A PARTY OF LOVERS.

PENSIVE they sit, and roll their languid eyes,
Nibble their toast, and cool their tea with sighs,
Or else forget the purpose of the night,
Forget their tea-forget their appetite.

See with cross'd arms they sit-ah! happy crew,
The fire is going out and no one rings
For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings.
A fly is in the milk-pot-must he die

By a humane society?

No, no; there Mr. Werter takes his spoon,
Inserts it, dips the handle, and lo! soon

The little straggler, sav'd from perils dark,
Across the teaboard draws a long wet mark.

This is one of the many varieties of the Winchester journal-letter of September 1819, as published in the New York World of the 25th of June 1877. Keats characterizes the jeu d'esprit as "a few nonsense verses". They were probably written on the 17th of September; and they illustrated the following passage in the journalletter :

"Nothing strikes me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as love. A man in love I do think cuts the sorryest figure in the world. Even when I know a poor fool to be really in pain about it I could burst out laughing in his face. His pathetic visage becomes irresistible. Not that I take H. as a pattern for lovers; he is a very worthy man and a good friend. His love is very amusing. Somewhere in the Spectator is related an account of a man inviting a party of stutterers and squinters to his table. It would please me more to scrape together a party of lovers; not to dinner-no, to tea. There would be no fighting as among knights of old."

Arise! take snuffers by the handle,
There's a large cauliflower in each candle.
A winding-sheet, ah me! I must away
To No. 7, just beyond the circus gay.
'Alas, my friend! your coat sits very well;
Where may your tailor live?' 'I may not tell.
O pardon me-I'm absent now and then.
Where might my tailor live? I say again

I cannot tell, let me no more be teaz'd

He lives in Wapping, might live where he pleas'd.'

15

20

(19) In The World we read Taylor, with a capital T, both here and in line 21, as if Keats were thinking of his publisher; but I doubt whether that pleasantry was intentional, because I cannot see any point or meaning in it; and I think Keats was quite capable of spelling the common noun tailor in that fashion without any arrière pensée.

SONNET.

THE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!

Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,

Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms,

Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise-
Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve,

When the dusk holiday-or holinight

Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I've read love's missal through to-day,
He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

This sonnet was first given among the Literary Remains in 1848, with the date 1819. There is a letter to Miss Brawne posted on the 11th of October at Westminster, which corresponds with the sonnet in subject; so that this poem may very well belong to the 10th of October 1819.

LINES TO FANNY.

WHAT can I do to drive away

Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen,
Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free
In my old liberty?

When every fair one that I saw was fair,
Enough to catch me in but half a snare,
Not keep me there :

When, howe'er poor or particolour'd things,
My muse had wings,

And ever ready was to take her course

Unintellectual, yet divine to me ;

5

10

Whither I bent her force,

Divine, I say!—What sea-bird o'er the sea

15

Is a philosopher the while he goes

Winging along where the great water throes?

How shall I do

To get anew

Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more
Above, above

The reach of fluttering Love,

And make him cower lowly while I soar?

These lines, first given in the Life, Letters &c., were there dated October 1819; and I should be disposed to assign them to the 12th of that month, the day before that on which Keats posted a letter at

Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism,
A heresy and schism,

Foisted into the canon law of love ;-
No,-wine is only sweet to happy men;
More dismal cares

Seize on me unawares,—

Where shall I learn to get my peace again?

To banish thoughts of that most hateful land,
Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand

25

30

Where they were wreck'd and live a wrecked life;
That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour,
Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore,
Unown'd of any weedy-haired gods;

35

Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods,
Ic'd in the great lakes, to afflict mankind;

Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind,
Would fright a Dryad; whose harsh herbag'd meads 40
Make lean and lank the starv'd ox while he feeds;
There bad flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song,
And great unerring Nature once seems wrong.

O, for some sunny spell

To dissipate the shadows of this hell!

45

Westminster to Miss Brawne, saying inter alia that he has set himself to copy some verses out fair, and adding “I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time". The text appears to me to need revision in certain points; but I know of no authority for change. Thus, in line 3, the word and or but has probably dropped out after Aye.

(33) Probably wrecked should be wretched. There seems a want of aptness in making use of wreck'd (monosyllable) and wrecked (dissyllable) in such sharp counterpoint; and Keats would be quite likely to write wreched without the t and thus leave the word easy to mistake for wrecked.

(35) I should think Even a likelier initial word here than Ever.