A DRAUGHT OF SUNSHINE. HENCE ENCE Burgundy, Claret, and Port, Too earthly ye are for my sport; There's a beverage brighter and clearer. Instead of a pitiful rummer, My wine overbrims a whole summer; My bowl is the sky, And I drink at my eye, Till I feel in the brain A Delphian pain Then follow, my Caius! then follow : On the green of the hill We will drink our fill Of golden sunshine, Till our brains intertwine With the glory and grace of Apollo ! These lines are part of an extract from a letter to Reynolds dated "Hampstead, Jan. 31st, 1818", published in Volume I of the Life, Letters &c. (1848), but omitted from the Life and Letters of 1867 as a page of doggerel not worth transcription". The time has now come when students will feel entitled to have even Keats's doggerel, some of which, by the bye, has far less reason (and rhyme too) than the present effusion-to my mind rather a bright and happy specimen, notwithstanding Keats's own plea to his correspondent, "you must forgive all this ranting; but the fact is, I cannot write sense this morning." With the view of giving Reynolds some sense” nevertheless, he proceeds to copy out his latest God of the Meridian, And of the East and West, To thee my soul is flown, And my body is earthward press'd.- A terrible division; And leaves a gulph austere To be fill'd with worldly fear. Aye, when the soul is fled. To high above our head, As doth a mother wild, When her young infant child And is not this the cause 20 25 30 sonnet, "When I have fears" &c. To the present fragment I have ventured to add a very obvious title. (35) In the Life, Letters &c. bare stands in place of bear; and very likely Keats wrote bare here as he often did elsewhere for bear. FAERY SONGS. SHED I. no tear-O shed no tear ! The flower will bloom another year. Dry your eyes-O dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies- Overhead-look overhead 'Mong the blossoms white and red— See me 'tis this silvery bill Shed no tear-O shed no tear! I vanish in the heaven's blue- 5 10 15 These two songs appeared in the Life, Letters &c. (1848) among the Literary Remains; and a fac-simile of the manuscript of No. I was inserted in the second volume by way of frontispiece. The variations shown by the manuscript according to this reproduction are mainly in minute details; and I have adopted many II. Ah! woe is me! poor silver-wing! That I must chant thy lady's dirge, And death to this fair haunt of spring, Of melody, and streams of flowery verge,— That I must see These blossoms snow upon thy lady's pall! Go, pretty page! and in her ear Whisper that the hour is near! Such calm favonian burial! Go, pretty page! and soothly tell,— 5 ΤΟ The blossoms hang by a melting spell, And fall they must, ere a star wink thrice Upon her closed eyes, That now in vain are weeping their last tears, At sweet life leaving, and these arbours green,- 15 of them as characteristic-not, however, the curious orthography Paradize in line 6, or bow for bough in line 12. SONG. Written on a blank page in Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, between "Cupid's Revenge" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen." I. SPIRIT here that reignest! Spirit here that painest! Spirit here that burnest! Spirit here that mournest! My forehead low, Enshaded with thy pinions. All passion-struck Into thy pale dominions. 2. Spirit here that laughest! Spirit here that quaffest! First given among the Literary Remains in 1848 as an independent song; but included in the Aldine edition among Faery Songs, with the two preceding. The fact that the Song was written where it was leads me to prefer the earlier arrangement. The variation from the printed text shown by the manuscript in the third and fourth lines of each stanza is curious, namely burneth, mourneth, danceth, and pranceth. There are several differences of punctuation |