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Agnes, and the remarkable fragment, Hyperion, together in
1820, a few months before his death. The latter volume also
contained several shorter pieces, one of which, of great beauty,
the Ode to a Nightingale, may serve as a companion to Shelley's
Skylark :-

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-ward had sunk:
"Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blissful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs;
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards !

and the lovely poetic consciousness in the Lamia of Keats, in which the lines seem to take pleasure in the progress of their own beauty, like sea-nymphs luxuriating through the water, he would be a perfect master of rhyming heroic verse."

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Already with thee! Tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry fays;

But here there is no light

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But in embalmed darkness guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets, covered up in leaves;
And mid-day's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen, and, for many a time,

I have been half in love with easeful Death,1
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To seize upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still would'st thou sing, and I have ears in vain-
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown;
Perhaps the self-same song hath found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Shelley had probably this line in his ear, when in the Preface to his Adonais, which is an elegy on Keats, he wrote-describing "the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants" at Rome, where his friend was buriedThe cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place."

66

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my soul's self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music :-do I wake or sleep?

HUNT.

These last names can hardly be mentioned without suggesting another-that of one who has only the other day been taken from us. Leigh Hunt, the friend of Shelley and Keats, had attracted the attention of the world by much that he had done, both in verse and prose, long before the appearance of either. His Story of Rimini, published in 1816, being, as it was, indisputably the finest inspiration of Italian song that had yet been heard in our modern English literature, had given him a place of his own as distinct as that of any other poetical writer of the day. Whatever may be thought of some peculiarities in his manner of writing, nobody will now be found to dispute either the originality of his genius, or his claim to the title of a true poet. Into whatever he has written he has put a living soul; and much of what he has produced is brilliant either with wit and humour, or with tenderness and beauty. In some of the best of his pieces too there is scarcely to be found a trace of anything illegitimate or doubtful in the matter of diction or versification. Where, for example, can we have more unexceptionable English than in the following noble version of the Eastern Tale?—

There came a man, making his hasty moan,
Before the Sultan Mahmoud on his throne,
And crying out-" My sorrow is my right,
And I will see the Sultan, and to-night."

"Sorrow," said Mahmoud, "is a reverend thing;
I recognise its right, as king with king;
Speak on." "A fiend has got into my house,"
Exclaimed the staring man, "and tortures us;

One of thine officers-he comes, the abhorred,
And takes possession of my house, my board,
My bed :-I have two daughters and a wife,

And the wild villain comes, and makes me mad with life." "Is he there now ?" said Mahmoud :-" No; he left

The house when I did, of my wits bereft;

And laughed me down the street, because I vowed

I'd bring the prince himself to lay him in his shroud.
I'm mad with want-I'm mad with misery,

And, oh thou Sultan Mahmoud, God cries out for thee!"

The Sultan comforted the man, and said,

"Go home, and I will send thee wine and bread "

(For he was poor), " and other comforts. Go:

And, should the wretch return, let Sultan Mahmoud know."

In three days' time, with haggard eyes and beard,
And shaken voice, the suitor re-appeared,

And said, "He's come."-Mahmoud said not a word,
But rose and took four slaves, each with a sword,

And went with the vexed man. They reach the place,

And hear a voice, and see a female face,
That to the window fluttered in affright:
"Go in," said Mahmoud, "and put out the light;

But tell the females first to leave the room;
And, when the drunkard follows them, we come."

The man went in. There was a cry, and hark!
A table falls, the window is struck dark:
Forth rush the breathless women; and behind
With curses comes the fiend in desperate mind.
In vain the sabres soon cut short the strife,
And chop the shrieking wretch, and drink his bloody life.

"Now light the light," the Sultan cried aloud.
"Twas done; he took it in his hand, and bowed
Over the corpse, and looked upon the face;
Then turned and knelt beside it in the place,
And said a prayer, and from his lips there crept
Some gentle words of pleasure, and he wept.

In reverent silence the spectators wait,
Then bring him at his call both wine and meat;
And when he had refreshed his noble heart,
He bade his host be blest, and rose up to depart.

The man amazed, all mildness now, and tears,
Fell at the Sultan's feet, with many prayers,
And begged him to vouchsafe to tell his slave
The reason, first, of that command he gave

About the light; then, when he saw the face,
Why he knelt down; and lastly, how it was
That fare so poor as his detained him in the place.

The Sultan said, with much humanity,
"Since first I saw thee come, and heard thy cry,
I could not rid me of a dread, that one

By whom such daring villanies were done

Must be some lord of mine, perhaps a lawless son.
Whoe'er he was, I knew my task, but feared
A father's heart, in case the worst appeared;
For this I had the light put out; but when
I saw the face, and found a stranger slain,

I knelt, and thanked the sovereign arbiter,

Whose work I had performed through pain and fear;

And then I rose, and was refreshed with food,

The first time since thou cam'st, and marr'dst my solitude."

Other short pieces in the same style are nearly as good-such as those entitled The Jaffar and The Inevitable. Then there are the admirable modernizations of Chaucer-of whom and of Spenser, whom he has also imitated with wonderful cleverness, no one of all his contemporaries probably had so true and deep a feeling as Hunt. But, passing over likewise his two greatest works, The Story of Rimini and The Legend of Florence (published in 1840), we will give one other short effusion, which attests, we think, as powerfully as anything he ever produced, the master's triumphant hand, in a style which he has made his own, and in which, with however many imitators, he has no rival:

THE FANCY CONCERT.

They talked of their concerts, their singers, and scores,

And pitied the fever that kept me in doors;

And I smiled in my thought, and said, "O ye sweet fancies,

And animal spirits, that still in your dances

Come bringing me visions to comfort my care,

Now fetch me a concert,-imparadise air."

Then a wind, like a storm out of Eden, came pouring
Fierce into my room, and made tremble the flooring,

And filled, with a sudden impetuous trample
Of heaven, its corners; and swelled it to ample
Dimensions to breathe in, and space for all power;
Which falling as suddenly, lo! the sweet flower
Of an exquisite fairy-voice opened its blessing;
And ever and aye, to its constant addressing,

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