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been written by a friend :-but illness on his part, and distracting engagements on mine, prevented us from accomplishing our plan at the time; and Death now, to my deep sorrow, has frustrated it forever! He, who is gone, was one of the very kindest friends I possessed, and yet he was not kinder perhaps to me, than to others. His intense mind and powerful feeling would, I truly believe, have done the world some service, had his life been spared-but he was of too sensitive a nature 826. and thus he was destroyed! One story he completed, and that is to me now the most pathetic poem in existence!"

FRAGMENT OF AN ODE TO MAIA

This fragment was written in a letter to Reynolds, dated May 3, 1818, after the following statement: "With respect to the affec tions and poetry you must know by a sympathy my thoughts that way, and I daresay these few lines will be but a ratification: I wrote them on May-day-and intend to finish the ode all in good time-"

Arnold quotes this ode in the closing paragraph of his essay on Keats prefixed to the 827. selections in Ward's The English Poets, following this statement regarding Keats's poetic work: "Shakespearian work it is; not imltative, indeed, of Shakespeare, but Shakespearian, because its expression has that rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness of which Shakespeare is the great master. To Let us now show such work is to praise it. end by delighting ourselves with a fragment of it, too broken to find a place among the pieces which follow, but far too beautiful to be lost. It is a fragment of an ode for May-day."

TO AILSA ROCK

While journeying through Scotland, Keats wrote his brother as follows (July 10, 1818): "Yesterday we came 27 miles from Stranraer -entered Ayrshire a little beyond Cairn, and had our path through a delightful country. I shall endeavor that you may follow our steps in this walk-it would be uninteresting in a book of travels-it can not be interesting but by my having gone through it. When we left Cairn our road lay half way up the sides of a green mountainous shore, full of clefts of verdure and eternally varying-sometimes up sometimes down, and over little bridges going across green chasms of moss, rock, and trees-winding about everywhere. After two or three miles of this we turned suddenly into a magnificent glen finely wooded in parts-seven miles long-with a mountain stream winding down the midst-full of cottages in the most happy situations-the sides of the hills covered with sheep-the effect of At the cattle lowing I never had so finely. end we had a gradual ascent and got among the tops of the mountains whence in a little

FANCY

ODE

ODE ON MELANCHOLY

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

There is a tradition that the urn which inspired this poem was one still preserved in the garden of Holland House, a noted mansion in Kensington, London.

11-12. Cf. Wordsworth's Personal Talk, 25-26 (p. 301).

ODE ON INDOLENCE

In a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, dated March 19, 1819, Keats wrote as fol lows: "This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless-I long after a stanza or two of Thomson's Castle of Indolence-my passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre all over me, to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness. If I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor, but as I am I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleas ure has no show of enticement and pain no

This poem was written in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats following this statement: "The following poem-the last I have written-is the first and the only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have for the most part dash'd off my lines in a hurry. This I have done leisurely-I think it reads the more richly for it, and will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time of Apuleius the Platonist who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the Goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervorand perhaps never thought of in the old religion-I am more orthodox than to let a heathen Goddess be so neglected-" 831. 50-67. Ruskin quotes these lines to illustrate Keats's power in describing the pine (Modern Painters, Pt. VI, ch. 9, sec. 9, note). He says: "Keats (as is his way) puts nearly all that may be said of the pine into one verse [line 55], though they are only figurative pines of which he is speaking. I have come to that pass of admiration for him now, that I dare not read him, so discontented he makes me with my own work; but others must not leave unread, in considering the influence of trees upon the human soul, that marvellous Ode to Psyche."

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

In the Aldine edition of 1876, Lord Houghton prefixes this note to the poem: "In the spring of 1819 a nightingale built her nest next Mr. Bevan's house. Keats took great pleasure in her song, and one morning took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass plot under a plum tree, where he re

mained between two and three hours. He then reached the house with some scraps of paper in his hand, which he soon put together in the form of this ode."

832. 26. This line may refer to Keats's brother Tom, who died in December, 1818. Shortly after this date, Haydon wrote Miss Mitford, "The death of his brother wounded him deeply, and it appeared to me from the hour he began to droop. He wrote his exquisite Ode to the Nightingale at this time, and as we were one evening walking in the Kilburn meadows he repeated it to me, before he put it to paper, in a low, tremulous undertone which affected me extremely."

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52. In love with easeful Death.-Cf. Keats's statement in Letter to Bailey, dated June 10, 1818: "I was in hopes some little time back to be able to relieve your dulness by my spirits-to point out things in the world worth your enjoyment-and now I am never alone without rejoicing that there is such a thing as death without placing my ultimate in the glory of dying for a great human purpose. Perhaps if my affairs were in a different state, I should not have written the above-you shall judge: I have two brothers; one is driven, by the 'burden of society,' to America; the other with an exquisite love of life, is in a lingering state-My love for my brothers, from the early loss of our parents, and even from earlier misfortunes, has grown into an affection 'passing the love of women." I have been ill-tempered with them-I have vexed them--but the thought of them has always stifled the impression that any woman might otherwise have, made upon me. I have a sister too, and may not follow them either to America or to the grave. Life must be undergone, and I certainly derive some consolation from the thought of writing one or two more poems before it ceases."

In a letter to Charles Brown, dated Nov. 30, 1820, Keats said, "It runs in my head, we shall all die young."

65-70. See Hood's Ruth (p. 1136). 69-70.

These are two of the lines referred to by Kipling in his Wireless: "Remember that in all the millions permitted there are no more than five-five little lines-of which one can say: "These are the magic. These are the vision. The rest is only poetry."" The other three lines referred to are in Coleridge's Kubla Khan, 14-16 (p. 358).

LAMIA

Keats is said to have written this poem after studying Dryden's versification. It is based upon the old legend of Lamia, a beautiful woman loved by Zeus and turned into a man-eating monster by Here; later Lamia was regarded as an evil spirit who enticed youths by her beauty and fed upon their flesh and

1 Probably a reference to the unfortunate second marriage of their mother, 22 Samuel, 2:26.

1

842.

blood. Keats found the germ of the story in the following passage from Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): "Philostratus, in his fourth book de Vita Apollonii, hath a memorable instance in this kind, which I may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, that going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which, taking him by the hand, carried him home to her house, in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if he would tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; but she, being fair and lovely, would live and die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold. The young man, a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love, tarried with her a while to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who, by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia; and that all her furniture was, like Tantalus' gold, described by Homer, no substance but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant: many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the midst of Greece." (III, 2, 1, 1,)

This passage appeared as a note to the last line in the first edition of Lamia.

St. Agnes was a Roman virgin who suffered martyrdom about the year 300. Formerly, in the Catholic church, upon St. Agnes Day, January 21, while the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) was chanted, two lambs were sacrificed and their wool was afterwards woven by nuns. The poem is based on the superstition that it was possible for a girl, on the eve of St. Agnes, to obtain knowledge of her future husband; as she lay on her back, with her hands under her head, he was supposed to appear before her in a dream, to salute her with a kiss, and to feast with her.

H. N. MacCracken suggests (Modern Philology, 5, 1-8, Oct. 1907) that "for most of the numerous and essential details of the charming episode of Porphyro and Madeline, Keats is indebted to the Filocolo of Boccaccio." 845. 23-25. Keats devoted especial care to the composition of these three stanzas, as is shown by the manuscript changes. Hunt says of stanza 24, in his comment on the poem published in Imagination and Fancy (1844): "Could all the pomp and graces of aristocracy, with Titian's and Raphael's aid to boot, go beyond the rich religion of this picture, with its twilight saints,' and its 'scutcheons

'blushing with the blood of queens'?" The haunting quality of several of these lines is aptly portrayed by Kipling in his "Wireless," printed in Traffics and Discoveries, and in Scribner's Magazine, Aug., 1902 (32:129). 846. 27, 7. Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray.-Several interpretations have been given for this line. Hunt interprets it as follows: "Where Christian prayer-books must not be seen, and are, therefore, doubly cherished for the danger." Other interpretations suggested are: "Iler soul was clasped as tightly in sleep as a prayer-book would be by a Christian in a land of Pagans!"-"A_prayer-book bearing upon its margin pictures of converted heathen in the act of prayer." Keats originally wrote "shut like a missal"; so clasp'd must mean fastened by clasps. The meaning given on p. 846a, n. 1, seems to fit best.

28, 7. The suggestiveness of this line has frequently been called worthy of Shakspere. 30. "It is, apparently, as a poetical contrast to the fasting which was generally accepted as the method by which a maiden was to prepare herself for the vision, that the gorgeous supper-picture of st. ΧΑΧ was introduced. Keats, who was Leigh Hunt's guest at the time this volume appeared, read aloud the passage to Hunt, with manifest pleasure in his work: the sole instance I can recall where the poet-modest in proportion to his greatness-yielded even to so innocent an impulse of vanity."-Palgrave, in his edition of Keats's Poetical Works (1884). 848. 40, 9. Carpets. The use of carpets in the poem is an anachronism.

THE EVE OF ST. MARK

This poem was written in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, dated Sept. 20, 1819, following this statement: "The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting. The palatine Venice and the abbotine Winchester are equally interesting. Some time since I began a poem called The Eve of St. Mark, quite in the spirit of town quietude. I think I will give you the sensation of walking about an old country town in a coolish evening. I know not whether I shall ever finish it; I will give It as far as I have gone."

Regarding the superstition on which the poem is based, Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote Forman as follows: "Keats's unfinished poem on that subject is perhaps, with La Belle Dame sans Merci, the chastest and choicest example of his maturing manner, and shows astonishingly real medievalism for one not bred as an artist. I copy an extract [from The Unseen World (Masters, 1853), p. 72] which I have no doubt embodies the superstition in accordance with which Keats meant to develop his poem. It is much akin to the belief connected with the Eve of St. Agnes. 'It was believed that if a person, on

849.

St. Mark's Eve, placed himself near church-porch, when twilight was thickening, he would behold the apparition of those persons in the parish who were to be seized with any severe disease that year, go into the church. If they remained there it signified their death; if they came out again it portended their recovery; and the longer or shorter the time they remained in the building, the severer or less dangerous their illness. Infants, under age to walk, rolled in.'" -Quoted from Forman's edition of Keats's Poetical Works.

HYPERION

In a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, dated Dec. 25, 1818, Keats announced that his next poem would be on the fall of Hyperion, the sun-god. On Sept. 22, 1819, he wrote Reynolds: "I have given up Hyperion— there were too many Miltonic inversions in it-Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humor. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some lines from Hyperion, and put a mark X to the false beauty proceeding from art, and one to the true voice of feeling. Upon my soul 'twas imagination-I cannot make the distinctionEvery now and then there is a Miltonic intonation-But I cannot make the division properly."

Keats's friend, Woodhouse, in his annotated copy of Endymion, says of Hyperion: "The structure of the verse, as well as the subject, are colossal. It has an air of calm grandeur about it which is indicative of true power.—I know of no poem with which in this respect it can be compared.--It is that in poetry, which the Elgin and Egyptian marbles are in sculpture."-Quoted from Forman's edition of Keats's Poetical Works.

At the close of his extracts from the manuscript of the poem, Woodhouse says: "The above lines, separated from the rest, give but a faint idea of the sustained grandeur and quiet power which characterize the poem; but they are sufficient to lead us to regret that such an attempt should have been abandoned. The poem if completed, would have treated of the dethronement of Hyperion, the former God of the Sun, by Apollo,-and incidentally of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by Jupiter etc., and of the war of the Giants for Saturn's reëstablishment-with other events, of which we have but very dark hints in the mythological poets of Greece and Rome. In fact the incidents would have been pure creations of the poet's brain. How he is qualified for such a task. may be seen in a trifling degree by the few mythological glimpses afforded in Endymion."-Quoted from Forman's edition of Keats's Poetical Works.

TO AUTUMN

Autumn always had a peculiar attraction for Keats. On Sept. 22, 1819, he wrote Reynolds: "How beautiful the season is now-How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather-Dian skies-I never liked stubblefields so much as now-Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm-in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it." He refers to the ode To Autumn.

$61. BRIGHT STAR, WOULD I WERE STEADFAST AS THOU ART

863.

This sonnet was composed on the Dorsetshire coast just as Keats was sailing for Italy in the autumn before his death. "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, 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."-Lord Houghton, in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats (1848).

KEATS'S LETTERS

In the Preface to his edition of Keats's Letters, Colvin says that Keats "is one of those poets whose genius makes itself felt in prosewriting almost as decisively as in verse, and at their best these letters are among the most beautiful in our language." The Letters here printed were addressed to the following: (1) Benjamin Bailey (1794-1852), undergraduate of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, afterwards Archdeacon of Colombo; (2) John Hamilton Reynolds (1796-1852), poet, critic, and lawyer; (3) John Taylor (1781-1864), publisher, of the firm of Taylor and Hessey, and proprietor and editor of The London Magazine; (4) James Augustus Hessey, publisher, of the firm of Taylor and Hessey; (5) George and Georgiana Keats, Keats's brother and his brother's wife; (6) Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), the poet.

TO BENJAMIN BAILEY

b. 2. Unsaid.-Colvin, in his edition of Keats's Letters, suggests that this is probably an error for unpaid. As the first part of the word is italicized, it may, however, be simply a play on the phrase "the said letter."

TO JOHN TAYLOR

b. 39-40. “O for a Muse of Fire to ascend.”— Henry V, Prologue 1.