Oft of one wide expanse had I been told, 1816. Sonnet. When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charact❜ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; That I shall never look upon thee more, Of unreflecting love ;-then on the shore Saturn and Thea. Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, It seem'd no force could wake him from his place: But there came one, who with a kindred hand Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low With reverence, though to one who knew it not. She was a Goddess of the infant world; By her in stature the tall Amazon Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, As if the vanward clouds of evil days Fancy. Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home : (From Hyperion, Book i.) At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, Then let winged Fancy wander Through the thought still spread beyond her: Open wide the mind's cage-door, She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar. O sweet Fancy! let her loose; To banish Even from her sky. Fancy, high-commission'd:-send her! And thou shalt quaff it :-thou shalt hear Rustle of the reaped corn; Sweet birds antheming the morn: And, in the same moment-hark! 'Tis the early April lark, 1818. Shaded hyacinth, alway Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose; At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, While she held the goblet sweet, And Jove grew languid.-Break the mesh And such joys as these she'll bring.- Madeline in her Chamber. Out went the taper as she hurried in ; Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died: She clos'd the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air, and visions wide: No uttered syllable, or, woe betide! But to her heart, her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side; As though a tongueless nightingale should swell Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell. A casement high and triple-arch'd there was, Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings. Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. Ode to a Nightingale. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, O for a draught of vintage, that hath been Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget Here, where men sit and hear each other groan ; Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain- Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Ode to Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; La Belle Dame sans Merci. The sedge has wither'd from the lake, O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms! And the harvest 's done. I see a lily on thy brow With anguish moist and fever dew, I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful-a faery's child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, I made a garland for her head, I set her on my pacing steed, She found me roots of relish sweet, 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 there I dream'd-ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd On the cold hill's side. I saw pale kings and princes too, I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill's side. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing. April (?) 1819. Sonnet-On a Dream. As Hermes once took to his feathers light, So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft Nor unto Tempe, where Jove griev'd a day; But to that second circle of sad Hell, Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell Their sorrows,-pale were the sweet lips I saw, Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form I floated with, about that melancholy storm. April 1819. Keats's Last Sonnet. Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou artNot 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 moorsNo-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever-or else swoon to death. Sept. 1820. Letter. Feb. 19, 1818. MY DEAR REYNOLDS,-I had an idea that a man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner - let him on a certain day read a certain page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, and reflect upon it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it, until it becomes stale. But when will it do so? Never. When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting-post towards all the two-and-thirty Palaces.' How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent indolence! A doze upon a sofa does not hinder it, and a nap upon clover engenders ethereal finger-pointings. The prattle of a child gives it wings, and the converse of middle-age a strength to beat them. A strain of music conducts to 'an odd angle of the Isle,' and when the leaves whisper it puts a girdle round the earth. Nor will this sparing touch of noble books be any irreverence to their writers; for perhaps the honours paid by man to man are trifles in comparison to the benefit done by great works to the Spirit and pulse' of good by their mere passive existence. Memory should not be called Knowledge. Many have original minds who do not think it-they are led away by Custom. Now it appears to me that almost any man may, like the spider, spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel. The points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine web of his Soul, and weave a tapestry empyrean full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of distinctness for his luxury. But the minds of mortals are so different and bent on such diverse journeys that it may at first appear impossible for any common taste and fellowship to exist between two or three under these suppositions. It is, however, quite the contrary. Minds would leave each other in contrary directions, traverse each other in numberless points, and at last greet each other at the journey's end. An old man and a child would talk together, and the old man be led on his path and the child left thinking. Man should not dispute or assert, but whisper results to his neighbour; and thus, by every germ of spirit sucking the sap from mould ethereal, every human [being] might become great, and Humanity, instead of being a wide heath of furze and briars with here and there a remote oak or pine, would become a grand democracy of forest trees. It has been an old comparison for our urging on,-the beehive; however, it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the bee. For it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving; no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the bee; its leaves blush deeper in the next spring: and who shall say between man and woman which is the most delighted! Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury. Let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be aimed at; but let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit. Sap will be given us for meat, and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of idleness. I have not read any books-the morning said I was right. I had no idea but of the morning, and the thrush said I was right-seeming to say: 'O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind, And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.' Now I am sensible all this is a mere sophistication (however it may neighbour to any truths) to excuse my own indolence; so I will not deceive myself that Man should be equal with Jove, but think himself very well 1 off as a sort of scullion-Mercury, or even a humble bee. It is no matter whether I am right or wrong, either one way or another, if there is sufficient to lift a little time from your shoulders. -Your affectionate friend, Feb. 19, 1818. JOHN KEATS. See Keats's Poems and Letters, edited by Forman, in five small volumes (Gowans & Gray, 1900). The Aldine edition of the Poems (1876) gives them in nearly chronological order, but the text is bad. The Letters (without those to Miss Brawne, and a few others) have been well edited by Colvin (1891). Lord Houghton's biography, first published in 1848, can never be superseded; but Colvin's Keats in the 'Men of Letters' series (1887) is based on fuller material, and contains excellent criticism. See also, among many criticisms, F. M. Owens's Study (1880; the first serious attempt to examine Keats's ideas); W. T. Arnold's Introduction to his edition of the Poems (1883; on literary influences and on Keats's vocabulary); M. Arnold in Essays in Criticism, second series; Swinburne in Miscellanies; and especially R. Bridges in his Introduction to the Poems in the 'Muses' Library.' A. C. BRADLEY. Percy Bysshe Shelley,* born 4th August 1792, son of Timothy the son of Sir Bysshe Shelley, first baronet of an ancient and noble house till then undistinguished from its equals by any hereditary title, entered Eton twelve years later, after some private schooling, and passed on to Oxford in 1810. Next year he was expelled from the university which had recently cast out Landor, whose noble poem of Gebir had already excited his just and ardent admiration. The rather irrational reason, in the younger poet's case, was the appearance of an anonymous pamphlet or flysheet called The Necessity of Atheism. It is not a work of any particular promise, but it is the first of Shelley's writings which would not disgrace a lower boy at Eton. His previous verse and prose, ballad or elegy or fiction, were servile and futile imitations of the illustrious Monk Lewis and the less illustrious Laura Matilda. And the boy had succeeded in sinking to a deeper and a duller depth of absurdity than had ever been fathomed by his models. In 1811 the youth of nineteen was induced to marry Harriet Westbrook, a schoolgirl of sixteen who had made use of her acquaintance with his sister to throw herself upon his protection. This unlucky alliance was the source of all the serious trouble which could possibly have affected the life of a man not miserable enough by nature to be made miserable by reviling or neglect. A short first visit to Ireland, hardly memorable by the issue of a characteristic Address to the Irish People, had no recorded effect or result beyond the comical effect of alarming the Government into notice of his not very dangerous or politically important existence. In June 1813 his daughter lanthe (a name which had already been borrowed by Byron from Landor) was born, and addressed three months later in a sonnet expressive of due and dutiful baby-worship. In the same year he read Ariosto with the rapture of a boy-a fact to be remembered because the spirit of comedy, whether incarnate in Fletcher or in Sheridan, was repulsive rather than attractive to him. There are certainly no signs of this influence in the poem, now privately printed, of Queen Mab-a work of impassioned rhetoric and passionate reasoning rather than poetic expression or imaginative thought. A Refutation of Deism, printed early in the following year, shows more intellectual power as well as more literary capacity than anything Shelley had yet written the design of reducing the concept of theism to an obvious and palpable absurdity, by demonstration of the assumed theorem that it must naturally and inevitably result in acceptance of Christianity, is carried out with more dialectic skill and more ironic ability than might have been thought possible for so young and so ardent a novice in controversy. On 24th March he remarried Harriet in London, probably in order to obviate any question which might be raised as to the validity of the former ceremony, performed in Edinburgh according to Scottish law while he was still a minor. In April his wife left him, as a friend of his expressed it, 'again a widower;' in May he sent after her a rather pathetic, if rather too submissive, appeal for the restoration of a regard which can hardly have ever been genuine or serious. Soon afterwards he met the daughter of William Godwin, a novelist of unique rather than peculiar genius, but then more famous as a teacher and preacher of political and religious philosophies long since forgotten and never much more than derivative from France-the France of Diderot and Rousseau. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her future husband fell in love, by all accounts, at once -if not at first sight. On 28th July they eloped to France, accompanied by Jane Clairmont, daughter of Mary's stepmother by a former husband. On 13th August Shelley wrote a singularly affectionate and simple-hearted letter to the wife who had deserted him, inviting her to join them in Switzerland. On 13th September they were again in England. On 30th November Harriet Shelley gave birth, prematurely, to a boy; and some friendly and kindly intercourse ensued between the alienated husband and wife. As soon as his own money matters became settled by arrangement with his father, he sent Harriet £200 to discharge her debts, and settled the same sum upon her annually in quarterly payments. In February 1815 a baby girl was borne by Mary to Shelley, and died on 6th March. On 24th January 1816 the little child so loved and lamented in such lovely snatches of song by the father who had lost him was born, and called William, after the father of his mother. In March the first poem of a great poet made its appearance in print. It was then that Shelley published Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, and other Poems. Before this he had shown himself to be a thoughtful, generous, fearless and fervent master of rhetoric in verse and prose; and assuredly nothing more. He now stood forth as a poet comparable only with Coleridge and with Wordsworth, and not unworthy of such comparison. In May 1816 Shelley and Mary left England for Geneva-unhappily for all parties, again accom* Copyright 1903 by J. B. Lippincott Company to the selection "From the 'Hymp to Intellectual Beauty,'" page 112. |