8.

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes-

So kiss'd to sleep.

9.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,

The latest dream I ever dream'd

On the cold hill side.

IO.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd-" La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

and in the third line we read sidelong would she bend. The reading of the text probably arose from the desire to avoid the repetition of long.

(8-9) In Lord Houghton's version

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,...

And in line 4 of stanzas 9 and 11, we have hill's side for hill side. The kisses four perhaps struck Keats, upon review, as a little quaint; and the other changes are an organic consequence of that made here.

(10) Lord Houghton reads They for Who in line 3.

II.

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloom
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here

On the cold hill side.

12.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

(11) The reading gloam for gloom, which occurs in the Literary Remains, is so characteristic that there is some temptation to retain it against the evidence of The Indicator in favour of its rejection by Keats; for Hunt may have made that small change. There is a graphic value in the strained use of gloam for gloaming which counterbalances its grammatical laxity; and it certainly exceeds the more ordinary word gloom in poetic intensity.

Just

as

thou art_

Bright Star, would I were
Bright
Not in love splendor hung aloft the night
and watching, with elemnal lids apout.
Lette natures patient sleepless Exemete,
waters at their prestlake lask

The

ing

Of pure ablution cound earth's human

or

9azing

new

shoves,

• oft fallen masque

snow upon the mountains and the moors. no - net still stedfast, still unchangeable Pillow'd upon my fair

love's

rpening breath ever its soft swell and fall,

Awake

To feel for for

wer in

sevelt unest,

Stile, stile to hear her lender taken breath,

SONNET.

Written on a Blank Page in Shakespeare's Poems, facing

A LOVER'S COMPLAINT.

BRIGHT star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors

Lord Houghton records that, after Keats had embarked for Italy he "landed once more in England, on the Dorsetshire coast, after a weary fortnight spent in beating about the Channel; the bright beauty of the day and the scene revived the poet's drooping heart, and the inspiration remained on him for some time even after his return to the ship. It was then that he composed that sonnet of solemn tenderness,

'Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art,' &c.

and wrote it out in a copy of Shakespeare's Poems he had given to Severn a few days before. I know of nothing written afterwards." The copy of Shakespeare's Poetical Works had been given to Keats by John Hamilton Reynolds, and is now in the possession of Sir Charles Dilke. It is a royal 8vo volume "printed for Thomas Wilson, No. 10, London-House-yard, St. Paul's", in 1806; and this sonnet, of which a fac-simile is here given, is written upon the verso of the fly-title to A Lover's Complaint. It seems fair to assume that the reason of its being so high up on the page is that it thus faces a space of equal size containing no words except the VOL. II. BB