displayed by Thomas Ohatterton, the descendant of a line of Bristol sextons.
"I think," wrote Keats to his brother, " I shall be among the English poets after
my death." "He is," wrote another poet,-Matthew Arnold; "he is with
Shakespeare." One might end with that; but better still it seems to me to close
by crediting to yet another poet,-its true owner-an appreciation which the
critics of to-day are but too prone to deliver as their own-a few words of Bryan
Waller Procter's:" Were it necessary, in this place, to characterise Keats as a writer, I should
say that he was more intensely and exclusively poetical than any other. No one
can read his poems (including 'Endymion' and all others subsequently published)
without feeling at once that he is communing with a great poet. There can be no
mistake about his quality. It is above all doubt; and if, like Lucifer, he has not
drawn after him a third part of the heavens, he has had a radiant train of followers,
comprising (with the exception of the great name of Wordsworth) all who have
since succeeded in distinguishing themselves in the same sphere of art."




PUBLISHERS' NOTE
in explanation of the different types employed.
In order to prevent a difflculty that sometimes arises of distinguishing between the
author and the editor, especially when author's and editor's notes to a text both
occur, the following plan has been adopted. The text of the author and its variants
have been printed throughout in 'old style ' type, while all notes &c. added by the
editor have been set in 'condensed ' type. It is hoped that this innovation will be
found of no small service to the general reader as well as to the student.


li








POEMS
Published in 1817.








The poems preceding 'Endymion' are the contents of a small volume published
early in 1817 with a title-page worded as follows:POEMS,
BY
JOHN KEATS.
"What more felicity can fall to creature,
"Than to enjoy delight with liberty."
Fate of the Butteorly.-SPENSER.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR
C. & J. OLLIER, 3, WELBECK          STREET,
CAVENDISH SQUARE,
1817.
This book, Keats's first substantive publication, though worked in fours, is a
foolscap octavo, each sheet of paper being cut in halves. It was issued in drab
boards, with a back label "Keats's Poems," and consists of a blank leaf, fly-title
'Poems' in heavy black letter, with imprint on verso, "Printed by C. Richards,
No. 18, Warwick Street, Golden Square, London," title-page as given above,
Dedication with a note on the verso, and pages 1 to 121 including the fly-titles to
the Epistles, Sonnets, and 'Sleep and Poetry'. There are head-lines in Roman
capitals running throughout each section, recto and verso alike, (1) 'Poems',,(2) 'Epistles', (3) ' Sonnets', and (4) ' Sleep and Poetry'.
The note after the Dedication is as follows:"The Short Pieces in the middle of the book, as well as some of the
Sonnets, were written at an earlier period than the rest of the Poems."
Leigh Hunt, reviewing with characteristic boldness, loyalty, and insight this
volume, dedicated to him, laid his finger unerringly on its weak and strong points.
His review appeared in 'The Examiner' for the 1st of June and 6th and 13th of




July 1817, and was reprinted as an Appendix in my Library edition of Keats's
Works.
Charles Oilier, reputed the leading spirit in the young firm of publishers who
issued this book, seems to have been well enough pleased with the volume at first;
for in what appears to have been his own copy he wrote immediately on its
appearance, the following Sonnet:
Keats I admire thine upward daring Soul,
Thine eager grasp at immortality
I deem within thy reach;-rejoic'd I see
Thee spurn, with brow serene, the gross controul
Of circumstance, while o'er thee visions roll
In radiant pomp of lovely Poesy!
She points to blest abodes where spirits free
Feed on her smiles and her great name extol.Still shall the pure flame bright within thee burn
While nature's voice alone directs thy mind;
Who bids thy speculation inward turn
Assuring thee her transcript thou shalt find.
Live her's-live freedom's friend-so round thine urn
The oak shall with thy laurels be entwin'd.
I have no evidence of authorship beyond the hand-writing; but I have no
doubt about its being the writing of Charles Ollier. This sonnet, dated the
2nd of March 1817, represents a far pleasanter phase of Keats's connexion with
his first publisher than that represented by another document in prose. George
Keats would seem to have become more or less aggressive on his brother's behalf
within two months of the issue of the little book. What his controversy with
the Olliers was we do not know; but he seems to have written them a letter
to which the following is their reply.
Sir,-We regret that your brother ever requested us to publish his book, or
that our opinion of its talent should have led us to acquiesce in undertaking it.
We are, however, much obliged to you for relieving us from the unpleasant necessity
of declining any further connexion with it, which we must have done, as we
think the curiosity is satisfied, and the sale has dropped. By far the greater
number of persons who have purchased it from us have found fault with it in
such plain terms, that we have in many cases offered to take the book back
rather than be annoyed with the ridicule which has, time after time, been
showered upon it. In fact, it was only on Saturday last that we were under the
mortification of having our own opinion of its merits flatly contradicted by a
gentleman, who told us he considered it 'no better than a take in.' These are
unpleasant imputations for any one in business to labour under, but we should
have borne them and concealed their existence from you had not the style of your
note shewn us that such delicacy would be quite thrown away. We shall take
means without delay for ascertaining the number of copies on hand, and you
shall be informed accordingly.      Your most, &c.
0. & J. Oilier.
3, Welbeck Street, 29th April, 1817.
This letter appeared in 'The Athenaum' for the 7th of June 1873, and was
reprinted in the Appendix to Volume I of the Library edition of Keats's Works.
H. B. F.




DEDICATION.


TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.
GLORY 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 of nymphs soft voic'd and young, and gay,
In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,
Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn
The shrine of 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
Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free,
A leafy luxury, seeing I could please
With these poor offerings, a man like thee.
Charles Cowden Clarke (Recollections of Keats) says that on the evening when
the last proof sheet of the 1817 volume was brought from the printer, it was
accompanied by the information that, if a " dedication to the book was intended it
must be sent forthwith." Whereupon he withdrew to a side table, and in the buzz
of a mixed conversation, composed and brought to Charles Oilier, the publisher,
this Dedication Sonnet.
The following sonnet, which Hunt wrote to Keats in reply to this dedication, is
transcribed from Keats's own copy of 'Foliage; or Poems Original and Translated,
by Leigh Hunt' (1818), bearing upon the title-page, in Hunt's beautiful writing, the
words John Keats from his affectionate friend the Author."  Keats gave the book
to Miss Brawne; and it is now in my possession.
To JOHN KEATS.
'Tis well you think me truly one of those,
Whose sense discerns the loveliness of things;
For surely as I feel the bird that sings
Behind the leaves, or dawn as it up grows,
Or the rich bee rejoicing as he goes,
Or the glad issue of emerging springs,
Or overhead the glide of a dove's wings,
Or turf, or trees, or, midst of all, repose.
And surely as I feel things lovelier still,
The human look, and the harmonious form
Containing woman, and the smile in ill,
And such a heart as Charles's, wise and warm,As surely as all this, I see, ev'n now,
Young Keats, a flowering laurel on your brow.
Hunt notes that the "Charles" of the last line but two is "Charles 0. C.
[Cowden Clarke], a mutual friend."








POEMS.
"Places of nestling green for Poets made."
STORY OF RIMINI.
I STOOD tip-toe upon a little hill,
The air was cooling, and so very still,
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scantly leav'd, 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; sweetly they slept
On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept             10
A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves:
For not the faintest motion could be seen
Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green.
There was wide wand'ring for the greediest eye,                15
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
1. Leigh Hunt tells us in 'Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries' that "this
poem was suggested to Keats by a delightful summer's-day, as he stood beside the
gate that leads from the Battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood."
This is of course merely an identification of the locality; and the poem was clearly
not written there or then; for in a letter to Charles Cowden Clarke postmarked
the 17th of December 1816 Keats writes of finishing this poem "in one more
attack." He speaks of it as ' Endymion'; and that that was the name by which
he designated this poem before publication I learned in 1883 by inspecting
George Keats's transcript of it-headed ' Endymion'. I did not note any variations of text.  No doubt the title was abandoned at the time of publication
because the poet had already in his mind the full treatment of the subject
which he gave to the world in 1818.
12. Hunt calls this (' Examiner') "a fancy, founded, as all beautiful fancies are,
on a strong sense of what really exists or occurs."




8                 POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.
Of a fresh woodland alley, never ending;               20
Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves,
Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves.
I gazed awhile, and felt as light, and free
As though the fanning wings of Mercury
Had play'd upon my heels: I was light-hearted,         25
And many pleasures to my vision started;
So I straightway began to pluck a posey
Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy.
A bush of May flowers with the bees about them;
Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them;      30
And let a lush laburnum oversweep them,
And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them
Moist, cool and green; and shade the violets,
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.
A filbert hedge with wild briar overtwin'd,            35
And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind
Upon their summer thrones; there too should be
The frequent chequer of a youngling tree,
That with a score of light green brethren shoots
From the quaint mossiness of aged roots:               10
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    15
By infant hands, left on the path to die.
Open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!
Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,
For great Apollo bids                                  50
That in these days your praises should be sung
On many harps, which he has lately strung;
And when again your dewiness he kisses,
Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses:
So haply when I rove in some far vale,                 55
His mighty voice may come upon the gale.
Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white,
3741. Of this passage Hunt says in ' The Examiner', " Any body who has seen
a throng of young beeches, furnishing those natural clumpy seats at the root,
must recognize the truth and grace of this description."  He adds that the remainder of the poem, especially verses 47 to 86, "affords an exquisite proof of
close observation of nature as well as the most luxuriant fancy."




"I STOOD TIP-TOE UPON A LITTLE HILL."


And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.                   60
Linger awhile upon some bending planks
That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks,
And watch intently Nature's gentle doings:
They will be found softer than ring-dove's cooings.
How silent comes the water round that bend;               65
Not the minutest whisper does it send
To the o'erhanging sallows: blades of grass
Slowly across the chequer'd shadows pass.
Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach
To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach              70
A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds;
Where swarms of minnows show their little heads,
Staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams,
To taste the luxury of sunny beams
Temper'd with coolness.    How they ever wrestle          75
With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle
Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand.
If you but scantily hold out the hand,
That very instant not one will remain;
But turn your eye, and they are there again.              80
The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses,
And cool themselves among the em'rald tresses:
The while they cool themselves, they freshness give,
And moisture, that the bowery green may live:
So keeping up an interchange of favours,                  85
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:                   90
Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings,
Pausing upon their yellow flutterings.
Were I in such a place, I sure should pray
That nought less sweet, might call my thoughts away,
61-80. Clarke says Keats told him this passage was the recollection of the friends'
"having frequently loitered over the rail of a foot-bridge that spanned... a
little brook in the last field upon entering Edmonton."  Keats, he says, "thought
the picture correct, and acknowledged to a partiality for it."  Lord Houghton
prints the following alternative reading of the passage beginning with line 61:Linger awhile among some bending planks
That lean against a streamlet's daisied banks,
And watch intently Nature's gentle doings:
That will be found as soft as ringdoves' cooings.
The inward ear will hear her and be blest,
And tingle with a joy too light for rest.




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


Than the soft rustle of a maiden's gown                   95
Fanning away the dandelion's down;
Than the light music of her nimble toes
Patting against the sorrel as she goes.
How she would start, and blush, thus to be caught
Playing in all her innocence of thought.                 100
O let me lead her gently o'er the brook,
Watch her half-smiling lips, and downward look;
O let me for one moment touch her wrist;
Let me one moment to her breathing list;
And as she leaves me may she often turn                  105
Her fair eyes looking through her locks auburne.
What next? A tuft of evening primroses,
O'er which the mind may hover till it dozes;
O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep,
But that 'tis ever startled by the leap                  110
Of buds into ripe flowers; or by the flitting
Of diverse moths, that aye their rest are quitting;
Or by the moon lifting her silver rim
Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim
Coming into the blue with all her light.                 115
O Maker of sweet poets, dear delight
Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers;
Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers,
Mingler with leaves, and dew and tumbling streams,
Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,                  120
Lover of loneliness, and wandering,
Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!
Thee must I praise above all other glories
That smile us on to tell delightful stories.
For what has made the sage or poet write                 125
But the fair paradise of Nature's light?
In the calm grandeur of a sober line,
We see the waving of the mountain pine;
And when a tale is beautifully staid,
We feel the safety of a hawthorn glade:                  130
96. In the Rowfant collection (formed by the late Mr. F. Locker-Lampson) there
is a single leaf of the autograph manuscript of this poem, beginning with line 96
and ending with line 182. It seems to have been preserved by Haydon, who has
written upon it, "Given me by my Dear Friend Keats-B. R. Haydon." The
verbal variations are given below.
99. The manuscript reads ' will' for 'would'.
106. In the manuscript, 'peeping' for 'looking'.
115. Lord Houghton notes, presumably from some other manuscript, the following variation:Floating through space with ever-living eye,
The crowned queen of ocean and the sky.
128. In the manuscript we read 'a mountain Pine'.




"I STOOD TIP-TOE UPON A LITTLE HILL."1


11


When it is moving on luxurious wings,
The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings:
Fair dewy roses brush against our faces,
And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases;
O'er head we see the jasmine and sweet briar,         135
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 wreath'd and curl'd.    110
So felt he, who first told, how Psyche went
On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment;
-What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips
First touch'd; what amorous, and fondling nips
They gave each other's cheeks; with all their sighs,  115
And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes:
The silver lamp,-the ravishment,-the wonderThe darkness, —loneliness,-the fearful thunder;
Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown,
To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne.            150
So did he feel, who 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,        155
Upheld on ivory wrists, or sporting feet:
Telling us how fair, trembling Syrinx fled
Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread.
Poor nymph,-poor Pan,-how he did weep to find,
Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind               160
Along the reedy stream; a half heard strain,
Full of sweet desolation-balmy pain.
What first inspir'd a bard of old to sing
Narcissus pining o'er the untainted spring?
In some delicious ramble, he had found                165
A little space, with boughs all woven round;
141. Compare 'Endymion', final couplet:Peona went
Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.
144. This was originally written in the manuscript, 'What fondleing and
amourous nips'; but the words are marked to be transposed.
151. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'So do they feel who pull'; and in the
next line, ' may' for ' might '.
163. In the manuscript, and in the original edition, 'Fawns' for 'Fauns'.
156. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'And curious garlands of flowers', etc.
166. The manuscript has ' sportive' for ' sporting
159. In the manuscript, 'how did he weep'.




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.
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.  170
And on the bank a lonely flower he spied,
A meek and forlorn flower, with naught of pride,
Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness,
To woo its own sad image into nearness:
Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move;        175
But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love.
So while the poet stood in this sweet spot,
Some fainter gleamings o'er his fancy shot;
Nor was it long ere he had told the tale
Of young Narcissus, and sad Echo's bale.         180
Where had he been, from whose warm head out-flew
That sweetest of all songs, that ever new,
That aye refreshing, pure deliciousness,
Coming ever to bless
The wanderer by moonlight? to him bringing       185
Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing
From out the middle air, from flowery nests,
And from the pillowy silkiness that rests
Full in the speculation of the stars.
Ah! surely he had burst our mortal bars;        190
Into some wond'rous region he had gone,
To search for thee, divine Endymion!
He was a Poet, sure a lover too,
Who stood on Latmus' top, what time there blew
Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below;         195
And brought in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow
A hymn from Dian's temple; while upswelling,
The incense went to her own starry dwelling.
But though her face was clear as infant's eyes,
Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice,     200
The Poet wept at her so piteous fate,
Wept that such beauty should be desolate:
So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won,
And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion.
Queen of the wide air; thou most lovely queen   205
Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen!
As thou exceedest all things in thy shine,
So every tale, does this sweet tale of thine.
O for three words of honey, that I might
174. We read ' fair' for ' sad ' in the manuscript.




"I STOOD TIP-TOE UPON A LITTLE HILL."               13
Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night!                   210
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,              215
That men of health were of unusual cheer;
Stepping like Homer at the trumpet's call,
Or young Apollo on the pedestal:
And lovely women were as fair and warm,
As Venus looking sideways in alarm.                        220
The breezes were ethereal, and pure,
And crept through half-closed lattices to cure
The languid sick; it cool'd their fever'd sleep,
And sooth'd them into slumbers full and deep.
Soon they awoke clear ey'd: nor burnt with thirsting,      225
Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting:
And springing up, they met the wond'ring sight
Of their dear friends, nigh foolish with delight;
Who feel their arms, and breasts, and kiss and stare,
And on their placid foreheads part the hair.               230
Young men, and maidens at each other gaz'd
With hands held back, and motionless, amaz'd
To see the brightness in each other's eyes;
And so they stood, fill'd with a sweet surprise,
Until their tongues were loos'd in poesy.                  235
Therefore no lover did of anguish die:
But the soft numbers, in that moment spoken,
Made silken ties, that never may be broken.
Cynthia! I cannot tell the greater blisses,
That follow'd thine, and thy dear shepherd's kisses:       210
Was there a poet born?-but now no more,
My wand'ring spirit must no farther soar.233. In the original edition, 'others".
Hunt's remark in 'The Examiner' on this poem as a whole is excellent. He
says, "The first poem consists of a piece of luxury in a rural spot, ending with an
allusion to the story of Endymion, and to the origin of other lovely tales of mythology, on the ground suggested by Mr. Wordsworth in a beautiful passage of his
' Excursion.  Here, and in the other largest poem [ Sleep and Poetry ], which
closes the book, Mr. Keats is seen to his best advantage, and displays all that
fertile power of association and imagery which constitutes the abstract poetical
faculty as distinguished from every other. He wants age for a greater knowledge
of humanity, but evidences of this also bud forth here and there."




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


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,                5
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.                 10
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                 15
Hails it with tears, her stout defender sent
And from her own pure self no joy dissembling
Wraps round her ample robe with happy trembling.
Sometimes, when the good Knight his rest would take,
It is reflected, clearly, in a lake,                     20
With the young ashen boughs, 'gainst which it rests,
And th' half seen mossiness of linnets' nests.
Ah! shall I ever tell its cruelty,
When the fire flashes from a warrior's eye,
And his tremendous hand is grasping it,                  25
And his dark brow for very wrath is knit?
Or when his spirit, with more calm intent,
Leaps to the honors of a tournament,
And makes the gazers round about the ring
Stare at the grandeur of the ballancing?                 30
No, no! this is far off:-then how shall I
Revive the dying tones of minstrelsy,
Which linger yet about long gothic arches,
In dark green ivy, and among wild larches?
Hunt in his review speaks confidently of this and the next composition as connected-"The 'Specimen of an induction to a Poem,' and the fragment of the
Poem itself entitled ' Calidore"'; and, in a volume of transcripts made in a copybook of Tom Keats's, the two compositions are written continuously, the first headed
simply 'Induction', and the second ' Calidore'.
8. Manuscript variation, ' say' for ' think'.
9-10. Manuscript variation, 'his' for 'its'.
17. In the transcript line 17 stands thus:
And now no more her anxious grief remembring.




SPECIMEN OF AN INDUCTION TO A POEM.                 15
How sing the splendour of the revelries,                    35
When buts of wine are drunk off to the lees?
And that bright lance, against the fretted wall,
Beneath the shade of stately banneral,
Is slung with shining cuirass, sword, and shield?
Where ye may see a spur in bloody field.                    40
Light-footed damsels move with gentle paces
Round the wide hall, and show their happy faces;
Or stand in courtly talk by fives and sevens:
Like those fair stars that twinkle in the heavens.
Yet must I tell a tale of chivalry:                         45
Or wherefore comes that steed so proudly by?
Wherefore more proudly does the gentle knight,
Rein in the swelling of his ample might?
Spenser! thy brows are arched, open, kind,
And come like a clear sun-rise to my mind;                  50
And always does my heart with pleasure dance,
When I think on thy noble countenance:
Where never yet was ought more earthly seen
Than the pure freshness of thy laurels green.
Therefore, great bard, I not so fearfully                   55
Call on thy gentle spirit to hover nigh
My daring steps: or if thy tender care,
Thus startled unaware,
Be jealous that the foot of other wight
Should madly follow that bright path of light               60
Trac'd by thy lov'd Libertas; he will speak,
And tell thee that my prayer is very meek;
That I will follow with due reverence,
And start with awe at mine own strange pretence.
Him thou wilt hear; so I will rest in hope                  65
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.
3640. Manuscript variations, 'grandeur' for 'splendour' in line 35, 'this
bright spear' for 'that bright lance' in line 37, and 'you' for 'ye' in line 40.
44. The transcript reads 'which' for ' that'.
46. In previous editions, 'knight'; but in a copy of the 1817 volume bearing
on the title-page an inscription in Keats's writing, the word ' steed' is substituted
in manuscript for 'knight '. The transcript also reads 'steed'.
51. This thought, of the heart "dancing" at what is seen by "the inward
eye", is of course from Wordsworth's renowned poem about the Daffodils:
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.
67. The transcript reads 'gentle' for 'tender'.
59. The transcript has 'living' in place of 'other'.
61. 'Libertas' means Leigh Hunt. Mrs. Charles Cowden Clarke had positive
knowledge of this from her husband.




16


POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


CALIDORE.
A FRAGMENT.
YOUNG Calidore is paddling o'er the lake;
His healthful spirit eager and awake
To feel the beauty of a silent eve,
Which seem'd full loath this happy world to leave;
The light dwelt o'er the scene so lingeringly.        5
He bares his forehead to the cool blue sky,
And smiles at the far clearness all around,
Until his heart is well nigh over wound,
And turns for calmness to the pleasant green
Of easy slopes, and shadowy trees that lean          10
So elegantly o'er the waters' brim
And show their blossoms trim.
Scarce can his clear and nimble eye-sight follow
The freaks, and dartings of the black-wing'd swallow,
Delighting much, to see it half at rest,             15
Dip so refreshingly its wings, and breast
'Gainst the smooth surface, and to mark anon,
The widening circles into nothing gone.
And now the sharp keel of his little boat
Comes up with ripple, and with easy float,           20
And glides into a bed of water lillies:
Broad leav'd are they and their white canopies
Are upward turn'd to catch the heavens' dew.
Near to a little island's point they grew;
Whence Calidore might have the goodliest view        25
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 prepar'd to scan
Nature's clear beauty, could pass lightly by         30
Objects that look'd out so invitingly
On either side. These, gentle Calidore
Greeted, as he had known them long before.
The sidelong view of swelling leafiness,
Which the glad setting sun, in gold doth dress;      35
Whence ever, and anon the jay outsprings,
And scales upon the beauty of its wings.
6-16. The transcript in Tom Keats's copy-book reads 'clear' for cool' in line
6, 'was' for ' is' in line 8, ' which ' for 'that' in line 10, 'his' for ' its' in line 16,
28. In the transcript, line 28 readsAnd light blue Mountains. But sure no breathing man
and in line 29 ' an' stands in place of 'and.'




CULIDORE.


17


The lonely turret, shatter'd, and outworn,
Stands venerably proud; too proud to mourn
Its long lost grandeur: fir trees grow around,        40
Aye dropping their hard fruit upon the ground.
The little chapel with the cross above
Upholding wreaths of ivy; the white dove,
That on the window spreads his feathers light,
And seems from purple clouds to wing its flight.       15
Green tufted islands casting their soft shades
Across the lake; sequester'd leafy glades,
That through the dimness of their twilight show
Large dock leaves, spiral foxgloves, or the glow
Of the wild cat's eyes, or the silvery stems           50
Of delicate birch trees, or long grass which hems
A little brook. The youth had long been viewing
These pleasant things, and heaven was bedewing
The mountain flowers, when his glad senses caught
A trumpet's silver voice. Ah! it was fraught          55
With many joys for him: the warder's ken
Had found white coursers prancing in the glen:
Friends very dear to him he soon will see;
So pushes off his boat most eagerly,
And soon upon the lake he skims along,                 60
Deaf to the nightingale's first 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:       65
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:           70
Anon he leaps along the oaken floors
Of halls and corridors.
40. In the transcript this and the next line stand thus:Its long lost grandeur. Laburnums grow around
And bow their golden honors to the ground.
42. In the transcript, 'its cross.
44. The transcript reads 'window'; the first edition, 'windows'.
48. 'Which' for 'That' in the transcript.
57. In the transcript we read ' seen' for found'.
60. In the transcript, 'across the lake'.
69. The transcript reads 'flies' for ' goes'.
70. 'And scarcely stops', in the transcript,
B




18


POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


Delicious sounds! those little bright-eyed things
That float about the air on azure wings,
Had been less heartfelt by him than the clang
Of clattering hoofs; into the court he sprang,
Just as two noble steeds, and palfreys twain,
Were slanting out their necks with loosened rein;
While from beneath the threat'ning portcullis
They brought their happy burthens. What a kiss,
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 incline so sweet
From their low palfreys o'er his neck they bent:
And whether there were tears of languishment,
Or that the evening dew had pearl'd their tresses,
He feels a moisture on his cheek, and blesses
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:
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 thrall, and forward gently bending,
Thank'd heaven that his joy was never ending;
While 'gainst his forehead he devoutly pressed
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 the waving of his plumes would be
High as the berries of a wild ash tree,
Or as the winged cap of Mercury.
78. In the transcript, 'from loosened rein'.
85. The transcript reads 'pretty feet'.
101. 'This present being in the transcript.
103. The transcript reads 'meekly bending'.




CALIDORE.


19


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       120
Might live, and show itself to human eves.
'Tis the far-fam'd, the brave Sir Gondibert,
Said the good man to Calidore ale-t;
While the young warrior with a step of grace
Came up,-a courtly smile upon his face,          125
And mailed hand held out, ready to greet
The large-ey'd 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        130
Over a knightly brow; while they went by
The lamps that from the high roof d hall were pendent.
And gave the steel a shining quite transcendent.
Soon in a pleasant chamber they are seated;
The sweet-lipp'd ladies have already greeted    135
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          140
Is looking round about him with a fond,
And placid eye, young Calidore is burning
To hear of knightly deeds, and gallant spurning
Of all unworthiness; and how the strong of arm
Kept off dismay, and terror, and alarm           115
From lovely woman: while brimful of this,
He gave each damsel's hand so warm a kiss,
And had such manly ardour in his eye,
That each at other look'd half staringly;
And then their features started into smiles      150
Sweet as blue heavens o'er enchanted isles.
Softly the breezes from the forest came,
Softly they blew aside the taper's flame;
Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower;
Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower;  155
Mysterious, wild, the far heard trumpet's tone;
Lovely the moon in ether, all alone:


139. In the transcript, 'free and easy'.
147. The transcript reads, 'sweet' for ' warm '.




20


POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


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        16
We hear around when Hesperus is coming.
Sweet be their sleep. **  *    *  *
TO   SOME    LADIES.
WHAT though while the wonders of nature exploring,
I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;             I
Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring,
Bless Cynthia's face, the enthusiast's friend:
Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes,     5
With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove;
Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes,
Its spray that the wild flowers kindly bedews.
Why linger you so, the wild labyrinth strolling?
Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare?           10
Ah! you list to the nightingale's tender condoling,
Responsive to sylphs, in the moon-beamy air.
'Tis morn, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping,
I see you are treading the verge of the sea:
And now! ah, I see it-you just now are stooping           15
To pick up the keep-sake intended for me.
If a cherub, on pinions of silver descending,
Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven
And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending,
The blessings of Tighe had melodiously given;           20
It had not created a warmer emotion
Than the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you,
Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean
Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw.
For, indeed, 'tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure,
(And blissful is he who such happiness finds,)
To possess but a span of the hour of leisure,
In elegant, pure, and aerial minds.
158. In the transcript, ' those' for ' these'.
20. The reference is of course to Mrs. Henry Tighe, hborn Mary Blachford
whose delicate poem 'Psyche, or the Legend of Love', now unduly almost fo
gotten, had a natural attraction for Keats and influenced his early poetic thoug




ON RECEIVING A CURIOUS SHELL.


21


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 shine through a fountain?
Hast thou a goblet for dark sparkling wine?                       5
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?                10
Hast thou a trumpet rich melodies blowing?
And wear'st thou the shield of the fam'd Britomartis?
What is it that hangs from thy shoulder, so brave,
Embroider'd with many a spring peering flower?
Is it a scarf that thy fair lady gave?                          15
And hastest thou now to that fair lady's bower?
Ah! courteous Sir Knight, with large joy thou art crown'd;
Full many the glories that brighten thy youth!
I will tell thee my blisses, which richly abound
In magical powers to bless, and to sooth.                     20
On this scroll thou seest written in characters fair
A sun-beamy tale of a wreath, and a chain;
And, warrior, it nurtures the property rare
Of charming my mind from the trammels of pain.
The title of this poem is in many editions distributed between this and the
receding composition. In Tom Keats's book of transcripts, already mentioned,
te poem is headed merely "On receiving a curious shell and a copy of verses";
tut another transcript, in the hand-writing of George Keats, is subscribed (not
headed) "Written on receiving a copy of Tom Moore's 'Golden Chain', and a
most beautiful Dome shaped shell from a Lady". The reference is to 'The
Wreath and the Chain'. The last-named copy, in line 6, reads 'full' for 'right',
kn line 7 'wrought' for 'mark'd', in line 9 'his mane thickly', in line 10
'which' for 'that'. Line 17 reads:Ah courteous Sir Eric! with joy thou art crown'd:
bn line 19 we have ' I too have my blisses', and line 23 is
And lo! it possesses this property rare.




22


POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


This canopy mark: 'tis the work of a fay;                          25
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; 30
The wondering spirits of heaven were mute,
And tears 'mong the dewdrops of morning oft glisten'd.
In this little dome, all those melodies strange,
Soft, plaintive, and melting, for ever will sigh;
Nor e'er will the notes from their tenderness change;              35
Nor e'er will the music of Oberon die.
So, when I am in a voluptuous vein,
I pillow my head on the sweets of the rose,
And list to the tale of the wreath, and the chain,
Till its echoes depart; then I sink to repose.                   O
Adieu, valiant Eric! with joy thou art crown'd;
Full many the glories that brighten thy youth,
I too have my blisses, which richly abound
In magical powers, to bless and to sooth.
TO   * * * *
[GEORGIANA AUGUSTA WYLIE.]
HADST thou liv'd in days of old,
O what wonders had been told
Of thy lively countenance,
28-39. In line 29, George Keats's transcript has 'soft-speaking' for 'soft
sighing', and line 31 is
The Hymns of the wondering Spirits were mute!
In line 37 we have 'And' for 'So' and in line 39 'song' for 'tale'. None
of these variations are shown by the other copy, which corresponds almost
exactly with the volume of 1817, but reads line 31 thus:
The wandering spirits of Heaven are mute.
Hunt, in reviewing the 1817 volume in 'The Examiner' says, "without
affection or favour ", that these earlier poems in the middle of the book "might
have been omitted, especially the string of magistrate-interrogatories about a
shell and a copy of verses ".
3. Richard Woodhouse records in his Keats Commonplace Book that this poem was
" altered from a copy of verses written by K. at the request of his brother George,
and by the latter sent as a valentine" to Georgiana Wylie. This valentine,
after line 2, read:Of thy lively dimpled face
And thy footsteps full of grace:




TO   * * *


23


And thy humid eyes that dance
In the midst of their own brightness;                        5
In the very fane of lightness.
Over which thine eyebrows, leaning,
Picture out each lovely meaning:
In a dainty bend they lie,
Like to streaks across the sky,                             10
Or the feathers from a crow,
Fallen on a bed of snow.
Of thy dark hair that extends
Into many graceful bends:
As the leaves of Hellebore                                  15
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;                                    20
Full, and round like globes that rise
Of thy hair's luxurious darkling,
Of thine eyes' expressive sparkling.
And thy voice's swelling rapture,
Taking hearts a ready capture.
Oh! if thou hadst breathed then,
Thou hadst made the Muses ten.
Then came lines 37 to 68 as in the text, and lastly,
Ah me! whither shall I flee?
Thou hast metamorphosed me.
Do not let me sigh and pine,
Prythee be my valentine.
14 Feb,. I816.
Professor Colvin ('Keats,' Men of Letters Series, pages 112 and 113), quoting
from a manuscript in the late Lord Houghton's collection, gives an account of a
meeting between Henry Stephens and Keats at which the poet introduced to his
friend his new sister-in-law, who was then on her way with her husband, George
Keats, to America. The occasion was that on which Keats and Brown started on
their Scotch tour, going as far as Liverpool with George and his bride and
calling on the way at Redbourn near St. Albans to dine and see Stephens. The
young bride is described as "rather short, not what might strictly be called
lhandsome, but looked like a being any man of moderate sensibility might easily
love. She had an imagination poetically cast, somewhat singular and girlish in
her attire.... There was something original about her, and John seemed to
regard her as a being whom he delighted to honour and introduced her with
evident satisfaction." Keats wrote to his brotherand sister-in-law in October
1818 a letter expressing his feelings very plainly. To her he says: "I have a
tenderness for you and an admiration which I feel to be as great and more chaste
than I can have for any woman in the world ". He then mentions his sister, and
hopes he "may one day feel as much for her  "; but "her character," he says, "is
not formed, her identity does not press upon me as yours does." To George he
isays: "Through you I know not only a sister, but a glorious human being."




POEMS PUBLISHED INt 1817.
From the censer to the skies
Through sunny air. Add too, the sweetness
Of thy honey'd voice; the neatness
Of thine ankle lightly turn'd:                 25
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.                    30
Saving when, with freshening lave,
Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave;
Like twin water lillies, born
In the coolness of the morn.
0, if thou hadst breathed then,                35
Now the Muses had been ten.
Couldst thou wish for lineage higher
Than twin sister of Thalia?
At least for ever, evermore,
Will I call the Graces four.                   40
Hadst thou liv'd when chivalry
Lifted up her lance on high,
Tell me what thou wouldst have been?
Ah! I see the silver sheen
Of thy broider'd, floating vest                15
Cov'ring half thine ivory breast;
Which, 0 heavens! I should see,
But that cruel destiny
Has plac'd a golden cuirass there;
Keeping secret what is fair.                   50
Like sunbeams in a cloudlet nested
Thy locks in knightly casque are rested:
O'er which bend four milky plumes
Like the gentle lilly's blooms
Springing from a costly vase.                  55
See with what a stately pace
Comes thine alabaster steed;
Servant of heroic deed!
O'er his loins, his trappings glow
Like the northern lights on snow.              60
Mount his back! thy sword unsheath!.
Sign of the enchanter's death;
Bane of every wicked spell;
Silencer of dragon's yell.
Alas! thou this wilt never do:                 65
Thou art an enchantress too,
And wilt surely never spill
Blood of those whose eyes can kill.




TO HOPE.


25


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,     5
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,   10
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,      15
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chace him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!
Whene'er the fate of those I hold most dear
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,  20
O bright-ey'd Hope, my morbid fancy cheer;
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!
Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain,        25
From cruel parents, or relentless fair;
O let me think it is not quite in vain
To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!   30
In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country's honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed-  35
Beneath thy pinions canopy my head!
Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
Great liberty! how great in plain attire!




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


With the base purple of a court oppressed,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:                10
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:       45
So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud,
Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,
Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head.
February, 1815.
IMITATION OF SPENSER.
it**  **     **   *
Now Morning from her orient chamber came,
And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill;
Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,
Silv'ring the untainted gushes of its rill;
Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill,          5
And after parting beds of simple flowers,
By many streams a little lake did fill,
Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,
And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.
There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright           10
Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below;
Whose silken fins, and golden scales' light
Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow:
There saw the swan his neck of arched snow,
And oar'd himself along with majesty;                  15
Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show
Beneath the waves like Afric's ebony,
And on his back a fay reclin'd voluptuously.
Ah! could I tell the wonders of an isle
That in that fairest lake had placed been,             20
Lord Houghton states on the authority of the notes of Charles Armitage Brown
that the Imitation of Spenser is the earliest known composition of Keats, and
was written while he was living at Edmonton.
12. Tom Eeats's copy-book reads 'golden scales light'. It seems highly
likely that Keats really meant to carry his archaism to the extent of making
' scales ' a dissyllable, especially as the metre is thus corrected.




IMITATION OF SPENSER.


27


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          25
Of the bright waters; or as when on high,
Through clouds of fleecy white, laughs the ccerulean sky.
And all around it dipp'd luxuriously
Slopings of verdure through the glossy tide,
Which, as it were in gentle amity,                30
Rippled delighted up the flowery side;
As if to glean the ruddy tears, it try'd,
Which fell profusely from the rose-tree stem!
Haply it was the workings of its pride,
In strife to throw upon the shore a gem           35
Outvieing all the buds in Flora's diadem.
WOMAN! when I behold thee flippant, vain,
Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies;
Without that modest softening that enhances
The downcast eye, repentant of the pain
That its mild light creates to heal again:           5
E'en then, elate, my spirit leaps, and prances,
E'en then my soul with exultation dances
For that to love, so long, I've dormant lain:
But when I see thee meek, and kind, and tender,
Heavens! how desperately do I adore              10
Thy winning graces;-to be thy defender
I hotly burn-to be a CalidoreA very Red Cross Knight-a stout LeanderMight I be lov'd by thee like these of yore.
Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair;      15
Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast,
Are things on which the dazzled senses rest
Till the fond, fixed eyes, forget they stare.
From such fine pictures, heavens! I cannot dare
To turn my admiration, though unpossess'd         20
They be of what is worthy,-though not drest
In lovely modesty, and virtues rare.
29. In line 29 the transcript reads 'glassy' for 'glossy'; and this is likely
enough to be right,




28              POEMS PUBLISHED IB 1817.
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     25
Such charms with mild intelligences shine,
My ear is open like a greedy shark,
To catch the tunings of a voice divine.
Ah! who can e'er forget so fair a being?
Who can forget her half retiring sweets?       30
God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats
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      35
A dove-like bosom. In truth there is no freeing
One's thoughts from such a beauty; when I hear
A lay that once I saw her hand awake,
Her form seems floating palpable, and near;
Had I e'er seen her from an arbour take        40
A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear,
And o'er my eyes the trembling moisture shake.




EPISTLES.
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,          5
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.  10
Too partial friend! fain would I follow thee
Past each horizon of fine poesy;
Fain would I echo back each pleasant note
As o'er Sicilian seas, clear anthems float
'Mong the light skimming gondolas far parted,       15
Just when the sun his farewell beam has darted:
But 'tis impossible; far different cares
Beckon me sternly from soft " Lydian airs,"
And hold my faculties so long in thrall,
That I am oft in doubt whether at all               20
I shall again see Phcebus in the morning:
Or flush'd Aurora in the roseate dawning!
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,          25
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:
This and the two other 'Epistles' form a separate section of the 1817 volume,
with a half-title bearing the motto"Among the rest a shepheard (though but young
"Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill
" His few yeeres could, began to fit his quill."
This is from Browne's 'Britannia's Pastorals'
29




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.
Whlen bright processions took their airy march
Beneath the curved moon's triumphal arch.         30
But might I now each passing moment give
To the coy muse, with me she would not live
In this dark city, nor would condescend
'Mid contradictions her delights to lend.
Should e'er the fine-ey'd maid to me be kind,     35
Ah! surely it must be whene'er I find
Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic,
That often must have seen a poet frantic;
Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing,
And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing;   40
Where the dark-leav'd laburnum's drooping clusters
Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres,
And intertwin'd the cassia's arms unite,
With its own drooping buds, but very white.
Where on one side are covert branches hung,       q5
'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.  50
There must be too a ruin dark, and gloomy,
To say "joy not too much in all that's bloomy."
Yet this is vain-O Mathew lend thy aid
To find a place where I may greet the maidWhere we may soft humanity put on,                55
And sit, and rhyme and think on Chatterton;
And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him
Four laurell'd spirits, heaven-ward to intreat him.
With reverence would we speak of all the sages
Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages:  60
And thou shouldst moralize on Milton's blindness,
And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness
To those who strove with the bright golden wing
Of genius, to flap away each sting
Thrown by the pitiless world. We next could tell  65
Of those who in the cause of freedom fell;
Of our own Alfred, of Helvetian Tell;
Of him whose name to ev'ry heart's a solace,
High-minded and unbending William Wallace.
While to the rugged north our musing turns        70
We well might drop a tear for him, and Burns.
Felton! without incitements such as these,
How vain for me the niggard Muse to tease:




EPISTLE TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW.


31


For thee, she will thy every dwelling grace,
And make "a sun-shine in a shady place:"            75
For thou wast once a flowret blooming wild,
Close to the source, bright, pure, and undefil'd,
Whence gush the streams of song: in happy hour
Came chaste Diana from her shady bower,
Just as the sun was from the east uprising;         80
And, as for him some gift she was devising,
Beheld thee, pluck'd thee, cast thee in the stream
To meet her glorious brother's greeting beam.
I marvel much that thou hast never told
How, from a flower, into a fish of gold             85
Apollo chang'd thee; how thou next didst seem
A black-ey'd 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,      90
And all the wonders of the mazy range
O'er pebbly crystal, and o'er golden sands;
Kissing thy daily food from Naiad's pearly hands.
November, 815.
TO MY BROTHER GEORGE.
FULL many a dreary hour have I past,
My brain bewilder'd, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze         5
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 all along      10
The purple west, and, two bright streaks between,
The golden lyre itself were dimly seen:
That the still murmur of the honey bee
Would never teach a rural song to me:
That the bright glance from beauty's eyelids slanting  15
Would never make a lay of mine enchanting,
1. This epistle seems to have been composed at Margate, for a very careful transcript of it in George Keats's hand-writing is subscribed "Margate, August x816".
In line 11 this copy reads 'strokes' for 'streaks', and in line 12 'faintly' for
'dimly'. Another transcript of George Keats's reads 'Glide' for 'Fly' in line 20.




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


Or warm my breast with ardour to unfold
Some tale of love and arms in time of old.
But there are times, when those that love the bay,
Fly from all sorrowing far, far away;                       20
A sudden glow comes on them, nought they see
In water, earth, or air, but poesy.
It has been said, dear George, and true I hold it,
(For knightly Spenser to Libertas told it,)
That when a Poet is in such a trance,                       25
In air he sees white coursers paw, and prance,
Bestridden of gay knights, in gay apparel,
Who at each other tilt in playful quarrel,
And what we, ignorantly, sheet-lightning call,
Is the swift opening of their wide portal, ---              30
When the bright warder blows his trumpet clear,
Whose tones reach nought on earth but Poet's ear.
When these enchanted portals open wide,
And through the light the horsemen swiftly glide,
The Poet's eye can reach those golden halls,                35
And view the glory of their festivals:
Their ladies fair, that in the distance seem
Fit for the silv'ring of a seraph's dream;
Their rich brimm'd.goblets, that incessant run
Like the bright spots that move about the sun;              40
And, when upheld, the wine from each bright jar
Pours with the lustre of a falling star.
Yet further off, are dimly seen their bowers,
Of which, no mortal eye can reach the flowers;
And 'tis right just, for well Apollo knows                  45
'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,
24. Libertas=Leigh Hunt. See note, page 15.
37. The first transcript reads ' bright' for ' fair'.
42. Hunt (' Examiner ) notes this comparison of poured wine to a falling star as
an instance of Keats's early "tendency to notice everything too indiscriminately
and without an eye to natural proportion and effect".
45.- The second transcript reads 'just right'.
48. In the first transcript,
Is, the clear fountains, interchanging kisses,
perhaps the right reading. Hunt charges this comparison with the same fault as
line 42; and he adds-" It was by thus giving way to every idea that came across
him, that Marino, a man of real poetical fancy, but no judgment, corrupted the
poetry of Italy; a catastrophe, which however we by no means anticipate from our
author, who with regard to this point is much more deficient in age than in good
taste ",




EPISTLE TO GEORGE KEATS                 33
Like silver streaks across a dolphin's fin,           50
When he upswimmeth from the coral caves,
And sports with half his tail above the waves.
These wonders strange he sees, and many more,
Whose head is pregnant with poetic lore.
Should he upon an evening ramble fare                 55
With forehead to the soothing breezes bare,
Would he naught 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,          60
And staidly paces higher up, and higher,
Like a sweet nun in holy-day attire?
Ah, yes! much more would start into his sightThe revelries, and mysteries of night:
And should I ever see them, I will tell you           65
Such tales as needs must with amazement spell you.
These are the living pleasures of the bard:
But richer far posterity's award.
What does he murmur with his latest breath,
While his proud eye looks through the film of death?  70
"What though I leave this dull, and earthly mould,
"Yet shall my spirit lofty converse hold
~' With after times.-The patriot shall feel
"My stern alarum, and unsheath his steel;.
"Or, in the senate thunder out my numbers            75
"To startle princes from their easy slumbers.
"The sage will mingle with each moral theme
"My happy thoughts sententious; he will teem
"With lofty periods when my verses fire him,
"And then I'll stoop from heaven to inspire him.      80
"Lays have I left of such a dear delight
"That maids will sing them on their bridal night.
"Gay villagers, upon a morn of May,
"When they have tir'd their gentle limbs with play,
"And form'd a snowy circle on the grass,             85
"And plac'd in midst of all that lovely lass
51. 'When he upspringeth' in the first transcript.
60. The first transcript reads ' doth ' instead of ' does '.
65-6. The first transcript reads —
And should I ever view them, I will tell ye
Such Tales, as needs must with amazement spell ye.
77. The first transcript reads, 'the moral theme'-the second 'each' as in
the text.
86. The first transcript readsPlacing in midst thereof, that happy lass,
C




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


" Who chosen is their queen,-with her fine head
"Crowned with flowers purple, white, and red:
" For there the lilly, and the musk-rose, sighing,
" Are emblems true of hapless lovers dying:        90
" Between her breasts, that never yet felt trouble,
"A bunch of violets full blown, and double,
" Serenely sleep:-she from a casket takes
"A little book,-and then a joy awakes
"About each youthful heart,-with stifled cries,   95
"And rubbing of white hands, and sparkling eyes:
" For she's to read a tale of hopes, and fears;
"One that I foster'd in my youthful years:
"The pearls, that on each glist'ning circlet sleep,
"Gush ever and anon with silent creep,            100
"Lur'd by the innocent dimples. To sweet rest
"Shall the dear babe, upon its mother's breast,
"Be lull'd with songs of mine. Fair world, adieu!
"Thy dales, and hills, are fading from my view:
" Swiftly I mount, upon wide spreading pinions,   105
"Far from the narrow bounds of thy dominions.
" Full joy I feel, while thus I cleave the air,
"That my soft verse will charm thy daughters fair,
"And warm thy sons! " Ah, my dear friend and brother,
Could I, at once, my mad ambition smother,       110
For tasting joys like these, sure I should be
Happier, and dearer to society.
At times, 'tis true, I've felt relief from pain
When some bright thought has darted through my brain:
Through all that day I've felt a greater pleasure  115
Than if I'd brought to light a hidden treasure.
As to my sonnets, though none else should heed them,
I feel delighted, still, that you should read them.
Of late, too, I have had much calm enjoyment,
Stretch'd on the grass at my best lov'd employment  120
Of scribbling lines for you. These things I thought
While, in my face, the freshest breeze I caught.
E'en now I'm pillow'd on a bed of flowers
That crowns a lofty clift, which proudly towers
Above the ocean-waves. The stalks, and blades,    125
Chequer my tablet with their quivering shades.
On one side is a field of drooping oats,
Through which the poppies show their scarlet coats;
So pert and useless, that they bring to mind
The scarlet coats that pester human-kind.         130
118. The first transcript reads 'will' for ' should '.
125. The first transoript reads, 'ocean's waves'.




EPISTLE TO GEORGE KEATS.


35


And on the other side, outspread, is seen
Ocean's blue mantle streak'd with purple, and green.
Now 'tis I see a canvass'd ship, and now
Mark the bright silver curling round her prow.
I see the lark down-dropping to his nest,                    135
And the broad winged sea-gull never at rest;
For when no more he spreads his feathers free,
His breast is dancing on the restless sea.
Now I direct my eyes into the west,
Which at this moment is in sunbeams drest:                   110
Why westward turn?       'Twas but to say adieu!
'Twas but to kiss my hand, dear George, to you!
August, i8i6.
TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE.
OFT have you seen a swan superbly frowning,
And with proud breast his own white shadow crowning;
He slants his neck beneath the waters bright
So silently, it seems a beam of light
Come from the galaxy: anon he sports,-                         5
With outspread wings the Naiad Zephyr courts,
Or ruffles all the surface of the lake
In striving from its crystal face to take
Some diamond water drops, and them to treasure
In milky nest, and sip them off at leisure.                   10
But not a moment can he there insure them,
Nor to such downy rest can he allure them;
For down they rush as though they would be free,
And drop like hours into eternity.
Just like that bird am  I in loss of time,                    15
Whene'er I venture on the stream of rhyme;
139. The first transcript reads ' towards the west'.
1. Charles Cowden Clarke was born at Enfield on the 15th of December 1787; so
that he was in his twenty-ninth year when this epistle was addressed to him. He
died at Villa Novello, Genoa, on the 13th of March 1877, in his ninetieth year.
He assisted his father in the school where Keats was educated.
Hunt remarks in 'The Examiner '-"The Epistle to Mr. Clarke is very amiable
as well as poetical, and equally honourable to both parties,-to the young writer
who can be so grateful towards his teacher, and to the teacher who had the sense to
perceive his genius, and the qualities to call forth his affection. It consists chiefly
of recollections of what his friend had pointed out to him in poetry and in general
taste; and the lover of Spenser will readily judge of his preceptor's qualifications,
even from a single triplet, in which he is described, with a deep feeling of
Simplicity [lines 36-7]."




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


With shatter'd boat, oar snapt, and canvass rent
I slowly sail, scarce knowing my intent;
Still scooping up the water with my fingers,
In which a trembling diamond never lingers.      20
By this, friend Charles, you may full plainly see
Why I have never penn'd a line to thee:
Because my thoughts were never free, and clear,
And little fit to please a classic ear;
Because my wine was of too poor a savour         25
For one whose palate gladdens in the flavour
Of sparkling Helicon:-small good it were
To take him to a desert rude, and bare,
Who had on Baie's shore reclin'd at ease,
While Tasso's page was floating in a breeze       30
That gave soft music from Armida's bowers,
Mingled with fragrance from her rarest flowers:
Small good to one who had by Mulla's stream
Fondled the maidens with the breasts of cream;
Who had beheld Belphcebe in a brook,              35
And lovely Una in a leafy nook,
And Archimago leaning o'er his book:
Who had of all that's sweet tasted, and seen,
From silv'ry ripple, up to beauty's queen;
From the sequester'd haunts of gay Titania,      40
To the blue dwelling of divine Urania:
One, who, of late, had ta'en sweet forest walks
With him who elegantly chats, and talksThe wrong'd Libertas,-who has told you stories
Of laurel chaplets, and Apollo's glories;        45
Of troops chivalrous prancing through a city,
And tearful ladies made for love, and pity:
With many else which I have never known.
Thus have I thought; and days on days have flown
Slowly, or rapidly-unwilling still               50
For you to try my dull, unlearned quill.
Nor should I now, but that I've known you long;
That you first taught me all the sweets of song:
The grand, the sweet, the terse, the free, the fine;
What swell'd with pathos, and what right divine:  55
Spenserian vowels that elope with ease,
And float along like birds o'er summer seas;
Miltonian storms, and more, Miltonian tenderness;
Michael in arms, and more, meek Eve's fair slenderness.
Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly       60
Up to its climax and then dying proudly?
Who found for me the grandeur of the ode,
44. Libertas =Leigh Hunt. See page 15.




EPISTLE TO CHARkLES COWDEN CLARKE.


37


Growing, like Atlas, stronger from its load?
Who let me taste that more than cordial dram,
The sharp, the rapier-pointed epigram?           65
Show'd me that epic was of all the king,
Round, vast, and spanning all like Saturn's ring?
You too upheld the veil from Clio's beauty,
And pointed out the patriot's stern duty;
The might of Alfred, and the shaft of Tell;      70
The hand of Brutus, that so grandly fell
Upon a tyrant's head. Ah! had I never seen,
Or known your kindness, what might I have been?
What my enjoyments in my youthful years,
Bereft of all that now my life endears?         75
And can I e'er these benefits forget?
And can I e'er repay the friendly debt?
No, doubly no;-yet should these rhymings please,
I shall roll on the grass with two-fold ease:
For I have long time been my fancy feeding       80
With hopes that you would one day think the reading
Of my rough verses not an hour misspent;
Should it e'er be so, what a rich content!
Some weeks have pass'd since last I saw the spires
In lucent Thames reflected:-warm desires         85
To see the sun o'erpeep the eastern dimness,
And morning shadows streaking into slimness
Across the lawny fields, and pebbly water;
To mark the time as they grow broad, and shorter;
To feel the air that plays about the hills,      90
And sips its freshness from the little rills;
To see high, golden corn wave in the light
When Cynthia smiles upon a summer's night,
And peers among the cloudlets jet and white,
As though she were reclining in a bed            95
Of bean blossoms, in heaven freshly shed.
No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures
Than I began to think of rhymes and measures:
The air that floated by me seem'd to say
" Write! thou wilt never have a better day."    100
And so I did. When many lines I'd written,
Though with their grace I was not oversmitten,
Yet, as my hand was warm, I thought I'd better
Trust to my feelings, and write you a letter.
Such an attempt requir'd an inspiration          105
Of a peculiar sort,-a consummation;Which, had I felt, these scribblings might have been
Verses from which the soul would never wean:
82 & 94. The first edition reads ' mispent' and ' cloudlet's'.




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


But many days have passed since last my heart
Was warm'd, luxuriously by divine Mozart;               110
By Arne delighted, or by Handel madden'd;
Or by the song of Erin pierc'd and sadden'd:
What time you were before the music sitting,
And the rich notes to each sensation fitting.
Since I have walk'd with you through shady lanes        115
That freshly terminate in open plains,
And revel'd in a chat that ceased not
When at night-fall among your books we got:
No, nor when supper came, nor after that,Nor when reluctantly I took my hat;                     120
No, nor till cordially you shook my hand
Mid-way between our homes:-your accents bland
Still sounded in my ears, when I no more
Could hear your footsteps touch the grav'ly floor.
Sometimes I lost them, and then found again;            125
You chang'd the footpath for the grassy plain.
In those still moments I have wish'd you joys
That well you know to honor:-" Life's very toys
"With him," said I, "will take a pleasant charm;
" It cannot be that ought will work him harm."         130
These thoughts now come o'er me with all their might:Again I shake your hand,-friend Charles, good night.
Seftemnber, i 8 i6.
130. Hunt says ('Examiner'), in evident allusion to Keats's prowess as a boxer
and readiness to back his friends-"we can only add, without any disrespect to
the graver warmth of our young poet, that if Ought attempted it, Ought would
find he had stout work to do with more than one person.'  The student will
probably turn to the posthumous poems and compare these epistles with that to
John Hamilton Reynolds written in 1818.




SONNETS.
i.
TO MY BROTHER GEORGE.
MANY the wonders I this day have seen:
The sun, when first he kist away the tears
That fill'd the eyes of morn;-the laurell'd peers
Who from     the feathery gold of evening lean;Joseph Severn preserved a few leaves torn from a small oblong pocket note-book,
bearing pencilled sketches by Keats of rude figures &c., and what seemed to be the
first drafts (in pencil also) of this sonnet and the two quatrains of the sonnet 'To
my Brothers'.   I collated this draft with a careful transcript made by George
Keats himself, and with another in Tom Keats's copy-book. This last does not
vary from the printed text, and bears no date; but the other transcript, like that
of the Epistle to George Keats, is subscribed "Margate, August, 1816 ". In the
draft, line 3 at first stood unfinishedThat trembled on the morning's eye
and thenThat trembled in the eye of Morn
and finallyThat hung on Morning's cheek-the laurelI'd Peers,
which is the reading of George Keats's transcript. In line 4 we have 'That ' for
W ho' in George's transcript; while the draft reads 'That in the Paleing (altered
to 'feathery') gold '. In line 6 of the draft, ' Dangers' stands cancelled in favour
of ' Rocks. Line 8 in both draft and transcript isMust muse on what's to come and what has been.
In line 10 the draft reads ' silver ' for ' silken ', and there is a cancelled line 11:Giving the world such snatches of delight,
for which the reading of the text is substituted. The final couplet was originallyThe Sights have warmed me but without thy love,
What Joy in Earth or Sea or Heaven above?
This is cancelled in the draft in favour of the reading of the text. In line 13
George's transcript has 'thoughts' for 'thought'.  Hunt's 'Examiner' review
contains an excellent passage on the second quatrain, which, he says, "passes, with
great happiness, from the mention of physical associations to mental; and concludes
with a feeling which must have struck many a contemplative mind, that has
found the sea-shore like a border, as it were, of existence....  We have read
somewhere the remark of a traveller, who said that when he was walking alone at
night-time on the sea-shore, he felt conscious of the earth, not as the common
every day sphere it seems, but as one of the planets, rolling round with him in
the mightiness of space. The same feeling is common to imaginations that are
not in need of similar local excitements."
39




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


The ocean with its vastness, its blue green,
Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,Its voice mysterious, which whoso hears
Must think on what will be, and what has been.
E'en now, dear George, while this for you I write,
Cynthia is from her silken curtains peeping
So scantly, that it seems her bridal night,
And she her half-discover'd revels keeping.
But what, without the social thought of thee,
Would be the wonders of the sky and sea?
II.
TO * *** **
HAD I a man's fair form, then might my sighs
Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell
Thine ear, and find thy gentle heart; so well
Would passion arm me for the enterprize:
But ah! I am no knight whose foeman dies;
No cuirass glistens on my bosom's swell;
I am no happy shepherd of the dell
Whose lips have trembled with a maiden's eyes.
Yet must I dote upon thee,-call thee sweet,
Sweeter by far than Hybla's honied roses
When steep'd in dew rich to intoxication.
Ah! I will taste that dew, for me 't is meet,
And when the moon her pallid face discloses,
I'll gather some by spells, and incantation.
III.
WRITTEN ON THE DAY THAT MR. LEIGH HUNT
LEFT PRISON.
WHAT though, for showing truth to flatter'd state,
Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he,
In his immortal spirit, been as free
As the sky-searching lark, and as elate.
II. Tom Keats's copy-book contains a transcript of this sonnet showing no variation in the text, except by a copyist's error at the end,-the last word being
'incantations '. There is no heading beyond the word ' Sonnet ', no date, and no
clue to the identity of the person addressed.
III. The Hunts (" Wronged Libertas " and his brother) left prison on the 2nd of
February 1815, according to Leigh Hunt's own account, though Thornton Hunt
says the 3rd at page 99, Volume I, of the 'Correspondence' (1862). Professor
Wilson, well described by Horne as "the clown of 'Blackwood's Magazine'",
found sufficient ground here for one of the unseemliest of his coarse pleasantriesto wit the allegation that Keats fed Hunt "on the oil cakes of flattery " till he




SONNETS.


41


Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key?
Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
In Spenser's halls he stray'd, and bowers fair,
Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew
With daring Milton through the fields of air:
To regions of his own his genius true
Took happy flights.      Who shall his fame impair
When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?
IV.
How many bards gild the lapses of time!
A few of them have ever been the food.
Of my delighted fancy,-I could brood
Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:
became "flatulent of praisp ". Keats's real offence was of course his friendship
with a radical, and his v  tauring to characterize as "showing truth to fiatter'd
state" the article in 'The Examiner' for which Hunt and his brother were imprisoned for two years and fined a thousand pounds,-an article in which Hunt,
doing battle with 'The Morning Post', thus translated the "language of adulation
into that of truth ":
"What person, unacquainted with the true state of the case, would imagine, in
reading these astounding eulogies, that this ' Glory of the people ' was the subject
of millions of shrugs and reproaches!-... that this ' Exciter of desire' [bravo!
Messieurs of the 'Post'!]-this 'Adonis in loveliness' was a corpulent man of
fifty!-in short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasurable, honourable, virtuous, true, and immortal prince, was a violator of his word, a libertine over head
and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and
demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one sir 'le claim on the
gratitude of his country, or the respect of posterity!"
Even towards such a ruthless polemic as Professor Wilson one must seek to be
just; and I do not doubt that he felt called upon to oppose the Hunt set with every
pulsation of "a heart as rough as Esan's hand", but loyal enough to those
politicians whom Keats called the Prince Regent's "wretched crew". It was
really, I take it, from this poor little sonnet tat te animus o  he predominant
press party against Keats originated.  An article celebrating "The Departure
of the Proprietors of this Paper from Prison" occupied the first page of 'The
Examiner' for Sunday, the 5th of February 1815. The opening is as follows:"The two years' imprisonment inflicted on the Proprietors of this Paper for
differing with the 'Morning Post' on the merits of the Prince Regent, expired on
Thursday last; and on that day accordingly we quitted our respective Jails." On
the subject of how they felt on the occasion, Hunt excuses himself from particularity, but observes with characteristic pleasantness, "there is a feeling of space
and of airy clearness about everything, which is alternately delightful andpainful."
The greater part of the article is far from being in Hunt's best manner; but the
end should stand on record here: " We feel that we have driven another nail or
two into the old oaken edifice of English Liberty; and if we have rapped our
fingers a little in the operation, it is only a laugh and a wring of the hands, and
all is as it should be."
IV. Hunt adduces the first line ('Examiner') as an example of Keats's "senseof the
proper variety of versification without a due consideration of its principles ", and




42


POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude'
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; 't is a pleasing chime.
So the unnumber'd sounds that evening store;
The songs of birds-the whisp'ring of the leavesThe voice of waters-the great bell that heaves
With solemn sound,-and thousand others more,
That distance of recognizance bereaves,
Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.
V.
TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME SOME ROSES.
As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the sky-lark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;-when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields:
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 't was the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,
I thought the garden-rose it far excell'd:
But when, 0 Wells! thy roses came to me
My sense with their deliciousness was spell'd:
Soft voices had they, that with tender plea
Whisper'd of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquell'd
very justly adds, "by no contrivance of any sort can we prevent this from
jumping out of the heroic measure into mere rhythmicality." Clarke records
that when this and one or two other early poems of Keats were first shown by
him to Hunt, Horace Smith, being present, remarked on the 13th line, "What a
well-condensed expression for a youth so young! "
V. This sonnet was addressed to Charles Wells, the author of 'Stories after
Nature', 'Joseph and his Brethren', and a few fugitive compositions.  His
great dramatic poem, 'Joseph and his Brethren', probably came out late in 1823,
for, though the title-page is dated 1824, the label at the back is dated 1823. The
book was left in oblivion for something like fifty years. Wells, however, lived to
find himself famous in 1876, on the issue of a revised edition, which I had the
pleasure of fitting for and seeing through the press for him. He died at Marseilles
on the 17th of February 1879, in his 78th year, having finally corrected and
interpolated a copy of the new edition of his great work for some future re-edition.
In Tom Keats's copy-book this sonnet is headed "To Charles Wells on receiving a bunch of roses," and dated "June 29, 1816." In this heading the
word 'full-blown' stands cancelled before 'roses'. The only variation beyond
spelling and pointing is in the last line, which is
Whispered of truth, Humanity and Friendliness unquell'd.




SONNETS.


43


VI.
TO G. A. W.
NYMPH of the downward smile and sidelong glance,
In what diviner moments of the day
Art thou most lovely? —when gone far astray
Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance,
Or when serenely wand'ring in a trance
Of sober thought?-or when starting away
With careless robe to meet the morning ray
Thou spar'st the flowers in thy mazy dance?
Haply 'tis when thy ruby lips part sweetly,
And so remain, because thou listenest:
But thou to please wert nurtured so completely
That I can never tell what mood is best.
I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly
Trips it before Apollo than the rest.
VII.
O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,Nature's observatory-whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
'Mongst boughs pavillion'd, where the deer's swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
VI. The subject of this sonnet was Georgiana Augusta Wylie, who married Keats's
brother George, and after his death became Mrs. Jeffrey. See foot-note at page 23.
The holograph manuscript, headed "To Miss Wylie", corresponds verbatim with
the sonnet as published in 1817; but in the two quatrains the better punctuation
is that of the manuscripts; and I have followed it in the text.  The thirteenth
] ne shows one correction: ' Nmph ' was originally written where ' Grace' now: ands. In a transcript in Tom Keats's copy-book we read 'what grace'; and.he sonnet is headed "Sonnet to a Lady ", and dated "Dec. 1816 ". Curiously
-nough Keats's edition also reads 'grace', with a small g, as if Tom had made.ie " press copy".
VII. This sonnet, published in 'The Examiner' for the 5th of May 1816, signed
J. K.", is stated by Charles Cowden Clarke ('Gentleman's Magazine' for
February 1874) to be "Keats's first published poem". In Tom Keats's copybook it is headed "Sonnet to Solitude ", and undated. The only variation is,1 line 9,-'I'd' for 'I'll'.  'The Examiner' reads 'rivers' for 'river's' in
ae 5, and lines 9 and 10 stand thusAh! fain would Ifrequent such scenes with thee;
But the sweet converse of an innocent mind.




44


POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd,
Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.
VIII.
TO MY BROTHERS.
SMALL, busy flames play through the fresh laid coals,
And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep
Like whispers of the household gods that keep
A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles,
Your eyes are fix'd, as in poetic sleep,
Upon the lore so voluble and deep,
That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
This is your birth-day Tom, and I rejoice
That thus it passes smoothly, quietly.
Many such eves of gently whisp'ring noise
May we together pass, and calmly try
What are this world's true joys,-ere the great voice,
From its fair face, shall bid our spirits fly.
November 18, 1816.
VIII. In Tom Keats's copy-book this sonnet is headed "Written to his broth
Tom on his Birthday", and dated " Nov. 18, 1816." In the last line the transcri
reads 'place' for 'face'.  The sonnet seems to have been originally written
pencil in the note-book referred to at page 39, immediately after the sonnet
George Keats; but the two quatrains, which fill one page, are all that I found o
this sonnet among the Keats relics of Severn. The quatrains stand finally thus
in the draft:Small flames are peeping through the fresh laid coals
And their faint Crackling o'er our Silence creeps
'Like Whispers of the Household God that keeps
A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls
And while for Rhymes I search around the Poles
Your Eyes are fixed as in poetic sleep
Upon the Pages Voluble and deep
That aye at fall of Night our care condoles.
There is a cancelled reading at line 2, unfinishedWith a faint Crackling head distract...
and another at line 5 —
And while I am thinking of a Rhyme;
and here 'searching' was substituted for 'thinking of', before the whole was
cancelled in favour of the reading of the text.




SONNETS.


46


IX.
KEEN, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there
Among the bushes half leafless, and dry;
The stars look very cold about the sky,
And I have many miles on foot to fare.
Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,
Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,
Or of those silver lamps that burn on high,
Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair:
For I am brimfull of the friendliness
That in a little cottage I have found; -
Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress,
And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd;
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,
And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd.
x.
To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
IX. Clarke records that this sonnet was written on the occasion of Keats's first
'becoming acquainted with Leigh Hunt at the Cottage in the Vale of Health,
Hampstead.
X. In a transcript in the hand-writing of George Keats this sonnet is subscribed as
"Written in the Fields-Jnne 1816 ". The variations shown by this manuscript,
no doubt correctly copied from the original, are,-in line 2, 'upon' for into; in
line 4 'bright' for 'blue'; in line 5 'heart's' is written correctly, though
hearts' is wrongly printed in the 1817 volume; in line 6 'upon a' for 'into
some'; in line 7 'some' for a '; in line 9 'Returning, thoughtful, homeward'
for ' Returning home at evening '; line 11 is
Following the wafted Cloudlet's light career;
and line 14 is
That droppeth through the iEther silently.
In Tom Keats's copy-book the only variation from the printed text of 1817 is in line
4, ' bright ' for 'blue '. It is clear the sonnet was carefully revised for the 1817
volume; and it is curious that Keats did not find out his indebtedness to Milton
for his "prosperous opening ". Compare 'Paradise Lost ', IX. 445,
As one who long in populous City pent...




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel,-an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.
XI.
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER.
MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer rul'd as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
XI. Charles Cowden Clarke says, in the article in 'The Gentleman's Magazine'
referred to at page 43, that this sonnet was sent to him by Keats so as to reach
him at 10 o'clock one morning when they two had parted "at day-spring " after a
night encounter with a copy of Chapman's Homer belonging to Mr. Alsager of
'The Times'. Mr. Locker-Lampson had an undated manuscript of the sonnet in
Keats's writing, headed "On the first looking into Chapman's Homer"; while
in Tom Keats's copy-book the heading is "Sonnet on looking into Chapman's
Homer", and the date "1816." In that book, though not in the Locker-Lampson
manuscript, line 5 opens with 'But' instead of 'Oft '. In the manuscript line 6
originally read 'Which low-brow'd Homer'; but 'deep' is substituted for
'low'; and for line 7 we read both in the manuscript and in the copy-book
Yet could I never judge what men could mean.
In line 11 the autograph manuscript reads 'wond'ring eyes' for 'eagle eyes '.
The variation in line 7 is of value in connexion with one of the reminiscences of
Clarke, who says the seventh line originally stood thus:
Yet could I never tell what men could mean
and that Keats substituted the reading of the text because he considered the
first reading " bald, and too simply wondering". But he may have been actuated
by another reason also, as thus: in an article headed "Young Poets" in 'The
Examiner' for the 1st of December 1816, Hunt had spoken in high praise of a
set of Keats's manuscript poems shown to him, and had printed this one as given
in Tom Keats's copy-book, with the remark that it contained "one incorrect
rhyme". The only disputable rhyme is that of 'mean' and 'demesne', and
that is got rid of by the revision. "The rest of the composition", says Hunt,
"with the exception of a little vagueness in calling the regions of poetry 'the
realms of gold ', we do not hesitate to pronounce excellent, especially the last six
lines. The word 'swims' is complete; and the whole conclusion is equally
powerful and quiet." He appears to have become reconciled to "the realms of
gold" in later years, to judge from the close of that charming work 'Imagination
and Fancy'.   Speaking of this sonnet he says at page 345 (I quote the third
edition, dated 1846),-" 'Stared' has been thought by some too violent, but it is




SONNETS.


Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific-and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien.
XII.
ON LEAVING SOME FRIENDS AT AN EARLY HOUR.
GIVE me a golden pen, and let me lean
On heap'd up flowers, in regions clear, and far;
Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,
Or hand of hymning angel, when 't is seen
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:
And let there glide by many a pearly car,
Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,
And half discover'd wings, and glances keen.
precisely the word required by the occasion. The Spaniard was too original and
ardent a man either to look, or to affect to look, coldly superior to it.  His 'eagle
eyes' are from life, as may be seen by Titian's portrait of him." Of the last line,
which ends the poetry of 'Imagination and Fancy', Hunt says " We leave the
reader standing upon it, with all the illimitable world of thought and feeling
before him, to which his imagination will have been brought, while journeying
through these ' realms of gold. '"
The last four lines seem to be a reminiscence of Robertson's History of America,
recorded by Clarke as among Keats's later school reading; but, as Tennyson
pointed out to Francis Palgrave (' Golden Treasury', 1861, page 320) the reference
should really be to Balboa. From Hunt's remark about the portrait it is clear
that this was no mere slip of the pen: Cortez was the man whom Keats's imagination saw in the situation; and it is to be presumed that his memory betrayed him,
for it seems unlikely that he met with the story elsewhere, told of Cortez. The
passage of Robertson's History of America (Works, edition of 1817) is in Volume
VIII, page 287.
"At length the Indians assured them, that from the top of the next mountain
they should discover the ocean which was the object of their wishes. When, with
infinite toil, they had climbed up the greater part of that steep ascent, Balboa
commanded his men to halt, and advanced alone to the summit, that he might be
the first who should enjoy a spectacle which he had so long desired. As soon as
he beheld the South Sea stretching in endless prospect below him, he fell on his
knees, and lifting up his hands to heaven, returned thanks to God, who had conducted him to a discovery so beneficial to his country, and so honourable to himself.
His followers, observing his transports of joy, rushed forward to join in his wonder,
exultation, and gratitude."
An account of this incident will also be found in Washington Irving's 'Voyages
and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus '.
XI. This sonnet also belongs to the Cottage in the Vale of Health, as we are led
to infer from Clarke's mention of it in connexion with No. IX and No. XV.




48


POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


The while let music wander round my ears,
And as it reaches each delicious ending,
Let me write down a line of glorious tone,
And full of many wonders of the spheres:
For what a height my spirit is contending!
'Tis not content so soon to be alone.
XIII.
ADDRESSED TO HAYDON.
HIGHMINDEDNESS, a jealousy for good,
A loving-kindness for the great man's fame,
Dwells here and there with people of no name,
In noisome alley, and in pathless wood:
And where we think the truth least understood,
Oft may be found a " singleness of aim,"
That ought to frighten into hooded "hame
A money-mong'ring, pitiable brood.
How glorious this affection for the cause
Of stedfast genius, toiling gallantly!
What when a stout unbending champion awes
Envy, and Malice to their native sty?
Unnumber'd souls breathe out a still applause,
Proud to behold him in his country's eye.
XIV.
ADDRESSED TO THE SAME.
GREAT spirits now on earth are sojourning;
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake:
And lo!-whose stedfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
XIII. Benjamin Robert Haydon, historical painter, was born on the 26th of
January 1786, and died by his own hand on the 22nd of June 1846. He had considerable influence with Keats in the early days of the period to which this sonnet
belongs, and keenly appreciated the young poet's genius. This will be readily
discerned by those who read the letters of the two friends in a subsequent
volume of this edition of Keats's works.
XIV. This sonnetwas not originallywrittenwith a short 13thline, but with the line
Of mighty workings in some distant Mart?
Haydon suggested the hiatus; and Keats adopted it. In Tom Eeats's copy-book
the sonnet is headed simply "Sonnet" and is dated 1816 merely. There is no
variation from the printed text. It is almost superfluous to identify the two men
referred to in the first six lines-Wordsworth and Leigh Hunt.




BONNETS.


49


And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings?Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.
XV.
ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.
THE poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's-he takes the lead
In summer luxury,-he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetly of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
December 30, I 86.
Clarke records that this sonnet was written at Leigh Hunt's cottage, on a
challenge from Hunt. It appeared with Hunt's sonnet in 'The Examiner' for
the 21st of September 1817; but Keats's volume had already appeared in June
of that year. Hunt's sonnet in this competition is as follows:
TO THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET.
Green little vaulter in the sunny grass
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon,
When ev'n the bees lag at the summoning brass;
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
With those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;
Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong,
One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
Both have your sunshine; both though small are strong
At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth
To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song,In doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth.
30th December, 1816.
This, like his response to Keats's Dedication (page 5 of the present volume), is
transcribed from Keats's copy of 'Foliage' 0818).
D




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


XVI.
TO KOSCIUSKO.
GOOD Kosciusko, thy great name alone
Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;
It comes upon us like the glorious pealing
Of the wide spheres-an everlasting tone.
And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown,
The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing,
And changed to harmonies, for ever stealing
Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne.
It tells me too, that on a happy day,
When some good spirit walks upon the earth,
Thy name with Alfred's, and the great of yore
Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth
To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away
To where the great God lives for evermore.
XVII.
HAPPY is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent:
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
Yet do I often warmly bum to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.
XVI. This sonnet was published in 'The Examiner ' for the 16th of February
1817. The punctuation differs slightly from that of the 1817 volume; and in the
eighth line we read ' around ' for ' and round '. The date " Dec. i8i6 " and the
initials "J. K. " appear under the sonnet in ' The Examiner '. Keats left line 7
defective. Lord Houghton altered 'And' to ' Are' and made sense of it. I think
the best revision would be to read 'change ' for ' changed'; but, in the absence
of authority, Keats's own printed text is the safest.




SLEEP AND POETRY.
" As I lay in my bed slepe full unmete
" Was unto me, but why that I ne might
" Rest I ne wist, for there n'as erthly wight
" [As I suppose] had more of hertis ese
"Than I, for I n'ad sicknesse nor disese."
CHAUCER.
WHAT is more gentle than a wind in summer?
What is more soothing than the pretty hummer
That stays one moment in an open flower,
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?
What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing              5
In a green island, far from all men's knowing?
More healthful than the leafiness of dales?
More secret than a nest of nightingales?
More serene than Cordelia's countenance?
More full of visions than a high romance?                  10
What, but thee Sleep?     Soft closer of our eyes!
Low murmurer of tender lullabies!
Light hoverer around our happy pillows!
Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!
Silent entangler of a beauty's tresses!                   15
Most happy listener! when the morning blesses
Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes
That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise.
But what is higher beyond thought than thee?
Fresher than berries of a mountain tree?                  20
More strange, more beautiful, more smooth, more regal,
Than wings of swans, than doves, than dim-seen eagle?
Leigh Hunt says in 'The Examiner'"The best poem is certainly the last and longest, entitled 'Sleep and Poetry'.
It is a striking specimen of the restlessness of the young poetical appetite, obtaining its food by the very desire of it, and glancing for fit subjects of creation ' from
earth to heaven.' Nor do we like it the less for an impatient, and as it may be
thought by some, irreverent assault upon the late French school of criticism and
monotony, which has held poetry chained long enough to render it somewhat
indignant when it has got free."
51




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


What is it? And to what shall I compare it?
It has a glory, and nought else can share it:
The thought thereof is awful, sweet, and holy,   25
Chasing away all worldliness and folly;
Coming sometimes like fearful claps of thunder,
Or the low rumblings earth's regions under;
And sometimes like a gentle whispering
Of all the secrets of some wond'rous thing       30
That breathes about us in the vacant air;
So that we look around with prying stare,
Perhaps to see shapes of light, aerial limning,
And catch soft floatings from a faint-heard hymning;
To see the laurel wreath, on high suspended,     35
That is to crown our name when life is ended.
Sometimes it gives a glory to the voice,
And from the heart up-springs, rejoice! rejoice!
Sounds which will reach the Framer of all things,
And die away in ardent mutterings.               40
No one who once the glorious sun has seen,
And all the clouds, and felt his bosom clean
For his great Maker's presence, but must know
What 't is I mean, and feel his being glow:
Therefore no insult will I give his spirit,      45
By telling what he sees from native merit.
O Poesy! for thee I hold my pen
That am not yet a glorious denizen
Of thy wide heaven-Should I rather kneel
Upon some mountain-top until I feel              50
A glowing splendour round about me hung,
And echo back the voice of thine own tongue?
O Poesy! for thee I grasp my pen
That am not yet a glorious denizen
Of thy wide heaven; yet, to my ardent prayer,    55
Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air,
Smooth'd for intoxication by the breath
Of flowering bays, that I may die a death
Of luxury, and my young spirit follow
The morning sun-beams to the great Apollo        60
Like a fresh sacrifice; or, if I can bear
The o'erwhelming sweets, 'twill bring to me the fair
Visions of all places: a bowery nook
Will be elysium-an eternal book
Whence I mnay copy many a lovely saying          65
About the leaves, and flowers-about the playing
Of nymphs in woods, and fountains; and the shade
Keeping a silence round a sleeping maid;
33. The original edition reads ' lymning '.




SLEEP AND POETRY.


63


And many a verse from so strange influence
That we must ever wonder how, and whence          70
It came. Also imaginings will hover
Round my fire-side, and haply there discover
Vistas of solemn beauty, where I'd wander
In happy silence, like the clear Meander
Through its lone vales; and where I found a spot  75
Of awfuller shade, or an enchanted grot,
Or a green hill o'erspread with chequer'd dress
Of flowers, and fearful from its loveliness,
Write on my tablets all that was permitted,
All that was for our human senses fitted.        80
Then the events of this wide world I'd seize
Like a strong giant, and my spirit teaze
Till at its shoulders it should proudly see
Wings to find out an immortality.
Stop and consider! life is but a day;            85
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree's summit; a poor Indian's sleep
While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep
Of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan?
Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown;       90
The reading of an ever-changing tale;
The light uplifting of a maiden's veil;
A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;
A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,
Riding the springy branches of an elm.           95
O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed.
Then will I pass the countries that I see
In long perspective, and continually             100
Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass
Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,
Feed upon apples red, and strawberries,
And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees;
Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,  105
To woo sweet kisses from averted faces, —
Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white
Into a pretty shrinking with a bite
As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,
A lovely tale of human life we'll read.          110
And one will teach a tame dove how it best
May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest;
74. In the original edition, 'meander' with a small m.




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


Another, bending o'er her nimble tread,
Will set a green robe floating round her head,
And still will dance with ever varied ease,      115
Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:
Another will entice me on, and on
Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon;
Till in the bosom of a leafy world
We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd       120
In the recesses of a pearly shell.
And can I ever bid these joys farewell?
Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,
Where I may find the agonies, the strife
Of human hearts: for lo! I see afar,             125
O'ersailing the blue cragginess, a car
And steeds with streamy manes-the charioteer
Looks out upon the winds with glorious fear:
And now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly
Along a huge cloud's ridge; and now with sprightly  130
Wheel downward come they into fresher skies,
Tipt round with silver from the sun's bright eyes.
Still downward with capacious whirl they glide;
And now I see them on a green-hill's side
In breezy rest among the nodding stalks.        135
The charioteer with wond'rous gesture talks
To the trees and mountains; and there soon appear
Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear,
Passing along before a dusky space
Made by some mighty oaks: as they would chase    140
Some ever-fleeting music on they sweep.
Lo! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep:
Some with upholden hand and mouth severe;
Some with their faces muffled to the ear
Between their arms; some, clear in youthful bloom,  145
Go glad and smilingly athwart the gloom;
Some looking back, and some with upward gaze;
Yes, thousands in a thousand different ways
Flit onward-now a lovely wreath of girls
Dancing their sleek hair into tangled curls;    150
And now broad wings. Most awfully intent
The driver of those steeds is forward bent,
And seems to listen: O that I might know
All that he writes with such a hurrying glow.
The visions all are fled-the car is fled        155
Into the light of heaven, and in their stead
A sense of real things comes doubly strong,
And, like a muddy stream, would bear along




SLEEP AND POETRY.


65


My soul to nothingness: but I will strive
Against all doubtings, and will keep alive                 160
The thought of that same chariot, and the strange
Journey it went.
Is there so small a range
In the present strength of manhood, that the high
Imagination cannot freely fly
As she was wont of old? prepare her steeds,                165
Paw up against the light, and do strange deeds
Upon the clouds? Has she not shown us all?
From the clear space of ether, to the small
Breath of new buds unfolding? From the meaning
Of Jove's large eye-brow, to the tender greening           170
Of April meadows? Here her altar shone,
E'en in this isle; and who could paragon
The fervid choir that lifted up a noise
Of harmony, to where it aye will poise
Its mighty self of convoluting sound,                      175
Huge as a planet, and like that roll round,
Eternally around a dizzy void?
Ay, in those days the Muses were nigh cloy'd
With honors; nor had any other care
Than to sing out and sooth their wavy hair.                180
Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism
Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,
Made great Apollo blush for this his land.
Men were thought wise who could not understand
His glories: with a puling infant's force                  185
They sway'd about upon a rocking horse,
And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal soul'd
The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll'd
Its gathering waves-ye felt it not. The blue
Bar'd its eternal bosom, and the dew                       190
Of summer nights collected still to make
The morning precious: beauty was awake!
Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead
181. In Keats's edition ' schism' is misspelt 'scism.'
181-312. Leigh Hunt's admirable qualities as a critic were not often displayed to better advantage than in that part of his review of Keats's 'Poems'
in 'The Examiner' which deals indirectly with this now historic passage from
line 181 to line 312. The following summary of the situation treated by Keats
furnishes the precise critical commentary wanted for the poet's polemics; and it
takes just that view of Keats's own position that contemporary critics are now
beginning to take as if it were a discovery of their own. HunIt's clearness of
sight for a movement in which he was living and acting is truly remarkable.
"It is no longer", he says, "a new observation, that poetry has of late years




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817,


To things ye knew not of,-were closely; wed
To musty laws lined out with wretched:ule                      195
And compass vile: so that ye taught a school
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask                         200
Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race!
That blasphem'd the bright Lyrist to his face,
And did not know it,-no, they went about,
Holding a poor, decrepid standard out
Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large                    205
The name of one Boileau!
0 ye whose charge
It is to hover round our pleasant hills!
Whose congregated majesty so fills
My boundly reverence, that I cannot trace
Your hallowed names, in this unholy place,                      210
So near those common folk; did not their shames
Affright you? Did our old lamenting Thames
Delight you? Did ye never cluster round
Delicious Avon, with a mournful sound,
And weep? Or did ye wholly bid adieu                           215
To regions where no more the laurel grew?
Or did ye stay to give a welcoming
To some lone spirits who could proudly sing
Their youth away, and die? 'T was even so:
But let me think away those times of woe:                      220
Now 't is a fairer season; ye have breathed
Rich benedictions o'er us; ye have wreathed
Fresh garlands: for sweet music has been heard
In many places;-some has been upstirr'd
undergone a very great change, or rather, to speak properly, poetry has undergone
no change, but something which was not poetry has made way for the return
of something which is. The school which existed till lately since the restoration
of Charles the 2d, was rather a school of wit and ethics in verse, than any thing
else; nor was the verse, with the exception of Dryden's, of the best order. The
authors, it is true, are to be held in great honour. Great wit there certainly was,
excellent satire, excellent sense, pithy sayings; and Pope distilled as much real
poetry as could be got from the drawing-room world in which the art then lived,from the flowers and luxuries of artificial life,-into that exquisite little toiletbottle of essence, the 'Rape of the Lock'.  But there was little imagination,
of a higher order, no intense feeling of nature, no sentiment, no real music or
variety.  Even the writers who gave evidences meanwhile of a truer poetical
faculty, Gray, Thomson, Akenside, and Collins himself, were content with a great
deal of second-hand workmanship, and with false styles made up of other languages
and a certain kind of inverted cant. It has been thought that Cowper was the
first poet who re-opened the true way to nature and a natural style; but we hold




SLEEP AND POETRY.                           67
From   out its crystal dwelling in a lake,                    225
By a swan's ebon bill; from a thick brake,
Nested and quiet in a valley mild,
Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild
About the earth: happy are ye and glad.
These things are doubtless: yet in truth we've had            230
Strange thunders from the potency of song;
Mingled indeed with what is sweet and strong,
From majesty: but in clear truth the themes
Are ugly cubs, the Poets Polyphemes
Disturbing the grand sea.      A drainless shower             235
Of light is poesy; 't is the supreme of power;
'T is might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.
The very archings of her eye-lids charm
A thousand willing agents to obey,
And still she governs with the mildest sway:                   240
But strength alone though of the Muses born
Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,
Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres
Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs,
And thorns of life; forgetting the great end                  245
Of poesy, that it should be a friend
To sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.
Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than
E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds
Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds                   250
A silent space with ever sprouting green.
All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen,
Creep thiough the shade with jaunty fluttering,
Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing.
Then let us clear away the choaking thorns                    255
From round its gentle stem; let the young fawns,
this to be a mistake, arising merely from certain negations on the part of that
amiable but by no means powerful writer. Cowper's style is for the most part as
inverted and artificial as that of the others; and we look upon him to have been
by nature not so great a poet as Pope: but Pope, from certain infirmities on his
part, was thrown into the society of the world, and thus had to get what he could
out of an artificial sphere:-Cowper, from other and more distressing infirmities,
(which by the way the wretched superstition that undertook to heal, only burnt in
upon him) was confined to a still smaller though more natural sphere, and in truth
did not much with it, though quite as much perhaps as was to be expected from an
organization too sore almost to come in contact with any thing.
It was the Lake Poets in our opinion (however grudgingly we say it, on some
accounts) that were the first to revive a true taste for nature; and like most
Revolutionists, especially of the cast which they have since turned out to be, they
went to an extreme, calculated rather at first to make the readers of poetry
disgusted with originality and adhere with contempt and resentment to their
magazine common-places. This had a bad effect also in the way of re-action;




POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


Yeaned in after times, when we are flown,
Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown
With simple flowers: let there nothing be
More boisterous than a lover's bended knee;                    20G
Nought more ungentle than the placid look
Of one who leans upon a closed book;
Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes
Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes!
As she was wont, th' imagination                                265
Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,
And they shall be accounted poet kings
Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.
O may these joys be ripe before I die.
Will not some say that I presumptuously                         270
Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace
'T were better far to hide my foolish face?
That whining boyhood should with reverence bow
Ere the dread thunderbolt could reach?         How!
If I do hide myself, it sure shall be                           275
In the very fane, the light of Poesy:
If I do fall, at least I will be laid
Beneath the silence of a poplar shade;
And over me the grass shall be smooth shaven;
And there shall be a kind memorial graven.                      280
But off Despondence! miserable bane!
They should not know thee, who athirst to gain
A noble end, are thirsty every hour.
What though I am not wealthy in the dower
Of spanning wisdom; though I do not know                       285
and none of those writers have ever since been able to free themselves from
certain stubborn affectations, which having been ignorantly confounded by others
with the better part of them, have been retained by their self-love with a still less
pardonable want of wisdom. The greater part indeed of the poetry of Mr. Southey,
a weak man in all respects, is really made up of little else. Mr. Coleridge still
trifles with his poetical as he has done with his metaphysical talent. Mr. Lamb,
in our opinion, has a more real tact of humanity, a modester, Shakspearean
wisdom, than any of them; and had he written more, might have delivered
the school victoriously from all its defects. But it is Mr. Wordsworth who has
advanced it the most, and who in spite of some morbidities as well as mistaken
theories in other respects, has opened upon us a fund of thinking and imagination,
that ranks him as the successor of the true and abundant poets of the older time.
Poetry, like Plenty, should be represented with a cornucopia, but it should be a
real one; not swelled out and insidiously optimrized at the top, like Mr. Southey's
stale strawberry baskets, but fine and full to the depth, like a heap from the
vintage.  Yet from the time of Milton till lately, scarcely a tree had been
planted that could be called a poet's own. People got shoots from France, that
ended in nothing but a little barren wood, from which they made flutes for young
gentlemen and fan-sticks for ladies. The rich and enchanted ground of real
poetry, fertile with all that English succulence could produce, bright with all




STL  AND POETRY.


69


The shiftings of the mighty winds that blow
Hither and thither all the changing thoughts
Of man: though no great minist'ring reason sorts
Out the dark mysteries of human souls
To clear conceiving: yet there ever rolls                       290
A vast idea before me, and I glean
Therefrom my liberty; thence too I've seen
The end and aim of Poesy. 'T is clear
As anything most true; as that the year
Is made of the four seasons-manifest                            295
As a large cross, some old cathedral's crest,
Lifted to the white clouds. Therefore should I
Be but the essence of deformity,
A coward, did my very eye-lids wink
At speaking out what I have dar'd to think.                     300
Ah! rather let me like a madman run
Over some precipice; let the hot sun
Melt my Dedalian wings, and drive me down
Convuls'd and headlong!        Stay! an inward frown
Of conscience bids me be more calm awhile.                      305
An ocean dim, sprinkled with many an isle,
Spreads awfully before me. How much toil I
How many days! what desperate turmoil!
Ere I can have explored its widenesses.
Ah, what a task! upon my bended knees,                          310
I could unsay those-no, impossible!
Impossible!
For sweet relief I '11 dwell
On humbler thoughts, and let this strange assay
that Italian sunshine could lend, and haunted with exquisite humanities, had
become invisible to mortal eyes like the garden of Eden:And from that time those Graces were not found.
These Graces, however, are re-appearing; and one of the greatest evidences is the
little volume before us; for the work is not. one of mere imitation, or a compilation
of ingenious and promising things that merely announce better, and that after all
might only help to keep up a bad system; but here is a young poet giving himself
up to his own impressions, and revelling in real poetry for its own sake. He has
had his advantages, because others have cleared the way into those happy bowers;
but it shews the strength of his natural tendency, that he has not been turned
aside by the lingering enticements of a former system, and by the self-love which
interests others in enforcing them. We do not, of course, mean to say, that
Mr. Keats has as much talent as he will have ten years hence, or that there
are no imitations in his book, or that he does not make mistakes common to
inexperience;-the reverse is inevitable at his time of life. In proportion to our
ideas, or impressions of the images of things, must be our acquaintance with the
things themselves. But our author has all the sensitiveness of temperament requisite to receive these impressions; and wherever he has turned hitherto he has
felt them deeply."




60


POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.


Begun in gentleness die so away.
E'en now all tumult from my bosom fades:              315
I turn full hearted to the friendly aids
That smooth the path of honour; brotherhood,
And friendliness the nurse of mutual good.
The hearty grasp that sends a pleasant sonnet
Into the brain ere one can think upon it;             320
The silence when some rhymes are coming out;
And when they're come, the very pleasant rout:
The message certain to be done to-morrow.
'T is perhaps as well that it should be to borrow
Some precious book from out its snug retreat,         325
To cluster round it when we next shall meet.
Scarce can I scribble on; for lovely airs
Are fluttering round the room like doves in pairs;
Many delights of that glad day recalling,
When first my senses caught their tender falling.     330
And with these airs come forms of elegance
Stooping their shoulders o'er a horse's prance,
Careless, and grand-fingers soft and round
Parting luxuriant curls;-and the swift bound
Of Bacchus from his chariot, when his eye             335
Made Ariadne's cheek look blushingly.
Thus I remember all the pleasant flow
Of words at opening a portfolio.
Things such as these are ever harbingers
To trains of peaceful images: the stirs               340
Of a swan's neck unseen among the rushes:
A linnet starting all about the bushes:
A butterfly, with golden wings broad parted,
Nestling a rose, convuls'd as though it smarted
With over pleasure-many, many more,                   315
Might I indulge at large in all my store
Of luxuries: yet I must not forget
Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet:
For what there may be worthy in these rhymes
I partly owe to him: and thus, the chimes             350
Of friendly voices had just given place
To as sweet a silence, when I 'gan retrace
The pleasant day, upon a couch at ease.
It was a poet's house who keeps the keys
354. Hunt's house: he says in 'The Examiner' that the poem "originated in
sleeping in a room adorned with busts and pictures,"-"many a cast from Shout,"
as Shelley says in the 'Letter to Maria Gisborne.' In Hunt's Corrospondence
(Volume i, page 289) we read-"Keats's 'Sleep and Poetry' is a description of a
parlour that was mine, no bigger than an old mansion's closet." Clarke says
(' Gentleman's Magazine', February 1874)-" It was in the library at Hunt's cottage,
where an extemporary bed had been made up for him on the sofa".




BLEEP MAD POETRY.


61


Of pleasure's temple. Round about were hung      355
The glorious features of the bards who sung
In other ages-cold and sacred busts
Smiled at each other. Happy he who trusts
To clear Futurity his darling fame!
Then there were fauns and satyrs taking aim      360
At swelling apples with a frisky leap
And reaching fingers, 'mid a luscious heap
Of vine-leaves. Then there rose to view a fane
Of liny marble, and thereto a train
Of nymphs approaching fairly o'er the sward:     365
One, loveliest, holding her white hand toward
The dazzling sun-rise: two sisters sweet
Bending their graceful figures till they meet
Over the trippings of a little child:
And some are hearing, eagerly, the wild          370
Thrilling liquidity of dewy piping.
See, in another picture, nymphs are wiping
Cherishingly Diana's timorous limbs;A fold of lawny mantle dabbling swims
At the bath's edge, and keeps a gentle motion    375
With the subsiding crystal: as when ocean
Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothness o'er
Its rocky marge, and balances once more
The patient weeds; that now unshent by foam
Feel all about their undulating home.            380
Sappho's meek head was there half smiling down
At nothing; just as though the earnest frown
Of over thinking had that moment gone
From off her brow, and left her all alone.
Great Alfred's too, with anxious, pitying eyes,  385
As if he always listened to the sighs
Of the goaded world; and Kosciusko's worn
By horrid suifrance-mightily forlorn.
Petrarch, outstepping from the shady greeni,
Starts at the sight of Laura; nor can wean       390
His eyes from her sweet face. Most happy they!
For over them was seen a free display
Of out-spread wings, and from between them shone
The face of Poesy: from off her throne
She overlooked things that I scarce could tell.  395
The very sense of where I was might well
Keep Sleep aloof: but more than that there came
Thought after thought to nourish up the flame




62                   POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817.
Within my breast; so that the morning light
Surprised me even from a sleepless night; *00
And up I rose refresh'd, and glad, and gay,
Resolving to begin that very day
These lines; and howsoever they be done,
I leave them as a father does his son.
Hunt says in conclusion of lines 248-51 that they contain " an idea of as lovely
and powerful a nature in embodying an abstraction, as we ever remember to have
seen put into words:Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than
E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds
Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds
A silent space with ever sprouting green.
"Upon the whole, Mr. Keats's book cannot be better described than in a couplet
written by Milton when he too was young, and in which he evidently alludes to
himself. It is a little luxuriant heap of
Such sights as useful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream."




ENDYMION:
A Romance.








In Woodhouse's copy of 'Endymion' (see Preface) there is a note against the
assage "so I will begin" &c., line 39, Book I, to the effect that the poem was
begun in the spring of 1817 and finished in the winter of 1817-18; and in the
title-page he has inserted April before 1818. The statement corresponds with
Keats's own record of May 1817 (see Letters) that he was busying himself at
Margate with the commencement of Endymion '. This reference cannot of course
oe to the same 'Endymion' ("I stood tip-toe upon a little hill") that he
expected to finish in one more attack when he wrote to Clarke in December 1816.
Probably the conception referred to by Lord Houghton (Aldine edition, page xvii)
"s "long germinating in his fancy" really took bodily form and substance, and
that substance was wholly rejected, when Keats came within the radius of Haydon's
tieroio art propaganda, for the design on an ambitious scale which the next Spring
-vas to see in print.  Woodhouse records that at the end of the first draft is
Aritten "Burford Bridge, Nov. 28, r187 ". His statement as to the month of
issue scarcely does more than confirm the record of the series of documents bearping on this point published by Lord Houghton. Thus, the first book was in the
nublisher's hands by January 1818, and the last was copied out by the 14th
f March; the original Preface, rejected upon the unfavourable verdict of Reynolds
and others of Keats's friends, is dated the 19th of March; the Preface as published
is dated the 10th of April, and went, it seems, in a letter to Reynolds of that date.
The title-page originally devised was as follows:ENDYMION.
A ROMANCE.
BY JOHN KEATS.
"The stretched metre of an antique song."
Shakspeare's Sonnets.
n favour of the simple dedication as printed in the book, the following had
been rejected:INSCRIBED,
WITH EVERY FEELING OF PRIDE AND REGRET
AND WITH "A BOWED MIND,"
TO THE MEMORY OF
THE MOST ENGLISH OF POETS EXCEPT SHAKSPEARE,
THOMAS CHATTERTON.
the original preface referred to above reads as follows:ORIGINAL PREFACE REJECTED ON CONSIDERATION.
^  great nation, the work of an individual is of so little importance; his
adings and excuses are so uninteresting; his "way of life" such a
'Dting, that a Preface seems a sort of impertinent bow to strangers who
Lr nothing about it.
E




66


A Preface, however, should be down in so many words; and such a one
that by an eye-glance over the type the Reader may catch an idea of an
Author's modesty, and non-opinion of himself-which I sincerely hope may
be seen in the few lines I have to write, notwithstanding many proverbs of
many ages old which men find a great pleasure in receiving as gospel.
About a twelvemonth since, I published a little book of verses; it was
read by some dozen of my friends who lik'd it; and some dozen whom
I was unacquainted with, who did not.
Now, when a dozen human beings are at words with another dozen, it
becomes a matter of anxiety to side with one's friends-more especially
when excited thereto by a great love of Poetry. I fought under disadvantages. Before I began I had no inward feel of being able to finish; and as
I proceeded my steps were all uncertain. So this Poem must rather be
considered as an endeavour than a thing accomplished; a poor prologue
to what, if I live, I humbly hope to do. In duty to the Public I should have
kept it back for a year or two, knowing it to be so faulty: but I really cannot do so,-by repetition my favourite passages sound vapid in my ears,
and I would rather redeem myself with a new Poem should this one be
found of any interest.
I have to apologize to the lovers of simplicity for touching the spell of
loneliness that hung about Endymion; if any of my lines plead for me with'
such people I shall be proud.
It has been too much the fashion of late to consider men bigoted and
addicted to every word that may chance to escape their lips; now I here
declare that I have not any particular affection for any particular phrase,
word, or letter in the whole affair. I have written to please myself, and in
hopes to please others, and for a love of fame; if I neither please myself,
nor others, nor get fame, of what consequence is Phraseology?
I would fain escape the bickerings that all Works not exactly in chime
bring upon their begetters-but this is not fair to expect, there must be conversation of some sort and to object shows a man's consequence. In case
of a London drizzle or a Scotch mist, the following quotation from Marston
may perhaps 'stead me as an umbrella for an hour or so: " let it be the
curtesy of my peruser rather to pity my self-hindering labours than t'
malice me." '
One word more-for we cannot help seeing our own affairs in every
point of view-should any one call my dedication to Chatterton affected I
answer as followeth: " Were I dead, sir, I should like a Book dedicated to
me."
TEIGNMOUTH,
March 9Ith, I8I8.
On the 27th of April Keats wrote to Taylor apologizing for giving him " all t
trouble" of 'Endymion ', and adding, apparently in allusion to that poem, "T
book pleased me much. It is very free from faults; and, although there are 0
or two words I should wish replaced, I see in many places an improvement greatl
to the purpose". The measure of Keats's fluency in composition may bejudge
by observing the alterations recorded in Book I in the following pages. Of tha
Book there appears to have been but one manuscript, written on sheets of quar
foolscap paper, and considerably altered before going to press. The other thr
Books were written into a blank book and afterwards copied on quarto foolsca
uniform with that used for Book I. Hence the printer's copy (the quarto man
script) shows much more revision in Book I than elsewhere. The quarto manuscr'
remained in the Taylor family till 1897, when it was sold at auction by Mess
Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge and was bought by a bookseller. With th
manuscript I collated the printed text throughout before issuing the Libra




67
edition, the precious holograph being courteously lent to me by Mr. Taylor; but
the variations given in Books II, I[, and IV from the draft, I took from Woodhouse's manuscript annotations, not having seen the holograph draft of these three
books. The manuscript of the rejected Preface (first published by Lord Houghton
in 1867 in the 'Life and Letters of John Keats ) was formerly in the collection of
Dr. John Webster, sometime M.P. for Aberdeen.  It was attached to the rejected
title-page and dedication, the whole consisting of six quarto leaves evidently
detached from the Taylor manuscript, which, if I remember rightly, did not begin
in Keats's autograph, but had at least one leaf in another hand. The rejected
Preface, when I saw it in 1890, showed some cancellings; but I have mislaid
any notes I may have taken of them; and, since I saw it, it has been sold by auction. The original edition of' Endymion' is a handsome octavo volume, originally
issued in thick drab boards labelled at the back, Keats's Endymion. Lond. I88,
and consisting of (1) fly-title ' Endymion: A Romance' with imprint at foot of
verso, "Printed by T. Miller, Noble street, Cheapside ", (2) title-page (with
its motto adapted from Shakespeare's seventeenth Sonnet), worded thusENDYMION:
<   Joetitc    1om  ance.
BY JOHN KEATS.
THE STRETCHED METRE OF AN ANTIQUE SONG.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HIESSEY,
93, FLEET STREET.
1818.
(3) the following dedicationINSCRIBED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
THOMAS CHATTERTON.
(4) the Preface (pages vii to ix), (5) an erratum leaf with sometimes one and
sometimes five errata printed on the recto, and (6) 207 pages of text including




68
the fly-titles to the four books.  The head-line throughout is 'Endymion'
in Roman small capitals, the number of the Book being indicated in smaller
letters at the inner corners, and the pages in Arabic figures as usual at the outer
corners. The full page consists of 22 lines; and the lines are numbered in tens in
the margin; not every ten lines of verse, but every ten lines of print, so that when
a fresh paragraph begins with a portion of a verse, that particular verse counts for
two lines. In numbering the lines in fives I have of course counted by lines
of verse.
The influence of Keats upon Thomas Hood's serious poetry is so important
a fact in the history of English literature that the following sonnet comes fitly
into this note:
SONNET,
WRITTEN IN KEATS'S "ENDYMION,"
BY THOMAS HOOD.
I saw pale Dian, sitting by the brink
Of silver falls, the'overflow of fountains
From cloudy steeps; and I grew sad to think
Endymion's foot was silent on those mountains
And he but a hush'd name, that Silence keeps
In dear remembrance,-lonely, and forlorn,
Singing it to herself until she weeps
Tears, that perchance still glisten in the morn:And as I mused, in dull imaginings,
There came a flash of garments, and I knew
The awful Muse by her harmonious wings
Charming the air to music as she flewAnon there rose an echo through the vale
Gave back Endymion in a dreamlike tale.
Hood's early poems are but the commencement of a long series of works of
true literary art on which the impress of Keats's genius has passed.
H. B. F.




ENDYMION.
PREFACE.
KNOWING within myself the manner in which this Poem has
been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make
it public.
What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who
must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every
error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel
sensible are not of such completion as to warrant their passing
the press; nor should they if I thought a year's castigation
would do them any good;-it will not: the foundations are too
sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away: a sad
thought for me, if I had not some hope that while it is dwindling
I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit to live.
This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve
a punishment: but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it:
he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not a
fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written
with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course,
but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent
to look, and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honor of
English literature.
The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature
imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life
between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character
undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted:
thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters
which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going
iover the following pages.
I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful
mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness: for I wish to
try once more,' before I bid it farewell.
Teignmouth,
Ap1ril io, i8i8.
1 Woodhouse notes-" This alluded to his then intention of writing a poem
en the fall of Hyperion. He commenced this poem: but, thanks to the critics
who fell foul of this work, he discontinued it. The fragment was published
in 1820."
C9








ENDYMION.


BOOK I.
A THING of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.          5
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways                    10
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
*From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils                       15
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
1. The manuscript shows no variation in this renowned opening line; but my
friend the late Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson told me that his friend Mr. Henry
Stephens of Finchley, who was a fellow student in medicine with Keats, and lived
in the same rooms with him for a time, preserved the recollection of an earlier
opening line. Keats is said to have written the line, presumably in some rough
draft of his intended opening, thusA thing of beauty is a constant joy:
the tradition is that his friend, on hearing this, pronounced the opening line "a
fine line, but wanting something," and that Keats pondered it over, and at length
broke out with an inspired "I have it," and set down the household word that
now stands at the head of the poem.
9. In the manuscript, 'ways ' stands altered to ' days'.
13. Instead of line 13 there were originally three lines in the manuscript:
From our dark Spirits, and before us dances
Like glitter on the points of Arthur's Lances.
Of these bright powers are the Sun, and Moon...
But before the manuscript went to press Keats rejected the medieval allusion, and
supplied the reading of the text.
15. In the manuscript,
of these are daffodils
And the green world, &c.
71




ENDYMION.


Book L


That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms              20
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences                 25
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light             30
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether they be shine, or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.
Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.                       35
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own vallies: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city's din;                 40
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year          45
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,          50
20. The manuscript readsOf these too are the grandeur of the dooms...
21. Compare Thomson's ' Seasons' (Winter, line 432):
And hold high converse with the mighty dead.
24 In the manuscript,
Telling us we are on the heaven's brink.
29. In the manuscript,
And passion, poetry, glories infinite,...
50. Keats originally wrote this word 'vermil' both here and in line 696 of
this Book. Whether he adopted it from Spenser or some other writer I know
not; but in Spenser it is 'vermell': see 'Faerie Qneene,' Book II, Canto x,
stanza 24.




Book I.


ENDYNlI0N.


73


Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finish'd: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thcught into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.
Upon the sides of Latmus was outspread
A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed
So plenteously all weed-hidden roots
Into o'er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits.
And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,
Where no man went; and if from shepherd's keep
A lamb stray'd far a-down those inmost glens,
Never again saw he the happy pens
Whither his brethren, bleating with content,
Over the hills at every nightfall went.
Among the shepherds, 'twas believed ever,
That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever
From the white flock, but pass'd unworried
By angry wolf, or pard with prying head,
Until it came to some unfooted plains
Where fed the herds of Pan: aye great his gains
Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many,
Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly
To a wide lawn, whence one could only see
Stems thronging all around between the swell
Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell
The freshness of the space of heaven above,


55
60
65
70
75




85


58. In the manuscript there is a comma after 'now' and none after
' adventuresome'.
71. The manuscript reads ' To which ' for ' Whither'.
74. In the manuscript, 'fleecy' is altered to 'fleecing', which, in turn, is
altered back to ' fleecy.
78. In the manuscript,
aye great his gains
Who thus but one did lose.
The reading of the text is supplied, as an alternative, in pencil  In the first
edition ' ay ' is printed for I aye.
83. This line originally stood a foot short in the manuscript, thusStems thronging round between the swell...




74


ENDYMION.


Book I.


Edg'd round with dark tree tops? through which a dove
Would often beat its wings, and often too
A little cloud would move across the blue.
Full in the middle of this pleasantness
There stood a marble altar, with a tress               90
Of flowers budded newly; and the dew
Had taken fairy phantasies to strew
Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,
And so the dawned light in pomp receive.
For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire               95
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Qf brightness so unsully'd, that therein
-A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine                 100
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,          105
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.
Now while the silent workings of the dawn
Were busiest, into that self-same lawn
All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped
A troop of little children garlanded;                 110
Who gathering round the altar, seem'd to pry
Earnestly round as wishing to espy
Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited
For many moments, ere their ears were sated
With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then          115
Fill'd out its voice, and di'd away again.
Within a little space again it gave
Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,
To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking
Through copse-clad vallies,-ere their death, o'ertaking 120
The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.
And now, as deep into the wood as we
Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmered light
94, Cancelled manuscript reading, 'coming light' for 'dawned light'.
99. Cancelled manuscript reading 'pure' for fine'.
107. In the manuscript, originally, 'these silent workings', altered to 'the',
but finally changed back again to 'these.
115. In the manuscript the contraction for 'even is clearly ' e'en ', not ' ev'n'
as in the printed text.
119. Cancelled manuscript reading, and ' for ' in'.




Book I,


ENDYMION.


Fair faces and a rush of garments white,
Plainer and plainer showing, till at last                   125
Into the widest alley they all past,
Making directly for the woodland altar.
O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter
In telling of this goodly company,
Of their old piety, and of their glee:                      130
But let a portion of ethereal dew
Fall on my head, and presently unmew
My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring,
To stammer where old Chaucer us'd to sing.
Leading the way, young damsels danced along,              135
Bearing the burden of a shepherd song;
Each having a white wicker over brimm'd
With April's tender younglings: next, well trimm'd,
A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books;                        140
Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe,
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
Let his divinity o'erflowing die
In music, through the vales of Thessaly:
Some idly trail'd their sheep-hooks on the ground,          145
And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound
With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,
125. The manuscript has 'showing', Keats's usual orthography, the first
edition ' hewing'.
128. In the manuscript Keats had cancelled the whole of lis invocation,
sacrificing with it the lovely line 127; but the passage was fil ally restored by
means of a pencilled Stet.
132. The word ' unmew ', in the sense of enfranchise, may probably be a relic
of Shakespearean study.  Compare 'Romeo and Juliet', Act II, Scene iv,
line 11 -To-night she is mew'd np to her heaviness.
135. This and the next two lines originally stood thus:
In front some pretty Dansels danced along,
Bearing the Burden of a shepherd Song;
And each with handy wicker over brimmed...
and even then he had begun to write 'may day Song' instead of 'shepherd
Song '. Then there is an intermediate reading for line 135, before that of the
text is suppliedAnd in the front young Damsels danced along,
while two rejected marginal readings for line 137 areEach bringing a white wicker over brimmed
and
Each brought a little wicker over brimmed.
144. The allusion is to the story of Apollo's nine years' sojourn on earth
as the herdsman of Admetus, when banished from Olympus for killing the Cyclops
who had forged the thunder-bolts wherewith Esculapius had been slain.




76


ENDYMION.


Book L


Now coming from beneath the forest trees,
A venerable priest full soberly,
Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye                150
Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept,
And after him his sacred vestments swept.
From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white,
Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light;
And in his left he held a basket full                      155
Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull:
Wild thyme, and valley-lillies whiter still
Than Leda's love, and cresses from the rill.
His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath,
Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth                     160
Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd
Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud
Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd,
Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd
Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car,            165
Easily rolling so as scarce to mar
The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown:
Who stood therein did seem of great renown
Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,
Showing like Ganymede to manhood grown;                    170
And, for those simple times, his garments were
A chieftain king's: beneath his breast, half bare,
Was hung a silver bugle, and between
His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen.
A smile was on his countenance; he seem'd,                 175
To common lookers on, like one who dream'd
150. 'Begirt with ministring looks' is certainly what Keats wrote; and I
presume there can be no doubt as to the meaning-surrounded by people whose
looks showed their eagerness to do their ministering part.
153. This couplet originally stood thusFrom his right hand there swung a milk-white vase
Of mingled wines, outsparkling like the Starsthe less vigorous reading of the text being evidently supplied to get rid of the
false rhyme. The bare idea of rhyming 'vase' and 'stars' shows that Keats
no longer pronounced ' vase' as if it rhymed with ' pace ', as at page 24 of this
volume.
157. The motive of amending the rhyme was probably not the only one for the
next erasure. Lines 157 and 158 were originallyWild thyme, and valley lillies white as Leda's
Bosom, and choicest strips from mountain Cedars.
Then 'blossoms from the rill' has place in the manuscript before the final
'cresses from the rill' is supplied.  'Whiter than Leda's love' (Jupiter in
the form of a swan) is an obviously better comparison than 'white as Leda's
bosom '.
163. In the manuscript, 'o' the Ditty.'
168. In the manuscript, 'sat ' is here cancelled in favour of 'stood'.




Book I.


ENDYMION.


77


Of idleness in groves Elysian:
But there were some who feelingly could scan
A lurking trouble in his nether lip,
And see that oftentimes the reins would slip               180
Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,
And think of yellow leaves, of owlets' cry,
Of logs pil'd solemnly.-Ah, well-a-day,
Why should our young Endymion pine away!
Soon the assembly, in a circle rang'd,                   185
Stood silent round the shrine: each look was chang'd
To sudden veneration: women meek
Beckon'd their sons to silence; while each cheek
Of virgin bloom pal'd gently for slight fear.
Endymion too, without a forest peer,                       190
Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face,
Among his brothers of the mountain chace.
In midst of all, the venerable priest
Ey'd them with joy from greatest to the least,
And, after lifting up his aged hands,                      195
Thus spake he: " Men of Latmos! shepherd bands!
Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks:
Whether descended from beneath the rocks
That overtop your mountains; whether come
From vallies where the pipe is never dumb;                 200
Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs
Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze
Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge
Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge,
Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn         205
By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn:
Mothers and wives! whcr day by day prepare
The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air;
191. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'a bowed face' for 'an awed face'.
208. The writer in the 'Quarterly Review' whom Shelley apostrophized as
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
aocused Keats of inventing (or as he put it 'spawning') certain words, among
which was 'needments'.  Had the "noteless blot's" reading extended far
enough, he might have found this word in almost the same context in Spenser's
'Faerie Queene' (Book I, Canto vi, stanza 35):
and eke behind,
His scrip did hang, in which his needments he did bind.
In Canto i of the same Book, stanza 6, the same word occurs in connexion with
bag instead of scrip:
Behind her farre away a Dwarfe did lag,
That lazie seem'd in beeing euer last,
Or wearied with bearing of her bag
Of needments at his back.
Oddments and needments are not wholly obsolete even yet in some parts of England.




78


ENDYMION.


Book L


And all ye gentle girls who foster up
Udderless lambs, and in a little cup                         210
Will put choice honey for a favoured youth:
Yea, every one attend! for in good truth
Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan.
Are not our lowing heifers sle'eker than
Night-swollen mushrooms?        Are not our wide plains      215
Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains
Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad
Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had
Great bounty from Endymion our lord.
The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour'd                 220
His early song against yon breezy sky,
That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity."
Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire
Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;
Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod                     225
With wine, in honor of the shepherd-god.
Now while the earth was drinking it, and while
Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,
And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright
'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light                  230
Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang:
" 0 THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;                     235
Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress
232. It was the Hymn to Pan beginning here that the young poet when
engged in the composition of 'Endymion' was induced to recite in the presence
of Wordsworth, on the 28th of December 1817, at Haydon's house. Leigh Hunt
records that the elder poet pronounced it "a very pretty piece of Paganism,"
though his own magnificent sonnet,
The world is too much with us,
shows that he was not always in a mood to contemn the poetic-imaginative aspects
of nature open to "a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn."  Note the coincidence
between the couplet in the text, lines 205-6, and the end of that sonnet:
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
In respect of this noble hymn to Pan it is worth while to save from the not
unkindly though desperately inaccurate notice of Keats published in the 'Edinburgh Review  for August 1820 the appreciative remark that this is "a choral
hymn addressed to the sylvan deity, which appears to us to be full of beauty; and
reminds us, in many places, of the finest strains of Sicilian or English poetry."




Book L


ENDYMION.


79


Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;
And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken
The dreary melody of bedded reedsIn desolate places, where dank moisture breeds                240
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;
Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx-do thou now,
By thy love's milky brow!
By all the trembling mazes that she ran,                      245
Hear us, great Pan!
" O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles
Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles,
What time thou wanderest at eventide
Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side                 250
Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom
Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom
Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees
Their golden honeycombs; our village.as
Their fairest blossom'd beans and poppied corn;               255
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,
To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries
Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies
Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year
All its completions-be quickly near,                          260
246. Cancelled manuscript readingListen great Pan!
The beautiful tale of Syrinx seems to have entered into Keats's soul, and not
unnaturally. Compare this with the tender passage,
Telling us how fair, trembling Syrinx fled
Arcadian Pan,
and so on (page 11 of the present volume).
248. The verb to passion is another of the words which the "noteless blot" in
the 'Quarterly Review' accused Keats of inventing. Spenser, as we have seen,
was a sealed book to him; so that it is not strange he ignored the passage in
'The Faerie Queene' (Book I, Canto ix, stanza 41),
Great wonder had the knight to see the maid
So strangely passioned.
But Shakespeare seems to have been a sealed book too, at all events during those
seasons in which he took the liberty accorded by Shelley of spilling the overflowing venom from his fangs: otherwise he might have discovered such passages
as
Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning
For Theseus' perjury and unjust flight;
'Two Gentlemen of Verona ', Act IV, Scene iv, lines 172-3.
And shall not myself.  passion as they
Tempest', Act V, Scene i, lines 22-4.
Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth
'Venus and Adonis ', line 1059.




80


ENDYMflION.


Book L


By every wind that nods the mountain pine,
O forester divine!
"Thou, to whom every faun and satyr flies
For willing service; whether to surprise
The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;           265
Or upward ragged precipices flit
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;
Or by mysterious enticement draw
Bewildered shepherds to their path again;
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,           270
And gather up all fancifullest shells
For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells,
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
The while they pelt each other on the crown             275
With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brownBy all the echoes that about thee ring,
Hear us, 0 satyr king!
" 0 Hearkener to the loud clapping shears
While ever and anon to his shorn peers                  280
A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,
When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn
Anger our huntsmen: Breather round our farms,
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,               285
That come a swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread opener of the mysterious doors
Leading to universal knowledge-see,
Great son of Dryope,                                    290
The many that are come to pay their vows
With leaves about their brows!
"Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,                295
263. In the manuscript and in the first edition we read ' fawn 'for 'faun'.
272. Cancelled manuscript readingTo tumble them into fair Naiads Cells.
283. The manuscript reads ' Huntsmen ', the first edition ' huntsman  but it
is most unlikely that Keats made this slight change in a wrong direction.
290. Of the various parentages assigned to Pan by the ancients Keats seems to
have preferred that of the Homeric version.
293. The quotation marks here and at the close of the hymn are not in the first
edition, nor in the manuscript; but they are in the corrected copy.




Book L


ENDYMION.


81


Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
Gives it a touch ethereal-a new birth:
Be still a symbol of immensity;
A firmament reflected in a sea;                       300
An element filling the space between;
An unknown-but no more: we humbly screen
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,
And giving out a shout most heaven rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean,             305
Upon thy Mount Lycean!"
Even while they brought the burden to a close,
A shout from the whole multitude arose,
That lingered in the air like dying rolls
Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals                310
Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine.
Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine,
Young companies nimbly began dancing
To the swift treble pipe, and humming string.
Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly            315
To tunes forgotten-out of memory:
Fair creatures! whose young children's children bred
Thermopylae its heroes-not yet dead,
But in old marbles ever beautiful.
High genitors, unconscious did they cull              320
Time's sweet first-fruits-they danc'd to weariness,
And then in quiet circles did they press
The hillock turf, and caught the latter end
Of some strange history, potent to send
A young mind from its bodily tenement.                325
Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side; pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him,-Zephyr penitent,
Who now, ere Phcebus mounts the firmament,           330
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.
The archers too, upon a wider plain,
Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft,
And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft
307. The contraction 'E'en' is in the manuscript; but the first edition reads
'Even'.
313. The accentuation of the final syllable of ' dancing ' is reminiscent of a rhythmical way of Spenser's: compare 'Faerie Queene', Book II, Canto vii, stanza 23 -The hateful messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolor telling sad tidings.
319. Doubtless meant to refer specially to the Elgin marbles.
F




82


ENDYMKION.


Book I.


Branch down sweeping from        a tall ash top,                335
Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope
Those who would watch.        Perhaps, the trembling knee
And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,
Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young
Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue                    340
Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,
And very, very deadliness did nip
Her motherly cheeks. Arous'd from this sad mood
By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd,
Uplifting his strong bow into the air,                          345
Many might after brighter visions stare:
After the Argonauts, in blind amaze
Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways,
Until, from the horizon's vaulted side,
There shot a golden splendour far and wide,                     350
Spangling those million poutings of the brine
With quivering ore: 'twas even an awful shine
From the exaltation of Apollo's bow;
A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe.
Who thus were ripe for high contemplating,                      355
Might turn their steps towards the sober ring
Where sat Endymion and the aged priest
335. The manuscript gives no help to this somewhat ailing line. It stands
there precisely as in Keats's printed text. It seems more likely that he meant
the heavy monosyllable 'Branch' to do duty for a whole foot or time-beat than
that he accidentally let drop the second syllable of 'downward' for example.
339. This line is punctuated as in Keats's edition: the manuscript gives no
stops whatever in it.
347. The reference here is to the passage from the second Book of the 'Argonautica'
of Apollonius Rhodius, beginning at verse 674 (Trolc & A-TroT  v sK, K.T.A.), which
Shelley had in mind when (Prose Works, Volume 1II, page 56) he alluded to the
Apollo " so finely described by Apollonius Rhodius when the dazzling radiance of
his beautiful limbs suddenly shone over the dark Euxine."
Right glorious before their wondering sight
Appeared the child of Leto, traveling swift
From Libya northwards to the boundless realms
Of men that dwell beyond the northern wind.
The bright curls clustered round about his cheeks
Like streaming gold: he bore a silver bow
In his left hand, and o'er his shoulder slung
A quiver: and beneath his feet divine
The island trembled, and great waves came up
Out of the sea and broke upon the shore.
The passage was kindly rendered for me as above by the late Mr. R. C. Day, who
thus saved me the necessity of giving it in prose or in the stiff and not very
accurate rendering of Green or one of the still poorer translators of Apollonius
Rhodius.
352. In Eeats's edition 'even ' is here printed in full; but in the manuscript it
is contracted to 'e'en '.




Book I.


ENDYMION.


83


'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas'd
The silvery setting of their mortal star.
There they discours'd upon the fragile bar        360
That keeps us from our homes ethereal;
And what our duties there: to nightly call
Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;
To summon all the downiest clouds together
For the sun's purple couch; to emulate            365
In ministring the potent rule of fate
With speed of fire-tail'd exhalations;
To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons
Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,
A world of other unguess'd offices.               370
Anon they wander'd, by divine converse,
Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse
Each one his own anticipated bliss.
One felt heart-certain that he could not miss
His quick gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs,  375
Where every zephyr-sigh pouts, and endows
Her lips with music for the welcoming.
Another wish'd, mid that eternal spring,
To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,
Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales:    380
Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,
And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;
And, ever after, through those regions be
His messenger, his little Mercury.
Some were athirst in soul to see again            385
Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign
In times long past; to sit with them, and talk
Of all the chances in their earthly walk;
Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores
Of happiness, to when upon the moors,             390
Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,
And shar'd their famish'd scrips. Thus all out-told
Their fond imaginations,-saving him
Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim,
Endymion: yet hourly had he striven               395
To hide the cankering venom, that had riven
His fainting recollections. Now indeed
His senses had swoon'd off: he did not heed
The sudden silence, or the whispers low,
Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe,            o00
368. In the manuscript, 'pretty cheek', with 'pallid' and 'waning' as
'marginal alternatives.
386. In the manuscript, campaign '.
389. Cancelled manuscript reading, present ' for ' plenteous'.




ENDYMION.


Book L


Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,
Or maiden's sigh, that grief itself embalms:
But in the self-same fixed trance he kept,
Like one who on the earth had never stept.
Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man,                    405
Frozen in that old tale Arabian.
Who whispers him so pantingly and close?
Peona, his sweet sister: of all those,
His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made,
And breath'd a sister's sorrow to persuade                  410
A yielding up, a cradling on her care.
Her eloquence did breathe away the cursejJ
She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse
Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,
Along a path between two little streams,-                   415
Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,
From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow
From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;
Until they came to where these streamlets fall,
With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,                   42r
Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush
With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.
A little shallop, floating there hard by,
Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;
And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,               425
405-6. There are several episodes in ' The Thousand and One Nights' that might..
possibly be cited in connexion with this couplet; but I consider the allusion to be
to the tale generally associated with the name of Zobeide, its narrator,-that is to
say the Eldest Lady's Story in ' The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad.'
In line 406 the manuscript shows a cancelled reading, 'Sitting' for ' Frozen';
and immediately after this line the following passage is obliterated in favour of
what now stands as lines 407 to 412:
Now happily, there sitting on the grass
Was fair Peona, a most tender Lass,
And his sweet sister; who, uprising, went
With stifled sobs, and o'er his shoulder leant.
Putting her trembling hand against his cheek
She said: 'My dear Endymion, let us seek
A pleasant bower where thou may'st rest apart,
And ease in slumber thine afflicted heart:
Come my own dearest brother: these our friends
Will joy in thinking thou dost sleep where bends
Our freshening River through yon birchen grove:
Do come now!' Could he gainsay her who strove,
So soothingly, to breathe away a Curse?
Sweet and tender as this passage is, no one will doubt the excellence of the self,
criticism which led to the substitution of the six exquisite lines now standing in
place of it; but it was a sad miscarriage of fine intention that, in making th
change, the poet left line 411 rhymeless.




Book I.


ENDYMION.


And dipt again, with the young couple's weight,Peona guiding, through the water straight,
Towards a bowery island opposite;
Which gaining presently, she steered light
Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,                      430
Where nested was an arbour, overwove
By many a summer's silent fingering;
To whose cool bosom she was us'd to bring
Her playmates, with their needle broidery,
And minstrel memories of times gone by.                    435
So she was gently glad to see him laid
Under her favourite bower's quiet shade,
On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,
Dry'd carefully on the cooler side of sheaves
When last the sun his autumn tresses shook,                440
And the tann'd harvesters rich armfuls took.
Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest:
But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest
Poena's busy hand against his lips,
And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips                445
In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps
A patient watch over the stream that creeps
Windingly by it, so the quiet maid
Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade
Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling                   450
432. In the manuscript, ' With ' is here struck out in favour of ' By'.
440. Keats has here sacrificed, no doubt properly, a very pretty picture, consisting of eleven lines struck out of the manuscript. The whole passage originally
stood thus:
On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,
Dry'd carefully on the cooler side of sheaves
W\Then last the Harvesters rich armfuls took.
She tied a little bucket to a Crook,
Ran some swift paces to a dark wells side,
And in a sighing-time return'd, supplied
With spar cold water; in which she did squeeze
A snowy napkin, and upon her knees
Began to cherish her poor Brother's face;
Damping refreshfully his forehead's space,
His eyes, his Lips: then in a cupped shell
She brought him ruby wine; then let him smell,
Time after time, a precious amulet,
Which seldom took she from its cabinet.
Thus was he quieted to slumbrous rest:
[n supplying the couplet that now stands for this cancelled passage, Keats altered. the initial ' And ' of line 441 to ' While, ' and back again to ' And '.
450-1. The manuscript corresponds with the printed text in regard to this,ouplet; but the ' or ' in line 461 was an afterthought. Perhaps Keats meant to
R'emedy in the same way line 450, and read 'or a bee bustling '; but the rough



ENDYMION.


Book L


Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling
Among sere leaves and twigs, might all be heard.
O magic sleep! 0 comfortable bird,
That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind
Till it is hush'd and smooth! 0 unconfin'd                 455
Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key
To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,
Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,
Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves
And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world                  460
Of silvery enchantment! —who, upfurl'd
Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour,
But renovates and lives?-Thus, in the bower,
Endymion was calm'd to life again.
Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain,                465
He said: " I feel this thine endearing love
All through my bosom: thou art as a dove
Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings
About me; and the pearliest dew not brings
Such morning incense from the fields of May,               470
As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray
From those kind eyes,-the very home and haunt
Of sisterly affection.  Can I want
Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears?
Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears                475
That, any longer, I will pass my days
Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise
My voice upon the mountain-heights; once more
ness of metre may have been intentional. The licence of framing a couplet so
that a rhyming dissyllable must be accentuated on the second syllable in one line
and on the first in the other should have been intolerable to his exquisite and
cultivated ear; but this was of course no innovation of his: he must have met
with it over and over again in his studies of earlier English poets.
454. The manuscript reads 'o' the mind' for 'of the mind '
466. This line is the remnant of five which originally stood for it in the manuscript:
A cheerfuller resignment, and a smile
For his fair Sister flowing like the Nile
Through all the channels of her piety,
He said: 'Dear Maid, may I this moment die,
If I feel not this thine endearing Love...
470. In the manuscript, line 469 was originally followed by the three linesFrom woodbine hedges such a morning feel,
As do those brighter drops, that twinkling steal
Through those pressed lashes, from the blossom'd plant...
which Keats rejected for the three lines in the text.  In line 472 he had altered
'those ' to ' thy' in pencil; and it is at least probable that the adoption of ' those
in the printed text was an oversight.




Book I,


ENDYMION.


87


Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar:
Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll              60
Around the breathed boar: again I'll poll
The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow:
And, when the pleasant sun is getting low,
Again I'll linger in a sloping mead
To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed                   485
Our idle sheep.    So be thou cheered sweet,
And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat
My soul to keep in its resolved course."
Hereat Peona, in their silver source,
Shut her pure sorrow drops with glad exclaim,                 490
And took a lute, from which there pulsing came
A lively prelude, fashioning the way
In which her voice should wander.       'Twas a lay
More subtle cadenced, more forest wild
Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child;                       495
And nothing since has floated in the air
So mournful strange. Surely some influence rare
Went, spiritual, through the damsel's hand;
For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd
The quick invisible strings, even though she saw              500
Endymion's spirit melt away and thaw
Before the deep intoxication.
But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon
Her self-possession —swung the lute aside,
480. Compare Thomson's 'Seasons', Winter, lines 816-17:the trooping deer
Sleep on the new fallen snow.
494-5. This couplet is marginally substituted in the manuscript for the following six lines:
More forest-wild, more subtle-cadenced
Than can be told by mortal: even wed
The fainting tenors of a thousand shells
To a million whisperings of Lilly bells;
And mingle too the Nightingale's complain
Caught in its hundredth echo; 'twould be vain:...
Strikingly characteristic as this is of the ruling mood of Keats, one cannot regret
the liberality of rejection which threw it aside for the incomparable reference to
Pan's mother in the couplet of the text.
496. In the manuscript, this line begins with 'For,' 'And' being jotted as a
suggestion in the margin.
502. The use of this word 'intoxication' a,' a full five-syllable word accented
on the final syllable, and a similar use of many words terminating in ion, has
been a topic of frequent censure with Keats's critics; but this was merely another
Elizabethan licence reproduced. Here is one of many instances from Shakespeare
(' Romeo and Juliet,' Act Im, Scene v, line 29):
Some say the lark makes sweet division,




88


ENDYMION.


Book I.


And earnestly said: " Brother, 'tis vain to hide            505
That thou dost know of things mysterious,
Immortal, starry; such alone could thus
Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn'd in aught
Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught
A Paphian dove upon a message sent?                         510
Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent
Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen
Her naked limbs among the alders green;
And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace
Something more high perplexing in thy face!"               515
Endymion look'd at her, and press'd her hand,
And said, " Art thou so pale, who wast so bland
And merry in our meadows? H-ow is this?
Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change                    520
Wrought suddenly in me.      What indeed more strange?
Or more complete to overwhelm surmise?
and here is one from Spenser ( Faerie Queene ', Book mI, Canto viii, stanza 1):
Lo oft as I this history record
My heart doth melt with meere compassion,
To think how causelesse, of her owne accord,
This gentle damzell whom I write upon,
Should plonged be in such affiction...
Spenser, indeed, availed himself so often and so unsparingly of this facile way of
rhyming and scanning that it may well have happened that Keats's ardent
admiration for the elder poet led him to think even this a beauty to be imitated.
513. Cancelled manuscript, reading 'on flags and rushes for 'among the
alders'.
614. Compare 'Romeo and Juliet,' Act II, Scene ii, line 64:
And the place death, considering who thou art.
515. This speech of Peona's was originally much longer: the manuscript
shows the following lines, struck out for the reading of the text:
And I do pray thee by thy utmost aim
To tell me all. No little fault or blame
Canst thou lay on me for a teasing Girl;
Ever as an unfathomable pearl
Has been thy secrecy to me: but now
I needs must hunger after it, and vow
To be its jealous Guardian for aye.
Uttering these words she got nigh and more nigh,
And put at last her arms about his neck:
Nor was there any, ungentle check,
Nor any frown, or stir dissatisfied,
But smooth compliance, and a tender slide
Of arm in arm, and what is written next.
'Doubtless, Peona, thou hast been perplex'd,
And pained oft in thinking of the change...




Book I.


ENDYMION.


Ambition is no sluggard: 'tis no prize,
That toiling years would put within my grasp,
That I have sigh'd for: with so deadly gasp                  525
No man e'er panted for a mortal love.
So all have set my heavier grief above
These things which happen. Rightly have they done:
I, who still saw the horizontal sun
Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the world,         530
Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl'd
My spear aloft, as signal for the chaceI, who, for very sport of heart, would race
With my own steed from Araby; pluck down
A vulture from his towery perching; frown                    535
A lion into growling, loth retireTo lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire,
And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast
Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest.
"This river does not see the naked sky,                    540
Till it begins to progress silverly
Around the western border of the wood,
Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood
Seems at the distance like a crescent moon:
And in that nook, the very pride of June,                    545
530. In the manuscript we read 'o' the world ' for 'of the world'.  Compare
Thomson, 'Winter ', lines 780-1,
the horizontal sun,
Broad o'er the south, hangs at his utmost noon.
631. The last of the stars to disappear before the rising sun.  Ovid says
(' Metamorphoses', Book I, verses 114-15),
Diffugiunt stella; quarum agmina cogit
Lucifer, et celi statione novissimus exit.
536. In the manuscript, 'grumbling' is cancelled for ' growling'.
539. This couplet is substituted in the manuscript for the erased coupletAnd come to such a Ghost as I am now!
But listen, Sister, I will tell the how.
Probably 'the' was meant for thee'; but perhaps not.
545. Instead of this and the following line, the manuscript originally had six
linesAnd in this spot the most endowing boon
Of balmy air, sweet blooms, and coverts fresh
Has been outshed; yes, all that could enmesh
Our human senses-make us fealty sware
To gadding Flora. In this grateful lair
Have I been used to pass my weary eaves;
and before these lines were cancelled, ' this' was altered to ' that' in the first of
them: the second and third Keats worked upon in pencil, transposing and
erasing; but the intention is not now to be made out: 'sware' in the fourth
stands presumably for 'swear': in the fifth ' gadding Flora' is struck through
in pencil, while In' is changed to 'To' and back again to In'.




ENDYMION.


Book L


Had I been us'd to pass my weary eves;
The rather for the sun unwilling leaves
So dear a picture of his sovereign power,
And I could witness his most kingly hour,
When he doth tighten up the golden reins,                  550
And paces leisurely down amber plains
His snorting four. Now when his chariot last
Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast,
There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed
Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red:                         555
At which I wondered greatly, knowing well
That but one night had wrought this flowery spell;
And, sitting down close by, began to muse
What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus,
In passing here, his owlet pinions shook;                  560
Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook
Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth,
Had dipt his rod in it: such garland wealth
Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought,
Until my head was dizzy and distraught.                    565
Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole
A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul;
And shaping visions all about my sight
Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light;
The which became more strange, and strange, and dim, 570
And then were gulph'd in a tumultuous swim:
And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell
The enchantment that afterwards befel?
Yet it was but a dream: yet such a dream
That never tongue, although it overteem                    575
With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring,
Could figure out and to conception bring
All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay
Watching the zenith, where the milky way
550. In the first edition, ' lighten ' for ' tighten '.
555. In the manuscript and in the first edition we read 'ditamy'. I have
not succeeded in finding the orthography elsewhere; but I see no reason for
doubting that Keats met with it somewhere and preferred it to dittacny. In
Philemon Holland's Pliny, where it might have been expected to occur, I can
find no more English equivalent for dictanucs than dictamne; but it is worth
noting that three modern languages drop the n and not the ma-thus, Italian
dittac o, Spanish dictamo, and French dictame; and in times when spelling
was more or less optional some classical English writer may well have done the
same.
561. This line first stood in the manuscript thusOr it may be that, ere still Night uptook...
573. This line is given as in the manuscript and in Keats's edition. I suppose
we are to accentuate ' enchantment ' on the first syllable.




Book I.                  ENDYMION.                       91
Among the stars in virgin splendour pours;           580
And travelling my eye, until the doors
Of heaven appear'd to open for my flight,
I became loth and fearful to alight
From such high soaring by a downward glance:
So kept me stedfast in that airy trance,            585
Spreading imaginary pinions wide.
When, presently, the stars began to glide,
And faint away, before my eager view:
At which I sigh'd that I could not pursue,
And dropt my vision to the horizon's verge;          590
And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge
The loveliest moon, that ever silver'd o'er
A shell for Neptune's goblet: she did soar
So passionately bright, my dazzled soul
Commingling with her argent spheres did roll        595
Through clear and cloudy, even when she went
At last into a dark and vapoury tentWhereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train
Of planets all were in the blue again.
To commune with those orbs, once more I rais'd      600
My sight right upward: but it was quite daz'd
By a bright something, sailing down apace,
Making me quickly veil my eyes and face:
Again I look'd, and, O ye deities,
Who from Olympus watch our destinies!               605
Whence that completed form of all completeness?
Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness?
Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O where
Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair?
Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun;        610
Not-thy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun
Such follying before thee-yet she had,
Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad;
And they were simply gordian'd up and braided,
Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded,             615
Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow;
The which were blended in, I know not how,
With such a paradise of lips and eyes,
582. Cancelled manuscript reading 'seemed' for 'appear'd'.
596. Compare Thomson's 'Seasons,' 'Spring,' line 332,
From clear to cloudy tossed.
599. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'were all,' for 'all were'.
600-1. This couplet stood thus in the manuscript originallyAnd to commune with them once more I rais'd
My eyes right upward: but they were quite dazed...
but it is altered to correspond with the printed text.




ENDY]1ION.


Book L


Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs,
That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings                 620
And plays about its fancy, till the stings
Of human neighbourhood envenom all.
Unto what awful power shall I call?
To what high fane?-Ah! see her hovering feet,
More bluely vein'd, more soft, more whitely sweet            625
Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose
From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows
Her scarf into a fluttering pavillion;
'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million
Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed,                 630
Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed,
Handfuls of daisies."-" Endymion, how strange!
Dream within dream!"-" She took an airy range,
And then, towards me, like a very maid,
Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid,                  635
And press'd me by the hand: Ah! 'twas too much;
Methought I fainted at the charmed touch,
Yet held my recollection, even as one
Who dives three fathoms where the waters run
Gurgling in beds of coral: for anon,                         640
I felt upmounted in that region
Where falling stars dart their artillery forth,
And eagles struggle with the buffeting north
That ballances the heavy meteor-stone;Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone,                      645
But lapp'd and lull'd along the dangerous sky.
Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high,
And straightway into frightful eddies swoop'd;
Such as aye muster where grey time has scoop'd
Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side:                  G50
621. In the manuscript, ' fawns ' is here struck out and 'plays' inserted.
624. This transition into the present and seeming-actual as Endymion relates
the vision that seems to him such a desperate reality may perhaps be selected as
one of the things of highest imaginative value in the poem.
630. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'wast' for wert'.
632. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'bud-stars' for 'daisies'.
638. In this instance the contracted form 'e'en' was deliberately altered to
'even' in the manuscript. It is ' even' in the first edition.
641. See note to verse 502.
646. This line stood differently in the manuscript at first, and was followed by
two others, now struck out,-thus:
But lapp'd and lull'd in safe deliriousness;
Sleepy with deep foretasting, that did bless
My Soul from Madness, 'twas such certainty.
648. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'fearful' for 'frightful'.
649. The manuscript reads 'aye ', the first edition 'ay '.




Book I.


ENDYEION.


There hollow sounds arous'd me, and I sigh'd
To faint once more by looking on my blissI was distracted; madly did I kiss
The wooing arms which held me, and did give
My eyes at once to death: but 'twas to live,                 655
To take in draughts of life from the gold fount
Of kind and passionate looks; to count, and count
The moments, by some greedy help that seem'd
A second self, that each might be redeem'd
And plunder'd of its load of blessedness.                    660
Ah, desperate mortal! I e:en dar'd to press
Her very cheek against my crowned lip,
And, at that moment, felt my body dip
Into a warmer air: a moment more,
Our feet were soft in flowers.   There was store             665
Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes
A scent of violets, and blossoming limes,
Loiter'd around us; then of honey cells,
Made delicate from all white-flower bells;
And once, above the edges of our nest,                       670
An arch face peep'd,-an Oread as I guess'd.
651. In this line the more violent expression 'died' is judiciously superseded
by 'sigh'd '.
661. In the manuscript, ' e'en', not 'ev'n' as in the first edition.  The manuscript should rule here, because the presence of the v upsets the rhythm.
662. In the manuscript, cheeks, with the s struck out.
665. After ' flowers ' in this line occurs the following cancelled passage in the
manuscript:Hurry o'er
O sacrilegious tongue the- best be dumb;
For should one little accent from thee come
On such a daring theme, all other sounds
Would sicken at it, as would beaten hounds
Scare the elysian Nightingales.
'Between these obliterated lines is a chaos of rubbed-out pencillings, of which the
sense is so far recoverable that we can safely call them trial lines, and not a continuous passage.  Two fresh starts are made in place of ' Hurry o'er', namely,
'Sounds past o'er' and 'Standing o'er'. Then there is the whole line
Mingling the whispering of Lily Bells...
and then
Came little faintest
'Past' being substituted for 'Came' in the margin: then comes again the variant
Mingled with whisperings of Lily Bells...
Finally in supplying marginally the reading of the text, 'There were stores ' was
altered to ' There was store '.  The use of ' alp' in the singular as a common
noun, though unusual, is not peculiar to Keats. Milton has it in 'Paradise Lost',
Book II, line 620 -O'er many a fiery many a frozen Alp;
and in ' Samson Agonistes', line 628 -Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp.




ENDYMION.


Book L


"Why did I dream that sleep o'er-power'd me
In midst of all this heaven? Why not see,
Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark,
And stare them from me? But no, like a spark    675
That needs must die, although its little beam
Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream
Fell into nothing-into stupid sleep.
And so it was, until a gentle creep,
A careful moving caught my waking ears,         680
And up I started: Ah! my sighs, my tears,
My clenched hands;-for lo! the poppies hung
Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung
A heavy ditty, and the sullen day
Had chidden herald Hesperus away,                685
With leaden looks: the solitary breeze
Bluster'd, and slept, and its wild self did teaze
With wayward melancholy; and I thought,
Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought
Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus!-  690
Away I wander'd-all the pleasant hues
Of heaven and earth had faded: deepest shades
Were deepest dungeons; heaths and sunny glades
Were full of pestilent light; our taintless rills
Seem'd sooty, and o'er-spread with upturn'd gills  695
Of dying fish; the vermeil rose had blown
In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown
Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird
Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd
In little journeys, I beheld in it              700
A disguis'd demon, missioned to knit
My soul with under darkness; to entice
My stumblings down some monstrous precipice:
Therefore I eager followed, and did curse
The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse,       705
Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven!
These things, with all their comfortings, are given
To my down-sunken hours, and with thee,
Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea
Of weary life."
Thus ended he, and both          710
Sat silent: for the maid was very loth
To answer; feeling well that breathed words
Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords
Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps
Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps,     715
And wonders; struggles to devise some blame;
To put on such a look as would say, Shanme




Book I.


ENDYMION.


95


On this poor weakness! but, for all her strife,
She could as soon have crush'd away the life
From a sick dove.   At length, to break the pause,       720
She said with trembling chance: " Is this the cause?
This all? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas!
That one who through this middle earth should pass
Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave
His name upon the harp-string, should achieve            725
No higher bard than simple maidenhood,
Singing alone, and fearfully,-how the blood
Left his young cheek; and how he us'd to stray
He knew not where; and how he would say, nay,
If any said 'twas love: and yet 'twas love;              730
What could it be but love? How a ring-dove
Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path;
And how he di'd: and then, that love doth scathe,
The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses;
And then the ballad of his sad life closes               735
With sighs, and an alas!-Endymion!
Be rather in the trumpet's mouth,-anon
Among the winds at large-that all may hearken!
Although, before the crystal heavens darken,
I watch and dote upon the silver lakes                   740
Pictur'd in western cloudiness, that takes
The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands,
Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands
With horses prancing o'er them, palaces
And towers of amethyst,-would I so teaze                 745
My pleasant days, because I could not mount
Into those regions? The Morphean fount
Of that fine element that visions, dreams,
And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams
719. Compare Thomson's 'Seasons', ' Winter ', line 374 -And crushed out lives, by secret barbarous ways.
722. There is a rejected passage here in the manuscript, which stands thus:This all? Yet it is wonderful-exceedingAnd yet a shallow dream, for ever breeding
Tempestuous Weather in that very Soul
That should be twice content, twice smooth, twice whole,
As is a double Peach. 'Tis sad Alas!
In altering this for the reading of the text Keats left the line thus, short by a foot,
This all? Yet it is sad Alas!
The words 'strange and' seem to have been put in in proof.
727. The adjective 'young' before ' blood ' is struck out in the manuscript.
739, 'WVhat though ' is here altered in the manuscript to 'Although '.
741. In the manuscript, 'Pight among' was the first reading here, then
'Pight amid', and finally ' Pictur'd in '.
747 ' That' is altered to 'The' in the manuscript before ' Morphean '




ENDYMION.


Book I.


Into its airy channels with so subtle,                     750
So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle,
Circled a million times within the space
Of a swallow's nest-door, could delay a trace,
A tinting of its quality: how light                        754
Must dreams themselves be; seeing they're more slight
Than the mere nothing that engenders them!
Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem
Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?
Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick
For nothing but a dream?" Hereat the youth                760
Look'd up: a conflicting of shame and ruth
Was in his plaited brow: yet, his eyelids
Widened a little, as when Zephyr bids
A little breeze to creep between the fans
Of careless butterflies: amid his pains                   765
He seem'd to taste a drop of manna-dew,
Full palatable; and a colour grew
Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake.
"Peona! ever have I long'd to slake
My thirst for the world's praises: nothing base,           770
No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace
The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar'dThough now 'tis tatter'd; leaving my bark bar'd
And sullenly drifting: yet my higher hope
Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope,                 775
To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks.
756. Inthemanuscript, 'nothingnessengendring' for 'nothing that engenders '.
761. Apparently 'conflicting' is meant to be accented on the first syllable in
this place.
762. In the manuscript pleated' for plaited'.
764. The word 'breeze' does not occur here in the manuscript, which gives
'Breath', that word being written over 'Puff', struck out. The expression
'fans', though a little whimsical, is a rich and happy designation of the wings of
butterflies.
770. Lord Tennyson owed to a mere accident this precedent for the term he
applied to the coinage of his predecessor WordsworthOf him who uttered nothing base.
In the manuscript the finals of this couplet were originally 'mean' and
' unseam'; and Keats discovered that those words did not rhyme, before parting
with the manuscript.
776. The original lines in the manuscript at this point areTo fret at myriads of earthly wrecks.
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to blending pleasureable:
And that delight is the most treasureable
That makes the richest Alchymy. Behold
The clear Religion of Heaven! Fold
A Rose leaf &c.




Book L


ENDYMION.


97


Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz'd, and free of space.    Behold                 780
The clear religion of heaven! Fold
A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness,
And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress
Of music's kiss impregnates the free winds,
And with a sympathetic touch unbinds                          785
E-olian magic from their lucid wombs:
Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;
Old ditties sigh above their father's grave;
Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave
Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot;                    790
Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
Where long ago a giant battle was;
And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass
In every place where infant Orpheus slept.
Feel we these things?-that moment have we stept              795
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's. But there are
Richer entanglements, enthralments far
More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
To the chief intensity: the crown of these                    800
Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
Upon the forehead of humanity.
All its more ponderous and bulky worth
Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth
This appears to have been next altered to
To fret at sight of this world's losses. For behold
Wherein lies happiness Peona, Fold
A Rose leaf &c.
But the words ' at sight ' are separately cancelled, as if that line had been set to
'rights before the whole passage was struck out, and the six lines of the printed
text supplied in the margin. The reading of the text was supplied in a letter
from Keats to Taylor bearing the postmark "Hampstead, 30 Jan. 1818 " but in
that letter line 781 reads
The clear religion of Heaven-Peona! fold...
As to the pronunciation of 'religion' as four full syllables, see note to line 502.
785. Cancelled line in the manuscriptAnd, sympathetically, unconfines
struck out doubtless on account of the false rhyme.
786. ' Eolian ' in the first edition.
790. In the manuscript, ' trod' is substituted for ' touch'd '. The first edition
has ' were ' in place of ' where '; but it is ' where ' in the manuscript...
794. In the manuscript, ' spot ' is struck out in favour of ' place.    *:
796. Unhappily the manuscript gives no trace of the line which may well have
disappeared in transcription and left this one rhymeless.
G




98


ENDYXION.


Book L


A steady splendour; but at the tip-top,              805
There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop
Of light, and that is love: its influence,
Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense,
At which we start and fret; till in the end,
Melting into its radiance, we blend,                 810
Mingle, and so become a part of it,Nor with aught else can our souls interknit
So wingedly: when we combine therewith,
Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith,
And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.            815
Aye, so delicious is the unsating food,
That men, who might have tower'd in the van
Of all the congregated world, to fan
And winnow from the coming step of time
All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime             820
Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,
Have been content to let occasion die,
Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium.
And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb,
Than speak against this ardent listlessness:         825
For I have ever thought that it might bless
The world with benefits unknowingly;
As does the nightingale, upperched high,
And cloister'd among cool and bunched leavesShe sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives        830
How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood.
Just so may love, although 'tis understood
The mere commingling of passionate breath,
Produce more than our searching witnesseth:
What I know not: but who, of men, can tell           835
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,         840
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet
If human souls did never kiss and greet?
" Now, if this earthly love has power to make
Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake
Ambition from their memories, and brim               845
813. In the manuscript, 'amalgamate' originally stood in the place of
* Icombine'.: 823. Cancelled manuscript reading, ' Whiles' for ' Whilst'.: 844. 'Man's' instead of 'Men'sI in the manuscript, but there is an 'e' pen* cilled over the ' a' as if for consideration.




Book L


ENDTMION.


99


Their measure of content: what merest whim,
Seems all this poor endeavour after fame,
To one, who keeps within his steadfast aim
A love immortal, an immortal too.
Look not so wilder'd; for these things are true,           850
And never can be born of atomies
That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies,
Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I'm sure,
My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,                          855
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
My sayings will the less obscured seem,
When I have told thee how my waking sight
Has made me scruple whether that same night                860
Was pass'd in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona!
Beyond the matron-temple of Latona,
Which we should see but for these darkening boughs,
Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows
Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart                 865
And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught,
And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide
Past them, but he must brush on every side.
Some moulder'd steps lead into this cool cell,
Far as the slabbed margin of a well,                       870
Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye
Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky.
Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set
Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet
Edges them round, and they have golden pits:               875
'Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits
In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat,
847. This line originally began with 'Shews',-altered in the manuscript
to ' Seems'.
849. In the manuscript thusA Love immortal, and immortal too.
The 'im' of the first 'immortal' is underlined in pencil and the word 'both
pencilled over; but it is not clear whether the writing is Keats's. In his edition
we have 'an' for ' and', which appears to be the right reading, though from the
bewilderment'of Peona we may presume that Keats saw his meaning was not very
clear. The argument seems to be, if a mere earthly love has power to remove ambition, how much more unworthy an object must fame seem to him who cherishes
an undying love for an immortal being.
862. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'Behind the little Temple '
867. The word 'spreaded,' notwithstanding the objections of 'The Quarterly
Review,' was used again in 'Hyperion,' Book I,
And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense           *~
Rose one by one, till all outspreaded were;...                *




100


ENDYMION.


Book L


When all above was faint with mid-day heat.
And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed,
I'd bubble up the water through a reed;                    880
So reaching back to boy-hood: make me ships
Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips,
With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be
Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily,
When love-lorn hours had left me less a child,             885
I sat contemplating the figures wild
Of o'er-head clouds melting the mirror through.
Upon a day, while thus I watch'd, by flew
A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver;
So plainly character'd, no breeze would shiver             890
The happy chance: so happy, I was fain
To follow it upon the open plain,
And, therefore, was just going; when, behold!
A wonder, fair as any I have toldThe same bright face I tasted in my sleep,                 895
Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap
896. This and the following line take the place of twenty which originally
stood in the manuscript. They are as follows:
In the green opening smiling. Gods that keep,
Mercifully, a little strength of heart
Unkill'd in us by raving, pang and smart;
And do preserve it like a lilly root,
That, in another spring, it may outshoot
From its wintry prison; let this hour go
Drawling along its heavy weight of woe
And leave me living! 'Tis not more than needYour veriest help. Ah! how long did I feed
On that crystalline life of Portraiture!
How hover'd breathless at the tender lure I
How many times dimpled the watery glass
With maddest kisses; and, till they did pass
And leave the liquid smooth again, how mad!
O 'twas as if the absolute sisters had
My Life into the compass of a Nut
Or all my breathing      and shut
To a scanty straw. To look above I fear'd
Lest my hot eyeballs might be burnt and sear'd
By a blank naught. It moved as if to fleeThe first few words of this passage were, intermediately, altered to 'Deep in the
clear water smiling '; and before the two lines of the printed text appear in the
margin we have the trial line
Was there) reflected. How my heart did leap...
I saw '
and Keats first wrote Down ' instead of 'Through ' as the initial word of line
897. The only line in the cancelled twenty of which there are two readings is.: *       How hover'd breathless at the tender lure!:   Whoih is altered to
How long I hover'd round the tender lure 1




Book L


ENDY6ON.


101


Through the cool depth.-It mov'd as if to fleeI started up, when lo! refreshfully,
There came upon my face in plenteous showers
Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,  900
Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,
Bathing my spirit in a new delight.
Aye, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss
Alone preserv'd me from the drear abyss
Of death, for the fair form had gone again.        905
Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain
Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth
On the deer's tender haunches: late, and loth,
'Tis scar'd away by slow returning pleasure.
How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure       910
Of weary days, made deeper exquisite,
By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night!
Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still,
Than when I wander'd from the poppy hill:
And a whole age of lingering moments crep.         915
Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept
Away at once the deadly yellow spleen.
Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen;
Once more been tortured with renewed life.
When last the wintry gusts gave over strife        920
With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies
Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes
In pity of the shatter'd infant buds,That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs,
My hunting cap, because I laugh'd and smil'd,      925
Chatted with thee, and many days exil'd
All torment from my breast;-'twas even then,
Straying about, yet, coop'd up in the den
Of helpless discontent,-hurling my lance
From place to place, and following at chance,      930
At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck,
And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck
In the middle of a brook,-whose silver ramble
Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble,
Tracing along, it brought me to a cave,            935
Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave
The nether sides of mossy stones and rock,'Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock
Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead,
915. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'pass'd' for ' crept'.
926. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'beguil'd' for 'exil'd'.
933. In the manuscript, the words 'In the' are here contracted to 'I' th''.




ENDYMION.


Book L


Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread           940
Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph's home.
" Ah! impious mortal, whither do I roam?"
Said I, low voic'd: " Ah, whither! 'Tis the grot
" Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot,
"Doth her resign; and where her tender hands               945
"She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands:
"Or 'tis the cell of Echo, where she sits,
"And babbles thorough silence, till her wits
"Are gone in tender madness, and anon,
"Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone                 950
" Of sadness. O that she would take my vows,
"And breathe them sighingly among the boughs,
" To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head,
"Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed,
"And weave them dyingly-send honey-whispers                955
"Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers
" May sigh my love unto her pitying!
" 0 charitable Echo! hear, and sing
"This ditty to her!-tell her"-so I stay'd
My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid,             960
Stood stupefied with my own empty folly,
And blushing for the freaks of melancholy.
Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name
Most fondly lipp'd, and then these accents came:
" Endymion! the cave is secreter                          965
"Than the isle of Delos.    Echo hence shall stir
"No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
" Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
"And trembles through my labyrinthine hair."
At that oppress'd I hurried in.-Ah! where                 970
Are those swift moments?    Whither are they fled?
940. The misprint of the first edition, ' scene' for ' screen ' is corrected in the i
copy in my possession. The printer was not much to blame, for in the manuscript
the word is 'serene', an orthography, by the bye, which the manuscript again
shows in Book HI, line 425.
958. In Keats's edition, 'echo ', with a small e.
960. In the manuscript, 'listening' is contracted to 'list'ning'.
964. There is a cancelled passage here in the manuscript after 'Most fondly
lipp'd,' thusI kept me still-it came
Again in passionatest syllables,
And thus again that voice's tender swells:
and there is another rejected reading of one lineAgain in passionate syllables: saying:...:- *  169. In the manuscript 'labyrinthian' for 'labyrinthine'.. '970. The words 'At that oppress'd I hurried in' are struck out of the manuscript, though restored by a Stet, and in the margin we have 'Since then I never'
and ' I never saw her Beauty more', both cancelled.




Book L                  ENDYMION.                     103
I'll smile no more, Peona; nor will wed
Sorrow the way to death; but patiently
Bear up against it: so farewel, sad sigh;
And come instead demurest meditation,             975
To occupy me wholly, and to fashion
My pilgrimage for the world's dusky brink.
No more will I count over, link by link,
My chain of grief: no longer strive to find
A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind             980
Blustering about my ears: aye, thou shalt see,
Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be;
What a calm round of hours shall make my days.
There is a paly flame of hope that plays
Where'er I look: but yet, I'll say 'tis naught-   985
And here I bid it die. Have not I caught,
Already, a more healthy countenance?
By this the sun is setting; we may chance
Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car."
This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star   990
Through autumn mists, and took Peona's hand:
They stept into the boat, and launch'e from land.
990. Canoelled manuscript reading, ' At this ' for ' This said'.




ENDYMION.
BOOK II.
O SOVEREIGN power of love! 0 grief! 0 balm!
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears
Have become indolent; but touching thine,                        5
One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,
One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze,
Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades,
Struggling, and blood, and shrieks-all dimly fades              10
Into some backward corner of the brain;
Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain
The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.
Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat!
1. From this point the various readings are from two separate manuscripts, as
explained in the note at page 66 of this volume.  It is to be understood that,
when the word manuscript alone is used, the reading is from the finished copy
sent to the press, and that the term draft refers to the holograph of the last three
Books which was written into a blank book before being fairly transcribed for the
printer.
6. The draft reads ' but 0! for thine' instead of 'but touching thine'.
7. In the draft, ' sends' for ' brings'.  Compare this line with the following
from ShakespeareEnjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber
('Julius OsSar,' Act, Scene 1, line 230)
A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know:
('Venus and Adonis,' line 16);
and with the memorable line in Coleridge's ' ubla Khan,'
For he on honey-dew hath fed.
8. The draft reads ' crashing ' for ' smothering'; and in the next line farreaching spears, clear blades'.
13-14. In the draft this couplet was writtenThe close of Troilus and Cressida.
Hence pageant history! away proud star.
In the final manuscript there is a cancelled reading of line 14,
Away pageant History! away proud dull feat.
10




Book IL


ENDYXION.


105


Swart planet in the universe of deeds!                         15
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds
Along the pebbled shore of memory!
Many old rotten-timberd boats there be
Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnifi'd
To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,                        20
And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry.
But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly
About the great Athenian admiral's mast?
What care, though striding Alexander past
The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?                         25
Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers
The glutted Cyclops, what care?-Juliet leaning
Amid her window-flowers,-sighing, —wleaning
Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow,
Doth more avail than these: the silver flow                     30
Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen,
Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den,
Are things to brood on with more ardency
Than the death-day of empires. Fearfully
Must such conviction come upon his head,                        35
Who, thus far, discontent, has dar'd to tread,
Without one muse's smile, or kind behest,
The path of love and poesy.      But, rest,
A doubt appears to have been entertained as to the precise value of 'close' in
'this couplet; for Woodhouse, who, be it observed, dates his interleaved copy
"Nov. 24, 1818," records that he has "learned that the author meant embrace.
He says "This allusion I apprehend is to Chaucer's, and not to Shakespeare's
work under this title."  But I incline to think the reference more likely to be to
Shakespeare's, albeit both were among Keats's reading.
19. The rejected reading 'misty' for 'vaporous' has place in the draft; and
the finished manuscript reads 'vap'rous', contracted.
27-30. In the draft the following lines are cancelled for the reading of the text:
Juliet leans
Amid her window flowers, sighs,-and as she weans
Her maiden thoughts from their young firstling snow,
What sorrows from the melting whiteness grow.
And there is another cancelled reading of line 29,
Tenderly from their first young snow her maiden breast.
31. The reference is of course not to the story of Hero and Leander but to the
tears of Hero in 'Much Ado about Nothing,' shed when she was falsely accused;
and Imogen must, equally of course, be Shakespeare's heroine in 'Oymbeline,
though she is not the only Imogen of fiction who has swooned. For Pastorella see
'Faerie Queene,' Book VI, Canto ii, stanza 1 et seq.
34. The original reading in the draft isThan the death of Empires. How fearfully...
36. Rejected reading from the draft, 'halt and laure' for 'discontent '
38. The draft affords here a curious comment on the precise value of the word
rest' as employed on this occasion.  What was originally written was ' To rest




EMEYMION.


Book IIH.


In chaffing restlessness, is yet more drear
Than to be crush'd, in striving to uprear
Love's standard on the battlements of song.
So once more days and nights aid me along,
Like legion'd soldiers.
Brain-sick shepherd prince,
What promise hast thou faithful guarded since
The day of sacrifice? Or, have new sorrows
Come with the constant dawn upon thy morrows?
Alas! 'tis his old grief. For many days,
Has he been wandering in uncertain ways:
Through wilderness, and woods of mossed oaks;
Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes
Of the lone woodcutter; and listening still,
Hour after hour, to each lush-leav'd rill.
Now he is sitting by a shady spring,
And elbow-deep with feverous fingering
Stems the upbursting cold: a wild rose tree
Pavillions him in bloom, and he doth see
A bud which snares his fancy: lo! but now
He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water: how!
It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight;


45
50
55


And, in the middle, there is softly pight                          60
In chaffing discontent '. Though the verb to rest is a common equivalent for
to remain, the noun rest has usually a sense of recuperation after labour; but its
meaning here is probably, considering how it came here, merely inactivity, without the recuperative arriere pensee. The final manuscript and the printed book
both perpetuate the word 'chaffing ' for 'chafing '. Spenser spells the word with
two f 's, but with a u also, thus (' Faerie Queene,' Book VI, Canto ii, stanza 21):
After long search and chauff he turned backe.
43. In the draft ' sturdy' was originally written in the place of ' legion'd '; and
in the finished manuscript is the cancelled reading 'Fainting' for 'Brain-sick'.
44. See the promises recorded in lines 477 et seq. and 978 et seq. of Book I.
49. The words 'brittle mossed oaks' occur in the draft for 'woods of
mossed oaks'.
51. Cancelled reading in the draft 'distant ', and in the manuscript lonely'
for ' lone'.
52. This line is precisely according to the manuscript and the first edition; the
word 'hour' is clearly to be scanned first as one syllable and then as two.
53. ' E'en now he's ' occurs in the draft in place of ' Now he is '.
56. The draft gives the reading 'Bends lightly over him' for 'Pavillions
him in bloom '.
57. In the draft, ' takes ' for ' snares '
58. In the manuscript, 'in' was originally contracted to i''; but 'in' is inserted as a correction.
59. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'blooms' for flowers'.
60. The original reading of the draft was ' in its middle'. The word 'pight'
(for pitched), occurs in 'Troilus and Cressida' (V, 10), 'Lear' (II, 1), and
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,' Book III, Canto vii, stanza 41,Or on the marble Pillour that is pight
Upon the top of Mount Olympus hight,...




Book -I.


ENTYMION.


107


A golden butterfly; upon whose wings
There must be surely character'd strange things,
For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft.
Lightly this little herald flew aloft,
Follow'd by glad Endymion's clasped hands:.     65
Onward it flies. From languor's sullen bands:His limbs are loos'd, and eager, on he hies
Dazzled to trace it in the sunny skies.
It seem'd he flew, the way so easy was;
And like a new-born spirit did he-pass                    70
Through the green evening quiet in the sun,
O'er many a heath, through many a woodland dun,
Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams
The summer time away. One track unseams
A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue                   75
Of ocean fades upon him; then, anew,
He sinks adown a solitary glen,
Where there was never sound of mortal men,
Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences.Melting to silence, when upon the breeze                  80
Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet,
To cheer itself to Delphi. Still his feet
~ Went swift beneath the merry-winged guide,
Until it reach'd a splashing fountain's side
That, near a cavern's mouth, for ever pour'd              85
Unto the temperate air: then high it soar'd,
v And, downward, suddenly began to dip,
As if, athirst with so much toil, 'twould sip
The crystal spout-head: so it did, with touch
Most delicate, as though afraid to smutch                 90
Even with mealy gold the waters clear.
But, at that very touch, to disappear
67-68. The draft gives two rejected readings} if this coupletHis limbs are loos'd, and eagerly he paces
With nimble feet beneath its airy tracesand
His limbs are loos'd, and eagerly he traces
With nimble footsteps all its airy paces.
69. The draft reads 'path' for ' way'.
75. The original reading of the draft is 'Thro' woody cleft'.
80. The draft has ' Thawing' in place of ' Melting'.
83. This line was written in the draftWent swift beneath the flutter-loving guide...
The expression flutter-loving ' was struck out; but nothing was substitut"ed 1
the reading of the text was supplied in the finished manuscript, in which, in the>
next line, 'he' was originally where 'it' now stands.
e 86. The draft reads 'whereat it soar'd ', and begins the next line with ' Then'
instead of 'And '.




108


ENDYMION.


Book 11.


So fairy-quick, was strange I Bewildered,
Endymion sought around, and shook each bed
Of covert flowers in vain; and then he flung               95
Himself along the grass.    What gentle tongue,
What whisperer disturb'd his gloomy rest?
It was a nymph uprisen to the breast
In the fountain's pebbly margin, and she stood
'Mong lillies, like the youngest of the brood.             100
T'ohirTi her dripping hand she softly kist,
And anxiously began to plait and twist
Her ringlets round her fingers, saying: "Youth!
Too long, alas, bast thou starv'd on the ruth,
The bitterness of love: too long indeed,                   105
Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I weed
Thy soul of care, by heavens, I would offer
All the bright riches of my crystal coffer
To Amphitrite; all my clear-ey'd fish,
Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish,                     110
Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze;
Yea, or my veined pebble-floor, that draws
A virgin light to the deep; my grotto-sands
Tawny and gold, ooz'd slowly from far lands
By my diligent springs; my level lillies, shells,         115
My charming rod, my potent river spells;
Yes, every thing, even to the pearly cup
Meander gave me,-for 1 bubbled up
To fainting creatures in a desert wild.
But woe is me, I am but as a child                         120
To gladden thee; and all I dare to say,
Is, that I pity thee; that on this day
94. At this point the draft has the rejected readingEndymion all around the welkin sped
His anxious sight,
and a further variation is ' Endyn.. on pry'd around'.
96-97. In the draft these two lines were writtenHis sullen limbs upon the grass-what tongue,
Wha.t airy whisperer spoilt his angry rest?
99. Here is a further instance of the contracted ' I' being altered to ' In ' in the
finished manuscript. In the draft ' basin ' occurs in the place of ' margin '.
102. In the draft is the variation
And carelessly began to twine and twist
Her ringlets 'bout her fingers...
10,4, his line originally began wit; the words 'Long hast thou tasted',
and.'the next line with 'The bitter ruth of love '.
116. Variation in the draft, 'water' for ' river '.
117. In the manuscript, ' e'en ' for ' even '.
121. The draft reads 'all that I may say '.




Book IL


ENDOYMO,.


109


I've been thy guide; that thou must wander far
In other regions, past the scanty bar
To mortal steps, before thou cans't be ta'en                  125
From every wasting sigh, from every pain,
Into the gentle bosom of thy love.
Why it is thus, one knows in heaven above:
But, a poor Naiad, I guess not.      Farewell!
I have a ditty for-my hollow cell."                           130
Hereat, she vanished from Endymion's gaze,
Who brooded o'er the water in amaze:
The dashing fount pour'd on, and where its pool
Lay, half asleep, in grass and rushes cool,
Quick waterflies and gnats were sporting still,               135
And fish were dimpling, as if good nor ill
Had fallen out that hour. The wanderer,
Holding his forehead, to keep off the burr
Of smothering fancies, patiently sat down;
And, while beneath the evening's sleepy frown                 140
Glow-worms began to trim their starry lamps,
Thus breath'd he to himself: " Whoso encamps
To take a fancied city of delight,
O what a wretch is he! and when 'tis his,
After long toil and travelling, to miss                       145
The kernel of his hopes, how more than vile:
Yet, for him there's refreshment even in toil;
128. The reading 'some know' for 'one knows' occurs in the draft, where
the next two lines were first writtenBut, a poor Naiad, I guess not nor tell
Farewell I must away to my hollow celland then as in the text, but with ' I've a new ditty' for ' I have a ditty.
131-4. These two couplets originally stood in the draft thusHereat, she vanish'd from the listener's gaze,
Whose soul kept o'er the water in amaze;
The dashing fall pour'd on, and where the pool
Crept smoothly by fresh grass and rushes cool,...
139. Rejected reading from the draft, 'drowning' for 'smothering.
140. Cancelled readings, from the draft 'gentle', and from the manuscript
'mild ', for ' sleepy '.
143. The manner in which the rhyme to this line was lost appears from the
draft, where the passage originally stood thus:
Whoso encamps
His soul to take a city of delight
0 what a wretch is he: 'tis in his sight...
Then "tis in his sight' was struck out in favour of ' and when 'tis his'; but
nothing was done, in transcribing for the press, to remedy the defect thus produced.
145. The original reading in the draft was' After long siege and travailing ';
but the finished-manuscript reads ' toil 'and 'travelling' as in the text.; ~
147. The draft reads ' e'en' for ' even'.                           *   *..   *.




110


ENDYNION.


Book I.


Another city doth he set about,
Free from the smallest pebble-bead of doubt
That he will seize on trickling honey-combs:               150
Alas, he finds them dry; and then he foams,
And onward to another city speeds.
But this is human life: the war, the deeds,
The disappointment, the anxiety,
Imagination's struggles, far and nigh,                     155
All human; bearing in themselves this good,
That they are still the air, the subtle food,
To make us feel existence, and to show
How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow,
Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me,                   160
There is no depth to strike in: I can see
Nought earthly worth my compassing; so stand
Upon a misty, jutting head of landAlone? No, no; and by the Orphean lute,
When mad Eurydice is listening to't;                       165
I'd rather stand upon this misty peak,
With not a thing to sigh for, or to seek,
But the soft shadow of my thrice-seen love,
Than be-I care not what. 0 meekest dove
Of heaven! 0 Cynthia, ten-times bright and fair!           170
From thy blue throne, now filling all the air,
Glance but one little beam of temper'd light
Into my bosom, that the dreadful might
And tyranny of love be somewhat scared!
Yet do not so, sweet queen; one torment spar'd,            175
Would give a pang to jealous misery,
Worse than the torment's self: but rather tie
Large wings upon my shoulders, and point out
149. In the first edition, 'pebble-head'; but in the manuscript, 'pebblebead ', which reading is restored in the corrected copy in my possession. The
draft reads ' Without' for ' Free from', and in the next line ' there he'll' for
'he will'.
153. In the draft, ' acts' for ' war'.
155. ' Imaginings and searchings', in the draft.
158. In the first edition, ' shew'.
159. ' Here is soil to grow' was originally written in the draft.
164. In the draft, 'Alone? No, heavens!'
166. Originally written ' I'd rather bide ', in the draft.
167. The original version of this line in the draft isWith nought to long for, sigh for, or to seek.
168. For the three occasions on which Endymion had seen Diana, refer to the
account given to Peona; beginning with line 540, Book I,-to the passage about
the well, line 896, Book I,-and to the passage in which he hurried into the
grotto, line 971, Book L
169. The original reading of the draft was ' I know not' in place of ' I care
Snot'.
* ** *..,*:




Book H.


ENDYMON.


11


My love's far dwelling. Though the playful rout
Of Cupids shun thee, too divine art thou,                  180
Too keen in beauty, for thy silver prow
Not to have dipp'd in love's most gentle stream.
O be propitious, nor severely deem
My madness impious; for, by all the stars
That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars                 185
That kept my spirit in are burst-that I
Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!
How beautiful thou art! The world how deep!
How tremulous-dazzlingly the wheels sweep
Around their axle! Then these gleaming reins,              190
How lithe! When this thy chariot attains
Its airy goal, haply some bower veils
Those twilight eyes?    Those eyes!-my spirit failsDear goddess, help! or the wide-gaping air
Will gulph me-help! "-At this with madden'd stare,        195
And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood;
Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood,
Or blind Orion hungry for the morn.
And, but from the deep cavern there was borne
A voice, he had been froze to senseless stone;             200
Nor sigh of his, nor plaint, nor passion'd moan
Had more been heard.      Thus swell'd it forth: " Descend,
Young mountaineer! descend where alleys bend
Into the sparry hollows of the world!
Oft hast thou seen bolts of the thunder hurl'd             205
As from thy threshold; day by day hast been
181. The word ' sharp' occurs in the draft in place of ' keen '.
189. In the draft this line has three tentative openings, ---' How silently and
tremulous', 'How bright and tremulous ', ' How tremulous and dazzling'.
191. The draft yields the rejected reading, 'When this thy silent chariot
gains '; and in the next two lines
haply thou veilst thine eyes
In some fresh bower.
In supplying the reading of the text Keats first wrote 'Those liquid eyes'.
195. The draft reads 'Oh' for 'help!'-and in the next line but one
'wondering at' for ' mountain'd o'er'.
198. Here the draft yields the readingOr blind Orion waiting for the dawnanother evidence of Keats's determination to get rid of the false rhymes where
observed. The next line was originally writtenAnd, but from the hollow cavern there was bornand I am not sure that 'born ' is not the word intended, though 'borne', the
reading of the first edition, must have the preference.
201. The original reading of the draft is
Nor sigh of his, nor wild complaint nor moan.
204. This line originally began in the draft with the word 'Spiral'.




ENDYMI0N.


Book IL


A little lower than the chilly sheen
Of icy pinnacles, and dipp'dst thine arms
Into the deadening ether that still charms
Their marble being: now, as deep profound                210
As those are high, descend! He ne'er is crown'd
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead: so through the hollow,
The silent mysteries of earth, descend!"
He heard but the last words, nor could contend         215
One moment in reflection: for he fled
Into the fearful deep, to hide his head
From the clear moon, the trees, and coming madness.
'Twas far too strange, and wonderful for sadness;
Sharpening, by degrees, his appetite                     220
To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light,
The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly,
But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy;
A dusky empire and its diadems;
One faint eternal eventide of gems.                      225
Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold,
Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told,
With all its lines abrupt and angular:
Out-shooting sometimes, like a meteor-star,
Through a vast antre; then the metal woof,               230
Like Vulcan's rainbow, with some monstrous roof
Curves hugely: now, far in the deep abyss,
It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss
Fancy into belief: anon it leads
208. The draft has the reading 'and couldst dip thy palms...'.
210. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' far' for ' deep'.
211. In the draft
As those were high, descend! He ne'er was crown'd...
214. The draft reads ' fearful ' for 'silent'.
215. In the manuscript, ' But the last words he heard'; but the reading of
the text is clearly a revision.
218. The draft reads 'night' for 'moon', and in the next line but one
'Upwinding' for 'Sharpening'.
227-30. In the draft this passage was written as follows:
Whose track the venturous Latmian follows bold
Thro' all its lines abrupt and angular:
And sometimes like a shooting meteor star
Past a vast antre's gloom.
The reading of the text is in the finished manuscript, where, however, line 230
was first writtenPast a large Antre; then the metal woof,....  *  31. The draft reads ' o'er' for ' with', and in the next line ' a' for ' the '.
*  *




Book IL


ENDYMIOlN.


113


Through winding passages, where sameness breeds        235
Vexing conceptions of some sudden change;
Whether to silver grots, or giant range
Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge
Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge
Now fareth he, that o'er the vast beneath             240
Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth
A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come
But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb
His bosom grew, when first he, far away
Descry'd an orbed diamond, set to fray                245
Old darkness from his throne: 'twas like the sun
Uprisen o'er chaos: and with such a stun
Came the amazement, that, absorb'd in it,
He saw not fiercer wonders-past the wit
Of any spirit to tell, but one of those               250
Who, when this planet's sphering time doth close,
Will be its high remembrancers: who they?
The mighty ones who have made eternal day
For Greece and England. While astonishment
With deep-drawn sighs was quieting, he went            255
Into a marble gallery, passing through
A mimic temple, so complete and true
In sacred custom, that he well nigh fear'd
To search it inwards; whence far off appear'd,
Through a long pillar'd vista, a fair shrine,         260
And just beyond, on light tiptoe divine,
A quiver'd Dian. Stepping awfully,
The youth approach'd; oft turning his veil'd eye
Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old.
And when, more near against the marble cold           265
236. In the draft this line begins with ' Dizzy ' instead of 'Vexing'.
240. The draft supplies two rejected readings, 'Sometimes he fares' and
'Sometimes he went.
243. The draft reads 'a ' in place of ' the '
248. In the draft we read 'this' for 'the '
253-4 Originally written in the draftThe mighty ones who've shone athwart the day
Of Greece and England.
256-7. Cancelled reading from the draftInto a marble gallery that near the roof
Of a fair mimic Temple...
261-3. Cancelled reading from the draftThro' a long vist' of columns a fair shrine
And just beyond lightly diminished
A Dian quiver'd tiptoe, crescented-,
264 The draft reads 'sideway aisles'.
H




ENDYMION.


Book IL


He had touch'd his forehead, he began to thread
All courts and passages, where silence dead
Rous'd by his whispering footsteps murmured faint:
And long he travers'd to and fro, to acquaint
Himself with every mystery, and awe;                          270
Till, weary, he sat down before the maw
Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim,
To wild uncertainty and shadows grim.
There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before,
And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore              275
The journey homeward to habitual self!
A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,
Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar,
Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire,
Into the bosom of a hated thing.                              280
What misery most drowningly doth sing
In lone Endymion's ear, now he has raught
The goal of consciousness? Ah, 'tis the thought,
The deadly feel of solitude: for lo!
He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow                       285
Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-pil'd,
The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west,
Like herded elephants; nor felt, nor prest
Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air;              290
266. In the manuscript ' tread ' stands here altered to ' thread'.
267. The draft reads 'The' for 'All '.
269. The words 'to acquaint' in the manuscript are contracted to 't'acquaint',
270-2. In the draft,
Himself with every mystery, until
His weary legs he rested on the sill
Of some remotest chamber, outlet dim...
277. The draft reads ' That ' for ' A '.
278. The original reading of the draft at this point isWhose flitting Lantern, through rude nettle-beds,
Cheats us into a bog,-cuttings and shreds
Of old Vexations plaited to a rope
Wherewith to haul us from the sight of hope,
And bind us to our earthly baiting-ring.
These lines were copied into the finished manuscript with the variations 'Swamp'
for bog ', 'drag' for ' haul ', and bind' for 'fix '. The passage as it stands
in the text is supplied in the margin of the manuscript. The grotesque imagery
of the earlier version reminds us, in its rude vigour, that Keats had actually
witnessed, and forcibly described to Clarke, a bear-baiting.
282. The final word in this line is clearly 'raught' in the manuscript, though
'caught ' in the first edition. As the obsolete equivalent of reached occurs often
in Shakespeare and elsewhere in 'Endymion' (see Book I, line 866), and also makes
sense, while caught does not, we are justified in restoring Taught.
290. In the draft, 'the free sleepy air '.




Book n.


IESDYMION.


But far from such companionship to wear
An unknown time, surcharg'd with grief, away,
Was now his lot. And must he patient stay,
Tracing fantastic figures with his spear?
"No!" exclaim'd he, " why should I tarry here?"          295
No! loudly echoed times innumerable.
At which he straightway started, and 'gan tell
His paces back into the temple's chief;
Warming and glowing strong in the belief
Of help from Dian: so that when again                      300
He caught her airy form, thus did he plain,
Moving more near the while: "O Haunter chaste
Of river sides, and woods, and heathy waste,
Where with thy silver bow and arrows keen
Art thou now forested?    0 woodland Queen,                305
What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos?
Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos
Of thy disparted nymphs? Through what dark tree
Glimmers thy crescent? Wheresoe'er it be,
'Tis in the breath of heaven: thou dost taste             310
Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste
Thy loveliness in dismal elements;
But, finding in our green earth sweet contents,
There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee
It feels Elysian, how rich to me,                          315
An exil'd mortal, sounds its pleasant name!
Within my breast there lives a choking flameO let me cool 't the zephyr-boughs among!
294. The draft reads Drawing ' for 'Tracing '.
297. The reading of the draft is 'roused, and gan to tell', and in the next
line but one 'growing' for ' glowing '.
301. The draft reads-       g       p
thus gan he plain,
Pacing towards the while.
The finished manuscript reads 'Moving towards the while:'. The reading of
the text must have been a correction of the proof.
304. The draft readsWhere now with silver bow and arrows keen
Art thou in covert hid?
308. In the draft there is a rejected reading, From what deep glen... '.
313. In the finished manuscript, ' on ' for in '.
318. In the finished manuscript, 'coolt' for 'cool it': otherwise the line is
really written as the first edition gives itO let me cool it among the zephyr-boughs!
But it seems absolutely certain that 'among' was meant to be at the end, to
rhyme with 'tongue ',-an assurance made doubly sure by the fact that the line
was originally written in the draftO let me cool't among the waving boughs!
and marked for transposition of 'among' to the end. Thus Keats clearly in
oopying the line altered 'waving' to 'zephyr' but forgot the transposition,




ENDYMION.


Book II.


A homeward fever parches up my tongueO let me slake it at the running springs!                 320
Upon my ear a noisy nothing ringsO let me once more hear the linnet's note!
Before mine eyes thick films and shadows floatO let me 'noint them with the heaven's light!
Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white?              325
O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice!
Dost thou now please thy thirst with berry-juice?
O think how this dry palate would rejoice!
If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice,
O think how I should love a bed of flowers!-              330
Young goddess! let me see my native bowers!
Deliver me from this rapacious deep!"
Thus ending loudly, as he would o'erleap
His destiny, alert he stood: but when
Obstinate silence came heavily again,                      335
Feeling about for its old couch of space
And airy cradle, lowly bow'd his face
Desponding, o'er the marble floor's cold thrill.
But 'twas not long; for, sweeter than the rill
To its old channel, or a swollen tide                      340
To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied,
And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns
Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns
Itself, and strives its own delights to hide319. In the draft this line was written thusA fever parches up my suppliant tongueand then altered to
An endless fever parches up my tongue.
325. In the finished manuscript ' hands' stands cancelled in favour of 'feet'.
327. The draft reads ' cherry-juice'.
330, In the draft, 'would' instead of 'should'; Oh ' for 'Young' in the
next line; and the next line but one readsLift me, oh lift me from this horrid deep!
335. In the draft, 'cloudily came' is cancelled in favour of 'came heavily';
and the next couplet originally stood thusFeeling its way to its old couch of space
And airy cradle he bent down his face.
In the finished manuscript line 335 stands precisely as in the text.
339. The draft reads 'Twas not for long'.
340. In the draftTo its cool channel, the o'erswollen tide...
The finished manuscript reads ' cold channel ',-the first edition, ' old channel'.
343-4. The reading of the draft isUpswelling through the slab; refreshment drowns
Itself, lush tumbling down on every side:




Book IL


ENDPMION.


117


Nor in one spot alone; the floral pride                      345
In a long whispering birth enchanted grew
Before his footsteps; as when heav'd anew
Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore,
Down whose green back the short-liv'd foam, all hoar,
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.                    350
Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense,
Upon his fairy journey on he hastes;
So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes
One moment with his hand among the sweets:
Onward he goes-he stops-his bosom beats                      355
As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm
Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm,
This sleepy music, forc'd him walk tiptoe:
For it came more softly than the east could blow
Arion's magic to the Atlantic isles; -                       360
Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles
Of thron'd Apollo, could breathe back the lyre
To seas Ionian and Tyrian.
in the finished manuscript, 'slap' is written for 'slab', and there is the cancelled reading,
Itself, lush-tumbling on every side:
the words 'cool fragrance' are inserted and struck out again; but how they were
to be used is not clear.
348-50. The draft shows the original reading to have been as follows:Old ocean sends a lengthened wave to the shore,
From whose green head the gentle foam all hoar
Runs gradual,...
Then we have 'O'er whose green back ', and next ' Down whose green back'.
The finished manuscript corresponds here precisely with the printed text; and
there can be no doubt the redundant the in line 348 is an intentional undulation.
Strictly there are two undulations in the line, because the fnal syllable of
lengthened is to be pronounced, according to Keats's practice.
353. The manuscript reads 'waits ' in place of ' wastes'.
359. In the manuscript, ' For it ' is contracted into ' For't'.
363. The draft supplies the history of the loss of a rhyme to this line; but I
fear it must remain rhymeless. The passage was left thus in the draft:
To seas Ionian and Tyrian. Dire
Was the love lorn despair to which it wrought
Endymion-for dire is the bare thought
That among lovers things of tenderest worth
Are swallow'd all, and made a blank-a dearth
By one devouring flame: and far far worse
Blessing to them become a heavy curse
Half happy till comparisons of bliss
To misery lead them. 'Twas even so with this..
Before this was finished there were the following readings of two of the linesEndymion-for dire to { quie } bosoms is the thought,




ENDYMION.


Book IL


O did he ever live, that lonely man,
Who lov'd-and music slew not?         'Tis the pest           365
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest;
That things of delicate and tenderest worth
Are swallow'd all, and made a seared dearth,
By one consuming flame: it doth immerse
And suffocate true blessings in a curse.                      370
Half-happy, by comparison of bliss,
Is miserable. 'Twas even so with this
Dew-dropping melody, in the Carian's ear;
First heaven, then hell, and then forgotten clear,
Vanish'd in elemental passion.                                375
And down some swart abysm he had gone,
Had not a heavenly guide benignant led
To where thick myrtle branches, 'gainst his head
Brushing, awakened: then the sounds again
Went noiseless as a passing noontide rain                     380
Over a bower, where little space he stood;
and
Half happy will they gaze upon the sky;
and when the passage was altered in copying out the poem for the press, the first
reading (cancelled) of line 365 wasWhom, loving, Music slew not,
while, in line 371, 'comparisons', not 'comparison', was written, and line
372 was left thusIs miserable. 'T[was] e'en so with this...
The omission of was' is curious. It seems that, in altering line 363 and making
line 364 rhyme with it, Keats overlooked the needs of line 362: there is nothing in
the finished manuscript to show that he or Taylor had any misgivings on the
subject, though it is quite possible there may have been an intention to introduce
some such line as
To seas Ionian and seas of Tyre.
The whole passage as it now stands is so superb that both poet and critic-publisher
may be easily pardoned for the oversight. No imagination so delicate in regard to
music had been vouchsafed to poet since Shakespeare wrote, in 'Twelfth Night',
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
0, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!
The attenuation of sound suggested by the thought that Arion's lyre-music was
wafted by the east wind from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and blown back
by Zephyrs, envious of Apollo's approbation, from the Atlantic to the seas about
Greece and Tyre, is so exceeding as to be in some respects preferable to the lovely
suggestion in 'Twelfth Night ', which brings a second sense into the idea.
377. This line originally began (in the draft) with 'But that some...'.
379-85. This passage stood thus in the draftBrushing awaken'd him: the sounds again
Came softly as a gentle evening rain,
Around a bower, where he stay'd harkening
And through whose tufted shrubby darkening




Book IL


EINDYMION.


119


For as the sunset peeps into a wood
So saw he panting light, and towards it went
Through winding alleys; and lo, wonderment!
Upon soft verdure saw, one here, one there,                  385
Cupids a slumbering on their pinions fair.
After a thousand mazes overgone,
At last, with sudden step, he came upon
A chamber, myrtle wall'd, embowered high,
Full of light, incense, tender minstrelsy,                   390
And more of beautiful and strange beside:
For on a silken couch of rosy pride,
In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth
Of fondest beauty; fonder, in fair sooth,
Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach:               395
And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach,
Or ripe October's faded marigolds,
Fell sleek about him in a thousand foldsNot hiding up an Apollonian curve
Of neck and shoulder, nor the tenting swerve                 400
Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light;
But rather, giving them to the filled sight
Officiously. Sideway his face repos'd
On one white arm, and tenderly unclos'd,
By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth                  405
To slumbery pout; just as the morning south
Disparts a dew-lipp'd rose. Above his head,
Bright starry glimmers came, towards which he went
Thro' winding alleys, and lo, wonderment!
Upon soft turf he saw, one here one there...
In the finished manuscript line 380 at frst began with 'Came'; but this was
altered to ' Went', and for the rest the passage stands as in the text. This
whole episode should be compared with Spenser's account of "the gardins of
Adonis" ('Faerie Queene,' Book III, Canto vi) which probably suggested to
Keats the embodiment of the legend in his poem. One would think stanzas 44,
46, and 47, at all events, must have been fresh in his memory.
396-7. In the draftAnd draperies mellow-tinted like the peach,
Or lady peas entwined with marigolds.
399. Cancelled manuscript reading, ' his' for 'an'.
400. Woodhouse seems to have been in doubt what tenting swerve meant;
for he notes that Keats told him it meant in the form of the top of a tent.
402. In the manuscript, 'gave' instead of 'giving', and in the draft 'gazer's'
instead of 'filled '.
403-4 Compare Sonnet nxi, Livre II, 'Amours de Ronsard' (h Marie de
Marquets):
Un somme languissant la tenoit mi-penchee
Dessus le coude droit fermant sa belle bouche.
405. The draft eads ' his' for 'a'.




120


ENDYMION.


Book IL


Four lilly stalks did their white honours wed
To make a coronal; and round him grew
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue,                410
Together intertwin'd and trammel'd fresh:
The vine of glossy sprout; the ivy mesh,
Shading its Ethiop berries; and woodbine,
Of velvet leaves and bugle-blooms divine;
Convolvulus in streaked vases flush;                       415
The creeper, mellowing for an autumn blush;
And virgin's bower, trailing airily;
With others of the sisterhood. Hard by,
Stood serene Cupids watching silently.
One, kneeling to a lyre, touch'd the strings,              420
Muffling to death the pathos with his wings;
And, ever and anon, uprose to look
At the youth's slumber; while another took
A willow-bough, distilling odorous dew,
And shook it on his hair; another flew                     425
In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise
Rain'd violets upon his sleeping eyes.
At these enchantments, and yet many more,
The breathless Latmian wonder'd o'er and o'er;
Until, impatient in embarrassment,                         430
He forthright pass'd, and lightly treading went
To that same feather'd lyrist, who straightway,
Smiling, thus whisper'd: "Though from upper day
Thou art a wanderer, and thy presence here
Might seem unholy, be of happy cheer!                      435
409. In the draft, ' coronet ' for ' coronal ', and the next line isAll tendril green, of pleasant lush and hue.
412. The draft reads ' purply ' for ' glossy ', and in the next line 'darkling '
for ' Ethiop '.
414. In the draftWith all its honey bugle tufts divine.
415. Cancelled manuscript reading, ' of for ' in '.
416. In the draft,
The creeper, blushing deep at Autumn's blush.
419. This triplet was not originally in the poem. The draft shews here the
readingStood Cupids holding o'er an upward gaze
Each a slim wand tipt with a silver blaze
Each one a silver torch...
The poet's nice taste doubtless rejected this on review as too suggestive of gilt
gingerbread cupids such as he may very well have seen at Edmonton fair.
424. The draft reads 'A myrtle-bough', and in the next line but one 'In
from the branched roof'.
429. In the draft, Endymion was described as 'The mortal Latmian'.




Book II.


ENDYMION.


121


For 'tis the nicest touch of human honor,
When some ethereal and high-favouring donor
Presents immortal bowers to mortal sense;
As now 'tis done to thee, Endymion. Hence
Was I in no wise startled.   So recline                    440
Upon these living flowers. Here is wine,
Alive with sparkles-never, I aver,
Since Ariadne was a vintager,
So cool a purple: taste these juicy pears,
Sent me by sad Vertumnus, when his fears                   445
Were high about Pomona: here is cream,
Deepening to richness from a snowy gleam;
Sweeter than that nurse Amalthea skimm'd
For the boy Jupiter: and here, undimm'd
By any touch, a bunch of blooming plums                    450
Ready to melt between an infant's gums:
And here is manna pick'd from Syrian trees,
In starlight, by the three Hesperides.
Feast on, and meanwhile I will let thee know
Of all these things around us."   He did so,               455
Still brooding o'er the cadence of his lyre;
And thus: " I need not any hearing tire
By telling how the sea-born goddess pin'd
For a mortal youth, and how she strove to bind
Him all in all unto her doting self.                       460
Who would not be so prison'd? but, fond elf,
He was content to let her amorous plea
Faint through his careless arms; content to see
An unseiz'd heaven dying at his feet;
436. 'The nicest touch of human honor' is a curious and not very perspicuous phrase; but the fact that the original reading of the draft was 'the highest
reach of human honor' leaves no doubt that Endymion was given to understand he was receiving the greatest honour that could be conferred on a human
be2. In the draft the line began with ' Sparkling up diamonds'.
443. It was a peculiarly happy piece of poetic realism to translate Ariadne's relations with Bacchus into her becoming a vintager; and I presume this was Keats's
own thought, as well as the idea immediately following, that the God of Orchards
oonciliated Love with a gift of pears when paying his addresses to Pomona.
448. In the draft,
Even sweet as that which Amalthea skimm'd.
456-7. The couplet was written thus in the draftKeeping a ravishing cadence with his lyre.
And thus it was " I'll not thy knowing tire...
4614. In the draft thusWho would not be so bound, but, foolish elf,
He was content to let Divinity
Slip through his careless arms-content to see
An unseized heaven sighing at his feet;




___


_______ _


122                        ENDYMION.                      Book IL
Content, 0 fool! to make a cold retreat,                 465
When on the pleasant grass such love, lovelorn,
Lay sorrowing; when every tear was born
Of diverse passion; when her lips and eyes
Were clos'd in sullen moisture, and quick sighs
Came vex'd and pettish through her nostrils small.       470
Hush! no exclaim-yet, justly mightst thou call
Curses upon his head.-I was half glad,
But my poor mistress went distract and mad,
When the boar tusk'd him: so away she flew
To Jove's high throne, and by her plainings drew         475
Immortal tear-drops down the thunderer's beard;
Whereon, it was decreed he should be rear'd
Each summer time to life. Lo! this is he,
That same Adonis, safe in the privacy
Of this still region all his winter-sleep.               480
Aye, sleep; for when our love-sick queen did weep
Over his waned corse, the tremulous shower
Heal'd up the wound, and, with a balmy power,
Medicin'd death to a lengthened drowsiness:
The which she fills with visions, and doth dress         485
In all this quiet luxury; and hath set
Us young immortals, without any let,
To watch his slumber through. 'Tis well nigh pass'd,
Even to a moment's filling up, and fast
She scuds with summer breezes, to pant through           490
The first long kiss, warm firstling, to renew
Embower'd sports in Cytherea's isle.
Look! how those winged listeners all this while
Stand anxious: see! behold! "-This clamant word
Broke through the careful silence; for they heard        495
A rustling noise of leaves, and out there flutter'd
and there are the cancelled readings
He was content to unclasp his...
He was content to let {  ig heaven
Faint gradual from his arms.
The finished manuscript corresponds with the printed text.
474. In the manuscript, 'tush'd '; in the first edition ' tusk'd'.
479. In the manuscript, 'i' the ' for 'in the'.
482. In the draft,
Over this paly corse, the crystal shower...
487. The draft reads ' These ' for 'Us ', and in the next two lines 'winter'
for 'slumber' and 'complishing' for 'filling up '.
489. The finished manuscript reads 'E'en' for ' Even'.
490. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' o'er' for ' with '.
491. The draft has ' sweet prologue' in place of ' warm firstling'.
495. Cancelled manuscript reading, 'and they heard '.




Book IL


ENDYOWN.


Pigeons and doves: Adonis something mutterd
The while one hand, that erst upon his thigh
Lay dormant, mov'd convuls'd and gradually
Up to his forehead. Then there was a hum                   500
Of sudden voices, echoing, " Come! come!
Arise! awake! Clear summer has forth walk'd
Unto the clover-sward, and she has talk'd
Full soothingly to every nested finch:
Rise, Cupids! or we'll give the blue-bell pinch            505
To your dimpled arms. Once more sweet life begin!"
At this, from every side they hurried in,
Rubbing their sleepy eyes with lazy wrists,
And doubling over head their little fists
In backward yawns.     But all were soon alive:            510
For as delicious wine doth, sparkling, dive
In nectar'd clouds and curls through water fair,
So from the arbour roof down swelPl'd an air
Odorous and enlivening; making all
To laugh, and play, and sing, and loudly call              515
For their sweet queen: when lo! the wreathed green
Disparted, and far upward could be seen
Blue heaven, and a silver car, air-borne,
Whose silent wheels, fresh wet from clouds of morn,
Spun off a drizzling dew,-which falling chill              520
On soft Adonis' shoulders, made him still
Nestle and turn uneasily about.
Soon were the white doves plain, with neck stretch'd out,
And silken traces lighten'd in descent;
501. In the draft,
Of sudden voices, echoing out, " Come! come.
504. The draft reads ' Most ' for ' Full'.
505. Cancelled readings,-in the draft,
Cupids awake! or black and blue we'll pinch
Your dimpled arms-for lo! your Queen, your Queen.
and in the finished copy,
Cupids awake! or black and blue we'll pinch
Your dimpled arms. Once more sweet life begin
509. The draft reads ' in the air' for ' over head'.
523. In the draft thusAnon the doves f appeard } with necks stretch'd out.
t were plain J,
524. Woodhouse notes that in the original this line began with 'Their'
instead of ' And ', and read ' tighten'd' for 'lighten'd '. I presume both variations are from the draft; for in the finished manuscript there is certainly no trace
of 'Their', while the other word is certainly written ' lighten'd', even if, as is
possible, it was intended to cross the first letter and make a t of it. In the line
before, Keats wrote the word ' out' without crossing the t; and he often omitted




ENDYMION.


Book IL


And soon, returning from love's banishment,                   525
Queen Venus leaning downward open arm'd:
Her shadow fell upon his breast, and charm'd
A tumult to his heart, and a new life
Into his eyes. Ah, miserable strife,
But for her comforting! unhappy sight,                        530
But meeting her blue orbs! Who, who can write
Of these first minutes? The unchariest muse
To embracements warm as theirs makes coy excuse.
O it has ruffled every spirit there,
Saving Love's self, who stands superb to share                535
The general gladness: awfully he stands;
A sovereign quell is in his waving hands;
No sight can bear the lightning of his bow;
His quiver is mysterious, none can know
What themselves think of it; from forth his eyes              540
There darts strange light of varied hues and dies:
that small duty; but I do not feel safe in altering 'lighten'd' to 'tighten'd'
here, seeing that the first edition reads 'lighten'd', and that it makes the
better sense: the traces would be lighter for the doves in descent, one would say,
not tighter.
525. The finished manuscript reads ' next ' instead of ' soon'
526. In lieu of the passage extending from line 526 to line 534, the following
fifteen lines were originally written in the draft:
Queen Venus bending downward, so o'ertaken,
So suffering sweet, so blushing mad, so shaken
That the wild warmth prob'd the young sleeper's heart
Enchantingly; and with a sudden start
His trembling arms were out in instant time
To catch his fainting love.-O foolish rhyme
What mighty power is in thee that so often
Thou strivest rugged syllables to soften
Even to the telling of a sweet like this.
Away! let them embrace alone! that kiss
Was far too rich for thee to talk upon.
Poor wretch! mind not those sobs and sighs! begone!
Speak not one atom of thy paltry stuff,
That they are met is poetry enough.
O this has ruffled every spirit there,...
These lines are struck out of the draft, where their place is not supplied; but the
finished copy corresponds with the printed text.
536. In the first edition, 'love's', with a small 1; but Love's' in the manuscript.
538. In the finished manuscript this line stands thusHis bow no sight can bear for lightning so.
541. The draft reads first 'sundry' and then 'changeful' in place of
'varied'. The first edition reads 'dyes'; but in the finished manuscript we
have 'dies' instead of 'dyes': I am confident that this is right; and it is
to be regretted that Woodhouse did not record which of the two words was in
the draft. Keats was not incapable of applying the word 'dyes' to light; but
there is redundancy in 'light of varied hues and dyes'; and the notion of
strange light flashing from Love's eyes and dying is in a far higher strain.




Book IL


ENDYMION.


125


A scowl is sometimes on his brow, but who
Look full upon it feel anon the blue
Of his fair eyes run liquid through their souls.
Endymion feels it, and no more controls           545
The burning prayer within him; so, bent low,
He had begun a plaining of his woe.
But Venus, bending forward, said: " My child,
Favour this gentle youth; his days are wild
With love-he-but alas! too well I see             550
Thou know'st the deepness of his misery.
Ah, smile not so, my son: I tell thee true,
That when through heavy hours I us'd to rue
The endless sleep of this new-born Adon',
This stranger aye I pitied. For upon              555
A dreary morning once I fled away
Into the breezy clouds, to weep and pray
For this my love: for vexing Mars had teaz'd
Me even to tears: thence, when a little easd,
Down-looking, vacant, through a hazy wood,        560
I saw this youth as he despairing stood:
Those same dark curls blown vagrant in the wind;
Those same full fringed lids a constant blind
Over his sullen eyes: I saw him throw
Himself on witherd leaves, even as though         565
Death had come sudden; for no jot he mov'd,
Yet mutter'd wildly. I could hear he lov'd
Some fair immortal, and that his embrace
Had zon'd her through the night. There is no trace
Of this in heaven: I have mark'd each cheek,      570
And find it is the vainest thing to seek;
And that of all things 'tis kept secretest
Endymion! one day thou wilt be blest: /
So still obey the guiding hand that fends
Thee safely through these wonders for sweet ends.  575
'Tis a concealment needful in extreme;
And if I guess'd not so, the sunny beam
Thou shouldst mount up to with me. Now adieu!
Here must we leave thee."-At these words upflew
The impatient doves, uprose the floating car,     580
Up went the hum celestial. High afar
The Latmian saw them minish into nought;
And, when all were clear vanish'd, still he caught
648. The draft reads 'leaning' for 'bending'.
552. In the draft ' sweet boy!' instead of ' my son', and in the next line but
one ' mad-brain'd' for ' new-born '.
561. The manuscript reads 'yon youth'.
567. The draft has ' madly' in place of 'wildly'.




ENDYMION.


Book II.


A vivid lightning from that dreadful bow.
When all was darkened, with A.tnean throe                   585
The earth clos'd-gave a solitary moanAnd left him once again in twilight lone.
He did not rave, he did not stare aghast,
For all those visions were o'ergone, and past,
And he in loneliness: he felt assur'd                       590
Of happy times, when all he had endur'd
Would seem a feather to the mighty prize.
So, with unusual gladness, on he hies
Through caves, and palaces of mottled ore,
Gold dome, and crystal wall, and turquois floor,            595
Black polish'd porticos of awful shade,
And, at the last, a diamond balustrade,
Leading afar past wild magnificence,
Spiral through ruggedest loopholes, and thence
Stretching across a void, then guiding o'er                 600
Enormous chasms, where, all foam and roar,
Streams subterranean teaze their granite beds;
Then heighten'd just above the silvery heads
584-5. This couplet stood thus in the draftAnon and ever gleams from that dread bow.
One lightning more-then with CEtncean throe...
In the manuscript the adjective in line 585 is written 'cetnean', in the first
edition 'Etnean. I presume Keats's intention was to make the first E long by
using a diphthong, and that he inadvertently used the wrong one.
587. The draft reads ' shut ' for ' left '.
588. In the draft
Nor did he rave, nor did he { seae  aghast.
589. We are to understand 'that' after 'For', the sense being doubtless that
Endvmion did not rave and stare on account of the departure of the visions, and
not that the departure of the visions was a sufficient cause for his not raving and
staring. Line 590 originally began with ' Leaving him solitary'.
592. The draft reads 'joy' for 'prize'.
596. Compare 'Sleep and Poetry,' lines 75-6, page 53:
and where I found a spot
Of awfnller shade...
597-600. The draft readsThen diamond steps and ruby balustrade
Leading to fierce and wild magnificence
Spiral by ruggedest loopholes, and thence
Stretching across a void, then leading o'er...
602. In the draft we have
Streams subterranean { wraei }granite beds;
and ' hundred ' for ' thousand' in the next line but one.




Book IH


ENDYMION.


127


Of a thousand fountains, so that he could dash
The waters with his spear; but at the splash,             605
Done heedlessly, those spouting columns rose
Sudden a poplar's height, and 'gan to enclose
His diamond path with fretwork, streaming round
Alive, and dazzling cool, and with a sound,
- Haply, like dolphin tumults, when sweet shells            610
Welcome the float of Thetis.    Long he dwells
On this delight; for, every minute's space,
The streams with changed magic interlace:
Sometimes like delicatest lattices,
Cover'd with crystal vines; then weeping trees,            615
Moving about as in a gentle wind,
Which, in a wink, to watery gauze refin'd,
Pour'd into shapes of curtain'd canopies,
Spangled, and rich with liquid broideries
Of flowers, peacocks, swans, and naiads fair.              620
Swifter than lightning went these wonders rare;
And then the water, into stubborn streams
Collecting, mimick'd the wrought oaken beams,
Pillars, and frieze, and high fantastic roof,
Of those dusk places in times far aloof                    625
Cathedrals call'd.  He bade a loth farewell
To these founts Protean, passing gulph, and dell,
And torrent, and ten thousand jutting shapes,
Half seen through deepest gloom, and griesly gapes,
Blackening on every side, and overhead                     630
A vaulted dome like Heaven's, far bespread
606. The draft reads ' He playfully made' in place of ' Done heedlessly'.
607. In the finished manuscript, "gan enclose'; but "gan to enclose' in
the first edition.
608. In the draft we read
His mid-air path with fretwork, quivering round
and in the next line but one 'loud' for 'sweet '. We must conclude that the
poet chose, for Thetis' sweet sake, to subdue into sweetness the orthodox clamour
of the conchs blown at her approach over the sea.
615-16. In the original draft
O'erspread with crystal vines; then weeping peas,
Waving about &c.
622-3. The draft gives this couplet thusAnd then the waters, into stubborn streams
Collecting, mimick'd the wrought rafts and beams,
and in the next line but one reads ' dim ' for ' dusk'.
628. In place of 'jutting ' the draft reads successively 'massy', 'blackening',
and ' bulging'.
629. 'Hid in the dim profound', according to the draft, which reads
'overspread' in the next line but one in place of ' far bespread ', and in line 632
'so monstrous strange' for 'so huge and strange '.




ENDYMION.


Book IL


With starlight gems: aye, all so huge and strange,
The solitary felt a hurried change
Working within him into something dreary,Vex'd like a morning eagle, lost, and weary,                635,And purblind amid foggy, midnight wolds.
But he revives at once: for who beholds
New sudden things, nor casts his mental slough?
Forth from a rugged arch, in the dusk below,
Came mother Cybele! alone-alone-                            640
In sombre chariot; dark foldings thrown
About her majesty, and front death-pale,
With turrets crown'd. Four maned lions hale
The sluggish wheels.; solemn their toothed maws,
Their surly eyes brow-hidden, heavy paws                    645
Uplifted drowsily, and nervy tails
Cowering their tawny brushes. Silent sails
This shadowy queen athwart, and faints away
In another gloomy arch.
Wherefore delay,
Young traveller, in such a mournful place?                  650
633. The draft reads 'dizzy' for 'hurried', and in the next line but one
'Scared' for ' Vex'd '.
636. The words ' damp and' stand cancelled in the finished manuscript before
'foggy '
dismal
639. The draft reads 'From out a - beetling  arch '; and in the finished
I gloomy
manuscript there is the cancelled reading ' dark' for 'dusk'.
642-7. In the original draft, there were seven lines in place of the six of the
text, thusAbout her majesty, and her pale brow
With turrets crown'd, which forward heavily bow
Weighing her chin to the breast. Four lions draw
The wheels in sluggish time-each toothed maw
Shut patiently-eyes hid in tawny veilsDrooping about their paws, and nervy tails
Cowering their tufted brushes to the dust.
These were crossed out; and the passage, revised so as to approach the final text,
was inserted thusAbout her majesty, and front death-pale
With turrets crown'd. Four tawny lions hale
The sluggish wheels; solemn their { closed } maws
Their surly eyes half shut, their heavy paws
Uplifted lazily, and nervy tails
Vailing their tawny tufts.
In the finished manuscript the passage was written precisely as in the printed
text, except that 'sleepily' was written in line 646 and then struck out in favour
of 'drowsily'.
649. 'Into' is here struck out in the finished manuscript, and 'In' substituted.




Book II.


ENDYMION.


129


Art thou wayworn, or canst not further trace
The diamond path? And does it indeed end
Abrupt in middle air? Yet earthward bend
Thy forehead, and to Jupiter cloud-borne
Call ardently! He was indeed wayworn;                      655
Abrupt, in middle air, his way was lost;
To cloud-bome Jove he bowed, and there crost
Towards him a large eagle, 'twixt whose wings,
Without one impious word, himself he flings,
Committed to the darkness and the gloom:                   660
Down, down, uncertain to what pleasant doom,
Swift as a fathoming plummet down he fell
Through unknown things; till exhal'd asphodel,
And rose, with spicy fannings interbreath'd,
Came swelling forth where little caves were wreath'd       665
So thick with leaves and mosses, that they seem'd
Large honey-combs of green, and freshly teem'd
With airs delicious. In the greenest nook
The eagle landed him, and farewell took.
It was a jasmine bower, all bestrown                     670
With golden moss. His every sense had grown
Ethereal for pleasure; 'bove his head
Flew a delight half-graspable; his tread
Was Hesperean; to his capable ears
657. In the original draft the supernatural machinery for this transit was
entirely different, thusTo cloudborne Jove he bent: and there was tost
Into his grasping hands a silken cord
At which without a single impious word
He swung upon it off into the gloom.
Down, down, uncertain to what pleasant doom,
Dropt like a fathoming plummet, down he fell
Through unknown things; till &c.
668-71. The draft carries out the idea of the silken cord as follows:
With airs delicious. Long he hung about
Before his nice enjoyment could pick out
The resting place: but at the last he swung
Into the greenest cell of all-among
Dark leaved jasmine: star flower'd and bestrown
With golden moss.
674. 'Hesperean', I presume, not Hesperean as invariably accented by Milton.
The precise value of 'capable' as used here is of course regulated by past and
not by present custom. In this case it simply stands for receptive, able to
receive, as in 'Hamlet' (Act II, Scene iv)look you how pale he glares,
His forme and cause conjoyn'd, preaching to stones,
Would make them capeable.
I




130


ENDURION.


Book IL


Silence was music from the holy spheres;                   675
A dewy luxury was in his eyes;
The little flowers felt his pleasant sighs
And stirrd them faintly. Verdant cave and cell
He wanderd through, oft wondering at such swell
Of sudden exaltation: but, <" Alas! "                     680
Said he, "will all this gush of feeling pass
Away in solitude?    And must they wane,
Like melodies upon a sandy plain,
Without an echo? Then shall I be left
So sad, so melancholy, so bereft!                          685
Yet still I feel immortal! 0 my love,
My breath of life, where art thou? High above,
Dancing before the morning gates of heaven?
Or keeping watch among those starry seven,
Old Atlas' children?   Art a maid of the waters,           690
One of shell-winding Triton's bright-hair'd daughters?
Or art, impossible! a nymph of Dian's,
Weaving a coronal of tender scions
For very idleness?    Where'er thou art,
Methinks it now is at my will to start                     695
Into thine arms; to scare Aurora's train,
And snatch thee from the morning; o'er the main
To scud like a wild bird, and take thee off
From thy sea-foamy cradle; or to doff
Thy shepherd vest, and woo thee mid fresh leaves.          700
679. In the draftHe wandered through, with still encreasing swell...
681. In the draftSaid he, " will all these gushing feelings pass...
684. The draft reads 'Ah I shall be left..'.
685. Compare the Sonnet 'On a Dream'So play'd, so charm'd, so conquered, so bereft...
687-90. Endymion conjectures whether his unknown love is one of the Hours
or one of the nymph Pleione's daughters by Atlas, transferred to heaven as the
Pleiades. The draft reads 'the starry seven', and 'Art a nymph of the
waters'. The finished manuscript has 'Art a maid o' the waters'.
691-2. According to the draft,
One of shell-winding Triton's floating daughters?
Art thou, impossible! a maid of Dian's,...
697. In the draft the passage originally stood thus:And snatch thee from among them; to attain
The starry hights and find thee ere a breath...
as if the intention had been to refer again to the fourfold conjecture instead of
only three of its aspects.
698. The draft reads ' skim' for 'scud.




Book IL


ENDYMION.


131


No, no, too eagerly my soul deceives
Its powerless self: I know this cannot be.
O let me then by some sweet dreaming flee
To her entrancements: hither sleep awhile!
Hither most gentle sleep! and soothing foil
For some few hours the coming solitude."


705


Thus spake he, and that moment felt endu'd
With power to dream deliciously; so wound
Through a dim passage, searching till he found
The smoothest mossy bed and deepest, where                 710
He threw himself, and just into the air
Stretching his indolent arms, he took, O bliss!
A naked waist: " Fair Cupid, whence is this?"
A well-known voice sigh'd, " Sweetest, here am I!"
At which soft ravishment, with doting cry                  715
They trembled to each other.-Helicon!
O fountain'd hill! Old Homer's Helicon!
That thou wouldst spout a little streamlet o'er
These sorry pages; then the verse would soar
And sing above this gentle pair, like lark                 720
Over his nested young: but all is dark
Around thine aged top, and thy clear fount
Exhales in mists to heaven.    Aye, the count
Of mighty Poets is made up; the scroll. Is folded by the Muses; the bright roll                   725
Is in Apollo's hand: our dazed eyes
Have seen a new tinge in the western skies:
701-2. In the draft,
But ah! too eagerly my soul deceives
Its mortal self: O since this cannot be,...
706. The draft reads With thy quick magic ' for 'For some few hours.
709. In the finished manuscript, 'feeling' stands cancelled in favour of
searching'.
713. The draft reads 'Good heavens!' for ' Fair Cupid'.
715. In the draft this line stood thusAt which each uttering forth  an anguishcry
o   awailful }
he finished manuscript reads as in the text; but the first edition has 'doating'.
719-20. The draft reads 'this verse' and 'the gentle pair', and in the next
ne but one ' green ' for 'top'.
723. In the draft, 'mist ', in the singular.
725-6. The original reading of the draft wasthe great roll
Is in Apollo's hand: our {daoal eyes...
me has reversed in favour both of Keats and of some of his contemporaries this?dict that the sun of poetry set with Shakespeare.




L


132


ENDYNION.


Book I


The world has done its duty. Yet, oh yet,
Although the sun of poesy is set,
These lovers did embrace, and we must weep              730
That there is no old power left to steep
A quill immortal in their joyous tears.
Long time ere silence did their anxious fears
Question that thus it was; long time they lay
Fondling and kissing every doubt away;                  735
Long time ere soft caressing sobs began
To mellow into words, and then there ran
Two bubbling springs of talk from their sweet lips.
" 0 known Unknown! from whom my being sips
Such darling essence, wherefore may I not               740
Be ever in these arms? in this sweet spot
Pillow my chin for ever? ever press
These toying hands and kiss their smooth excess?
Why not for ever and for ever feel
That breath about my eyes? Ah, thou wilt steal          745
Away from me again, indeed, indeedThou wilt be gone away, and wilt not heed
My lonely madness. Speak, delicious fair!
Is-is it to be so? No! Who will dare
To pluck thee from me? And, of thine own will,          750
Full well I feel thou wouldst not leave me. Still
Let me entwine thee surer, surer-now
How can we part? Elysium! who art thou?
Who, that thou canst not be for ever here,
Or lift me with thee to some starry sphere?             755
Enchantress! tell me by this soft embrace,
By the most soft completion of thy face,
Those lips, 0 slippery blisses, twinkling eyes,
735-6. The draft reads ' dreaming' for 'every' and ' few' for 'soft'.
739. Compare, for mere juxtaposition of words, 'Romeo and Juliet,' Act 1
Scene v, line 141 -Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
743. The draft reads 'languid' for 'toying'.
747-8. Woodhouse notes, apparently from the draft, the variation,
And there must be a time when thoul't not heed
My lonely madness-O delicious { faird }.
The finished manuscript and the first edition both read ' my kindest fair!' Bu
the version of the text is from the corrected copy.
749. In the draft,' What will dare', and in the next line but one ' I knowfeel'.
766-7. The draft gives this couplet thus




Enchantress! tell me by this mad embrace,
By the moist languor of thy breathing face...






Book IL


ENDMI0ON.


133


And by these tenderest, milky sovereigntiesThese tenderest, and by the nectar-wine,                   760
The passion"-        " "   dov'd Ida the divine!
Endymion! dearest! Ah, unhappy me!
His soul will 'scape us-O felicity!
How he does love me! His poor temples beat
To the very tune of love-how sweet, sweet, sweet.          765
Revive, dear youth, or I shall faint and die;
Revive, or these soft hours will hurry by
In tranced dulness; speak, and let that spell
Affright this lethargy! I cannot quell
Its heavy pressure, and will press at least                770
My lips to thine, that they may richly feast
Until we taste the life of love again.
What! dost thou move? dost kiss? O bliss! O pain!
I love thee, youth, more than I can conceive;
And so long absence from thee doth bereave                 775
My soul of any rest: yet must I hence:
Yet, can I not to starry eminence
Uplift thee; nor for very shame can own
Myself to thee: Ah, dearest, do not groan
Or thou wilt force me from this secrecy,                   780
And I must blush in heaven. O that I
Had done 't already; that the dreadful smiles
At my lost brightness, my impassion'd wiles,
Had waned from Olympus' solemn height,
And from all serious Gods; that our delight                785
Was quite forgotten, save of us alone!
And wherefore so asham'd? 'Tis but to atone
For endless pleasure, by some coward blushes:
760-1. The draft has this couplet as followsThese tenderest-and by the breath-the love
The passion-nectar-Heaven! " —     Jove above!
The second of these lines originally stood in the finished manuscript thusThe Passion - - - "    Ida the divine!
as if 'passion' were meant to scan as a trisyllable, as in many other cases of
similar words in 'Endymion,'-'ambrosial' for instance in line 810; 'Endymion'
in lines 823 and 855 of this Book; and 'intoxication' in line 502 of Book I;
but Keats has inserted before ' Ida' the word dov'd ', not ' lov'd ' as in the first
edition.
770. The draft reads ' yet ' for ' and ', and in the next line 'gainst' for ' to'.
774. Cancelled reading from the draft, ' Listen to me if Love will let me...'.
782. The contraction 'done't' here is a final and deliberate intention: for
although 'done it' was printed in the first edition-perhaps through Keats
having puzzled the printer by writing in the manuscript 'do n't '-the printed
words are altered to done 't in the corrected copy.
783. There is a cancelled reading in the draft, 'At my dear weakness and'....
785. The draft reads 'Powers for 'Gods' and 'my' for 'our', and in the
next line but one ' But' for ' And'.




13t


ENDYION.


Book IL


Yet must I be a coward!-Horror rushes
Too palpable before me-the sad look                          790
Of Jove-Minerva's start-no bosom shook
With awe of purity-no Cupid pinion
In reverence vailed-my crystalline dominion
Half lost, and all old hymns made nullity!
But what is this to love?   0 I could fly                   795
With thee into the ken of heavenly powers,
So thou wouldst thus, for many sequent hours,
Press me so sweetly. Now I swear at once
That I am wise, that Pallas is a duncePerhaps her love like mine is but unknown-                   800
O I do think that I have been alone
In chastity: yes, Pallas has been sighing,
While every eve saw me my hair uptying
With fingers cool as aspen leaves. Sweet love,
I was as vague as solitary dove,                             805
Nor knew that nests were built. Now a soft kissAye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss,
An immortality of passion's thine:
Ere long I will exalt thee to the shine
Of heaven ambrosial; and we will shade                       810
Ourselves whole summers by a river glade;
And I will tell thee stories of the sky,
And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy.
My happy love will overwing all bounds!
O let me melt into thee; let the sounds                      815
789. In place of 'Horror' the draft reads first 'The thing', then 'The
idea'. In the finished manuscript the original reading was ' the horror'; but
' the' is struck out. In the first edition the word was printed ' Honour ', which
word Keats habitually spelt without the u, so that in his writing ' horror' and
' honor ' are almost if not quite identical. The correction is made in the copy in
my possession; but it is not made in Woodhouse's copy though it appears in the
longer list of errata found in some copies. Woodhouse's has only the singleerratum page.
793. In the first edition (and as far as I know all others) 'veiled', but
' vailed ' in the manuscript, which is obviously right.
796. The draft reads ' starry ' for ' heavenly'.
800. In the draft,
Does Pallas self not love? she must-she must 1
807. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' swear I for ' vow '.
813-14. The draft has these two lines thusAnd breathe thee empyrean minstrelsy.
0 my mad love     I will overwing all bounds
My maddened love j     o
815-29. This passage varies considerably in detail from what was originally
written in the draft:let the sounds
Of both our voices marry at their birth;




Book IL


ENDYMION.


135


Of our close voices marry at their birth;
Let us entwine hoveringly-O dearth
Of human words! roughness of mortal speech!
Lispings empyrean will I sometime teach
Thine honied tongue-lute-breathings, which I gasp        820
To have thee understand, now while I clasp
Thee thus, and weep for fondness-I am pain'd,
Endymion: woe! woe! is grief contain'd
In the very deeps of pleasure, my sole life?"Hereat, with many sobs, her gentle strife                825
Melted into a languor. He return'd
Entranced vows and tears.
Ye who have yearn'd
With too much passion, will here stay and pity,
For the mere sake of truth; as 'tis a ditty
Not of these days, but long ago 'twas told               830
By a cavern wind unto a forest old;
And then the forest told it in a dream
To a sleeping lake, whose cool and level gleam
A poet caught as he was journeying
To Phoebus' shrine; and in it he did fling               835
His weary limbs, bathing an hour's space,
And after, straight in that inspired place
He sang the story up into the air,
Giving it universal freedom.  There       /
Has it been ever sounding for those ears                 810
Let us entwine inextricably-O dearth
Of mortal words! I'll teach thee other speech;
Lispings immortal will I sometime teach
Thine honied tongue-Gold-breathings, which I gasp
To have thee understand, now while I clasp
Thee thus, and shed these dtears -I  am pain'd,
Endymion. There is a grief contain'd
In the very shrine of pleasure, O my life! "
Hereat with fainting sobs her gentle strife
Died into passive languor-he return'd
No answer, saving tears.-Ye who have burn'd
With over passion, here exclaim and pity
Even for the sake of truth;...
It is perhaps worth while to note the correspondence of thought between the
utterance here given to Diana on the subject of the "grief contain'd in the very
deeps of pleasure," and that wonderful line of Keats's in the Homer sonnet of
1818,
There is a budding morrow in midnight.
831. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, 'Cavern's Mouth' for 'cavern
wind '.
833. The draft reads 'slumbering ' for sleeping '




ENDYMION.


Book IL


Whose tips are glowing hot. The legend cheers
Yon centinel stars; and he who listens to it
Must surely be self-doom'd or he will rue it:
For quenchless burnings come upon the heart,
Made fiercer by a fear lest any part                         845
Should be engulphed in the eddying wind.
As much as here is penn'd doth always find
A resting place, thus much comes clear and plain
Anon the strange voice is upon the waneAnd 'tis but echo'd from departing sound,                    850
That the fair visitant at last unwound
Her gentle limbs, and left the youth asleep.Thus the tradition of the gusty deep.
Now turn we to our former chroniclers.
Endymion awoke, that grief of hers                           855
Sweet paining on his ear: he sickly guess'd
How lone he was once more, and sadly press'd
His empty arms together, hung his head,
And most forlorn upon that widow'd bed
Sat silently.  Love's madness he had known:                  860
Often with more than tortured lion's groan
Moanings had burst from him; but now that rage
Had pass'd away: no longer did he wage
A rough-voic'd war against the dooming stars.
No, he had felt too much for such harsh jars:                865
The lyre of his soul AEolian tun'd
841. Compare Milton's 'Lycidas 'But not the praise,
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;...
849-50. The draft readsBut after the strange voice is on the waneAnd 'tis but guess'd from the departing sound,
and in the next line but one ' prison'd ' for ' gentle '. The two lines as written
in the draft make it more absolutely clear than the two lines as printed that the
departure of Diana is divined from the faintly sounding close of the story to
which the poet gave voice. The birth of this tale out-does in imaginative delicacy
the account of the "sleepy music" in this Book (lines 358 to 363), though that
exceeds this in compactness.
856. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' in' for 'on'.
860. The draft reads ' Patiently sat' for Sat silently.
862. In the draft, this line began with the word 'Passion'; and 'Complaints'
and ' Plainings' were in turn struck out of the finished manuscript before the
word of the text, 'Moanings ', was arrived at.
865. The draft gives the lineNo, he{felas }too divine for such harsh jars.
866. In the first edition ' Eolian '. Keats meant to use the diphthong; but in
the manuscript he put the wrong one, 'CEX'




Book IL


ENDYMION.


137


Forgot all violence, and but commun'd
With melancholy thought: O he had swoon'd
Drunken from pleasure's nipple; and his love
Henceforth was dove-like.-Loth was he to move              870
From the imprinted couch, and when he did,
'Twas with slow, languid paces, and face hid
In muffling hands. So temper'd, out he stray'd
Half seeing visions that might have dismay'd
Alecto's serpents; ravishments more keen                   875
Than Hermes' pipe, when anxious he did lean
Over eclipsing eyes: and at the last
It was a sounding grotto, vaulted, vast,
O'er studded with a thousand, thousand pearls,
And crimson mouthed shells with stubborn curls,            880
Of every shape and size, even to the bulk
In which whales harbour close, to brood and sulk
Against an endless storm. Moreover too,
Fish-semblances, of green and azure hue,
Ready to snort their streams.    In this cool wonder       885
Endymion sat down, and 'gan to ponder
On all his life: his youth, up to the day
When 'mid acclaim, and feasts, and garlands gay,
He stept upon his shepherd throne: the look
Of his white palace in wild forest nook,                   890
And all the revels he had lorded there:
Each tender maiden whom he once thought fair,
With every friend and fellow-woodlander868. The draft reads 'With thoughts of tenderest birth '.
870-1. In the draft, thusScarcely could he move
From the dear couch.
873. The draft reads ' In muffling arms', and in the next line 'Scarce seeing
wonders '.
876. The words 'those of' are cancelled in the finished manuscript before
'Herme's ' (not Hermes'). The story of Argus seems to have impressed Keats
vividly: see his sonnet, 'As Hermes once took to his feathers light.' Probably
this vivid impression was derived from Cary's Dante (Purgatory, Canto xxxii),
which he certainly read attentively, and on the fly-leaf of which by the bye, he
wrote that very sonnet. He may also have known the story in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (Book I).
878. The draft reads 'He found' for ' It was'.
879. ' And' is here cancelled in favour of 'O'er' in the finished manuscript.
880. In the draftAnd shells outswelling their faint tinged curls.
881. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, 'hue' for 'shape'.
882. In the finished manuscript and in the first edition 'arbour'; but, although
this might have a very far-fetched sense, I do not think it would be justifiable to
restore the reading.
884 The draft reads 'green and golden hue'.




ENDYMION.


Book IL


Pass'd like a dream before him. Then the spur
Of the old bards to mighty deeds: his plans           895
To nurse the golden age 'mong shepherd clans:
That wondrous night: the great Pan-festival;
His sister's sorrow; and his wanderings all,
Until into the earth's deep maw he rush'd:
Then all its buried magic, till it flush'd            900
High with excessive love. "And now," thought he,
"How long must I remain in jeopardy
Of blank amazements that amaze no more?
Now I have tasted her sweet soul to the core
All other depths are shallow: essences,               905
Once spiritual, are like muddy lees,
Meant but to fertilize my earthly root,
And make my branches lift a golden fruit
Into the bloom of heaven: other light,
Though it be quick and sharp enough to blight         910
The Olympian eagle's vision, is dark,
Dark as the parentage of chaos. Hark!
My silent thoughts are echoing from these shells;
Or they are but the ghosts, the dying swells
Of noises far away?-list " —Hereupon                 915
He kept an anxious ear. The humming tone
Came louder, and behold, there as he lay,
On either side outgush'd, with misty spray,
A copious spring; and both together dash'd
Swift, mad, fantastic round the rocks, and lash'd     920
Among the conchs and shells of the lofty grot,
Leaving a trickling dew. At last they shot
Down from the ceiling's height, pouring a noise
As of some breathless racers whose hopes poize
Upon the last few steps, and with spent force         925
Along the ground they took a winding course.
Endymion follow'd-for it seem'd that one
Ever pursu'd, the other strove to shunFollow'd their languid mazes, till well nigh
895. The draft reads ' minstrelsy ' instead of ' the old bards'.
897. Cancelled readings from the draftThat wondrous night that wean'd him...
That wondrous night: great Pan's high festival.
899. The draft reads 'dim' for 'deep'.
907. The draft reads first 'Made ' and then ' Sent ' for ' Meant', and in the
dext line ' their ripen'd fruit'.
914. This line was written in the draftOr they are subtlest and dying swells.
917. The word still ' is struok out of the finished manuscript after louder.
920. This line ends with 'splash'd' in the draft.




Book IL


ENDY0ION.


139


He had left thinking of the mystery,-                      930
And was now rapt in tender hoverings
Over the vanish'd bliss. Ah! what is it sings
His dream away? What melodies are these?
They sound as through the whispering of trees,
Not native in such barren vaults.    Give ear!             935
" 0 Arethusa, peerless nymph! why fear
Such tenderness as mine? Great Dian, why,
Why didst thou hear her prayer? 0 that I
Were rippling round her dainty fairness now,
Circling about her waist, and striving how                 940
To entice her to a dive! then stealing in
Between her luscious lips and eyelids thin.
O that her shining hair was in the sun,
And I distilling from it thence to run
In amorous fillets down her shrinking form 1               945
To linger on her lilly shoulders, warm
Between her kissing breasts, and every charm
Touch raptur'd!-See how painfully I flow:
Fair maid, be pitiful to my great woe.
Stay, stay thy weary course, and let me lead,              950
A happy wooer, to the flowery mead
Where all that beauty snar'd me."-" Cruel god,
Desist! or my offended mistress' nod
Will stagnate all thy fountains:-teaze me not
With syren words-Ah, have I really got                     955
Such power to madden thee? And is it trueAway, away, or I shall dearly rue
My very thoughts: in mercy then away,
Kindest Alpheus, for should I obey
My own dear will, 'twould be a deadly bane.                960
932. In the draft, this line beFan with 'O'er past and future' The finished
manuscript reads ' is't ' for ' is it
945. The draft readsAmorous and slow adown her shrinking form!
947-9. These three lines stood thus in the draftAbout her {   ting   breasts, and every charm
Kiss, raptur'd, even to her milky toes.
0 foolish maid be gentle to my woes.
952. The draft reads ' slew ' for ' snar'd'.
954. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' waters ' for ' fountains'.
960. In the first edition Arethusa's speech is closed at the end of this line, and
taken up again at 'Alas, I burn', in line 363, the intermediate portion being
separated from it by independent marks of quotation, as if spoken by Alpheus; but
in the manuscript the one speech extends from 'Cruel God' (952) to 'cruel
thing ' (975); and this obviously correct arrangement is restored in the copy revised by Keats.




ENDYMION.


Book IL


0, Oread-Queen! would that thou hadst a pain
Like this of mine, then would I fearless turn
And be a criminal. Alas, I burnm,
I shudder-gentle river, get thee hence.
Alpheus! thou enchanter! every sense                     965
Of mine was once made perfect in these woods.
Fresh breezes, bowery lawns, and innocent floods,
Ripe fruits, and lonely couch, contentment gave;
But ever since I heedlessly did lave
In thy deceitful stream, a panting glow                  970
Grew strong within me: wherefore serve me so,
And call it love? Alas, 'twas cruelty.
Not once more did I close my happy eye
Amid the thrushes' song. Away! Avaunt!
O 'twas a cruel thing."-" Now thou dost taunt            975
So softly, Arethusa, that I think
If thou wast playing on my shady brink,
Thou wouldst bathe once again. Innocent maid!
Stifle thine heart no more; nor be afraid
Of angry powers: there are deities                       980
Will shade us with their wings. Those fitful sighs
'Tis almost death to hear: 0 let me pour
A dewy balm upon them!-fear no more,
Sweet Arethusa! Dian's self must feel
Sometime these very pangs. Dear maiden, steal            985
Blushing into my soul, and let us fly
These dreary caverns for the open sky.
I will delight thee all my winding course,
From the green sea up to my hidden source
About Arcadian forests; and will show                    990
964. The draft readsI shudder-for sweet mercy get thee hence.
966-9. The draft reads ' happy' for ' perfect', 'shady' for ' bowery, 'leafy'
for ' lonely', and ' gan' for ' did '.
973. This line ends with 'eyes' both in the finished manuscript and in the first
edition; but it is certain that ' eye' was the expression in the poet's mind, for in
the draft the line stood thusNo longer could I close my { seariess } eye.
974. In the finished manuscript, not' thrush's' but 'Thrushes', without any
apostrophe. As Woodhouse records that the draft read 'thrushes'', it seems safe
to adopt that form.
977. In the draft ' by' in place of ' on'.
986. In the manuscript, ' Somle time', without the final s as in the first
edition. I think the insertion of the s must have been overlooked by Keats.
990. The draft readsAbout Arcadia's Plains; and I will show




Book IL


ENDYMION.


141


The channels where my coolest waters flow
Through mossy rocks; where, 'mid exuberant green,
I roam in pleasant darkness, more unseen
Than Saturn in his exile; where I brim
Round flowery islands, and take thence a skim           995
Of mealy sweets, which myriads of bees
Buzz from their honey'd wings: and thou shouldst please
Thyself to choose the richest, where we might
Be incense-pillow'd every summer night.
Doff all sad fears, thou white deliciousness,          1000
And let us be thus comforted; unless
Thou couldst rejoice to see my hopeless stream
Hurry distracted from Sol's temperate beam,
And pour to death along some hungry sands.""What can I do, Alpheus? Dian stands                  1005
Severe before me: persecuting fate!
Unhappy Arethusa! thou wast late
A huntress free in "-At this, sudden fell
Those two sad streams adown a fearful dell.
The Latmiian listen'd, but he heard no more,           1010
Save echo, faint repeating o'er and o'er
The name of Arethusa.    On the verge
Of that dark gulph he wept, and said: " I urge
Thee, gentle Goddess of my pilgrimage,
By our eternal hopes, to soothe, to assuage,           1015
If thou art powerful, these lovers' pains;
And make them happy in some happy plains."
He turn'd-there was a whelming sound-he stept,
There was a cooler light; and so he kept
Towards it by a sandy path, and lo!                    1020
More suddenly than doth a moment go,
The visions of the earth were gone and fledHe saw the giant sea above his head.
and the finished manuscript,
About Arcadian Forests; and I will shew...
Probably Keats meant to cancel 'I'; and it does not appear in his printed edition.
996. The draft reads 'powdery' for mealy'.
997. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' Shake ' for Buzz.
998. In the draft, choose the freshest'.
1004. The draft reads ' along hot Afric's sands ', and in the next line but one
'cruel, cruel fate!'.
1016. 'Lovers' in the manuscript and in the first edition, without the apostrophe; and the speech is not closed with a mark of quotation in either.
1017. The draft reads ' their native plains'.
1020. Cancelled reading of the finished manuscript, 'scanty' for 'sandy ',




ENDYMION.
BOOK III.
THERE are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
From human pastures; or, 0 torturing fact!                5
Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd
Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe
Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes.   With not one tinge
Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight
Able to face an owl's, they still are dight               10
By the blear-ey'd nations in empurpled vests,
And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts,
Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount
To their spirit's perch, their being's high account,
Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones-   15
Amid the fierce intoxicating tones
Of trumpets, shoutings, and belabour'd drums,
And sudden cannon. Ah! how all this hums,
In wakeful ears, like uproar past and goneLike thunder clouds that spake to Babylon,                20
And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks.I Are then regalities all gilded masks?
i No, there are throned seats unscalable
(But by a patient wing, a constant spell,
i Or by ethereal things that, unconfin'd,                  25
i Can make a ladder of the eternal wind,
1. Woodhonse notes that " Keats said, with much simplicity, 'It will be easily
seen what I think of the present ministers, by the beginning of the third Book.''
Perhaps the Quarterly Reviewer had heard of that simple saying.
5. The draft reads '0 devilish fact!'-and in the next line 'with' for
'through'.
19. The draft has 'almost' in place of ' past and'.
21-3. The following rejected reading is from the draft:
And set these old Chaldeans to their work.Are then all regal things so gone, so murk?
No there are other thrones to mount.
1{2




Book III


ENDYMION.


143


And poize about in cloudy thunder-tents
To watch the abysm-birth of elements.
Aye, 'bove the withering of old-lipp'd Fate
A thousand Powers keep religious state,                     30
In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne;
And, silent as a consecrated urn,
Hold spherey sessions for a season due.
Yet few of these far majesties, ah, few!
Have bar'd their operations to this globe-                  35
Few, who with gorgeous pageantry enrobe
Our piece of heaven-whose benevolence
Shakes hand with our own Ceres; every sense
Filling with spiritual sweets to plenitude,
As bees gorge full their cells.  And, by the feud           40
'Twixt Nothing and Creation, I here swear,
Eterne Apollo! that thy Sister fair
Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest.
When thy gold breath is misting in the west,
She unobserved steals unto her throne,                      45
And there she sits most meek and most alone;
As if she had not pomp subservient;
As if thine eye, high Poet! was not bent
Towards her with the Muses in thine heart;
As if the ministring stars kept not apart,                  50
Waiting for silver-footed messages.
31-2, The draft yields the rejected coupletIn the several vastnesses of air and fire;
And silent, as a corpse upon a pyre.
34 The draft reads
How few of these far majesties, how few!
38-9. These two lines stood thus in the draftSalutes our native Ceres-  and each sense
{  every s
With spiritual honey fills to plenitude...
41. At the end of this line Keats wrote in the original draft, as if to localize
the oath he was recording, "Oxford, Septr. 5."
42. The word 'eterne' seems to be another reminiscence of Spenser: see
'Faerie Queene,' Book IE, Canto vi, Stanza 47:
Yet is eterne in mutabilitie,...
44. The draft readsWhen thy gold hair falls thick about the west.
49. The draft has 'Upon' in place of 'Towards '.
50. This attribution of an active life of ministration to the stars is a recurrence
of the idea in Book II, lines 184-5 -by all the stars
That tend thy bidding...




ENDYMION.


Book m.


O Moon! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees
Feel palpitations when thou lookest in:
O Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din
The while they feel thine airy fellowship.                     55
Thou dost bless every where, with silver lip
Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine,
Couch'd in thy brightness, dream of fields divine:
Innumerable mountains rise, and rise,
Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes;                     60
And yet thy benediction passeth not
One obscure hiding-place, one little spot
Where pleasure may be sent: the nested wren
Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken,
And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf                         65
Takes glimpses of thee; thou art a relief
To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps
Within its pearly house.-The mighty deeps,
The monstrous sea is thine-the myriad sea!
O Moon! far-spooming Ocean bows to thee,                       70
And Tellus feels his forehead's cumbrous load.
Cynthia! where art thou now?        What far abode
Of green or silvery bower doth enshrine
52. In the draft,
Waiting the oldest shadows { mong old trees.
56-7. The draft readsThou dost bless all things-even dead things sip
A midnight life from thee.
63. In the draft, 'wrought' for 'sent'; and in the next line there is the
cancelled reading, ' Quiet behind dark ivy leaves'...
69. The draft readsThe monstrous sea is thine-the monstrous sea!
70. In the draft 'old' occurs in place of 'far'.  The word 'spooming' for
spumrng, though not ordinarily found in dictionaries, was quite in Keats's line of
reading. Thus Beaumont and Fletcher in 'The Double Marriage' (Act II,
Scene i) have
Down with the foresail too, we'll spoom before her.
Dryden, in 'The Hind and the Panther,' has
When virtue spooms before a prosperous gale
My heaving wishes help to fill the sail.
And Brooke, in ' Constantia,' has
The wind fresh blowing from the Syrian shore
Swift through the floods her spooming vessel bore.
71. In the manuscript and in the corrected copy, ' his '; but ' her ' was printed
in the first edition, and corrected as an erratum,-the only one in some copies.
The mistake arose through a pencilled marginal suggestion made in the printer's
copy, not in Keats's writing.




Book ImL


ENDYMION.


145


Such utmost beauty? Alas, thou dost pine
For one as sorrowful: thy cheek is pale                 75
For one whose cheek is pale: thou dost bewail
His tears, who weeps for thee. Where dost thou sigh?
Ah! surely that light peeps from Vesper's eye,
Or what a thing is love! 'Tis She, but lo!
How chang'd, how full of ache, how gone in woe!       80
jShe dies at the thinnest cloud; her loveliness
Is wan on Neptune's blue: yet there's a stress
Of love-spangles, just off yon cape of trees,
Dancing upon the waves, as if to please
The curly foam with amorous influence.                 85
0, not so idle: for down-glancing thence
She fathoms eddies, and runs wild about
O'erwhelming water-courses; scaring out
The thorny sharks from hiding-holes, and fright'ning
Their savage eyes with unaccustom'd lightning.         90
Where will the splendour be content to reach?
O love! how potent hast thou been to teach
Strange journeyings! Wherever beauty dwells,
In gulph or aerie, mountains or deep dells,
In light, in gloom, in star or blazing sun,            95
Thou pointest out the way, and straight 'tis won.
Amid his toil thou gav'st Leander breath;
Thou leddest Orpheus through the gleams of death;
Thou madest Pluto bear thin element;
And now, 0 winged Chieftain! thou hast sent            100
A moon-beam to the deep, deep water-world,
To find Endymion.
74. Cancelled reading of the draft, 'Thine ' for ' Such'.
77-8. In the draft there was a false rhyme here, seen and remedied in copying
out:
Where art thou Ah
Surely that light is from the Evening star...
86-7. The draft shows more than one tentative for this passage, thus:
Nor stheays it  the idleness-but glancing thence...
fthere sleeps
Nor cradled idly-but down glancing thence...
Yet not so idle-for down glancing thence
It mingles and starts about unfathomed...
89-90. In the draft this couplet readsEnormous sharks from hiding-holes, and fright'ning
The whale's large eyes with unaccustomed lightning.
94-5. The draft reads thusIn air, or living flame-or magic shells,
In earth, or mist, in star or blazing sun,...
K




ENDYMION.


Book.I,


On gold sand impearl'd
With lilly shells, and pebbles milky white,
Poor Cynthia greeted him, and sooth'd her light
Against his pallid face: he felt the charm      105
To breathlessness, and suddenly a warm
Of his heart's blood: 'twas very sweet; he stay'd
His wandering steps, and half-entranced laid
His head upon a tuft of straggling weeds,
To taste the gentle moon, and freshening *beads,  110
Lash'd from the crystal roof by fishes' tails.
And so he kept, until the rosy veils
Mantling the east, by Aurora's peering hand
Were lifted from the water's breast, and fann'd
Into sweet air; and sober'd morning came         115
Meekly through billows:-when like taper-flame
Left sudden by a dallying breath of air,
He rose in silence, and once more 'gan fare
Along his fated way.
Far had he roam'd,
With nothing save the hollow vast, that foam'd,  120
Above, around, and at his feet; save things
More dead than Morpheus' imaginings:
Old rusted anchors, helmets, breast-plates large
Of gone sea-warriors; brazen beaks and targe;
Rudders that for a hundred years had lost       125
The sway of human hand; gold vase emboss'd
With long-forgotten story, and wherein
No reveller had ever dipp'd a chin
But those of Saturn's vintage; mouldering scrolls,
Writ in the tongue of heaven, by those souls    130
Who first were on the earth; and sculptures rude
In ponderous stone, developing the mood
Of ancient Nox;-then skeletons of man,
Of beast, behemoth, and leviathan,
And elephant, and eagle, and huge jaw           135
Of nameless monster. A cold leaden awe
These secrets struck into him; and unless
Dian had chac'd away that heaviness,
He might have di'd: but now, with cheered feel,
He onward kept; wooing these thoughts to steal  140
About the labyrinth in his soul of love.
"What is there in thee, Moon! that thou shouldst move
My heart so potently? When yet a child
128. In the draft, ' revellers ' for ' reveller '.
140. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' went ' for ' kept '.




Book DI.


ENDYMION.


117


I oft have dry'd my tears when thou hast smil'd.
Thou seem'dst my sister: hand in hand we went              145
From eve to morn across the firmament.
No apples would I gather from the tree,
Till thou hadst cool'd their cheeks deliciously:
No tumbling water ever spake romance,
But when my eyes with thine thereon could dance:           150
No woods were green enough, no bower divine,
Until thou liftedst up thine eyelids fine:
In sowing time ne'er would I dibble take,
Or drop a seed, till thou wast wide awake;
And, in the summer tide of blossoming,                     155
No one but thee hath heard me blythly sing
And mesh my dewy flowers all the night.
No melody was like a passing spright
If it went not to solemnize thy reign.
Yes, in my boyhood, every joy and pain                     160
By thee were fashion'd to the self-same end;
And as I grew in years, still didst thou blend
With all my ardours: thou wast the deep glen;
Thou wast the mountain-top-the sage's penThe poet's harp-the voice of friends-the sun;              165
Thou wast the river-thou wast glory won;
Thou wast my clarion's blast -thou wast my steedMy goblet full of wine-my topmost deed:Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon!
O what a wild and harmonized tune                          170
My spirit struck from all the beautiful
On some bright essence could I lean, and lull
Myself to immortality: I prest
Nature's soft pillow in a wakeful rest.
But, gentle Orb! there came a nearer bliss-               175
My strange love came-Felicity's abyss!
She came, and thou didst fade, and fade awayYet not entirely; no, thy starry sway
Has been an under-passion to this hour.
160. The draft reads 'soul' in place of 'eyes'.
156. This line affords a curious instance of waywardness in the matter of
spelling: the last word but one is 'blithly' in the first edition, 'blythly' in the
finished manuscript, and, fide Woodhouse, 'blithely' in the draft. In Book I,
line 939, the cognate adjective is spelt with a y, both in the manuscript and in
the first edition; so that it is to be presumed that Keats really preferred this
orthography, which is that adopted in 'Piers Plowman.'
169. The draft yields the readings 'flew' and 'sought' in place of ' went'.
168. Instead of' topmost' the draft has 'highest'.
170. In the draft, 'harmonizing', and in the next line the alternative readings ' sung' and ' made' for ' struck'.
176. The draft reads ' dear pleasure's own abyss ' for Felicity's abyss '.




148                          DYMION.                    Book Hm
Now I begin to feel thine orby power                    180
Is coming fresh upon me: 0 be kind,
Keep back thine influence, and do not blind
My sovereign vision.-Dearest love, forgive
That I can think away from thee and live!
Pardon me, airy planet, that I prize                    185
One thought beyond thine argent luxuries!
How far beyond!" At this a surpris'd start
Frosted the springing verdure of his heart;
For as he lifted up his eyes to swear
How his own goddess was past all things fair,           190
He saw far in the concave green of the sea
An old man sitting calm and peacefully.
Upon a weeded rock this old man sat,
And his white hair was awful, and a mat
Of weeds were cold beneath his cold thin feet;          195
And, ample as the largest winding-sheet,
A cloak of blue wrapp'd up his aged bones,
O'erwrought with symbols by the deepest groans
Of ambitious magic: every ocean-form
Was woven in with black distinctness; storm,            200
And calm, and whispering, and hideous roar,
Quicksand, and whirlpool, and deserted shore,
Were emblem'd in the woof; with every shape
That skims, or dives, or sleeps, 'twixt cape and cape.
The gulphing whale was like a dot in the spell,         205
Yet look upon it, and 'twould size and swell
To its huge self; and the minutest fish
Would pass the very hardest gazer's wish,
And show his little eye's anatomy.
Then there was pictur'd the regality                    210
Of Neptune; and the sea nymphs round his state,
In beauteous vassalage, look up and wait.
Beside this old man lay a pearly wand,
And in his lap a book, the which he conn'd
180. The draft reads ' orbed ' for ' orby '.
183. In the draft, instead of 'My sovereign vision ', we read 'The vision of
my Love'.
188. In the draft thusBlighted the     flowing ri
Stemm'd quick the flow g river of his heart.
201. This line stands rhymeless in the finished manuscript, as in the printed
text of the first edition; but in the original draft occurs the fellow line now
restored to the text. Its omission was clearly an error of transcription, which
poet, publisher, and printer alike failed to discover.
206. In the draftYet look upon it long, 'twould grow and swell...




Book ID


EBi)YRION.


So stedfastly, that the new denizen                  215
Had time to keep him in amazed ken,
To mark these shadowings, and stand in awe.
The old man rais'd his hoary head and saw
The wilder'd stranger-seeming not to see,
His features were so lifeless. Suddenly              220
He woke as from a trance; his snow-white brows
Went arching up, and like two magic ploughs
Furrow'd deep wrinkles in his forehead large,
Which kept as fixedly as rocky marge,
Till round his wither'd lips had gone a smile.       225
Then up he rose, like one whose tedious toil
Had watch'd for years in forlorn hermitage,
Who had not from mid-life to utmost age
Eas'd in one accent his o'er-burden'd soul,
Even to the trees. He rose: he grasp'd his stole,    230
With convuls'd clenches waving it abroad,
And in a voice of solemn joy, that aw'd
Echo into oblivion, he said:" Thou art the man! Now shall I lay my head
In peace upon my watery pillow: now                 235
Sleep will come smoothly to my weary brow.
0 Jove! I shall be young again, be young!
O shell-borne Neptune, I am pierc'd and stung
With new-born life! What shall I do? Where go,
When I have cast this serpent-skin of woe?-         240
I'll swim to the syrens, and one moment listen
Their melodies, and see their long hair glisten
Anon upon that giant's arm I'll be,
That writhes about the roots of Sicily:
To northern seas I'll in a twinkling sail,           245
And mount upon the snortings of a whale
To some black cloud; thence down I'll madly sweep
On forked lightning, to the deepest deep,
Where through some sucking pool I will be hurl'd
With rapture to the other side of the world!         250
0, I am full of gladness! Sisters three,
I bow full hearted to your old decree!
Yes, every god be thank'd, and power benign,
226. The draft reads 'studious' for ' tedious.
230. In the finished manuscript, 'Not even',-Not being however crossed
through with a pencil.
240. Cancelled manuscript reading, ' Now' for ' When'.
244. It is not clear whether the reference is to Briareus or to Enceladns, since
both were supposed to have been imprisoned under Mount Etna.




ENDYMION,


Book ILL


For I no more shall wither, droop, and pine.
Thou art the man!" Endymion started back          255
Dismay'd; and, like a wretch from whom the rack
Tortures hot breath, and speech of agony,
Mutter'd: "What lonely death am I to die
In this cold region? Will he let me freeze,
And float my brittle limbs o'er polar seas?        260
Or will he touch me with his searing hand,
And leave a black memorial on the sand?
Or tear me piece-meal with a bony saw,
And keep me as a chosen food to draw
His magian fish through hated fire and flame?      265
O misery of hell! resistless, tame,
Am I to be burnt up? No, I will shout,
Until the gods through heaven's blue look out!O Tartarus! but some few days agone
Her soft arms were entwining me, and on            270
Her voice I hung like fruit among green leaves:
Her lips were all my own, and-ah, ripe sheaves
Of happiness! ye on the stubble droop,
But never may be garner'd. I must stoop
My head, and kiss death's foot. Love! love, farewell! 275
Is there no hope from thee? This horrid spell
Would melt at thy sweet breath.-By Dian's hind
Feeding from her white fingers, on the wind
I see thy streaming hair! and now, by Pan,
I care not for this old mysterious man!"          280
He spake, and walking to that aged form,
Look'd high defiance. Lo! his heart 'gan warm
With pity, for the grey-hair'd creature wept.
Had he then wrong'd a heart where sorrow kept?
Had he, though blindly contumelious, brought       285
Rheum to kind eyes, a sting to humane thought,
Convulsion to a mouth of many years?
He had in truth; and he was ripe for tears.
The penitent shower fell, as down he knelt
Before that care-worn sage, who trembling felt     290
About his large dark locks, and faultering spake:
"'Arise, good youth, for sacred Phcebus' sake!
I know thine inmost bosom, and I feel
266. In the draft, ' Oh hell' for 'of hell'.
269. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, 'hours' for 'days', and in the next
line but one, ' lips ' for 'voice '.
286. In the finished manuscript, 'humane': in the first edition 'human',
which must surely be an error undiscovered by Keats.
291. The draft reads, haltingly, 'The youths ' in place of 'About his'.




Book EI.


ENDYMION.


A very brother's yearning for thee steal
Into mine own: for why? thou openest              295
The prison gates that have so long opprest
My weary watching. Though thou know'st it not,
Thou art commission'd to this fated spot
For great enfranchisement. O weep no more;
I am a friend to love, to loves of yore:          300
Aye, hadst thou never lov'd an unknown power,
I had been grieving at this joyous hour.
But even now most miserable old,
I saw thee, and my blood no longer cold
Gave mighty pulses: in this tottering case        305
Grew a new heart, which at this moment plays
As dancingly as thine. Be not afraid,
For thou shalt hear this secret all display'd,
Now as we speed towards our joyous task."
So saying, this young soul in age's mask        310
Went forward with the Carian side by side:
Resuming quickly thus; while ocean's tide
Hung swollen at their backs, and jewel'd sands
Took silently their foot-prints.
" My soul stands
Now past the midway from mortality,               315
And so I can prepare without a sigh
To tell thee briefly all my joy and pain.
I was a fisher once, upon this main,
And my boat danc'd in every creek and bay;
Rough billows were my home by night and day,-     320
The sea-gulls not more constant; for I had
No housing from the storm and tempests mad,
But hollow rocks,-and they were palaces
Of silent happiness, of slumberous ease:
Long years of misery have told me so.             325
Aye, thus it was one thousand years ago.
One thousand years!-Is it then possible
To look so plainly through them? to dispel
A thousand years with backward glance sublime?
To breathe away as 'twere all scummy slime        330
From off a crystal pool, to see its deep,
And one's own image from the bottom peep?
294. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, 'father's' for 'brother's'.
307. The draft reads 'As youthfully as thine'.
309. In the draft, 'The while we speed...'.
329. For this line the draft hasAt one glance back the mistiness of time?




ENDYMION.


Book mrL


Yes: now I am no longer wretched thrall,
My long captivity and meanings all
Are but a slime, a thin-pervading scum,                  335
The which I breathe away, and thronging come
Like things of yesterday my youthful pleasures.
"I touch'd no lute, I sang not, trod no measures:
I was a lonely youth on desert shores.
My sports were lonely, 'mid continuous roars,            340
And craggy isles, and sea-mew's plaintive cry
Plaining discrepant between sea and sky.
Dolphins were still my playmates; shapes unseen
Would let me feel their scales of gold and green,
Nor be my desolation; and, full oft,                     345
When a dread waterspout had rear'd aloft
Its hungry hugeness, seeming ready ripe
To burst with hoarsest thunderings, and wipe
My life away like a vast sponge of fate,
Some friendly monster, pitying my sad state,             350
Has div'd to its foundations, gulph'd it down,
And left me tossing safely. But the crown
Of all my life was utmost quietude:
More did I love to lie in cavern rude,
Keeping in wait whole days for Neptune's voice,          355
And if it came at last, hark, and rejoice!
There blush'd no summer eve but I would steer
My skiff along green shelving coasts, to hear
The shepherd's pipe come clear from aery steep,
Mingled with ceaseless bleatings of his sheep:           360
And never was a day of summer shine,
But I beheld its birth upon the brine:
For I would watch all night to see unfold
Heaven's gates, and AELthon snort his morning gold
Wide o'er the swelling streams: and constantly           365
At brim of day-tide, on some grassy lea,
My nets would be spread out, and I at rest.
337. The draft reads 'my first youth's pleasures '.
342. The draft reads "twixt the sea and sky '; and the finished manuscript
reads ' atween' for ' between '.
353. In the finished manuscript, 'tip-top ' instead of ' utmost'.
358. In the finished manuscript, 'coast ', not 'coasts '.
364. See Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' Book II (Sandys's Translation):
Meane while the Sunnes swift Horses, hot Pyroius,
Light ~~thon, fiery Phlegon, bright Eois,
Neighing alowd, inflame the Ayre with heat;
And, with their thundering hooves, the barriers beate.
367. 0anoelled manuscript reading ' outspread' for ' spread out'.




Book mIL


ENDYNION.


The poor folk of the sea-country I blest
With daily boon of fish most delicate:
They knew not whence this bounty, and elate          370
Would strew sweet flowers on a sterile beach.
"Why was I not contented? Wherefore reach
At things which, but for thee, 0 Latmian!
Had been my dreary death? Fool! I began
To feel distemperd longings: to desire               375
The utmost privilege tat ocean's sire
Could grant in benediction: to be free
Of all his kingdom. Long in misery
I wasted, ere in one extremest fit
I plung'd for life or death. To interknit            380
One's senses with so dense a breathing stuff
Might seem a work of pain; so not enough
Can I admire how crystal-smooth it felt,
And buoyant round my limbs. At first I dwelt
Whole days and days in sheer astonishment;           385
Forgetful utterly of self-intent;
Moving but with the mighty ebb and flow.
Then, like a new fledg'd bird that first doth show
His spreaded feathers to the morrow chill,
I try'd in fear the pinions of my will.              390
'Twas freedom! and at once I visited
The ceaseless wonders of this ocean-bed.
No need to tell thee of them, for I see
That thou hast been a witness-it must beFor these I know thou canst not feel a drouth,       395
By the melancholy corners of that mouth.
So I will in my story straightway pass
To more immediate matter. Woe, alas!
That love should be my bane! Ah, Scylla fair '
Why did poor Glaucus ever-ever dare                  400
To sue thee to his heart? Kind stranger-youth!
I lov'd her to the very white of truth,
And she would not conceive it. Timid thing!
She fled me swift as sea-bird on the wing,
Round every isle, and point, and promontory,         405
377. In the finished manuscript the word ' become' stands cancelled between
'to' and 'be'.
395. The draft gives this line thusFor such a drink thou canst not feel a drouth,...
The thought of the melancholy expression of the mouth of one who has seen
"ceaseless wonders " is probably allusive to the portrait of Dante, foremost of all
beholders of " ceaseless wonders."




ENDYMION.


Book Ill


From where large Hercules wound up his story
Far as Egyptian Nile. My passion grew
The more, the more I saw her dainty hue
Gleam delicately through the azure clear:
Until 'twas too fierce agony to bear;                        410
And in that agony, across my grief
It flash'd, that Circe might find some reliefCruel enchantress! So above the water
I rear'd my head, and look'd for Phoebus' daughter.
IEaea's isle was wondering at the moon:-                     415
It seem'd to whirl around me, and a swoon
Left me dead-drifting to that fatal power.
"When I awoke, 'twas in a twilight bower;
Just when the light of morn, with hum of bees,
Stole through its verdurous matting of fresh trees.          420
How sweet, and sweeter! for I heard a lyre,
And over it a sighing voice expire.
It ceas'd-I caught light footsteps; and anon
The fairest face that morn e'er look'd upon
Push'd through a screen of roses.     Starry Jove!           425
With tears, and smiles, and honey-words she wove
A net whose thraldom was more bliss than all
The range of flower'd Elysium. Thus did fall
The dew of her rich speech: " Ah! Art awake?
"0 let me hear thee speak, for Cupid's sake!                 430
"I am so oppress'd with joy! Why, I have shed
"An urn of tears, as though thou wert cold dead;
"And now I find thee living, I will pour
"From these devoted eyes their silver store,
"Until exhausted of the latest drop,                         135
"So it will pleasure thee, and force thee stop
406. Whether the reference is to the Pillars of Hercules, the confluence of the
Mediterranean and Atlantic, or to the scene of the Death of Hercules, is not very
clear; but probably 'wound up his story' refers rather to his last labour than
to his death on Mount (Eta.
412. In the draft, 'might afford relief'.
415. The draft reads 'looking' for 'wondering'.
417. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' towards ' for ' to'.
419. The draft reads ' What time' for ' Just when '
421-2. Cancelled reading of the manuscriptHow sweet to me! and then I heard a Lyre
With which a sighing voice.
425. The draft reads ' Mighty ' for ' Starry '.
429. The inverted commas before each line of this speech, to mark it as one
speech within another, are in the manuscript, but not in the first edition, though
*carefully inserted in the corrected copy in my possession.
432. The draft reads 'as if' for 'as though'.
436. In the draft, 'would' in place of ' will '




Book lE.


ENDYMION.


165


"Here, that I too may live: but if beyond
"Such cool and sorrowful offerings, thou are fond
"Of soothing warmth, of dalliance supreme;
"If thou art ripe to taste a long love dream;           440
"If smiles, if dimples, tongues for ardour mute,
"Hang in thy vision like a tempting fruit,
"0 let me pluck it for thee." Thus she link'd
Her charming syllables, till indistinct
Their music came to my o'er-sweeten'd soul;              445
And then she hovered over me, and stole
So near, that if no nearer it had been
This furrow'd visage thou hadst never seen.
"Young man of Latmos! thus particular
Am I, that thou may'st plainly see how far              450
This fierce temptation went: and thou may'st not
Exclaim, How then, was Scylla quite forgot?
"Who could resist? Who in this universe?
She did so breathe ambrosia; so immerse
My fine existence in a golden clime.                    455
She took me like a child of suckling time,
And cradled me in roses. Thus condemn'd,
The current of my former life was stemm'd,
And to this arbitrary queen of sense
I bow'd a tranced vassal: nor would thence              460
Have mov'd, even though Amphion's harp had woo'd
Me back to Scylla o'er the billows rude.
For as Apollo each eve doth devise
A new appareling for western skies;
So every eve, nay every spendthrift hour                465
Shed balmy consciousness within that bower.
And I was free of haunts umbrageous;
Could wander in the mazy forest-house
Of squirrels, foxes shy, and antler'd deer,
And birds from coverts innermost and drear              470
441. In the draft, ' rapture ' for ' ardour'.
445-7. The draft reads thusTheir music came to my o'ersweeten'd sense
And then I felt a hovering influence
A breathing on my forehead.
449. The first edition reads ' Latmos' here as well as in lines 63 and 196 of Book I;
but the finished manuscript reads ' Latmus ' here, as at page 12 of the present volume.
451. The draft reads ' that' for 'and; and the word ' and' is wanting in the
finished manuscript, so that the line is a syllable short.
461. In the manuscript, ' e'en ' for ' even'.
466. The draft readsShed nectarous Influence within that bower.




156


ENTDYMION.


Book IIm


Warbling for very joy mellifluous sorrowTo me new born delights!
" Now let me borrow,
For moments few, a temperament as stern
As Pluto's sceptre, that my words not burn
These uttering lips, while I in calm speech tell      475
How specious heaven was changed to real hell.
" One morn she left me sleeping: half awake
I sought for her smooth arms and lips, to slake
My greedy thirst with nectarous camel-draughts;
But she was gone. Whereat the barbed shafts           480
Of disappointment stuck in me so sore,
That out I ran and search'd the forest o'er.
Wandering about in pine and cedar gloom
Damp awe assail'd me; for there 'gan to boom
A sound of moan, an agony of sound,                   485
Sepulchral from the distance all around.
Then came a conquering earth-thunder, and rumbled
That fierce complain to silence: while I stumbled
Down a precipitous path, as if impell'd.
I came to a dark valley.-Groanings swell'd            490
Poisonous about my ears, and louder grew,
The nearer I approach'd a flame's gaunt blue,
That glar'd before me through a thorny brake.
This fire, like the eye of gordian snake,
Bewitch'd me towards; and I soon was near             495
A sight too fearful for the feel of fear:
In thicket hid I curs'd the haggard sceneThe banquet of my arms, my arbour queen,
Seated upon an uptorn forest root;
And all around her shapes, wizard and brute,          500
Laughing, and wailing, groveling, serpenting,
Showing tooth, tusk, and venom-bag, and sting!
O such deformities! Old Charon's self,
Should he give up awhile his penny pelf,
And take a dream 'mong rushes Stygian,                505
It could not be so phantasy'd. Fierce, wan,
And tyrannizing was the lady's look,
477. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, 'day' for 'morn'.
483. The contraction 'Wand'ring' occurs here in the finished manuscript.
495. In the draft, Drew me towards it', showing that 'towards ' was used
as a dissyllable; so that I fear 'it' was advisedly cancelled in revising the line.
498. Woodhouse notes, presumably from the draft, the variationMy beautiful rose bud, my arbour Queen,
and in the next line but one ' about ' for 'around'.




Book IIL


ENDYMION,


157


As over them a gnarled staff she shook.
Oft-times upon the sudden she laugh'd out,
And from a basket empty'd to the rout                   510
Clusters of grapes, the which they raven'd quick
And roar'd for more; with many a hungry lick
About their shaggy jaws. Avenging, slow,
Anon she took a branch of mistletoe,
And emptyd on't a black dull-gurgling phial:            515
Groan'd one and all, as if some piercing trial
Was sharpening for their pitiable bones.
She lifted up the charm: appealing groans
From their poor breasts went sueing to her ear
In vain; remorseless as an infant's bier               520
She whisk'd against their eyes the sooty oil.
Whereat was heard a noise of painful toil,
Increasing gradual to a tempest rage,
Shrieks, yells, and groans of torture-pilgrimage;
Until their grieved bodies 'gan to bloat                525
And puff from the tail's end to stifled throat:
Then was appalling silence: then a sight
More wildering than all that hoarse affright;
For the whole herd, as by a whirlwind writhen,
Went through the dismal air like one huge Python        530
Antagonizing Boreas,-and so vanish'd.
Yet there was not a breath of wind: she banish'd
These phantoms with a nod.    Lo! from the dark
Came waggish fauns, and nymphs, and satyrs stark,
With dancing and loud revelry,-and went                 535
Swifter than centaurs after rapine bent.Sighing an elephant appear'd and bow'd
Before the fierce witch, speaking thus aloud
In human accent: "Potent goddess! chief
" Of pains resistless! make my being brief,            540
"Or let me from this heavy prison fly:
" Or give me to the air, or let me die!
"I sue not for my happy crown again;
"I sue not for my phalanx on the plain;
537. The draft reads 'For a large Elephant '; and in the finished manuscript
the line begins with 'Seeing', instead of ' Sighing ' as in the printed book.
539, In the draft this line stands thusWith human voice: O potent goddess! chief..
The inverted commas before each line to mark this speech within speech are in
the finished manuscript as in the case of Circe's speech (line 429); but in this
instance Keats does not seem to have noticed, when correcting the printed book,
that the manuscript had been departed from here also.
640. The draft gives 'spells' and 'charms' as alternative readings for
'pains'.




158                        ENDYMION.                    Book mI.
" I sue not for my lone, my widow'd wife;                545
"I sue not for my ruddy drops of life,
" My children fair, my lovely girls and boys!
" I will forget them; I will pass these joys;
"Ask nought so heavenward, so too-too high:
"Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die,                   560
"Or be deliver'd from this cumbrous flesh,
"From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh,
"And merely given to the cold bleak air.
"Have mercy, Goddess! Circe, feel my prayer!"
"That curst magician's name fell icy numb              555
Upon my wild conjecturing: truth had come
Naked and sabre-like against my heart.
I saw a fury whetting a death-dart;
And my slain spirit, overwrought with fright,
Fainted away in that dark lair of night.                 560
Think, my deliverer, how desolate
My waking must have been! disgust, and hate,
And terrors manifold divided me
A spoil amongst them. I prepared to flee
Into the dungeon core of that wild wood:                 565
I fled three days-when lo! before me stood
Glaring the angry witch. O Dis, even now,
A clammy dew is beading on my brow,
At mere remembering her pale laugh, and curse.
"Ha! ha! Sir Dainty! there must be a nurse            570
" Made of rose leaves and thistledown, express,
"To cradle thee my sweet, and lull thee: yes,
" I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch:
" My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch.
645-8. The draft reads as followsI sue not for my lonely, my dear wife,
I sue not for my hearts blood drops of life,
My sweetest babes, my lovely girls and boys,
Ah, likely they are dead-I pass these joys...
554. At this point the draft reads thusHave mercy goddess! feel oh feel my prayer.
Pity great Circe! "-Nor sight nor syllable
Saw I or heard I more of this sick spell.
560. In the draft, 'dull realm' for ' dark lair '.
567. In the finished manuscript we read ' e'en ' for 'even'.
569. In the manuscript, ' remembring '.
670. This line begins with 'Ah, Ah ', in the finished manuscript; and Wood
house notes, in apparent allusion to the draft, " formerly '0! 0 '"  The inverted
commas before each line again occur both in the manuscript and in the corrected
copy of the first edition, but were not printed in that edition.




Book m.


ENDYMION.


159


" So, fairy-thing, it shall have lullabies            575
" Unheard of yet: and it shall still its cries
" Upon some breast more lilly-feminine.
"Oh, no-it shall not pine, and pine, and pine
" More than one pretty, trifling thousand years;
"And then 'twere pity, but fate's gentle shears       580
"Cut short its immortality. Sea-flirt!
"Young dove of the waters! truly I'll not hurt
" One hair of thine: see how I weep and sigh,
"That our heart-broken parting is so nigh.
"And must we part? Ah, yes, it must be so.           585
" Yet ere thou leavest me in utter woe,
" Let me sob over thee my last adieus,
"And speak a blessing: Mark me! Thou hast thews
" Immortal, for thou art of heavenly race:
"But such a love is mine, that here I chace           590
"Eternally away from thee all bloom
"Of youth, and destine thee towards a tomb.
"Hence shalt thou quickly to the watery vast;
"And there, ere many days be overpast,
"Disabled age shall seize thee; and even then         595
"Thou shalt not go the way of aged men;
"But live and wither, cripple and still breathe
"Ten hundred years: which gone, I then bequeath
"Thy fragile bones to unknown burial.
"Adieu, sweet love, adieu!"-As shot stars fall,      600
She fled ere I could groan for mercy. Stung
And poison'd was my spirit: despair sung
A war-song of defiance 'gainst all hell.
A hand was at my shoulder to compel
My sullen steps; another 'fore my eyes               605
Mov'd on with pointed finger.  In this guise
Enforced, at the last by ocean's foam
I found me; by my fresh, my native home.
Its tempering coolness, to my life akin,
Came salutary as I waded in;                          610
And, with a blind voluptuous rage, I gave
575. The draft reads ' tender ' for fairy '
577. In the draft, 'zephyr' in place of 'lilly ', and in the next line but one,
'little' for 'trifling'.
581-3. The draft gives the passage thusGreat Jove
What fury of the three could harm this dove
Dear youth! see how I weep, hear how I sigh...
in which ' Great Jove' is certainly preferable to ' Sea-flirt '
588. The finished manuscript reads ' Thou hadst thews'.
595. The word 'even' is contracted to e'en ' in the finished manuscript.




160


ENDYMION.


Book IIL


Battle to the swollen billow-ridge, and drave
Large froth before me, while there yet remain'd
Hale strength, nor from my bones all marrow drain'd.
"Young lover, I must weep-such hellish spite           615
With dry cheek who can tell? While thus my might
Proving upon this element, dismay'd,
Upon a dead thing's face my hand I laid;
I look'd-'twas Scylla! Cursed, cursed Circe!
O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy?              620
Could not thy harshest vengeance be content,
But thou must nip this tender innocent
Because I lov'd her?-Cold, O cold indeed
Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed
The sea-swell took her hair.  Dead as she was            625
I clung about her waist, nor ceas'd to pass
Fleet as an arrow through unfathom'd brine,
Until there shone a fabric crystalline,
Ribb'd and inlaid with coral, pebble, and pearl.
Headlong I darted; at one eager swirl                    630
Gain'd its bright portal, enter'd, and behold!
Twas vast, and desolate, and icy-cold;
And all around-But wherefore this to thee
Who in few minutes more thyself shalt see?I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled.                  635
My fever'd parchings up, my scathing dread
Met palsy half way: soon these limbs became
Gaunt, wither'd, sapless, feeble, cramp'd, and lame.
"Now let me pass a cruel, cruel space,
Without one hope, without one faintest trace             640
Of mitigation, or redeeming bubble
Of colour'd phantasy; for I fear 'twould trouble
612. The past tense 'drave', common enough in Elizabethan literature, is
probably another Spenserian memory: thus, in 'The Faerie Queene,' Book I,
Canto ix, stanza 33, we havethe ghastly Owle,
Shrieking his baleful note, which ever drave
Far from that haunt all other chearefull fowle.
620. In the finished manuscript, 'hast' was written originally; but 'hadst' is
written over it in pencil, though this seemingly more correct inflection was not
adopted in the printed book or restored in the corrected copy.
621. In the finished manuscript,
Was not thine harshest Avengeance content,
but in the first edition the line stands as in the text.
626. In the draftI clung about her waist and dived nor ceas'd to pass..,




Book IL.


ENDYMION.


161


Thy brain to loss of reason: and next tell
How a restoring chance came down to quell
One half of the witch in me.
" On a day,               615
Sitting upon a rock above the spray,
I saw grow up from the horizon's brink
A gallant vessel: soon she seem'd to sink
Away from me again, as though her course
Had been resum'd in spite of hindering force-        650
So vanish'd: and not long, before arose
Dark clouds, and muttering of winds morose.
Old AEolus would stifle his mad spleen,
But could not: therefore all the billows green
Toss'd up the silver spume against the clouds.       655
The tempest came: I saw that vessel's shrouds
In perilous bustle; while upon the deck
Stood trembling creatures. I beheld the wreck;
The final gulphing; the poor struggling souls:
I heard their cries amid loud thunder-rolls.         660
O they had all been sav'd but crazed eld
Annull'd my vigorous cravings: and thus quell'd
And curb'd, think on't, 0 Latmian! did I sit
Writhing with pity, and a cursing fit
Against that hell-born Circe. The crew had gone,     665
By one and one, to pale oblivion;
And I was gazing on the surges prone,
With many a scalding tear and many a groan,
When at my feet emerg'd an old man's hand,
Grasping this scroll, and this same slender wand.    670
I knelt with pain-reach'd out my hand-had grasp'd
These treasures-touch'd the knuckles-they unclasp'dI caught a finger: but the downward weight
O'erpowered me-it sank. Then 'gan abate
The storm, and through chill aguish gloom outburst   675
The comfortable sun. I was athirst
To search the book, and in the warming air
Parted its dripping leaves with eager care.
Strange matters did it treat of, and drew on
My soul page after page, till well-nigh won          680
644. In the finished manuscript the word 'small' is cancelled before
'restoring '.
650. In the draft this line readsShe would resume in spite of adverse force.
653. ' (CEolus' in the manuscript, ' Eolus ' in the first edition.
655. In the finished manuscript, 'their silver spume not 'the.
678. The draft reads ' Unfolded its damp leaves ',
L




162


ENDYMION.


Book IH.


Into forgetfulness; when, stupefied,
I read these words, and read again, and tried
My eyes against the heavens, and read again.
O what a load of misery and pain
Each Atlas-line bore off!-a shine of hope             685
Came gold around me, cheering me to cope
Strenuous with hellish tyranny. Attend!
For thou hast brought their promise to an end.
"In the wide sea there lives a frorlorn wretch,
Doom'd with enfeebled carcase to outstretch            690
His loath'd existence through ten centuries,
And then to die alone.  Who can devise
A total oqposition?  No one. So
One million times ocean must ebb andlow,
And he oppressed.   Yet he shall not die,              695
These things accomplish'd:-If he utterly
Scans all the depths of magic, and expounds
The meanings of all motions, shapes, and sounds;
If he explores allforms and substances
Strazght homeward to their symbol-essences;            700
He shall not die. Moreover, and in chief,
He must fursue this task ofjoy and grief
Most piously;-all lovers temp5est-tost,
And in the savage overwhelming lost,
He shall deposit side by side, until                   705
Time's creeping shall the dreary space fufil:
Which done, and all these labours ripiened,
A youth, by heavenly power lov'd and led,
Shall stand before him; whom he shall direct
How to consummate all.    The youth elect              710
Must do the thing, or both will be destroy'd.""Then," cried the young Endymion, overjoy'd,
"We are twin brothers in this destiny!
Say, I intreat thee, what achievement high
Is, in this restless world, for me reserv'd.           715
What! if from thee my wandering feet had swerv'd,
Had we both perish'd?"-" Look!" the sage reply'd,
" Dost thou not mark a gleaming through the tide,
685-6. The draft readssweet rays of hope
Glanc'd round me cheering me at once to cope...
689. The word 'Listen' stands in the finished manuscript at the beginning of
this line, making an Alexandrine of it; but it is struck through with a pencil.
697. In the draft this line begins with 'Sounds instead of Scans '.
702. The draft reads 'heaviest grief' for 'joy and grief'.




Book mIL


ENDYMION.


163


Of diverse brilliances? 'tis the edifice
I told thee of, where lovely Scylla lies;                  720
And where I have enshrined piously
All lovers, whom fell storms have doom'd to die
Throughout my bondage." Thus discoursing, on
They went till unobscur'd the porches shone;
Which hurryingly they gain'd, and enter'd straight.        725
Sure never since king Neptune held his state
Was seen such wonder underneath the stars.
Turn to some level plain where haughty Mars
Has legion'd all his battle; and behold
How every soldier, with firm foot, doth hold              730
His even breast: see, many steeled squares,
And rigid ranks of iron-whence who dares
One step? Imagine further, line by line,
These warrior thousands on the field supine:So in that crystal place, in silent rows,                  735
Poor lovers lay at rest from joys and woes.The stranger from the mountains, breathless, trac'd
Such thousands of shut eyes in order plac'd;
Such ranges of white feet, and patient lips
All ruddy,-for here death no blossom nips.                 740
He mark'd their brows and foreheads; saw their hair
Put sleekly on one side with nicest care;
And each one's gentle wrists, with reverence,
Put cross-wise to its heart.
" Let us commence,"
Whisper'd the guide, stuttering with joy, "even now."      745
He spake, and, trembling like an aspen-bough,
Began to tear his scroll in pieces small,
Uttering the while some mumblings funeral.
He tore it into pieces small as snow
That drifts unfeather'd when bleak northerns blow;         750
And having done it, took his dark blue cloak
And bound it round Endymion: then struck
719. The first edition reads divers'; but the manuscript reads 'diverse',
the final e being crossed through with a pencil; probably this was one of the
changes made by Taylor which Keats did not approve; for diverse gives the more
characteristic sense.
74. The words ' Let us commence, Whisper'd the guide, stuttering with
joy, even now', are enclosed in inverted commas as one speech in the first edition;
and the manuscript reads similarly except that it has 'e'en' for 'even'.
750. The draft reads ' all shatter'd' for 'unfeather'd '.
751. In the manuscript, 'having don't, he took ', instead of 'having done it,
took '.
752. In the manuscript Keats perfects his rhyme here by using 'stroke' as the
past tense of strike; but the word is ' struck' in his printed text.




ENDYION.


Book   TI.


His wand against the empty air times nine." What more there is to do, young man, is thine:
But first a little patience; first undo                755
This tangled thread, and wind it to a clue.
Ah, gentle! 'tis as weak as spider's skein;
And shouldst thou break it-What, is it done so clean?
A power overshadows thee! 0, brave!
The spite of hell is tumbling to its grave.            760
Here is a shell; 'tis pearly blank to me,
Nor mark'd with any sign or characteryCanst thou read aught? O read for pity's sake!
Olympus! we are safe! Now, Carian, break
This wand against yon lyre on the pedestal."           765
'Twas done: and straight with sudden swell and fall
Sweet music breath'd her soul away, and sigh'd
A lullaby to silence.-" Youth! now strew
These minced leaves on me, and passing through
Those files of dead, scatter the same around,          770
And thou wilt see the issue."-'Mid the sound
Of flutes and viols, ravishing his heart,
Endymion from Glaucus stood apart,
And scatter'd in his face some fragments light.
How lightning-swift the change! a youthful wight       775
Smiling beneath a coral diadem,
Out-sparkling sudden like an upturn'd gem,
Appear'd, and, stepping to a beauteous corse,
Kneel'd down beside it, and with tenderest force
Press'd its cold hand, and wept,-and Scylla sigh'd!   780
Endymion, with quick hand, the charm apply'dThe nymph arose: he left them to their joy,
And onward went upon his high employ,
Showering those powerful fragments on the dead.
And, as he pass'd, each lifted up his head,            785
As doth a flower at Apollo's touch.
Death felt it to his inwards: 'twas too much:
Death fell a weeping in his charnel-house.
753. The draft reads 'at something in the air '.
758. The words 'is it' are contracted here to 'is't ' in the manuscript.
767. There is nothing in the finished manuscript to indicate how this line came
to lose its fellow, if it ever had one; and Woodhonse notes nothing from the draft
bearing on that point. There is perhaps a reminiscence here of William Chamberlayne, in whose 'Pharonnida' (Book I, Canto iii, page 51 of the second volume of
the 1820 edition) we have —
The glad birds had snng
A lullaby to night,...
787. The draft reads ' at ' for 'to '.




Book mL


ENDMION.


The Latmian persever'd along, and thus
All were re-animated. There arose                     790
A noise of harmony, pulses and throes
Of gladness in the air-while many, who
Had died in mutual arms devout and true,
Sprang to each other madly; and the rest
Felt a high certainty of being blest.                 795
They gaz'd upon Endymion. Enchantment
Grew drunken, and would have its head and bent.
Delicious symphonies, like airy flowers,
Budded, and swell'd, and, full-blown, shed full showers
Of light, soft, unseen leaves of sounds divine.       800
The two deliverers tasted a pure wine
Of happiness, from fairy-press ooz'd out.
Speechless they ey'd each other, and about
The fair assembly wander'd to and fro,
Distracted with the richest overflow                  805
Of joy that ever pour'd from heaven.
-   "Away!"
Shouted the new born god; "Follow, and pay
Our piety to Neptunus supreme!"Then Scylla, blushing sweetly from her dream,
They led on first, bent to her meek surprise,         810
Through portal columns of a giant size,
Into the vaulted, boundless emerald.
Joyous all follow'd as the leader call'd,
Down marble steps; pouring as easily
As hour-glass sand,-and fast, as you might see        815
Swallows obeying the south summer's call,
Or swans upon a gentle waterfall.
Thus went that beautiful multitude, nor far,
Ere from among some rocks of glittering spar,
Just within ken, they saw descending thick            820
Another multitude. Whereat more quick
791. The draft reads 'A hum, a harmony'. Compare the reading of the text
with Sleep and Poetry 'The fervid choir that lifted up a noise
Of harmony,...
795. The draft reads ' sweet ' for high '.
796. The variation 'Ravishment' for 'Enchantment ' stands cancelled in the
finished manuscript.
802. The draft reads
Of happiness, not from earthly grapes press'd out.
811. ' Though ' stands for 'Through ' both in the finished manuscript and in
the first edition.




ENDYKION.


Book EIL


Mov'd either host. On a wide sand they met,
And of those numbers every eye was wet;
For each their old love found. A murmuring rose,
Like what was never heard in all the throes              825
Of wind and waters: 'tis past human wit
To tell; 'tis dizziness to think of it.
This mighty consummation made, the host
Mov'd on for many a league; and gain'd, and lost
Huge sea-marks; vanward swelling in array,               830
And from the rear diminishing away,Till a faint dawn surpris'd them. Glaucus cry'd,
"Behold! behold, the palace of his pride!
God Neptune's palaces!" With noise increas'd,
They shouldered on towards that brightening east.        835
At every onward step proud domes arose
In prospect,-diamond gleams, and golden glows
Of amber 'gainst their faces levelling.
Joyous, and many as the leaves in spring,
Still onward; still the splendour gradual swell'd.       840
Rich opal domes were seen, on high upheld
By jasper pillars,'letting through their shafts
A blush of coral. Copious wonder-draughts
Each gazer drank; and deeper drank more near:
For what poor mortals fragment up, as mere               845
As marble was there lavish, to the vast
Of one fair palace, that far far surpass'd,
Even for common bulk, those olden three,
Memphis, and Babylon, and Nineveh.
83240. In the draft this passage reads thus:
Till a faint dawning bloom'd-and Glaucus cried,
" Behold! behold, the palace of his pride!
Of God Neptunus pride." With hum increased
The host moved on towards that brightening east.
And as it moved along proud domes arose
In prospect,-diamond gleams, and golden glows
Of amber leveling against their faces.
With expectation high, and hurried paces
Still onward; &c.
The word 'hum' instead of 'noise' in line 834 was repeated in the finished
manuscript, which reads otherwise like the printed text.
845. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, 'treasure up ' for 'fragment up'.
The use of the word mere here, though peculiar, is not without authority, "trifling"
and "common" being among the equivalents given by Ash.
847. The draft readsOf one fair palace, that to nothing cast...
and in the finished manuscript we have the reading as far' struck out in favour
of 'far far'.




Book m.                    ENDYMION.                          167
As large, as bright, as colour'd as the bow            850
Of Iris, when unfading it doth show
Beyond a silvery shower, was the arch
Through which this Paphian army took its march,
Into the outer courts of Neptune's state:
Whence could be seen, direct, a golden gate,             855
To which the leaders sped; but not half raught
Ere it burst open swift as fairy thought,
And made those dazzled thousands veil their eyes /
Like callow eagles at the first sunrise.           /
Soon with an eagle nativeness their gaze                 860
Ripe from hue-golden swoons took all the blaze,
And then, behold! large Neptune on his throne
Of emerald deep: yet not exalt alone;
At his right hand stood winged Love, and on
His left sat smiling Beauty's paragon.                   865
Far as the mariner on highest mast
Can see all round upon the calmed vast,
So wide was Neptune's hall: and as the blue
Doth vault the waters, so the waters drew
Their doming curtains, high, magnificent,                870
Aw'd from the throne aloof;-and when storm-rent
Disclos'd the thunder-gloomings in Jove's air;
But sooth'd as now, flash'd sudden everywhere,
Noiseless, sub-marine cloudlets, glittering
Death to a human eye: for there did spring               875
From natural west, and east, and south, and north,
A light as of four sunsets, blazing forth
A gold-green zenith 'bove the Sea-God's head.
Of lucid depth the floor, and far outspread
As breezeless lake, on which the slim canoe              880
Of feather'd Indian darts about, as through
The delicatest air: air verily,
But for the portraiture of clouds and sky:
859-61. This simile must surely be a reminiscence of Perrin's 'Fables Amusantes' or some similar book used in Mr. Clarke's School. I remember the Fable
of the old eagle and her young stood first in the book I used at school. The
draft gives line 860 thusBut soon like eagles natively their gaze...
864-5. This couplet reads as follows in the draft:
At his right hand stood winged Love, elate
And on his left Love's fairest mother sate.
This reading leaves no doubt, if indeed there was any before, as to the identity of
" smiling Beauty's paragon."
869. Originally an Alexandrine, reading 'canopy' for 'vault', but corrected
in the manuscript.




ENDYMION.


Book DI


This palace floor breath-air,-but for the amaze
Of deep-seen wonders motionless,-and blaze            885
Of the dome pomp, reflected in extremes,
Globing a golden sphere.
They stood in dreams
Till Triton blew his horn. The palace rang;
The Nereids danc'd; the Syrens faintly sang;
And the great Sea-King bow'd his dripping head.       890
Then Love took wing, and from his pinions shed
On all the multitude a nectarous dew.
The ooze-born Goddess beckoned and drew
Fair Scylla and her guides to conference;
And when they reach'd the throned eminence            895
She kist the sea-nymph's cheek,-who sat her down
A toying with the doves. Then,-" Mighty crown
And sceptre of this kingdom! " Venus said,
"Thy vows were on a time to Nais paid:
Behold!"-   Two copious tear-drops instant fell      900
From the God's large eyes; he smil'd delectable,
And over Glaucus held his blessing hands." Endymion! Ah! still wandering in the bands
Of love? Now this is cruel. Since the hour
I met thee in earth's bosom, all my power             905
Have I put forth to serve thee. What, not yet
Escap'd from dull mortality's harsh net?
A little patience, youth! 'twill not be long,
Or I am skilless quite: an idle tongue,
A humid eye, and steps luxurious,                     910
Where these are new and strange, are ominous.
Aye, I have seen these signs in one of heaven,
When others were all blind: and were I given
To utter secrets, haply I might say
Some pleasant words:-but Love will have his day.    915
So wait awhile expectant. Pr'ythee soon,
Even in the passing of thine honey-moon,
Visit thou my Cythera: thou wilt find
Cupid well-natured, my Adonis kind;
889. The draft reads sweetly' for 'faintly '.
899. Glauous was the son of Nais (one of the Oceanides) by Magnes.
903. In the manuscript, 'wandring'.
907. The draft reads 'rough for 'harsh'.
913. The draft reads 'When others' sight was blind'; and in the next line
but one ' honey' for ' pleasant'.
917. In the finished manuscript, ' even' is contracted to e'en'.
918-19. Woodhouse, apparently following the draft, gives this couplet thus:
Visit thou my Cithera: thou wilt find
Cupid a treasure, my Adonis kind;




Book EI.                   ENDYMION.                          169
And pray persuade with thee-Ah, I have done,             920
All blisses be upon thee, my sweet son!"Thus the fair goddess: While Endymion
Knelt to receive those accents halcyon.
Meantime a glorious revelry began
Before the Water-Monarch.     Nectar ran                 925
In courteous fountains to all cups outreach'd;
And plunder'd vines, teeming exhaustless, pleach'd
New growth about each shell and pendent lyre;
The which, in disentangling for their fire,
Pull'd down fresh foliage and coverture                  930
For dainty toying. Cupid, empire-sure,
Flutter'd and laugh'd, and oft-times through the throng
Made a delighted way. Then dance, and song,
And garlanding grew wild; and pleasure reign'd.
In harmless tendril they each other chain'd,             935
And strove who should be smother'd deepest in
Fresh crush of leaves.
O 'tis a very sin
For one so weak to venture his poor verse
In such a place as this. O do not curse,
High Muses! let him hurry to the ending.                940
All suddenly were silent. A soft blending
Of dulcet instruments came charmingly;
And then a hymn.
" KING of the stormy sea!
Brother of Jove, and co-inheritor
Of elements! Eternally before                           945
Thee the waves awful bow. Fast, stubborn rock,
At thy fear'd trident shrinking, doth unlock
Its deep foundations, hissing into foam.
and I presume there can be no doubt that the reading of the finished manuscript
and all printed editions, 'Visit my Cytherea ', was the result of an error of transcription. The reference is unquestionably to the island Cythera.
922. The draft has 'blithe' in place of ' fair'.
930. In the draft, 'full' instead of 'fresh'.
934-5. The draft reads thusand wildness reigns.
They bound each other up in tendril chains...
937. In the draft, ' crushing ', not 'crush of'.
945. This passage was written thusEternally in awe
Of thee the Waves bow down.
The reading of the text is inserted with a pencil in the finished manuscript.




170


MDYNION.


Book mIL


All mountain-rivers, lost in the wide home
Of thy capacious bosom, ever flow.                         950
Thou frownest, and old AEolus thy foe
Skulks to his cavern, 'mid the gruff complaint
Of all his rebel tempests. Dark clouds faint
When, from thy diadem, a silver gleam
Slants over blue dominion.    Thy bright team              955
Gulphs in the morning light, and scuds along
To bring thee nearer to that golden song
Apollo singeth, while his chariot
Waits at the doors of heaven. Thou art not
For scenes like this: an empire stern hast thou;           960
And it hath furrowed that large front: yet now,
As newly come of heaven, dost thou sit
To blend and interknit
Subdued majesty with this glad time.
O shell-borne King sublime!                                965
We lay our hearts before thee evermoreWe sing, and we adore!
" Breathe softly, flutes;
Be tender of your strings, ye soothing lutes;
Nor be the trumpet heard! 0 vain, 0 vain;                  970
Not flowers budding in an April rain,
Nor breath of sleeping dove, nor river's flow,No, nor the iEolian twang of Love's own bow,
Can mingle music fit for the soft ear
Of goddess Cytherea!                                       975
Yet deign, white Queen of Beauty, thy fair eyes
On our souls' sacrifice.
949-50. In the draft these two lines were written and pointed thusA thousand rivers, lost in the wide home
Of thy capacious bosom, ever flow.
And in the finished manuscript also there is a comma after 'bosom' and none
after 'lost'. This is clearly sufficient evidence on which to reject the punctuation
of the first and other printed editions, which place a comma after ' lost' and none
after ' bosom '.
954-6. The draft readsWhen thy bright diadem a silver gleam
O'er blue dominion starts. Thy finny team
Snorts in the morning light, and sends along...
Compare 'Hyperion,' Book II, line 236 -I saw him on the calmed waters suend,...
960. The manuscript shows a cancelled reading, ' these' for ' this'.
962. Woodhouse notes, presumably from the draft, the variationLike a young child of heaven, dost thou sit...




Book It


ENDYMION.


171


" Bright-winged Child!
Who has another care when thou hast smil'd?
Unfortunates on earth, we see at last              980
All death-shadows, and glooms that overcast
Our spirits, fann'd away by thy light pinions.
O sweetest essence! sweetest of all minions!
God of warm pulses, and dishevell'd hair,
And panting bosoms bare!                            985
Dear unseen light in darkness! eclipser
Of light in light! delicious poisoner!
Thy venom'd goblet will we quaff until
We fill-we fill!
And by thy Mother's lips  -    "
Was heard no more        990
For clamour, when the golden palace door
Opened again, and from without, in shone
A new magnificence. On oozy throne
Smooth-moving came Oceanus the old,
To take a latest glimpse at his sheep-fold,         995
Before he went into his quiet cave
To muse for ever-Then a lucid wave,
Scoop'd from its trembling sisters of mid-sea,
Afloat, and pillowing up the majesty
Of Doris, and the JEgean seer, her spouse-         1000
Next, on a dolphin, clad in laurel boughs,
Theban Amphion leaning on his lute:
His fingers went across it-All were mute
To gaze on Amphitrite, queen of pearls,
And Thetis pearly too.The palace whirls         1005
Around giddy Endymion; seeing he
Was there far strayed from mortality.
He could not bear it-shut his eyes in vain;
Imagination gave a dizzier pain.
" 0 I shall die! sweet Venus, be my stay!        1010
Where is my lovely mistress? Well-away!
979. The draft readsWho is not full of heaven when thou hast smil'd?
983. In the draftO sweetest essence of all sweetest minions!
1000. Nereus, the son of Oceanus, who espoused his sister Doris, and had by
her fifty daughters, the Nereides.
1007. The draft gives this line thusWas there, a stray lamb from mortality.




172'


ENDYMION.


Book III.


I die-I hear her voice-I feel my wing —"
At Neptune's feet he sank. A sudden ring
Of Nereids were about him, in kind strife
To usher back his spirit into life:                          1015
But still he slept. At last they interwove
Their cradling arms, and purpos'd to convey
Towards a crystal bower far away.
Lo! while slow carried through the pitying crowd,
To his inward senses these words spake aloud;                 1020
Written in star-light on the dark above:
Dearest Endymion / my entire love!
How have I dwelt infear offate: 'tis done —
Immortal blissfor me too hast thou won.
Arise then / for the hen-dove shall not hatch                 1025
Her ready eggs, before i'll kissing snatch
Thee into endless heaven.    Awake! awake/
The youth at once arose: a placid lake
Came quiet to his eyes; and forest green,
Cooler than all the wonders he had seen,                     1030
Lull'd with its simple song his fluttering breast.
How happy once again in grassy nest!
1012. This line reads thus in the draftI die-love calls me hence "-thus muttering...
1016. After this line are the four following in the draftThey gave him nectar-shed bright drops, and strove
Long time in vain. At last they interwove
Their cradling arms, and carefully conveyed
His body towards a quiet bowery shade.
Perhaps the last three words were found inappropriate to the submarine scenery
and thus led to the loss of the rhyme. In the finished manuscript, after 'Their
cradling arms, and,' Keats had written 'did his', probably meaning to complete
the line with some such expression as body move; but he struck 'did his' out
and wrote 'carried him', then cancelled that, and supplied the reading of the
text. Were it not for the greater propriety of the 'crystal bower', there would
be a strong temptation to restore the reading of the draft, merely substituting
'crystal ' for ' bowery'.
1019. Cancelled readings, 'parting crowd' for 'pitying crowd' in the draft,
and 'throng' for ' crowd' in the finished manuscript.
1022. The draft reads 'my own entire love! '
1026. The draft reads 'madly' for ' kissing'.
1032. At the end of this Book Keats wrote in the draft, " Oxf: Sept. 26 ".




ENDYMION.
BOOK IV.
MUSE of my native land! loftiest Muse!
O first-born on the mountains! by the hues
Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
While yet our England was a wolfish den;                     5
Before our forests heard the talk of men;
Before the first of Druids was a child; —
Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild
Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude.
There came an eastern voice of solemn mood:-               10
Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine,
Apollo's garland:-yet didst thou divine
Such home-bred glory, that they cry'd in vain,
" Come hither, Sister of the Island!" Plain
Spake fair Ausonia; and once more she spake                 15
A higher summons:-still didst thou betake
Thee to thy native hopes. 0 thou hast won
A full accomplishment! The thing is done,
Which undone, these our latter days had risen
On barren souls. Great Muse, thou know'st what prison,
2. This line originally began with ' 0 Mountain-born in the draft, where
also while' stands cancelled in favour of ' by '.
6. The draft reads 'voice' for ' talk, and in line 7 'babe' for 'child'.
10. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' an hebrew voice '.
11. The draft reads 'those nine'.  The references to the Hebrew, Greek,
Roman, and Italian literatures are scarcely as clear and pointed as might have
been expected from Keats.
13. In the finished manuscript, 'in vain they cry'd'.
14. The draft gives 'from the Island '.
16. The draft reads 'In self surpassing summons'.
17. Originally an Alexandrine in both the manuscriptsThee to thyself and to thy hopes. 0 thou hast wonbut altered in the second manuscript.
19. In the draft, thusWhich wanting all these latter days had dawnd...
20. The draft reads ' Oh Muse ' not ' Great Muse'.
173




ENDYMIOR.


Book IV.


Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets
Our spirit's wings: despondency besets
Our pillows; and the fresh to-morrow morn
Seems to give forth its light in very scorn
Of our dull, uninspired, snail-paced lives.              25
Long have I said, how happy he who shrives
To thee! But then I thought on poets gone,
And could not pray:-nor could I now-so on
I move to the end in lowliness of heart.
"Ah, woe is me! that I should fondly part              30
From my dear native land! Ah, foolish maid!
Glad was the hour, when, with thee, myriads bade
Adieu to Ganges and their pleasant fields!
To one so friendless the clear freshet yields
A bitter coolness; the ripe grape is sour:               35
Yet I would have, great gods! but one short hour
Of native air-let me but die at home."
Endymion to heaven's airy dome
Was offering up a hecatomb of vows,
When these words reached him. Whereupon he bows          40
His head through thorny-green entanglement
Of underwood, and to the sound is bent,
Anxious as hind towards her hidden fawn.
"Is no one near to help me? No fair dawn
Of life from charitable voice?  No sweet saying          45
To set my dull and sadden'd spirit playing?
No hand to toy with mine? No lips so sweet
That I may worship them? No eyelids meet
31. The draft reads ' With' for ' From '.
34-6. In the draft lines 34 and 36 read thusWhere no friends are, the very freshet yields...
Then take my life, great Gods! for one short hour...
In the finished manuscript this last line originally began with ' And', which is
struck out and replaced by ' Yet'.
41-2. Cancelled readings from the draftthro' ever rough entanglement
In the { hick  } wood...
45. The draft reads ' hope ' for ' life'; but neither manuscript affords any help
to this ailing line.
48-54. In place of this passage the draft has the following:
No eyelids meet
To twinkle on my bosom! false! 'twas false
They said how beautiful I was! who calls




Book IV.


ENDYMION.


175


To twinkle on my bosom? No one dies
Before me, till from these enslaving eyes               50
Redemption sparkles!-I am sad and lost."
Thou, Carian lord, hadst better have been tost
Into a whirlpool. Vanish into air,
Warm mountaineer! for canst thou only bear
A woman's sigh alone and in distress?                  55
See not her charms! Is Phcebe passionless?
Phcebe is fairer far-O gaze no more: —
Yet if thou wilt behold all beauty's store,
Behold her panting in the forest grass!
Do not those curls of glossy jet surpass                60
For tenderness the arms so idly lain
Amongst them? Feelest not a kindred pain,
To see such lovely eyes in swimming search
After some warm delight, that seems to perch
Dovelike in the dim cell lying beyond                   65
Their upper lids?-Hist!
" O for Hermes' wand,
To touch this flower into human shape!
That woodland Hyacinthus could escape
From his green prison, and here kneeling down
Call me his queen, his second life's fair crown!        70
Ah me, how I could love!-My soul doth melt
For the unhappy youth-Love! I have felt
So faint a kindness, such a meek surrender
To what my own full thoughts had made too tender,
That but for tears my life had fled away!-             75
Me now divine? Who now kneels down and dies
Before me till from these enslaving eyes
Redemption sparkles. Ah me how sad I am!
Of all the poisons sent to make us mad
Of all death's overwhelmings "-Stay Beware
Young Mountaineer!
Keats must have intended to write 'Ah me how I am sad!'
65. In the draftA woman's sigh in the luxury of distress?
63. The draft reads 'fruitless ' for 'swimming'.
70. According to the draft, 'living's crown '.
72-3. The draft reads these two lines thusAfter some beauteous youth-Who, who hath felt
So warm a faintness, such a meek surrender...
and there is a cancelled opening for line 73, 'As I do now'.
74. In the draft, ' fair for ' full '.




176


ENDYION.


Book W.


Ye deaf and senseless minutes of the day,
And thou, old forest, hold ye this for true,
There is no lightning, no authentic dew
But in the eye of love: there's not a sound,
Melodious howsoever, can confound                           80
The heavens and earth in one to such a death
As doth the voice of love: there's not a breath
Will mingle kindly with the meadow air,
Till it has panted round, and stolen a share
Of passion from the heart! 'Upon a bough                  85
He leant, wretched. He surely cannot now
Thirst for another love: 0 impious,
That he can even dream upon it thus!
Thought he, " Why am I not as are the dead,
Since to a woe like this I have been led                    90
Through the dark earth, and through the wondrous sea?
Goddess! I love thee not the less: from thee
By Juno's smile I turn not-no, no, noWhile the great waters are at ebb and flow.I have a triple soul! 0 fond pretence-                      95
76-7. The draft reads as follows:
Sweet shadow, be distinct awhile and stay
While I speak to thee-trust me it is true...
79. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' a Lover's eye' instead of ' the eye
of Love'.
82. The draft reads, correspondingly with the cancelled reading of the finished
manuscript in line 79,
As will a lover's voice: there's not a breath...
85. The draft has the following passage at this point:
Of passion from the heart-Where love is not
Only is solitude-poor shadow! what
I say thou hearest not! away begone
And leave me prythee with my grief alone! "
The Latmian lean'd his arm upon a bough,
A wretched mortal: what can he do now?
Must he another Love? 0 impious...
89-91. In the finished manuscript, the note of interrogation is at the end of
line 89 and a full-stop at the end of line 91.
92. The draft reads ' Mine own' for ' Goddess'.
94. At this point the draft shows the following variation:
While the fair moon gives light, or rivers flow
My adoration of thee is yet pure
As infants prattling. How is this-why sure
I have a tripple soul! I




Book IV.


ENDYNION.


For both, for both my love is so immense,
I feel my heart is cut for them in twain."
And so he groan'd, as one by beauty slain.
The lady's heart beat quick, and he could see
Her gentle bosom heave tumultuously.                    100
He sprang from his green covert: there she lay,
Sweet as a muskrose upon new-made hay;
With all her limbs on tremble, and her eyes
Shut softly up alive. To speak he tries.
" Fair damsel, pity me! forgive that I                  105
Thus violate thy bower's sanctity!
O pardon me, for I am full of griefGrief born of thee, young angel! fairest thief!
Who stolen hast away the wings wherewith
I was to top the heavens. Dear maid, sith               110
Thou art my executioner, and I feel
Loving and hatred, misery and weal,
Will in a few short hours be nothing to me,
And all my story that much passion slew me;
Do smile upon the evening of my days:                   115
And, for my torturd brain begins to craze,
Be thou my nurse; and let me understand
How dying I shall kiss that lilly hand.Dost weep for me? Then should I be content.
Scowl on, ye fates! until the firmament                 120
Outblackens Erebus, and the full-cavern'd earth
Crumbles into itself. By the cloud girth
Of Jove, those tears have given me a thirst
To meet oblivion."-As her heart would burst
The maiden sobb'd awhile, and then reply'd:             125
" Why must such desolation betide
As that thou speak'st of? Are not these green nooks
97. In the first edition this line isI feel my heart is cut in twain for them.
And it is left so in the corrected copy. It was originally written so in the finished
manuscript, where, however, the inversion of the last four words is directed in
pencil, so that the right reading, that of the text, must have been lost through a
series of oversights.
104. Here again the draft is fuller,-thus:
Shut softly up alive-Ye harmonies
Ye tranced visions-ye flights ideal
Nothing are ye to life so dainty real
O Lady pity me!
127. In this line we read ' speakst' in the finished manuscript, but ' speakest'
in the first edition.
M




ENDYMION.


Book IV.


Empty of all misfortune? Do the brooks
Utter a gorgon voice? Does yonder thrush,
Schooling its half-fledg'd little ones to brush            130
About the dewy forest, whisper tales?Speak not of grief, young stranger, or cold snails
Will slime the rose to night. Though if thou wilt,
Methinks 'twould be a guilt-a very guiltNot to companion thee, and sigh away                       135
The light-the dusk-the dark-till break of day!"
"Dear lady," said Endymion, "'tis past:
I love thee! and my days can never last.
That I may pass in patience still speak:
Let me have music dying, and I seek                        140
No more delight-I bid adieu to all.
Didst thou not after other climates call,
And murmur about Indian streams?"-Then she,
Sitting beneath the midmost forest tree,
For pity sang this roundelay        -                      145
" 0 Sorrow,
Why dost borrow
128. For this choice use of the word 'empty', compare Shakespeare, 'Love's
Labour's Lost,' Act V, Scene ii, line 878:
And I shall find you empty of that fault,...
136. After this line the speech of Phcebe still goes on in the draft; and
Endymion's answer varies,-thus:
Canst thou do so? Is there no balm, no cure
Could not a beckoning Hebe soon allure
Thee into Paradise? What sorrowing
So weighs thee down what utmost woe could bring
This madness-Sit thee down by mc, and ease
Thine heart in whispers-haply by degrees
I may find out some soothing medicine.""Dear Lady," said Endymion, " I pine
I die-the tender accents thou hast spoken
Have finish'd all-my heart is lost and broken.
That I may pass in patience still speak:
Let me have music dying, and I seek
No more delight-I bid adieu to all.
Didst thou not after other climates call
And murmur about Indian streams-now, nowI listen, it may save me-O my vowLet me have music dying! " The ladye
Sitting beneath the midmost forest tree
With tears of pity sang this roundelayIt will be remembered that this antiquated use of the word 'ladye' was defended
by Coleridge both in theory and in practice.  See the ballad of 'The Dark
Ladye.'




Book IV.


ENDYION.


179


The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?To give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes?                              150
Or is't thy dewy hand the daisy tips?
" O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?To give the glow-worm light?                           155
Or, on a moonless night,
To tinge, on syren shores, the salt sea-spry?
"    Sorrow,
Why dost borrow
The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue?-                   160
To give at evening pale
Unto the nightingale,
That thou mayst listen the cold dews among?
"O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow                                         165
Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?A lover would not tread
A cowslip on the head,
Though he should dance from eve till peep of dayNor any drooping flower                                 170
Held sacred for thy bower,
Wherever he may sport himself and play.
"To Sorrow,
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;                      175
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
151. In the first edition 'is it'; but 'is't' in the manuscript and in the
corrected copy.
154. The draft reads 'lover's eye' for 'falcon-eye'.
157. Keats has been supposed to have invented the variant 'spry' for' spray'
for convenience of rhyming, just as Shelley has been accused of inventing for like
reasons the word 'uprest', for example, in 'Laon and Cythna,' Canto II,
Stanza xxi. Sandys, the translator of Ovid, may not be a very good authority;
bat he is not improbably Keats's authority for 'spry', and will certainly do in
default of a better. The following couplet is from Sandys's Ovid (Book XI,
verses 498-9);
Now tossing Seas appeare to touch the sky,
And wrap their curles in clouds, frotht with their spry.
172. The draft reads ' However' for Wherever '.
174. In the finished manuscript, 'bad ': in the first edition, 'bade'.




180


ENDYMION.


Book IV.


She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,                              180
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.
" Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping: in the whole world wide
There was no one to ask me why I wept,And so I kept                                  185
Brimming the water-lilly cups with tears
Cold as my fears.
" Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping: what enamourd bride,
Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds,            190
But hides and shrouds
Beneath dark palm trees by a river side?
"And as I sat, over the light blue hills
There came a noise of revellers: the rills
Into the wide stream came of purple hue-              195
'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
Like to a moving vintage down they came,              200
Crown'd with green leaves, and faces all on flame;
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley,
To scare thee, Melancholy!
0 then, 0 then, thou wast a simple name!
And I forgot thee, as the berried holly              205
By shepherds is forgotten, when, in June,
Tall chesnuts keep away the sun and moon:
I rush'd into the folly!
" Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood,
Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood,               210
With sidelong laughing;
And little rills of crimson wine imbru'd
His plump white arms, and shoulders, enough white
For Venus' pearly bite:
181. The draft reads this line thusBut ah! she is too constant and too kind.
187. In the draft, ' Chill'd with strange fears'.
190. The draft gives ' lover' for ' wooer.
202-3. The draft reads ' down' for ' through' and 'my' for ' thee'.
207. In the draft ' Beeches' instead of ' chesnuts'.
212-13. The draft reads ' streaks ' for ' rills' and ' dainty' for ' enough'.
214. In the draft, ' For any pearly bite'.




Book IV.                 EB1DYMION.                      181
And near him rode Silenus on his ass,                215
Pelted with flowers as he on did pass
Tipsily quaffing.
"Whence came ye, merry Damsels! whence came ye!
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your bowers desolate,               220
Your lutes, and gentler fate?'We follow Bacchus! Bacchus on the wing,
A conquering!
Bacchus, young Bacchus! good or ill betide,
We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide:-         225
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
To our wild minstrelsy!'
"Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs! whence came ye!
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left        230
Your nuts in oak-tree cleft?'For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree;
For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,
And cold mushrooms;
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth;        235
Great God of breathless cups and chirping mirth!Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
To our mad minstrelsy!'
"Over wide streams and mountains great we went,
And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent,            240
Onward the tiger and the leopard pants,
With Asian elephants:
Onward these myriads-with song and dance,
With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance,
Web-footed alligators, crocodiles,                   245
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files,
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil
Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil:
With toying oars and silken sails they glide,
Nor care for wind and tide.                   250
221. An additional line comes between 221 and 222 in the draftWe follow Bacchus from a far country.
225. The draft reads 'beside ' for 'before '.
232. The draft reads 'forest meat' for 'kernel tree'.
236. The draft has 'endless ' for 'chirping'.
247. This line reads as follows in the draftArch infant crews in mimic of the coil...




182


ENDYKIOW.


Book IV.


" Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes,
From rear to van they scour about the plains;
A three days' journey in a moment done:
And always, at the rising of the sun,
About the wilds they hunt with spear and horn,          255
On spleenful unicorn.
" I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown
Before the vine-wreath crown!
I saw parch'd Abyssinia rouse and sing
To the silver cymbals' ring!                     260
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
Old Tartary the fierce!
The kings of Inde their jewel-sceptres vail,
And from their treasures scatter pearled hail;
Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans,            265
And all his priesthood moans;
Before young Bacchus' eye-wink turning pale.Into these regions came I following him,
Sick hearted, wealy-so I took a whim
To stray away into these forests drear                 270
Alone, without a peer:
And I have told thee all thou mayest hear.
"Young stranger!
I've been a ranger
In search of pleasure throughout every clime:          275
Alas, 'tis not for me!
Bewitch'd I sure must be,
To lose in grieving all my maiden prime.
"Come then, Sorrow!
Sweetest Sorrow!                                 280
Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast:
I thought to leave thee
And deceive thee,
But now of all the world I love thee best.
254. The draft reads ' alway' without the s.
263. The draft reads 'jewel'd sceptres '.
267. At this point the following line is cancelled in the draft:
All city gates were opened to his pomp.
272. The biblical dissyllabic form ' mayest' is clearly used by deliberate preference, for the line originally stood thus in the draft:
And I have told thee all that thou canst hear.
277. In the draft, ' Bewitch'd must I sure be'.




Book IV.


EN!DYMION.


"There is not one,                              285
No, no, not one
But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid;
Thou art her mother,
And her brother,
Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade."            290
O what a sigh she gave in finishing,
And look, quite dead to every worldly thing!
Endymion could not speak, but gaz'd on her;
And listened to the wind that now did stir
About the crisped oaks full drearily,                  295
Yet with as sweet a softness as might be
Remember'd from its velvet summer song.
At last he said: " Poor lady, how thus long
Have I been able to endure that voice?
Fair Melody! kind Syren! I've no choice;             300
I must be thy sad servant evermore:
I cannot choose but kneel here and adore.
Alas, I must not think-by Phcebe, no!
Let me not think, soft Angel! shall it be so?
Say, beautifullest, shall I never think?               305
O thou could'st foster me beyond the brink
Of recollection! make my watchful care
Close up its bloodshot eyes, nor see despair!
Do gently murder half my soul, and I
Shall feel the other half so utterly!-                310
I'm giddy at that cheek so fair and smooth;
O let it blush so ever! let it soothe
My madness! let it mantle rosy-warm
With the tinge of love, panting in safe alarm.This cannot be thy hand, and yet it is;                315
And this is sure thine other softling-this
291-2. The draft reads 'Sob' for 'sigh' and begins line 292 with 'And
look'd quite dead'.
297. The gentleness of summer wind seems to have been a cherished idea with
Keats Compare 'Sleep and Poetry,' line 1 -What is more gentle than a wind in summer?
304, In the finished manuscript, 'shall't' for 'shall it'.
310-16. The draft reads thus at this point:
That-oh how beautiful-how giddy smooth!
Blush so for ever! let those glances soothe
My madness for did I no mercy spy
Dear lady I should shudder and then die.
This cannot be thy hand-and yet it is
And this thine other softling-and is this
Thine own fair bosom, and am I so near?




ENDYMION.


Book IV.


Thine own fair bosom, and I am so near!
Wilt fall asleep? O let me sip that tear!
And whisper one sweet word that I may know
This is this world-sweet dewy blossom! "- Woe!      320
Woe! Woe to that Endymion! Where is he?Even these words went echoing dismally
Through the wide forest-a most fearful tone,
Like one repenting in his latest moan;
And while it died away a shade pass'd by,             325
As of a thunder cloud. When arrows fly
Through the thick branches, poor ring-doves sleek forth
Their timid necks and tremble; so these both
Leant to each other trembling, and sat so
Waiting for some destruction-when lo,                 330
Foot-feather'd Mercury appear'd sublime
Beyond the tall tree tops; and in less time
Than shoots the slanted hail-storm, down he dropt
Towards the ground; but rested not, nor stopt
One moment from his home: only the sward              335
He with his wand light touch'd, and heavenward
Swifter than sight was gone-even before
The teeming earth a sudden witness bore
Of his swift magic. Diving swans appear
Above the crystal circlings white and clear;          340
And catch the cheated eye in wide surprise,
How they can dive in sight and unseen riseSo from the turf outsprang two steeds jet-black,
Each with large dark blue wings upon his back.
The youth of Caria plac'd the lovely dame             345
On one, and felt himself in spleen to tame
The other's fierceness. Through the air they flew,
High as the eagles. Like two drops of dew
Exhal'd to Phoebus' lips, away they are gone,
Far from the earth away-unseen, alone,                350
Among cool clouds and winds, but that the free,
The buoyant life of song can floating be
Above their heads, and follow them untir'd.Muse of my native land, am I inspir'd?
This is the giddy air, and I must spread              355
341. In the first edition 'wild surprise'; and no change is made here in the
corrected copy; but 'wide', the word in both the manuscripts, is so far more
charaoteristio that 'wild' may be oonoluded to have passed through an oversight.
343. The draft reads 'coal black'.
349. In the manuscript, 'they're' for they are'. Oompare Donne, 1st Satyre,
At last his love he in a window spies,
And, like light dew exhaled, he flings from me.




Book IV.


ENDYAION.


186


Wide pinions to keep here; nor do I dread
Or height, or depth, or width, or any chance
Precipitous: I have beneath my glance
Those towering horses and their mournful freight.
Could I thus sail, and see, and thus await         360
Fearless for power of thought, without thine aid?There is a sleepy dusk, an odorous shade
From some approaching wonder, and behold
Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold
Snuff at its faint extreme, and seem to tire,      365
Dying to embers from their native fire!
There curl'd a purple mist around them; soon,
It seem'd as when around the pale new moon
Sad Zephyr droops the clouds like weeping willow:
'Twas Sleep slow journeying with head on pillow.   370
For the first time, since he came nigh dead born
From the old womb of night, his cave forlorn
Had he left more forlorn; for the first time,
He felt aloof the day and morning's primeBecause into his depth Cimmerian                   375
There came a dream, showing how a young man,
Ere a lean bat could plump its wintery skin,
Would at high Jove's empyreal footstool win
An immortality, and how espouse
Jove's daughter, and be reckon'd of his house.     380
Now was he slumbering towards heaven's gate,
That he might at the threshold one hour wait
To hear the marriage melodies, and then
Sink downward to his dusky cave again.
His litter of smooth semilucent mist,              385
Diversely ting'd with rose and amethyst,
Puzzled those eyes that for the centre sought;
And scarcely for one moment could be caught
His sluggish form reposing motionless.
Those two on winged steeds, with all the stress    390
Of vision search'd for him, as one would look
866. In the draftSeeming but embers to their former fire.
367-8. The draft reads 'comes' for 'curl'd' and 'half moon' for 'new moon'.
370. In the draft, 'voyaging', not 'journeying'.
384. The draft gives this line thusBetake him downward to his cave again.
886. In the draf, ' pale' for ' smooth '.
3874- The draft reads 'Puzzled the eyes' and 'scarcely one short moment'.




186


ENDYMION.


Book IV.


Athwart the sallows of a river nook
To catch a glance at silver throated eels,Or from old Skiddaw's top, when fog conceals
His rugged forehead in a mantle pale,                 395
With an eye-guess towards some pleasant vale
Descry a favourite hamlet faint and far.
These raven horses, though they foster'd are
Of earth's splenetic fire, dully drop
Their full-vein'd ears, nostrils blood wide, and stop;  400
Upon the spiritless mist have they outspread
Their ample feathers, are in slumber dead,And on those pinions, level in mid air,
Endymion sleepeth and the lady fair.
Slowly they sail, slowly as icy isle                   405
Upon a calm sea drifting: and meanwhile
The mournful wanderer dreams. Behold! he walks
On heaven's pavement; brotherly he talks
To divine powers: from his hand full fain
Juno's proud birds are pecking pearly grain:           410
He tries the nerve of Phcebus' golden bow,
And asketh where the golden apples grow:
Upon his arm he braces Pallas' shield,
And strives in vain to unsettle and wield
A Jovian thunderbolt: arch Hebe brings                 415
A full-brimm'd goblet, dances lightly, sings
And tantalizes long; at last he drinks,
And lost in pleasure at her feet he sinks,
Touching with dazzled lips her starlight hand.
He blows a bugle,-an ethereal band                    420
Are visible above: the Seasons four,Green-kyrtled Spring, flush Summer, golden store
In Autumn's sickle, Winter frosty hoar,
Join dance with shadowy Hours; while still the blast,
In swells unmitigated, still doth last                425
394. The draft has 'front' instead of 'top'.
401. The draft reads 'air' for 'mist'; and in the finished manusoript the
word was first written 'mists'.
418. In the draftWith pleasure at her knees he swoons and sinks.
420. This line stands thus (an Alexandrine) in the draft:
He takes a bugle blows it, an aerial band...
421. In the draft, o'erhead ' for 'above'.
424. In the draft, 'with the shadowy Hours'; and the next line stands thus
(another Alexandrine)Echoed in swells unmitigated, still doth last.




ENDYMIOIN.


187


To sway their floating morris. "Whose is this?
Whose bugle?" he inquires; they smile-" 0 Dis I
Why is this mortal here? Dost thou not know
Its mistress' lips? Not thou?-'Tis Dian's: lo!
She rises crescented!"   He looks, 'tis she,              430
His very goddess: good-bye earth, and sea,
And air, and pains, and care, and suffering;
Good-bye to all but love! Then doth he spring
Towards her, and awakes-and, strange, o'erhead,
Of those same fragrant exhalations bred,                   435
Beheld awake his very dream: the gods
Stood smiling; merry Hebe laughs and nods;
And Phoebe bends towards him crescented.
O state perplexing! On the pinion bed,
Too well awake, he feels the panting side                  440
Of his delicious lady. He who died
For soaring too audacious in the sun,
When that same treacherous wax began to run,
Felt not more tongue-tied than Endymion.
His heart leapt up as to its rightful throne,              445
To that fair shadow'd passion puls'd its wayAh, what perplexity! Ah, well a day!
So fond, so beauteous was his bed-fellow,
He could not help but kiss her: then he grew
Awhile forgetful of all beauty save                        450
Young Phcebe's, golden hair'd; and so 'gan crave
Forgiveness: yet he turn'd once more to look
At the sweet sleeper,-all his soul was shook,428. The draft reads ' a mortal '.
429-30. In both manuscripts the preceding line stands rhymeless, and these
two stand thusIts Mistress' Lips? Not thou? Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah!
'Tis Dian's, here she comes, look out afar,
so that by the withdrawal of one line two very noticeable flaws were remedied.
In line 430, the finished manuscript has a cancelled reading 'look'd' for 'looks'.
432. The draft reads ' cares'.
442-4. The draft reads as follows:
Because in sunshine treacherous wax would melt,
Even at the fatal melting thereof, felt
Not more tongue.tied than did Endymion.
In the finished manuscript the reading is that of the text; and line 443 clearly
begins with 'When': in the first edition it begins with 'Where'; but, though no
alteration is here made in the corrected copy, the manuscript, supported by the
sense of the passage as given in the draft, must rule the text.
449. This line reads thus in the draftHe could not help but kiss-then did he grow...
but the finished manuscript gives the reading of the text.




188


ENDYMION.


Book IV.


She press'd his hand in slumber; so once more
He could not help but kiss her and adore.                455
At this the shadow wept, melting away.
The Latmian started up: "Bright goddess, stay!
Search my most hidden breast! By truth's own tongue,
I have no daedale heart: why is it wrung
To desperation?    Is there nought for me,               460
Upon the bourn of bliss, but misery?"
These words awoke the stranger of dark tresses:
Her dawning love-look rapt Endymion blesses
With 'haviour soft. Sleep yawn'd from underneath.
" Thou swan of Ganges, let us no more breathe            465
This murky phantasm! thou contented seem'st
Pillow'd in lovely idleness, nor dream'st
What horrors may discomfort thee and me.
Ah, shouldst thou die from my heart-treachery!Yet did she merely weep-her gentle soul                  470
Hath no revenge in it: as it is whole
In tenderness, would I were whole in love!
Can I prize thee, fair maid, all price above,
Even when I feel as true as innocence?
I do, I do.-What is this soul then? Whence               475
Came it? It does not seem my own, and I
Have no self-passion or identity.
Some fearful end must be: where, where is it?
By Nemesis, I see my spirit flit
Alone about the dark-Forgive me, sweet:                  480
Shall we away?"    He rous'd the steeds: they beat
Their wings chivalrous into the clear air,
Leaving old Sleep within his vapoury lair.
455. The draft reads 'kiss, kiss and adore'.
458. Cancelled reading of the finished manuscript, 'most inmost' for 'most
hidden'.
461. In the first edition, 'bourne', with a final e; but the manuscript reads
'bourn'.
462-3. The draft reads 'lady' for 'stranger' and 'love-glance' for 'lovelook'.
44. The contraction "haviour', it will be remembered, is of common Elizabethan
use. Compare 'Romeo and Juliet,' Act II, Scene ii, lines 98-9:
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayest think my 'haviour light.
465. In the draft, 'Thou wandering fair one.
483. The draft readsLeaving old Sleep to sail in vapoury lair.




Book IV.


ENDYMION.


The good-night blush of eve was waning slow,
And Vesper, risen star, began to throe                     485
In the dusk heavens silverly, when they
Thus sprang direct towards the Galaxy.
Nor did speed hinder converse soft and strangeEternal oaths and vows they interchange,
In such wise, in such temper, so aloof                     490
Up in the winds, beneath a starry roof,
So witless to their doom, that verily
'Tis well nigh past man's search their hearts to see;
Whether they wept, or laugh'd, or griev'd, or toy'dMost like with joy gone mad, with sorrow cloy'd.           495
Full facing their swift flight, from ebon streak,
The moon put forth a little diamond peak,
No bigger than an unobserved star,
Or tiny point of fairy scymetar;
Bright signal that she only stoop'd to tie                 500
Her silver sandals, ere deliciously
She bow'd into the heavens her timid head.
Slowly she rose, as though she would have fled,
While to his lady meek the Carian turn'd,
To mark if her dark eyes had yet discern'd                 505
This beauty in its birth-Despair! despair!
He saw her body fading gaunt and spare
In the cold moonshine. Straight he seiz'd her wrist;
It melted from his grasp: her hand he kiss'd,
And, horror! kiss'd his own-he was alone.                  510
484-7. These four lines stand thus in the draft:
The good-night hush of eve was waning slow,
And Vesper's timid pulse began to throe
In the dusk heavens silverly, when they
Thus sprang direct up to the Galaxy.
The finished manuscript corresponds with the text; but in the printed book the
word 'silvery' for 'silverly' slipped in. There can be no doubt that silverly
was the word intended.
492. The draft reads ' witless of all things'.
495. In the draft there are two cancelled readings, 'Until' and ' Haply', in
place of 'Most like'; and 'woe' stands in the place of 'joy'.
505-10. In the draft, this passage stands thus:
To mark if her dark eyes slept or discern'd
Such beauty being born-Despair! despair I
He saw her body faded gaunt and spare
In the cold moonshine. Straight her wrist he seized
It melted from his grasp-his lips were teazed
To madness for hisIn the finished manuscript there is no variation from the printed text to account
for the loss of a rhyme. It is likely that line 510 was condensed from a roughly
drafted couplet in which 'own ' rhymed with 'alone '.




190


EBIDYION.


Book IV.


Her steed a little higher soar'd, and then
Dropt hawkwise to the earth.
There lies a den,
Beyond the seeming confines of the space
Made for the soul to wander in and trace
Its own existence, of remotest glooms.                   515
Dark regions are around it, where the tombs
Of buried griefs the spirit sees, but scarce
One hour doth linger weeping, for the pierce
Of new-born woe it feels more inly smart:
And in these regions many a venom'd dart                 520
At random flies; they are the proper home
Of every ill: the man is yet to come
Who hath not journeyed in this native hell.
But few have ever felt how calm and well
Sleep may be had in that deep den of all.                525
There anguish does not sting; nor pleasure pall:
Woe-hurricanes beat ever at the gate,
Yet all is still within and desolate.
Beset with plainful gusts, within ye hear
No sound so loud as when on curtain'd bier               530
The death-watch tick is stifled. Enter none
Who strive therefore: on the sudden it is won.
Just when the sufferer begins to burn,
Then it is free to him; and from an urn,
Still fed by melting ice, he takes a draught-            535
Young Semele such richness never quaft
In her maternal longing! Happy gloom!
Dark Paradise! where pale becomes the bloom
Of health by due; where silence dreariest
Is most articulate; where hopes infest;                  540
513. In the draft this line stands thusOf misery beyond the seeming confines of the space...
518. The draft reads 'lingers' for ' doth linger', so as to force the word hour
into service as a dissyllable.
520. In the draft, ' a random dart'.
522. The draft reads ' that soul' for ' the man'.
526-7. The draft reads thus:
There anguish stings not-sweetness cannot pall:
Dark hurricanes of woe beat ever at the gate,...
531. The draft has ' muffled' in place of ' stifled'.
534. The draft reads 'This den is free to him'.
539. The curious expression ' Of health by due', ummistakeably so written in
the finished manuscript and printed in the first edition, is represented in the draft
by ' The rightful tinge of health '. We may therefore presume that by due is
used as an equivalent for by right.




Book IV.


EBYION.


191


Where those eyes are the brightest far that keep
Their lids shut longest in a dreamless sleep.
0 happy spirit-home! 0 wondrous soul!
Pregnant with such a den to save the whole
In thine own depth. Hail, gentle Carian!                545
For, never since thy griefs and woes began,
Hast thou felt so content: a grievous feud
Hath led thee to this Cave of Quietude.
Aye, his lull'd soul was there, although upborne
With dangerous speed: and so he did not mourn           550
Because he knew not whither he was going.
So happy was he, not the aerial blowing
Of trumpets at clear parley from the east
Could rouse from that fine relish, that high feast.
They stung the feather'd horse: with fierce alarm       555
He flapped towards the sound. Alas, no charm
Could lift Endymion's head, or he had view'd
A skyey mask, a pinion'd multitude,And silvery was its passing: voices sweet
Warbling the while as if to lull and greet              560
The wanderer in his path. Thus warbled they,
While past the vision went in bright array.
"Who, who from Dian's feast would be away?
For all the golden bowers of the day
Are empty left?   Who, who away would be                 565
From Cynthia's wedding and festivity?
Not Hesperus: lo! upon his silver wings
542. The draft reads ' close' for ' shut'.
546. In the draft, ' griefs and joys'.
548. In the first edition, ' Hath let'; but '4 led' in both manuscripts.
550. In the draft this line reads thus:
With dangerous speed: nor did he sigh and mourn...
In the finished manuscript it was written thus:
On dangerous Winds: and so he did not mourn...
and then changed so as to correspond with the text.
554. At this point the draft reads as follows:Could rouse him from that inward feast-and yet to hear't
'Twas like a gift of Prophecy-alert
The feather'd horse he snorted with alarm
And towards it flapp'd away-Alas no charm...
563. The draft reads thus:
Who, who would absent be from Dian's feast
For all the golden chambers of the East
Are empty left? Who, who away would be
From Cynthia's wedding and festivity?
Who, who would be?
Thus the rhyming of four successive lines, 561-4, was due to an accident of revision.




192


ENDYMION.


Book IV.


He leans away for highest heaven and sings,
Snapping his lucid fingers merrily!Ah, Zephyrus! art here, and Flora too!                   570
Ye tender bibbers of the rain and dew,
Young playmates of the rose and daffodil,
Be careful, ere ye enter in, to fill
Your baskets high
With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines,             575
Savory, latter-mint, and columbines,
Cool parsley, basil sweet, and sunny thyme;
Yea, every flower and leaf of every clime,
All gather'd in the dewy morning: hie
Away! fly, fly!-                                580
Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven,
Aquarius! to whom king Jove has given
Two liquid pulse streams 'stead of feather'd wings,
Two fan-like fountains,-thine illuminings
For Dian play:                                    585
Dissolve the frozen purity of air;
Let thy white shoulders silvery and bare
Show cold through watery pinions; make more bright
The Star-Queen's crescent on her marriage night:
Haste, haste away!-                              590
Castor has tam'd the planet Lion, see!
And of the Bear has Pollux mastery:
A third is in the race! who is the third
Speeding away swift as the eagle bird?
The ramping Centaur!                              595
The Lion's mane's on end: the Bear how fierce!
The Centaur's arrow ready seems to pierce
Some enemy: far forth his bow is bent
Into the blue of heaven. He'll be shent
Pale unrelentor,                                  600
569. The draft has two additional lines after this one,
He stay behind-he glad of lazy plea?
Not he! not he!
573. The draft reads this line thus:Mind ere ye enter in to oppress and fill...
576-7. The word 'early ' is cancelled in the finished manuscript before 'latter
mint'; and line 577 reads in the draftCool parsley, dripping cresses, sunny thyme.
584. This was originally a short line consisting of the words 'Thine illuminings'
alone. The whole stanza, lines 581 to 590, was sent by Keats to his friend
Baily for his "vote, pro or con ", in a letter dated the 22nd of November 1817.
The curious may see the passage as given in the letter in the present edition with
its slight variations of spelling and capitalling, and its ' hath' for 'has' in line 582.
589. The draft reads Night-Queen's ' for 'Star-Queen's'.
593. The draft reads 'Ay three are in the race I '.




Book IV.


EDYMON.


193


When he shall hear the wedding lutes a playing.Andromeda! sweet woman! why delaying
So timidly among the stars: come hither!
Join this bright throng, and nimbly follow whither
They all are going.                             605
Danae's Son, before Jove newly bow'd,
Has wept for thee, calling to Jove aloud.
Thee, gentle lady, did he disenthral:
Ye shall for ever live and love, for all
Thy tears are flowing.-                        610
By Daphne's fright, behold Apollo!-"More
Endymion heard not: down his steed him bore,
Prone to the green head of a misty hill.
His first touch of the earth went nigh to kill.
"Alas! " said he, "were I but always borne             615
Through dangerous winds, had bu4. my footsteps worn
A path in hell, for ever would I bless
Horrors which nourish an uneasiness
For my own sullen conquering: to him
Who lives beyond earth's boundary, grief is dim,        620
Sorrow is but a shadow: now I see
The grass; I feel the solid ground-Ah, me!
It is thy voice-divinest! Where?-who? who
Left thee so quiet on this bed of dew?
Behold upon this happy earth we are;                    625
Let us aye love each other; let us fare
On forest-fruits, and never, never go
Among the abodes of mortals here below,
Or be by phantoms dup'd. 0 destiny!
Into a labyrinth now my soul would fly,                 630
But with thy beauty will I deaden it.
607-8. The draft readscalling to Jove aloud
For thee-thee gentle did he disenthrall.
622. In the draft, this line isThe real grass, the solid ground-Ah, me!
but in the finished manuscript it is an AlexandrineThe real grass; I feel the solid ground —Ah, me!
the word real being in both oases alike a full dissyllable, as in line 665, and not of
simple monosyllabic value as in line 852 (page 201). The reading of the text is that
of the first edition.
624. The draft has ' safe upon' for ' quiet on'.
629-30. This couplet stands thus in the draft:Or be by phantoms duped. Alas! alas!
Into a labyrinth now my soul would pass,...
N




194


ENDYMION.


Book IV.


Where didst thou melt to? By thee will I sit
For ever: let our fate stop here-a kid
I on this spot will offer: Pan will bid
Us live in peace, in love and peace among                  635
His forest wildernesses. I have clung
To nothing, lov'd a nothing, nothing seen
Or felt but a great dream! 0 I have been
Presumptuous against love, against the sky,
Against all elements, against the tie                      640
Of mortals each to each, against the blooms
Of flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombs
Of heroes gone! Against his proper glory
Has my own soul conspired: so my story
Will I to children utter, and repent.                      615
There never liv'd a mortal man, who bent
His appetite beyond his natural sphere,
But starv'd and died. My sweetest Indian, here,
Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast
My life from too thin breathing: gone and past             650
Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewell!
And air of visions, and the monstrous swell
Of visionary seas! No, never more
Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore
Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast.                  655
Adieu, my daintiest Dream! although so vast
My love is still for thee. The hour may come
When we shall meet in pure elysium.
On earth I may not love thee; and therefore
Doves will I offer up, and sweetest store                  660
All through the teeming year: so thou wilt shine
632. The finished manuscript and the first edition read ' too ' for 'to'; but as
the question is repeated in line 668 in the words 'Whither didst melt', there
can be no possible doubt as to the right reading.
641-3. The draft readsOf mortals to each other, against the blooms
Of roses, rush of rivers, and the tombs
Of heroes gone! Against its proper glory...
646. The draft has the word ' Has ' instead of ' There'.
649. In the finished manuscript this line stands thus:Will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast...
650. Woodhouse notes the following variation, presumably from the draft:My spirit from too thin a breath-gone and past...
653. Woodhouse notes the variation 'No more, no more'. See Book II,
line 199 et seq., for the explanation of this speech of Endymion's.
656. Woodhouse notes the variation ' how vast, how vast'.
660. Woodhouse notes the variation ' I offer thee '
661. Cancelled reading of the finished manuscript, ' smile ' for ' shine'.




Book IV.


ENDYMION.


195


On me, and on this damsel fair of mine,
And bless our silver lives. My Indian bliss!
My river-lilly bud! one human kiss!
One sign of real breath-one gentle squeeze,                  665
Warm as a dove's nest among summer trees,
And warm with dew at ooze from living blood!
Whither didst melt? Ah, what of that!-all good
We'll talk about-no more of dreaming.-Now,
Where shall our dwelling be?      Under the brow             670
Of some steep mossy hill, where ivy dun
Would hide us up, although spring leaves were none;
And where dark yew trees, as we rustle through,
Will drop their scarlet berry cups of dew?
O thou wouldst joy to live in such a place;                  675
Dusk for our loves, yet light enough to grace
Those gentle limbs on mossy bed reclin'd:
For by one step the blue sky shouldst thou find,
And by another, in deep dell below,
See, through the trees, a little river go                    680
All in its mid-day gold and glimmering.
Honey from out the gnarled hive I'll bring,
And apples, wan with sweetness, gather thee,Cresses that grow where no man may them see,
And sorrel untorn by the dew-claw'd stag:                    685
Pipes will I fashion of the syrinx flag,
That thou mayst always know whither I roam,
When it shall please thee in our quiet home
To listen and think of love. Still let me speak;
Still let me dive into the joy I seek,-                      690
For yet the past doth prison me. The rill,
Thou haply mayst delight in, will I fill
With fairy fishes from the mountain tarn,
And thou shalt feed them from the squirrel's barn.
664. Woodhouse notes the variation ' mortal ' for human'.
666. An imagination in which there is no basis of reality; but probably Keats
had never seen the miserable platform of dry twigs that serves for "a dove's nest
among summer trees."
670. Endymion's imaginary home and employments as pictured in the next fifty
lines may be compared with Shelley's Egean island and described so wonderfully in
' Epipsychidion.' Both passages are thoroughly characteristic; and they show the divergence between the modes of thought and sentiment of the two men in avery marked
way. Whatever debt there may be is on Shelley's side. He read 'Endymion in1819.
680. In the draft,
See, through the trees, a river at its flow...
682. The draft reads ' nest' for ' hive '.
685. The dew-claw is the small process at the back of the leg above the foot.
687. The draft reads 'That thou by ear mayst know'.
691. In the draft, 'For yet the past doth weigh me down'.
693-4. The draft reads 'tarns' and 'barns'.




ENDYMION.


Book IV.


Its bottom will I strew with amber shells,                 695
And pebbles blue from deep enchanted wells.
Its sides I'll plant with dew-sweet eglantine,
And honeysuckles full of clear bee-wine.
I will entice this crystal rill to trace
Love's silver name upon the meadow's face.                 700
I'll kneel to Vesta, for a flame of fire;
And to god Phcebus, for a golden lyre;
To Empress Dian, for a hunting spear;
To Vesper, for a taper silver-clear,
That I may see thy beauty through the night;               705
To Flora, and a nightingale shall light
Tame on thy finger; to the River-gods,
And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods
Of gold, and lines of Naiads' long bright tress.
Heaven shield thee for thine utter loveliness!             710
Thy mossy footstool shall the altar be
'Fore which I'll bend, bending, dear love, to thee:
Those lips shall be my Delphos, and shall speak
Laws to my footsteps, colour to my cheek,
Trembling or stedfastness to this same voice,              715
And of three sweetest pleasurings the choice:
And that affectionate light, those diamond things,
Those eyes, those passions, those supreme pearl springs,
Shall be my grief, or twinkle me to pleasure.
Say, is not bliss within our perfect seisure?              720
0 that I could not doubt!"
The mountaineer
Thus strove by fancies vain and crude to clear
His briar'd path to some tranquillity.
697. In the finished manuscript, ' I plant ',-not ' I'll plant'.
699. Cancelled readings of the manuscript,
Aye,' } I will make this crystal rillet trace.
700. After this line there is a couplet in the finished manuscript, which does
not appear in the printed book,And by it shalt thou sit and sing, hey nonny!
While doves coo to thee for a little honey.
709. The draft reads ' with' for ' and'.
716. This line originally began with the words ' And the most velvet', which
are struck out in the finished manuscript. Woodhouse notes, doubtless from the
draft, the lineAnd the most velvet peaches to my choice.
720. The draft reads ' Is not, then, bliss', etc.
721. In the first edition there is a note of interrogation after 'doubt'; but a
note of exclamation stands there both in the manuscript and in the corrected copy.
723. The draft reads ' The' for ' His'.




Book IV.


ENDYtION.


It gave bright gladness to his lady's eye,
And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow;            725
Answering thus, just as the golden morrow
Beam'd upward from the vallies of the east:
" 0 that the flutter of this heart had ceas'd,
Or the sweet name of love had pass'd away.
Young feathered tyrant! by a swift decay                    730
Wilt thou devote this body to the earth:
And I do think that at my very birth
I lisp'd thy blooming titles inwardly;
For at the first, first dawn and thought of thee,
With uplift hands I blest the stars of heaven.               735
Art thou not cruel? Ever have I striven
To think thee kind, but ah, it will not do!
When yet a child, I heard that kisses drew
Favour from thee, and so I kisses gave
To the void air, bidding them find out love:                 710
But when I came to feel how far above
All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood,
All earthly pleasure, all imagined good,
Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss,Even then, that moment, at the thought of this,              745
Fainting I fell into a bed of flowers,
And languish'd there three days. Ye milder powers,
Am I not cruelly wrong'd? Believe, believe
Me, dear Endymion, were I to weave
With my own fancies garlands of sweet life,                  750
Thou shouldst be one of all. Ah, bitter strife!
724-5. At the end of the book containing the draft, Keats wrote, apparently as
a memorandum for this passage, the two linesThere was rejoicing in his Lady's eye
And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow.
726. The draft has ' what time' for 'just as'.
734. The draft reads ' thought and dawn' instead of ' dawn and thought'.
739. In the finished manuscript, this line ends with ' so I gave gave', as if one
gave were an accidental repetition instead of the right word; and indeed the word
' kisses' is inserted in pencil in the margin as a substitute for the first' gave'.
Nevertheless the first edition reads ' so I gave and gave '; but the reading of the
text is supplied in the corrected copy. It is surprising that Keats did not discover
the rhymelessness of this line and of line 758, or the bad rhyme of lines 754
and 755.
743. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' Was' for the initial 'All ' in this
line.
748. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, ' serv'd' for ' wrong a'd'.
749-51. The draft has the following variation:were I to weave
My own imaginations to sweet life
Thou would'st o'ertop them all.




198


ENDYMION.


Book IV


I may not be thy love: I am forbiddenIndeed I am-thwarted, affrighted, chidden,
By things I trembled at, and gorgon wrath.
Twice hast thou ask'd whither I went: henceforth        755
Ask me no more! I may not utter it,
Nor may I be thy love. We might commit
Ourselves at once to vengeance; we might die;
We might embrace and die: voluptuous thought!
Enlarge not to my hunger, or I'm caught                 760
In trammels of perverse deliciousness.
No, no, that shall not be: thee will I bless,
And bid a long adieu."
The Carian
No word return'd: both lovelorn, silent, wan,
Into the vallies green together went.                   765
Far wandering, they were perforce content
To sit beneath a fair lone beechen tree;
Nor at each other gaz'd, but heavily
Por'd on its hazle cirque of shedded leaves.
Endymion! unhappy! it nigh grieves                   770
Me to behold thee thus in last extreme:
Ensky'd ere this, but truly that I deem
Truth the best music in a first-born song.
Thy lute-voic'd brother will I sing ere long,
And thou shalt aid-hast thou not aided me?             775
Yes, moonlight Emperor! felicity
Has been thy meed for many thousand years;
Yet often have I, on the brink of tears,
Mourn'd as if yet thou wert a forester;Forgetting the old tale.
He did not stir                 780
His eyes from the dead leaves, or one smail pulse
Of joy he might have felt. The spirit culls
764. In the draft, tremble ', not ' trembled '.
766. This line begins in the draft with 'Long' instead of 'Far'.
769. The draft reads 'carpet of shed leaves' instead of 'cirque of shedded
leaves '.
772. In the draftThat hadst been high ere this, but that I deem...
774. Another allusion to the poetic scheme of which the stately fragment
' Hyperion ' is the unachieved result.
778. The draft readsYet often have I, mid some foolish tears,...




Book IV.


ENDYMION.


199


Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays
Through the old garden-ground of boyish days.
A little onward ran the very stream                        785
By which he took his first soft poppy dream;
And on the very bark 'gainst which he leant
A crescent he had carv'd, and round it spent
His skill in little stars. The teeming tree
Had swollen and green'd the pious charactery,              790
But not ta'en out. Why, there was not a slope
Up which he had not fear'd the antelope;
And not a tree, beneath whose rooty shade
He had not with his tamed leopards play'd:
Nor could an arrow light, or javelin,                      795
Fly in the air where his had never beenAnd yet he knew it not.
0 treachery!
Why does his lady smile, pleasing her eye
With all his sorrowing? He sees her not.
But who so stares on him?    His sister sure 1            800
Peona of the woods!-Can she endureImpossible-how dearly they embrace!
His lady smiles; delight is in her face;
It is no treachery.
" Dear brother mine!
Endymion, weep not so! Why shouldst thou pine             805
When all great Latmos so exalt will be?
Thank the great gods, and look not bitterly;
And speak not one pale word, and sigh no more.
Sure I will not believe thou hast such store
Of grief, to last thee to my kiss again.                   810
783. The draft has ' perchance ' in place of ' wild', so as to make 'amaranth'
scan as a dissyllable.
791-2. The draft reads 'effaced' for 'ta'en out' and chaced' for 'fear'd'
which is of course used in its old sense of frightened.
794. Woodhouse notes, presumably from the draft, the variation 'jessied
falcons' for tamed leopards'.
799. The finished manusoript does not help us to the missing rhyme; and
Woodhonse notes nothing from the draft here, though against line 801 he records
what is doubtless a variation from the draft, ' Peona kind and fair'.
805. Woodhouse notes the variation 'Dear Endy: weep', etc., which I
should not like to accept literally without seeing the original
806. Here again as in Book =, line 449, the first edition reads 'Latmos'
though the manuscript reads 'Latmus '.
808. Another variation noted by Woodhouse is 'nor sigh once more' for
'and sigh no more.




200


ENDYMION.


Book IV.


Thou surely canst not bear a mind in pain,
Come hand in hand with one so beautiful.
Be happy both of you! for I will pull
The flowers of autumn for your coronals.
Pan's holy priest for young Endymion calls;              815
And when he is restor'd, thou, fairest dame,
Shalt be our queen. Now, is it not a shame
To see ye thus,-not very, very sad?
Perhaps ye are too happy to be glad:
0 feel as if it were a common day;                       820
Free-voic'd as one who never was away.
No tongue shall ask, whence come ye? but ye shall
Be gods of your own rest imperial.
Not even I, for one whole month, will pry
Into the hours that have pass'd us by,                   825
Since in my arbour I did sing to thee.
O Hermes! on this very night will be
A hymning up to Cynthia, queen of light;
For the soothsayers old saw yesternight
Good visions in the air,-whence will befal,              830
As say these sages, health perpetual
To shepherds and their flocks; and furthermore,
In Dian's face they read the gentle lore:
Therefore for her these vesper-carols are.
Our friends will all be there from nigh and far.         835
Many upon thy death have ditties made;
And many, even now, their foreheads shade
With cypress, on a day of sacrifice.
New singing for our maids shalt thou devise,
811. At this point Woodhouse gives the following passage, whioh is doubtless
from the draft:Were this sweet damsel like a long neck'd crane
Or an old rocking barn owl half asleep
Some reason would there be for thee to keep
So dull-eyed-but thou knowst she's beautiful
Yes, Yes I and thou dost love her well-I'll pull...
815. Woodhouse notes here the variation Great Pan's high priest', and for
the next lineThis Shepherd Prince restor'd, thou, fairest dame,...
819. Woodhouse notes the following two variants of this line,-one expressly
and the other presumably from the draft:
(1) Perhaps ye feel too much joy-too overglad:
(2) Perhaps ye are too glad, too overglad.
825. The draft reads ' Into the long hours', so as to avoid the necessity for
scanning hours as a dissyllable.
827. In the draft thusWhy! hark ye I on this very eve will be...




Book IV.


ENDYMION.


201


And pluck the sorrow from our huntsmen's brows.        340
Tell me, my lady-queen, how to espouse
This wayward brother to his rightful joys!
His eyes are on thee bent, as thou didst poize
His fate most goddess-like. Help me, I pray,
To lure-Endymion, dear brother, say                    845
What ails thee? " He could bear no more, and so
Bent his soul fiercely like a spiritual bow,
And twanged it inwardly, and calmly said:
"I would have thee my only friend, sweet maid!
My only visitor! not ignorant though,                  850
That those deceptions which for pleasure go
'Mong men, are pleasures real as real may be:
But there are higher ones I may not see,
If impiously an earthly realm I take.
Since I saw thee, I have been wide awake               855
Night after night, and day by day, until
Of the empyrean I have drunk my fill.
Let it content thee, Sister, seeing me
More happy than betides mortality.
A hermit young, I'll live in mossy cave,               860
Where thou alone shalt come to me, and lave
Thy spirit in the wonders I shall tell.
Through me the shepherd realm shall prosper well;
For to thy tongue will I all health confide.
And, for my sake, let this young maid abide            865
With thee as a dear sister. Thou alone,
Peona, mayst return to me. I own
This may sound strangely: but when, dearest girl,
Thou seest it for my happiness, no pearl
Will trespass down those cheeks. Companion fair!       870
Wilt be content to dwell with her, to share
This sister's love with me?"  Like one resign'd
And bent by circumstance, and thereby blind
In self-commitment, thus that meek unknown:
"Aye, but a buzzing by my ears has flown,              875
Of jubilee to Dian:-truth I heard?
Well then, I see there is no little bird,
840. The draft has ' cypress' for ' sorrow'.
863. In the draft, 'But I have', etc.
862. Woodhouse notes the variation ' will' for ' shall'.
866. Woodhonse notes the variation 'With thee ev'n as a sister'.
874. Woodhouse notes the variation 'mild' for ' meek'.
876. This line ends with a note of exclamation in the first edition, but with a
note of interrogation both in the finished manuscript and in the corrected copy.
Woodhouse does not cite the draft on this point.




ENDYMION.


Book IV,


Tender soever, but is Jove's own care.
Long have I sought for rest, and, unaware,
Behold I find it! so exalted too!                      880
So after my own heart! I knew, I knew
There was a place untenanted in it:
In that same void white Chastity shall sit,
And monitor me nightly to lone slumber.
With sanest lips I vow me to the number                 885
Of Dian's sisterhood; and, kind lady,
With thy good help, this very night shall see
My future days to her fane consecrate."
As feels a dreamer what doth most create
His own particular fright, so these three felt:         890
Or like one who, in after ages, knelt
To Lucifer or Baal, when he'd pine
After a little sleep: or when in mine
Far under-ground, a sleeper meets his friends
Who know him not. Each diligently bends                 895
Towards common thoughts and things for very fear;
Striving their ghastly malady to cheer,
By thinking it a thing of yes and no,
That housewives talk of. But the spirit-blow
Was struck, and all were dreamers. At the last          900
Endymion said: " Are not our fates all cast?
Why stand we here? Adieu, ye tender pair!
Adieu!" Whereat those maidens, with wild stare,
Walk'd dizzily away. Pained and hot
His eyes went after them, until they got                905
Near to a cypress grove, whose deadly maw,
In one swift moment, would what then he saw
Engulph for ever. " Stay! " he cried, " ah, stay!
Turn, damsels! hist! one word I have to say.
Sweet Indian, I would see thee once again.              910
It is a thing I dote on: so I'd fain,
Peona, ye should hand in hand repair
878. A curious importation from biblical theology into a subject from Greek
mythology. Compare St. Matthew, X, 29: "Are not two sparrows sold for a
farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father."
Or, as made familiar to our childhood by the popular hymn-wright,A little sparrow cannot fall,
Unnoticed, Lord, by Thee.
882. Woodhouse notes the variation 'void' for ' place'.
888-9. The draft reads ' in ' for ' to' and 4 can for ' doth '.
892. In the draft, at strife' in place of 'he'd pine'.
904. The draft reads ' patiently for ' dizzily '
906. In the draft, 'shade' for 'maw '.




Book IV.


ENDYMION.


203


Into those holy groves, that silent are
Behind great Dian's temple. I'll be yon,
At vesper's earliest twinkle-they are gone-             915
But once, once, once again —" At this he press'd
His hands against his face, and then did rest
His head upon a mossy hillock green,
And so remain'd as he a corpse had been
All the long day; save when he scantly lifted           920
His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted
With the slow move of time,-sluggish and weary
Until the poplar tops, in journey dreary,
Had reach'd the river's brim. Then up he rose,
And, slowly as that very river flows,                   925
Walk'd towards the temple grove with this lament:
"Why such a golden eve? The breeze is sent
Careful and soft, that not a leaf may fall
Before the serene father of them all
Bows down his summer head below the west.               930
Now am I of breath, speech, and speed possest,
But at the setting I must bid adieu
To her for the last time. Night will strew
On the damp grass myriads of lingering leaves,
And with them shall I die; nor much it grieves          935
To die, when summer dies on the cold sward.
Why, I have been a butterfly, a lord
Of flowers, garlands, love-knots, silly posies,
Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbour roses;
My kingdom's at its death, and just it is               940
That I should die with it: so in all this
We miscall grief, bale, sorrow, heartbreak, woe,
What is there to plain of? By Titan's foe
I am but rightly serv'd." So saying, he
Tripp'd lightly on, in sort of deathful glee;            945
Laughing at the clear stream and setting sun,
As though they jests had been: nor had he done
918-22. In the draft this passage stands thus:His hands upon a pillow of green moss
And so remained without impatient toss
All the day long-save when he scantly lifted
His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted,
And note the weary time.-Ah weary, weary,...
The word 'hands' in line 918 was probably a mere slip.
926-7. Woodhouse gives, presumably from the draft, the couplet,
Walk'd towards the temple grove lamenting "0
"Why such a golden eve? The breezes blow...
933. This line, though possibly corrupt, stands thus in the finished manuscript
and in Keats's edition. Woodhouse does not bring the draft in evidence.
934 In the manuscript, ' ling'ring' for ' lingering '.




ENDYMION.


Book IV.


His laugh at nature's holy countenance,
Until that grove appear'd, as if perchance,
And then his tongue with sober seemlihed                   950
Gave utterance as he enter'd: " Ha! I said,
" King of the butterflies; but by this gloom,
And by old Rhadamanthus' tongue of doom,
This dusk religion, pomp of solitude,
And the Promethean clay by thief endued,                   955
By old Saturnus' forelock, by his head
Shook with eternal palsy, I did wed
Myself to things of light from infancy;
And thus to be cast out, thus lorn to die,
Is sure enough to make a mortal man                        960
Grow impious." So he inwardly began
On things for which no wording can be found;
Deeper and deeper sinking, until drown'd
Beyond the reach of music: for the choir
Of Cynthia he heard not, though rough briar                965
Nor muffling thicket interpos'd to dull
The vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full,
Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles.
He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles,
Wan as primroses gather'd at midnight                      970
By chilly finger'd spring. " Unhappy wight!
Endymion!" said Peona, "we are here!
What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier?"
Then he embrac'd her, and his lady's hand
Press'd, saying: " Sister, I would have command,           975
If it were heaven's will, on our sad fate."
At which that dark-ey'd stranger stood elate
And said, in a new voice, but sweet as love,
949-60. In the draftUntil he saw that grove, as if perchance,
And then his soul was changed...
951. The inverted commas are closed after 'Ha! ' in the first edition; but it
is not so in the manuscript; and the matter is set right in the corrected copy.
955. Cancelled reading of the manuscript, 'And by Promethean...'. This
was probably rejected to get rid of the repetition of the word by.
956. The draft reads 'And by old Saturn's single forelock...'.
967. The draft reads 'prelude' for ' vesper'.
968. It is worth noting that, when writing out the fair copy, Keats made three
several attempts to spell this word 'aisles' rightly, having first written it ' isles',
then ' ailes' and lastly aisles'.
974-7. The draft reads as follows:
Her brother kiss'd her, and his lady's hand
Saying, " Sweet sister I would have command,
If it were heaven's will, on our sad fate."
Then that dark-tressed stranger stood elate...




Book IV.


ENDYMION.


205


To Endymion's amaze: "By Cupid's dove,
And so thou shalt! and by the lilly truth                980
Of my own breast thou shalt, beloved youth!"
And as she spake, into her face there came
Light, as reflected from a silver flame:
Her long black hair swell'd ampler, in display
Full golden; in her eyes a brighter day                  985
Dawn'd blue and full of love. Aye, he beheld
Phoebe, his passion! joyous she upheld
Her lucid bow, continuing thus: " Drear, drear
Has our delaying been; but foolish fear
Withheld me first; and then decrees of fate;             990
And then 'twas fit that from this mortal state
Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlook'd for change
Be spiritualiz'd.  Peona, we shall range
These forests, and to thee they safe shall be
As was thy cradle; hither shalt thou flee               995
To meet us many a time." Next Cynthia bright
Peona kiss'd, and bless'd with fair good night:
Her brother kiss'd her too, and knelt adown
Before his goddess, in a blissful swoon.
She gave her fair hands to him, and behold,             1000
Before three swiftest kisses he had told,
They vanish'd far away!-Peona went
Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.
THE END,
984-6. In the draft thus:
Her long black hair swell'd ampler, while it turned
Golden-and her eyes of jet dawned forth a brighter day
Blue-blue-and full of love.
997-8. In the finished manuscript the word 'kist' occurs twice in these two
lines instead of 'kiss'd' as in the first edition; but 'bless'd' is not similarly
transformed to ' blest '.
1003. At the end of the draft Keats wrote-' Burford Bridge Nov. 28, 18I7'.
Looking back at the several cases, recorded in the notes, of lines standing rhymeless, I am convinced that Palgrave was not right in assuming intention on Keats's
part thus to vary his form.




LIST OF WORDS ALTERED SO AS TO CONSIST WITH
KEATS'S RULE OR PRACTIOE.
In the 1817 Volume.
Page   Line              Page   Line              Page   Line
anoles      18     82    honour      38    128    shewn       55    167
lily        34     89    laurel'd    39      3    smoothiness 61    377
In Endymion.


honour
Book
valley-lilies I
owlets,,
honour,,
ohildrens',,
pavilion,,
balances,,
tease,,
farewel,
pavilions    II
lilies,,
farewel,,
lily',
honour,,


Preface
Line
157
182
226
317
628
644
745
974
56
100
115
129
408
436


Book
ay            II
tease,,
farewel,,
crystaline,,
lily,,
tease,,
shew,,
poise        III
sphery,,
splendor,,
gulf,
lily          9
blithly,,
shew,,
farewel,,


Line
555
602
626
669
793
946
954
990
27
33
91
94
103
156
209
275


Book
shew          HII
shewing,,
lily,,
chase          i
shew,
lily          IV
water-lily,,
shewing,,
Shew,
ay,,
farewel,
river-lily,,
poise,,
miscal,
lily


Line
388
502
577
590
851
118
186
376
588
626
651
664
843
942
980


WORDS ENDING IN ed.-In the 1817 Volume.
Page   Line             Page   Line            Page   Line
passed      5      1   large-eyed  19    127   fine-eyed   30    35
leaved      7      5   turned      19    129   intertwined  30   43
played      8     26    arched     19    130   black-eyed  31    87
overtwined  8     35   Embroidered 21     14   tired      33     84
scattered   8     45   listened    22     30   Lured       34   101
inspired   11    163   glistened   22     32   required    37   105
delayed    13    212   honied      24     24   strayed    41      9
turned     13    213   broidered   24     45   ruled      46      6
soothed    13    224   placed      24     49   Smoothed   52     57
eyed       13    225   bright-eyed  25    21   chequered  63     77
turned     14      9   reclined    26     18   Bared       55   190
prepared   16     29   tried       27     32   blasphemed  56   202
bright-eyed  18   73   loved       27     14 ' dared       59    300
206




WORDS ENDING IN ed.


207


finished
strayed
unsullied
seemed
died
used
trailed
piled
paled
Eyed
fire-tailed
used
Dried
used
dazed
used
died
moved
preserved
magnified
dared


Book
I,,
ti
if,,,,
It
II
~:


Line
55
69
97
111
116
134
145
183
189
194
367
433
439
546
601
728
733
897
904
19
36


In Endymion.
Book
reached      II
clear-eyed,,
Descried
exclaimed
Medicined
used
zoned,
exhaled
endued
ashamed,
self-doomed,
pursued,
honied
blear-eyed  III
bared,,
Couched
unaccustomed,,
Lashed,
chaced,
died,
dried,,
dived,,


Line
84
109
245
295
484
553
569
663
707
787
843
928
997
11
35
58
90
111
138
139
144
351


Book    Line
tried     mII     390
ceased,,     423
phantasied,,    506
emptied,, 510 & 515
poisoned,,     602
Moved,,     606
reached,,    671
applied,,     781
eyed,,     803
Moved,,     822
cried,,     832
uninspired  IV     25
replied,,     125
imbrued,,     212
gazed,,     293
full-veined,,   400
yawned,,    464
tamed,     591
duped,,     629
entered,,     951
dark-eyed,,    977


ERRATA.
Page 18, Line 73 for 'bright-eyed' read 'bright-ey'd'.
Page 18, Line 105 for 'pressed' read 'press'd '.
Page 47, Sonnet XII, Line 8 for 'discover'd' read 'discovered '
Page 73, Line 63 for 'Latmus' read 'Latmos'.
Page 103, Line 974 for 'farewel' read 'farewell'.
Page 189, Line 492 for 'to' read 'of'.
ADDENDUM.
Under the title "A Shelf of Old Books," Mrs. Fields contributed to 'Scribner's
Magazine' for March 1888 an account of some books of personal interest owned by
the late Mr. James T. Fields. One of these was a volume containing the poems
of Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, annotated in manuscript by Leigh Hant. Inserted in this were a letter from Coleridge, a tiny business note from Shelley,
and a fragment of Keats's holograph draft of " I stood tip-toe upon a little hilL"




208


ADDENDUM.


It seems to follow line 37; and it would appear that Keats at first thought it
needful to have an ash-tree in his landscape; for the fragment begins, after 'there
too should be,' with the words IThe delicate Ash'. Then comes
The frequent chequer of some a youngling tree
Of livelier breewThat      *,      -w:th...:t g^ght n    cs.
with a score of light green Brethren shoots
From the quaint Mossiness of aged roots
Round which is{    d    } springhead{f   rea   te
blooming]
That Babbles sweetly of its - fragdat- daughters
The wedland Hyaeiaths
The Spreading Blue Bells-it may haply mourn
That such fair Clusters should be rudely torn
From their fresh Beds and scattered though[tllessly
By Urchin's Hand left on the Path to dieComeybr-ig_ Mr-eoldOpen afresh your congreg.ted-of starry folds
Ye ardent Marigolds
Above the cancelled word ' congregated ' is written and cancelled ' crowd 'above that ' cirques ' (uncanoelled) and above that again ' round ' (also uncancelled). The line which Keats altered in the act of writing down was of course
Open afresh your congregated folds
which is a good line, though not so good as the reading selected when he came to
transcribe fairly, and print, namelyOpen afresh your round of starry folds.
I regret that I had mislaid this interesting excerpt from 'Scribner's Magazine'
when the sheet of this volume containing the poem (see page 8) was passing
through the press.
IL B. F.
1The alternative word is illegible.


End of Volume I








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