WHO loves to peer up at the morning sun, With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek, Let him, with this sweet tale, full often seek For meadows where the little rivers run; Who loves to linger with that brightest one Of Heaven Hesperus - let him lowly speak These numbers to the night, and starlight meek, Or moon, if that her hunting be begun. He who knows these delights, and too is prone To moralize upon a smile or tear, Will find at once a region of his own, A bower for his spirit, and will steer To alleys, where the fir-tree drops its cone, Where robins hop, and fallen leaves are sear. SONNET First published in Life, Letters and Literary Remains, but dated 1817 in a manuscript copy owned by Sir Charles Dilke. Keats sends it as his last sonnet' in a letter to Reynolds written on the last day of January, 1818. WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high pilèd books, in charactry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. ON SEEING A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR 'I was at Hunt's the other day,' writes Keats to Bailey, January 23, 1818, and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of Milton's Hair. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is as they say of a sheep in a Nursery Book.' 'This I did,' he adds, after copying the lines, 'at Hunt's at his request-perhaps I should have done something better alone and at home.' Lord Houghton printed the verse in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. CHIEF of organic numbers! Old Scholar of the Spheres! Thy spirit never slumbers, O what a mad endeavour Who to thy sacred and ennobled hearse How heavenward thou soundest, To a young Delian oath,—ay, by thy soul, When every childish fashion Has vanish'd from my rhyme, Will I, grey-gone in passion, Leave to an after-time, Hymning and harmony Of thee, and of thy works, and of thy life; But vain is now the burning and the strife, Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife With old Philosophy, And mad with glimpses of futurity ! In a letter to his brothers, dated January 23, 1818, Keats says: 'I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately - I cannot bear to be uninterested or unemployed, I, who for so long a time have been addicted to passiveness. Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers. As an instance of this observe - I sat down yesterday to read King Lear once again: the thing appeared to demand the prologue of a sonnet, I wrote it, and began to read (I know you would like to see it). So you see,' he goes on after copying the sonnet, 'I am getting at it with a sort of determination and strength, though verily I do not feel it at this moment.' The sonnet was printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. O GOLDEN-TONGUED Romance, with serene lute! Fair plumèd Syren, Queen of far away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute, Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay, Must I burn through; once more humbly assay The bitter sweet of this Shakespearean fruit: Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme! When through the old oak forest I am gone, LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN In sending his Robin Hood verses to Reynolds (see next poem), Keats added the following, but from the tenor of his letter, it would appear that they had been written earlier and were sent at Reynolds's request. The poem was published by Keats in his Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems, 1820. The friends were then in full tide of sympathy with the Elizabethans, and would have been very much at home with Shakespeare, Jonson, and Marlowe at the Mermaid. SOULS of Poets dead and gone, I have heard that on a day And pledging with contented smack Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? 10 20 ROBIN HOOD TO A FRIEND The friend was J. H. Reynolds, who had sent Keats two sonnets which he had written on Robin Hood. Keats's letter, dated February 3, 1818, is full of energetic pleasantry on the poetry which has a palpable design upon us,' and concludes: 'Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of Childe Harold, and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins. I hope they'll look pretty.' Keats included the poem in his Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems, 1820, with some trifling changes of text. No! those days are gone away, No, the bugle sounds no more, And the twanging bow no more; Silent is the ivory shrill Past the heath and up the hill; There is no mid-forest laugh, Where lone Echo gives the half To some wight, amaz'd to hear Jesting, deep in forest drear. On the fairest time of June You may go, with sun or moon, Or the seven stars to light you, Or the polar ray to right you; But you never may behold Little John, or Robin bold; Never one, of all the clan, Thrumming on an empty can Some old hunting ditty, while He doth his green way beguile 20 To fair hostess Merriment, Gone, the merry morris din; So it is; yet let us sing Honour to the old bow-string! Honour to the bugle horn! Honour to the woods unshorn! Honour to the Lincoln green! Honour to the archer keen ! Honour to tight little John, And the horse he rode upon! Honour to bold Robin Hood, Sleeping in the underwood! Honour to Maid Marian, And to all the Sherwood clan! Though their days have hurried by, Let us two a burden try. TO THE NILE 30 40 50 60 Composed February 4, 1818, in company with Shelley and Hunt, who each wrote a sonnet on the same theme. It was first published by Lord Houghton in the Life, Letters and Literary Remains. SON of the old moon-mountains African! Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile! We call thee fruitful, and that very while A desert fills our seeing's inward span; Nurse of swart nations since the world began, Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil, Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and De can ? O may dark fancies err! They surely do; 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too, And to the sea as happily dost haste. TO SPENSER Printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains, and undated. Afterward, when Lord Houghton printed it in the Aldine edition of 1876, he noted that he had seen a transcript given by Keats to Mrs. Longmore, a sister of Reynolds, dated by the recipient, February 5, 1818. But Lord Houghton is confident that the sonnet was written much earlier. SPENSER! a jealous honourer of thine, A forester deep in thy midmost trees, Did last eve ask my promise to refine Some English that might strive thine ear to please. But Elfin Poet, 't is impossible For an inhabitant of wintry earth To rise like Phoebus with a golden quill Fire-wing'd and make a morning in his mirth. It is impossible to escape from toil O' the sudden and receive thy spiriting: The flower must drink the nature of the soil Before it can put forth its blossoming: Be with me in the summer days, and I Will for thine honour and his pleasure try. SONG WRITTEN ON A BLANK PAGE IN BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'S WORKS, BETWEEN 'CUPID'S REVENGE' AND 'THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN' First published in Life, Letters and Literary Remains, and undated. SPIRIT here that reignest! My forehead low, All passion-struck Spirit here that laughest ! Spirit, with thee I join in the glee A-nudging the elbow of Momus. Spirit, I flush With a Bacchanal blush Just fresh from the Banquet of Comus. FRAGMENT Under the flag Of each his faction, they to battle bring Their embryo atoms. MILTON. Published in Life, Letters and Literary Remains, without date. WELCOME joy, and welcome sorrow, I love to mark sad faces in fair weather; And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder; Fair and foul I love together. Meadows sweet where flames are under, And a giggle at a wonder; Visage sage at pantomime; With the aspic at her breast; WHAT THE THRUSH SAID In a long letter to Reynolds, dated February 19, 1818, Keats writes earnestly of the sources of inspiration to a poet, and especially of the need of a receptive attitude: 'Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive; budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit-Sap will De given us for meat, and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness. I have not read any Book O THOU whose face hath felt the Winter's wind, Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist, And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars, To thee the spring will be a harvest-time. O thou, whose only book has been the light Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on Night after night when Phœbus was away, To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn. O fret not after knowledge - I have none, And yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge I have none, Blue! 'Tis the life of waters May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can queen the blue bell, and, that |