O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful 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:

3.

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 gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-ey'd despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

one printed text, especially when another manuscript certainly existed though not forthcoming, is insufficient. To me the introduction of the word away in the version finally given forth by Keats is too redolent of genius to pass for a mere accident. The perfection thus lent to the echo opening the next stanza exceeds a thousand times in value the regularity got by dropping the word; and that one line with its lingering motive has ample reason to be longer than any other in the poem. Hunt must have been familiar enough with the poem before it was embodied in the Lamia volume; and it is more than possible that he knew all about the history of that one word's introduction. Therefore it is worth while to set down as external evidence that when he quoted the poem entire in The Indicator and again when he printed it in Imagination and Fancy, he gave the author's last copy that preference which a textual critic is bound to give.

(3) In the third stanza the manuscript reads have for hast in line 2 and other's for other in line 4; but the Annals reads as in

4.

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:
Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd 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.

5.

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 cover'd up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,

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

the text of 1820. The sixth line very clearly bears out Haydon's words connecting the sadness of the poem with the death of Tom Keats, and should be compared with the passage about his sister in the letter to Brown written from Rome on the 30th of November 1820,-"my sister-who walks about my imagination like a ghost she is so like Tom." In the same letter he says "it runs in my head we shall all die young".

(5) In the last line but one of this stanza, both the manuscript and the Annals read sweetest wine.

6.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd 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 cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

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

7.

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 that 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

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. ✓

(6) Compare with the second line Shelley's words in the Preface to Adonais, "It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." In line 7 of this stanza, both the manuscript and the Annals read thus for forth, and line Io is as follows:

For thy high requiem, become a sod.

(7) In the last line of this stanza the word fairy instead of faery v stands in the manuscript and in the Annals; but the Lamia volume reads faery, which enhances the poetic value of the line in the subtlest manner-eliminating all possible connexion of fairy-land with Christmas trees, tinsel, and Santa Claus, and carrying the

V

8.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd 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?

imagination safely back to the middle ages—to Amadis of Gaul, to Palmerin of England, and above all to the East, to the Thousand and One Nights. It seems to me unlikely that any particular story is referred to, though there are doubtless many stories that will answer more or less nearly to the passage.

(8) In the manuscript and in the Annals, there is a note of exclamation after elf in the fourth line. In the manuscript the last two lines are pointed thus:

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

In the Annals they stand thus:

Was it a vision? Or a waking dream?
Fled is that music? Do I wake or sleep?

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

I.

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme :
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

This Ode is mentioned by Lord Houghton in connexion with the Ode to a Nightingale as belonging to the Spring of 1819; and we are informed of both alike that, soon after they were composed, Keats "repeated, or rather chanted, them to Mr. Haydon, in the sort of recitative that so well suited his deep grave voice, as they strolled together through Kilburn meadows, leaving an indelible impression on the mind of his surviving friend." The manuscript in Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion is dated simply "1819”. The poem appeared in Number XV of Annals of the Fine Arts, headed "On a Grecian Urn", and signed with a "dagger" (†). It would seem to have appeared in January 1820. There is some reason for thinking that the particular urn which inspired this beautiful poem is a somewhat weather-beaten work in marble still preserved in the garden of Holland House, and figured in Piranesi's Vasi e Candelabri.

(1) In the Annals, in line 1 of this stanza, there is a comma after still, which we do not find in the Lamia volume or in the manuscript. In line 8 in the Annals we read What Gods or Men are these? And both in the magazine and in the manuscript, the last line but one is

What love? what dance? what struggle to escape?

The version of the volume, given in the text, is an obvious revision.