Then the hurry and alarm
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
Acorns ripe down-pattering
While the autumn breezes sing.

Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;

Every thing is spoilt by use;

Where's the cheek that doth not fade,
Too much gazed at? Where's the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, winged Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe's, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down

Fell her kirtle to her feet,

While she held the goblet sweet,

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80

With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond'rous
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

10

20

30

40

'There is just room, I see, in this page to copy a little thing I wrote off to some Music as it was playing.' Keats to George and Georgiana Keats, January 2, 1819.

I HAD a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving:

O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied,

With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving;

Sweet little red feet! why should you die

Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why?

You lived alone in the forest-tree, Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me?

I kiss'd you oft and gave you white peas; Why not live sweetly, as in the green

trees?

ODE ON MELANCHOLY

Published in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems, 1820. There is no date affixed to it, but if it takes its color at all from Keats's own experience, it might not be amiss to refer it to the early part of 1819, when he had come under the influence of his passion for Fanny Brawne. In a letter to Haydon, written between January 7 and 14, 1819, Keats says: 'I have been writing a little now and then lately: but nothing to speak of - being discontented and as it were moulting. Yet I do not think I shall ever come to the rope or the pistol. For after a day or two's melancholy, although I smoke more and more my own insufficiency - I see by little and little more of what is to be done, and how it is to be done, should I ever be able to do it.'

Lord Houghton, in the Aldine edition of 1876, makes the following prefatory note: 'A singular instance of Keats's delicate perception occurred in the composition of this Ode. In the original manuscript he had intended to represent the vulgar conception of Melancholy with gloom and horror, in contrast with the emotion that incites to

"glut thy sorrow on a morning rose Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globed peonies; "

and which essentially

"lives in Beauty Beauty that must die, And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu."

The first stanza, therefore, was the following: as grim a passage as Blake or Fuseli could have dreamed and painted :

"Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones,
And rear a platform gibbet for a mast,
Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans
To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast;
Although your rudder be a dragon's tail
Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony,
Your cordage large uprootings from the skull
Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail
To find the Melancholy- whether she
Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull."

But no sooner was this written, than the poet became conscious that the coarseness of the contrast would destroy the general effect of luxurious tenderness which it was the object of the poem to produce, and he confined the gross notion of Melancholy to less violent images, and let the ode at once begin, — '

I

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poison

ous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd

By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, or the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

II

But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hills in an April

shroud;

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt-sand wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless

eyes.

III

She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

Aye, in the very temple of Delight

Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose

strenuous tongue

Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;

His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,

And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

THE EVE OF ST. AGNES

Begun early in 1819. In a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, dated February 14, 1819, Keats says: 'I was nearly a fortnight at Mr. John Snook's and a few days at old Mr. Dilke's (Chichester in Hampshire). Nothing worth speaking of happened at either place. I took down some thin paper and wrote on it a little poem called St. Agnes's Eve.' The poem

underwent a great deal of revision, and was not in final form before September; it was published in the 1820 volume.

II

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy

man;

Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,

And back returneth, meagre, barefoot,

wan,

Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees: The sculptured dead, on each side, seem to freeze,

Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails: Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat❜ries, He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails.

III

Northward he turneth through a little door,

And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue

Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor;

But no- already had his death-bell rung; The joys of all his life were said and

sung:

His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve:

Another way he went, and soon among Rough ashes sat he for his soul's reprieve,

And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve.

IV

That ancient Beadsman heard the pre

lude soft;

And so it chanced, for many a door was wide,

From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide:

The level chambers, ready with their pride,

Were glowing to receive a thousand guests:

The carved angels, ever eager-eyed,