Page images
PDF
EPUB

An echo of sweet music doth create

A fear in the poor Herdsman, who doth bring
His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring,—
He tells of the sweet music, and the spot,
To all his friends, and they believe him not.

O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,
Would all their colours from the sunset take:
From something of material sublime,
Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time
In the dark void of night. For in the world
We jostle, but my flag is not unfurl'd
On the Admiral-staff,—and so philosophize
I dare not yet! Oh, never will the prize,
High reason, and the love of good and ill,
Be my award! Things cannot to the will
Be settled, but they tease us out of thought;
Or is it that imagination brought

65

70

75

Beyond its proper bound, yet still confin'd,
Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind,

80

Cannot refer to any standard law

Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw

In happiness, to see beyond our bourn,—

It forces us in summer skies to mourn,
It spoils the singing of the Nightingale.

85

Dear Reynolds! I have a mysterious tale,
And cannot speak it: the first page I read

(73) In the Aldine edition we read to for so.

(77) Rossetti also notes that this line "is anticipative of the Grecian Urn ode”,—

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought...

The same may be said of "the milk-white heifer lows," in line 21.

Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed
Among the breakers; 'twas a quiet eve,

The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave

90

An untumultuous fringe of silver foam

Along the flat brown sand; I was at home

And should have been most happy,—but I saw
Too far into the sea, where every maw
The greater on the less feeds evermore.-
But I saw too distinct into the core

95

Of an eternal fierce destruction,

And so from happiness I far was gone.

Still am I sick of it, and tho', to-day,

I've gather'd young spring-leaves, and flowers gay

100

Of periwinkle and wild strawberry,

Still do I that most fierce destruction see,

The Shark at savage prey,-the Hawk at pounce,—
The gentle Robin, like a Pard or Ounce,

Ravening a worm,-Away, ye horrid moods!

105

Moods of one's mind! You know I hate them well.

You know I'd sooner be a clapping Bell

To some Kamtschatcan Missionary Church,

Than with these horrid moods be left i' the lurch.

(90) The Aldine edition reads weave; but the 1848 version has

wave.

(105) I do not know whether a line has been lost, or whether Keats is himself responsible for the want of a rhyme to this line.

DAWLISH FAIR.

OVER the Hill and over the Dale,

And over the Bourne to Dawlish,
Where ginger-bread wives have a scanty sale,
And ginger-bread nuts are smallish.

This scrap occurs in a letter to James Rice, written from Teignmouth on the 25th of March 1818, and published by Lord Houghton in the first volume of the Life, Letters &c. (1848). Keats closes his letter with "I went yesterday to Dawlish fair", and this quatrain. The hilly walk to Dawlish is recorded with topographical accuracy. Whether the rest is observation or (as is more probable) mere rhyme, I cannot say.

Fragment of an Ode to Maia, written on
May Day 1818.

MOTHER of Hermes! and still youthful Maia
May I sing to thee

As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiæ ?
I woo thee

Or may

In earlier Sicilian? or thy smiles

Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles,
By bards who died content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan ?
O, give me their old vigour, and unheard
Save of the quiet Primrose, and the span
Of heaven and few ears,

Rounded by thee, my song should die away
Content as theirs,

Rich in the simple worship of a day.

First given in the Life, Letters &c. (1848) in a letter to Reynolds from Teignmouth, dated the 3rd of May 1818, wherein Keats says "it is impossible to know how far knowledge will console us for the death of a friend, and the 'ills that flesh is heir to.' With respect to the affections and poetry, you must know by sympathy my thoughts that way, and I dare say these few lines will be but a ratification. I wrote them on May-day, and intend to finish the ode all in good time." Lord Houghton very aptly observes-" It is much to be regretted he did not finish this Ode; this commencement is in his best manner: the sentiment and expression perfect, as every traveller in modern Greece will recognize." An Ode so propitiously begun would, if completed, have been a worthy ending for the Devonshire series, though including what I believe I am not alone in regarding as Keats's masterpiece,-Isabella.

SONG.

I.

HUSH, hush! tread softly! hush, hush my dear!
All the house is asleep, but we know very well
That the jealous, the jealous old bald-pate may hear,
Tho' you've padded his night-cap-O sweet Isabel!

Tho' your feet are more light than a Fairy's feet,
Who dances on bubbles where brooklets meet,-
Hush, hush! soft tiptoe! hush, hush my dear!
For less than a nothing the jealous can hear.

2.

No leaf doth tremble, no ripple is there

On the river, all's still, and the night's sleepy eye Closes up, and forgets all its Lethean care,

Charm'd to death by the drone of the humming Mayfly;

And the Moon, whether prudish or complaisant,

Has fled to her bower, well knowing I want

No light in the dusk, no torch in the gloom,
But my Isabel's eyes, and her lips pulp'd with bloom.

As far as I have been able to trace this poem, it appeared for the first time in the Life, Letters, and Literary Remains (1848), where it is dated 1818. The statement in the Aldine edition of 1876 that it was first printed in The Literary Pocket-book or Companion for the Lover of Nature and Art, for 1818, must derive from some misapprehension, as there is no such book. The Pocket-book was started by Hunt in 1819; and in a copy of the book for that year

« PreviousContinue »