767. and passages of Shakspeare.-Things semireal, such as love, the clouds, etc., which require a greeting of the spirit to make them wholly exist-and nothings, which are made great and dignified by an ardent pursuit-which, by the by, stamp the Burgundy mark on the bottles of our minds, insomuch as they are able to 'consecrate whate'er they look upon.' I have written a sonnet here of a somewhat collateral nature so don't imagine it an 'apropos des bottes-." "Apropos des bottes" means literally "apropos of boots,"-i. e., without any reason or motive. The Human Seasons and To Ailsa Rock (p. 825) were first published, with the signature I, in Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book, 1819. The Blackwood reviewer described the poems as "two feats of Johnny Keats." ENDYMION The story of Endymion, the beautiful youth beloved by Diana, the moon goddess, had been in Keats's mind for about a year before he actually began to write it. The spirit of romance and of the classics abode with him constantly and stimulated him to poetic production. In a letter to Reynolds, dated April 17, 1817, he says: "I find I cannot exist without poetry-without eternal poetry-half the day will not do-the whole of it-I began with a little, but habit has made me a leviathan. I had become all in a tremble from not having written anything of late-the sonnet overleaf did me good. I slept the better last night for it-this morning, however, I am nearly as bad again. Just now I opened Spenser, and the first lines I saw were these"The noble heart that harbors virtuous thought, And is with child of glorious great intent, Can never rest until it forth have brought Th' eternal brood of glory excellent—' "I shall forthwith begin my Endymion, which I hope I shall have got some way with by the time you come, when we will read our verses in a delightful place I have set my heart upon." The "sonnet overleaf" was On the Sea (p. 765). The lines quoted by Keats are found in Spenser's The Faerie Queene, I, 5, 1, 1-4. In a letter to Bailey, dated Oct. 8, 1817, Keats quotes as follows from a letter written to his brother George "in the spring": "'As to what you say about my being a poet, I can return no answer but by saying that the high idea I have of poetical fame makes me think I see it towering too high above me. At any rate, I have no right to talk until Endymion is finished-it will be a test, a trial of my powers of imagination, and chiefly of my invention, which is a rare thing indeed-by which I must make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry: and when I consider that this is a great task, and that when done it will take me but a dozen paces towards the temple of fame-it makes me say-God forbid that I should be without such a task! I have heard Hunt say, and I may be asked why endeavor after a long poem? To which I should answer, Do not the lovers of poetry like to have a little region to wander in, where they may pick and choose, and in which the images are so numerous that many are forgotten and found new in a second reading: which may be food for a week's stroll in the summer? Do not they like this better than what they can read through before Mrs. Williams comes down stairs? a morning work at most. "Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails-and imagination the rudder. Did our great poets ever write short pieces? I mean in the shape of tales-this same invention seems indeed of late years to have been forgotten as a poetical excellence— But enough of this, I put on no laurels till I shall have finished Endymion.'” The poem was finished Nov. 28, 1817, and "inscribed, with every feeling of pride and regret and with 'a bowed mind' to the memory of the most English of poets except Shakspeare, Thomas Chatterton." The poem was published in April, 1818, with the following Preface: "Knowing within myself the manner in which this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public. "What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the press; nor should they if I thought a year's castigation would do them any good:it will not: the foundations are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit to live. "This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a punishment: but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it: he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honor of English literature. "The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy: but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages. "I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness: for I wish to try once more, before I bid it farewell." In the last line Keats has in mind a poem on the fall of Hyperion, the sun god. An earlier preface had been discarded because of objections by Reynolds. Keats's defense of it is contained in the following interesting letter to Reynolds, dated April 9, 1818: "Since you all agree that the thing is bad, it must be so-though I am not aware there is anything like Hunt in it (and if there is, it is my natural way, and I have something in common with Hunt). Look it over again, and examine into the motives, the seeds, from which any one sentence sprungI have not the slightest feeling of humility towards the public-or to anything in existence, but the eternal Being, the principle of beauty, and the memory of great men. When I am writing for myself for the mere sake of the moment's enjoyment, perhaps nature has its course with me-but a preface is written to the public; a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility. If I write a preface in a supple or subdued style, it will not be in character with me as a public speaker-I would be subdued before my friends, and thank them for subduing mebut among multitudes of men-I have no feel of stooping, I hate the idea of humility to them. comment: "I am anxious you should find this preface tolerable. If there is an affectation in it 'tis natural to me. Do let the printer's devil cook it, and let me be as 'the casing air' [Macbeth, III, 4, 23]. "You are too good in this matter-were I in your state, I am certain I should have no thought but of discontent and illness-I might though be taught patience: I had an idea of giving no preface; however, don't you think this had better go? O, let it one should not be too timid-of committing faults." 768. 34-62. Cf. Keats's Letter to Hessey, Oct. 9, 1818, in which he says: "In Endymion I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest." 770. 208. The review of Endymion in The Quarterly Review (see p. 913) accused Keats of introducing new words into the language. Needments, which Keats borrowed from Spenser's The Faerie Queene (I, 6, 35, 56), is one of the words objected to. "I never wrote one single line of poetry with 774. 534. the least shadow of public thought. "Forgive me for vexing you and making a Trojan horse of such a trifle, both with respect to the matter in question, and myself—but it eases me to tell you-I could not live without the love of my friends-I would jump down Etna for any great public good-but I hate a mawkish popularity. I cannot be subdued before them-My glory would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers about pictures and books-I see swarms of porcupines with their quills erect 'like lime-twigs set to catch my winged book,' [2 Henry VI, III, 3, 16] and I would fright them away with a torch. You will say my preface is not much of a torch. It would have been too insulting 'to begin from Jove,' and I could not set a golden head upon a thing of clay. If there is any fault in the preface it is not affectation, but an undersong of disrespect to the publicif I write another preface it must be done without a thought of those people-I will think about it. If it should not reach you in four or five days, tell Taylor to publish it without a preface, and let the dedication simply stand-inscribed to the Memory of Thomas Chatterton.'" The new preface was sent to Reynolds in a letter dated April 10, 1818, with the following achronism. 784. 376 f. Cf. this passage with the account of the garden of Adonis in Spenser's The Faerie Queene, III, 6, 29-50. 793. Book III.-Keats is said to have remarked to a friend: "It will be easily seen what I think of the present ministers, by the beginning of the third Book." Bates suggests (Athenæum Press ed.) that "the pseudopolitical effusion with which the third Book opens is rather a reflection of the opinion of the Leigh Hunt circle than the spontaneous expression of Keats, who at heart was too fully absorbed in literature to feel deeply upon such subjects as these." 809. 244. 818. an Arabians prance.-This is achronism. See Book I, 534 (p. 774). ISABELLA: OR THE POT OF BASIL an This poem was originally intended to be printed in a projected volume of metrical tales translated by Reynolds and Keats from Boccaccio; but Keats published his poem in 1820 without waiting for Reynolds, who published his in 1821. In the Preface to his volume, Reynolds said: "The stories from Boccaccio (The Garden of Florence, and The Ladye of Provence) were to have been associated with tales from the same source, intended to have 825. been written by a friend :-but illness on his FRAGMENT OF AN ODE TO MAIA This fragment was written in a letter to Reynolds, dated May 3, 1818, after the fol lowing statement: "With respect to the affections 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 iml tative, indeed, of Shakespeare, but Shakespearian, because its expression has that rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness of which Shakespeare is the great master. To show such work is to praise it. Let us now 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 cattle lowing I never had so finely. At the end we had a gradual ascent and got among the tops of the mountains whence in a little 828. time I descried in the sea Ailsa Rock 940 feet high-it was 15 miles distant and seemed close upon us. The effect of Ailsa with the peculiar perspective of the sea in connection with the ground we stood on, and the misty rain then falling gave me a complete idea of a deluge. Ailsa struck me very suddenlyreally I was a little alarmed." See note on The Human Seasons, 1287b. FANCY "I know of no other poem which so closely rivals the richness and melody,-and that in this very difficult and rarely attempted meter, of Milton's Allegro and Penseroso.”Palgrave's note in his edition of Poems of Keats. ODE This poem was written on a blank page before Beaumont and Fletcher's tragic-comedy The Fair Maid of the Inn. In his poem Keats refers especially to these Elizabethan dramatists. ODE ON MELANCHOLY Early in January, 1819, Keats wrote Hay. don as follows: "I have been writing a little now and then lately: but nothing to speak of-being discontented and as it were moulting. Yet I do not think I shall ever come to the rope or the pistol, for after a day or two's melancholy, although I smoke more and more my own insufficiency-I see by little and little more of what is to be done, and how it is to be done, should I ever be able to do it. On my soul, there should be some reward for that continual agonie ennuyeuse." 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 follows: "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." 832. 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. 69-70. See Hood's Ruth (p. 1136). 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. 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. THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 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 The blushing with the blood of queens' ?" 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: "Her 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. XXX was introduced. Keats, who was Leigh Hunt's guest at the time this volume appeared, read aloud the passage to Hunt, with manifest pleasure în 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 mediævalism 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 superst!tion 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 |