3.

Lift the latch! ah gently! ah tenderly-sweet!
We are dead if that latchet gives one little clink!
Well done-now those lips, and a flowery seat—
The old man may sleep, and the planets may wink;
The shut rose shall dream of our loves, and awake
Full blown, and such warmth for the morning's take,
The stock-dove shall hatch her soft brace and shall coo,
While I kiss to the melody, aching all through!

now in Sir Charles Dilke's possession Keats wrote the Song; but it is not printed in that or in either of the four later Pocket-books which complete the series. For the text of the song I follow the evidently later manuscript in Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion. The variations shown by the Pocket-book are, in stanza 1, line 7, tread softly for soft tiptoe; in stanza 2, line 6, Hath for Has, and line 7, darkness for dusk; in stanza 3, line 2, chink for clink, line 4, dream for sleep, line 5, may for shall, and line 6, morning for morning's. The final couplet is wanting in the later manuscript, with which Lord Houghton's version corresponds in the main. Here, however, previous texts read his soft twin-eggs and coo; and I am compelled to revert to the reading of the only manuscript I know of that couplet. It must be a later reading, because Keats never damages his work; and his, if a correct transcript from a third manuscript, is poetically inferior to her, while soft is inapplicable to eggs-applicable to the birds substituted. With lines 5 and 6 compare, in the garden song in Maud,

But the rose was awake all night for your sake,.......

The Laureate's sumptuous stanza can well afford the slight indebtedness.

EXTRACTS FROM AN OPERA.

O!

! WERE I one of the Olympian twelve, Their godships should pass this into a law,That when a man doth set himself in toil After some beauty veiled far away,

Each step he took should make his lady's hand
More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair;
And for each briar-berry he might eat,

A kiss should bud upon the tree of love,
And pulp and ripen richer every hour,
To melt away upon the traveller's lips.

DAISY'S SONG.

I.

The sun, with his great eye,
Sees not so much as I ;

And the moon, all silver-proud,

Might as well be in a cloud.

2.

And O the spring-the spring!

I lead the life of a king!

First given among the Literary Remains in Volume II of the Life, Letters &c. (1848), and assigned to the year 1818.

Couch'd in the teeming grass,

I spy each pretty lass.

3.

I look where no one dares,

And I stare where no one stares,

And when the night is nigh,
Lambs bleat my lullaby.

*

FOLLY'S SONG.

When wedding fiddles are a-playing,

Huzza for folly O!

And when maidens go a-Maying,

Oh, I am frighten'd with most hateful thoughts!
Perhaps her voice is not a nightingale's,
Perhaps her teeth are not the fairest pearl;
Her eye-lashes may be, for aught I know,
Not longer than the May-fly's small fan-horns;
There may not be one dimple on her hand;
And freckles many; ah! a careless nurse,
In haste to teach the little thing to walk,
May have crumpt up a pair of Dian's legs,
And warpt the ivory of a Juno's neck.

SONG.

*

I.

The stranger lighted from his steed,
And ere he spake a word,
He seiz'd my lady's lilly hand,
And kiss'd it all unheard.

2.

The stranger walk'd into the hall,
And ere he spake a word,
He kiss'd my lady's cherry lips,

And kiss'd 'em all unheard.

3.

The stranger walk'd into the bower,—

But my lady first did go,

Aye hand in hand into the bower,

Where my lord's roses blow.

Among Dante Gabriel Rosetti's notes upon Keats I find one to the effect that this song "reminds one somewhat of Blake's The Will and the Way."

4.

My lady's maid had a silken scarf,

And a golden ring had she,

And a kiss from the stranger, as off he went Again on his fair palfrey.

Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl!
And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee,
And let me call Heaven's blessing on thine eyes,
And let me breathe into the happy air,
That doth enfold and touch thee all about,
Vows of my slavery, my giving up,

My sudden adoration, my great love!