Keats: Poems Published in 1820

 

---

The text of this edition is a reprint (page for page and line for line) of a copy of the 1820 edition in the British Museum. For convenience of reference line-numbers have been added; but this is the only change, beyond the correction of one or two misprints.

The books to which I am most indebted for the material used in the Introduction and Notes are The Poems of John Keats with an Introduction and Notes by E. de Sélincourt, Life of Keats (English Men of Letters Series) by Sidney Colvin, and Letters of John Keats edited by Sidney Colvin. As a pupil of Dr. de Sélincourt I also owe him special gratitude for his inspiration and direction of my study of Keats, as well as for the constant help which I have received from him in the preparation of this edition.

M. R.

---

---

Of all the great poets of the early nineteenth century—Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats—John Keats was the last born and the first to die. The length of his life was not one-third that of Wordsworth, who was born twenty-five years before him and outlived him by twenty-nine. Yet before his tragic death at twenty-six Keats had produced a body of poetry of such extraordinary power and promise that the world has sometimes been tempted, in its regret for what he might have done had he lived, to lose sight of the superlative merit of what he actually accomplished.

The three years of his poetic career, during which he published three small volumes of poetry, show a development at the same time rapid and steady, and a gradual but complete abandonment of almost every fault and weakness. It would probably be impossible, in the history of literature, to find such another instance of the 'growth of a poet's mind'.

The last of these three volumes, which is here reprinted, was published in 1820, when it 'had good success among the literary people and . . . a moderate sale'. It contains the flower of his poetic production and is perhaps, altogether, one of the most marvellous volumes ever issued from the press.

But in spite of the maturity of Keats's work when he was twenty-five, he had been in no sense a precocious child. Born in 1795 in the city of London, the son of a livery-stable keeper, he was brought up amid surroundings and influences by no means calculated to awaken poetic genius.

He was the eldest of five—four boys, one of whom died in infancy, and a girl younger than all; and he and his brothers George and Tom were educated at a private school at Enfield. Here John was at first distinguished more for fighting than for study, whilst his bright, brave, generous nature made him popular with masters and boys.

Soon after he had begun to go to school his father died, and when he was fifteen the children lost their mother too. Keats was passionately devoted to his mother; during her last illness he would sit up all night with her, give her her medicine, and even cook her food himself. At her death he was brokenhearted.

The children were now put under the care of two guardians, one of whom, Mr. Abbey, taking the sole responsibility, immediately removed John from school and apprenticed him for five years to a surgeon at Edmonton.

Whilst thus employed Keats spent all his leisure time in reading, for which he had developed a great enthusiasm during his last two years at school. There he had devoured every book that came in his way, especially rejoicing in stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. At Edmonton he was able to continue his studies by borrowing books from his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, the son of his schoolmaster, and he often went over to Enfield to change his books and to discuss those which he had been reading. On one of these occasions Cowden Clarke introduced him to Spenser, to whom so many poets have owed their first inspiration that he has been called 'the poets' poet'; and it was then, apparently, that Keats was first prompted to write.

When he was nineteen, a year before his apprenticeship came to an end, he quarrelled with his master, left him, and continued his training in London as a student at St. Thomas's Hospital and Guy's. Gradually, however, during the months that followed, though he was an industrious and able medical student, Keats came to realize that poetry was his true vocation; and as soon as he was of age, in spite of the opposition of his guardian, he decided to abandon the medical profession and devote his life to literature.

If Mr. Abbey was unsympathetic Keats was not without encouragement from others. His brothers always believed in him whole-heartedly, and his exceptionally lovable nature had won him many friends. Amongst these friends two men older than himself, each famous in his own sphere, had special influence upon him.

One of them, Leigh Hunt, was something of a poet himself and a pleasant prose-writer. His encouragement did much to stimulate Keats's genius, but his direct influence on his poetry was wholly bad. Leigh Hunt's was not a deep nature; his poetry is often trivial and sentimental, and his easy conversational style is intolerable when applied to a great theme. To this man's influence, as well as to the surroundings of his youth, are doubtless due the occasional flaws of taste in Keats's early work.

The other, Haydon, was an artist of mediocre creative talent but great aims and amazing belief in himself. He had a fine critical faculty which was shown in his appreciation of the Elgin marbles, in opposition to the most respected authorities of his day. Mainly through his insistence they were secured for the nation which thus owes him a boundless debt of gratitude. He helped to guide and direct Keats's taste by his enthusiastic exposition of these masterpieces of Greek sculpture.

In 1817 Keats published his first volume of poems, including 'Sleep and Poetry' and the well-known lines 'I stood tiptoe upon a little hill'. With much that is of the highest poetic value, many memorable lines and touches of his unique insight into nature, the volume yet showed considerable immaturity. It contained indeed, if we except one perfect sonnet, rather a series of experiments than any complete and finished work. There were abundant faults for those who liked to look for them, though there were abundant beauties too; and the critics and the public chose rather to concentrate their attention on the former. The volume was therefore anything but a success; but Keats was not discouraged, for he saw many of his own faults more clearly than did his critics, and felt his power to outgrow them.

Immediately after this Keats went to the Isle of Wight and thence to Margate that he might study and write undisturbed. On May 10th he wrote to Haydon—'I never quite despair, and I read Shakespeare—indeed I shall, I think, never read any other book much'. We have seen Keats influenced by Spenser and by Leigh Hunt: now, though his love for Spenser continued, Shakespeare's had become the dominant influence. Gradually he came too under the influence of Wordsworth's philosophy of poetry and life, and later his reading of Milton affected his style to some extent, but Shakespeare's influence was the widest, deepest and most lasting, though it is the hardest to define. His study of other poets left traces upon his work in turns of phrase or turns of thought: Shakespeare permeated his whole being, and his influence is to be detected not in a resemblance of style, for Shakespeare can have no imitators, but in a broadening view of life, and increased humanity.

No poet could have owed his education more completely to the English poets than did John Keats. His knowledge of Latin was slight—he knew no Greek, and even the classical stories which he loved and constantly used, came to him almost entirely through the medium of Elizabethan translations and allusions. In this connexion it is interesting to read his first fine sonnet, in which he celebrates his introduction to the greatest of Greek poets in the translation of the rugged and forcible Elizabethan, George Chapman:—

Of the work upon which he was now engaged, the narrative-poem of Endymion, we may give his own account to his little sister Fanny in a letter dated September 10th, 1817:—

'Perhaps you might like to know what I am writing about. I will tell you. Many years ago there was a young handsome Shepherd who fed his flocks on a Mountain's Side called Latmus—he was a very contemplative sort of a Person and lived solitary among the trees and Plains little thinking that such a beautiful Creature as the Moon was growing mad in Love with him.—However so it was; and when he was asleep she used to come down from heaven and admire him excessively for a long time; and at last could not refrain from carrying him away in her arms to the top of that high Mountain Latmus while he was a dreaming—but I dare say you have read this and all the other beautiful tales which have come down from the ancient times of that beautiful Greece.'

On his return to London he and his brother Tom, always delicate and now quite an invalid, took lodgings at Hampstead. Here Keats remained for some time, harassed by the illness of his brother and of several of his friends; and in June he was still further depressed by the departure of his brother George to try his luck in America.

In April, 1818, Endymion was finished. Keats was by no means satisfied with it but preferred to publish it as it was, feeling it to be 'as good as I had power to make it by myself'.—'I will write independently' he says to his publisher—'I have written independently without judgment. I may write independently and with judgment hereafter. 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.' He published it with a preface modestly explaining to the public his own sense of its imperfection. Nevertheless a storm of abuse broke upon him from the critics who fastened upon all the faults of the poem—the diffuseness of the story, its occasional sentimentality and the sometimes fantastic coinage of words,[xiii:1] and ignored the extraordinary beauties of which it is full.

Directly after the publication of Endymion, and before the appearance of these reviews, Keats started with a friend, Charles Brown, for a walking tour in Scotland. They first visited the English lakes and thence walked to Dumfries, where they saw the house of Burns and his grave. They entered next the country of Meg Merrilies, and from Kirkcudbrightshire crossed over to Ireland for a few days. On their return they went north as far as Argyleshire, whence they sailed to Staffa and saw Fingal's cave, which, Keats wrote, 'for solemnity and grandeur far surpasses the finest Cathedral.' They then crossed Scotland through Inverness, and Keats returned home by boat from Cromarty.

His letters home are at first full of interest and enjoyment, but a 'slight sore throat', contracted in 'a most wretched walk of thirty-seven miles across the Isle of Mull', proved very troublesome and finally cut short his holiday. This was the beginning of the end. There was consumption in the family: Tom was dying of it; and the cold, wet, and over-exertion of his Scotch tour seems to have developed the fatal tendency in Keats himself.

From this time forward he was never well, and no good was done to either his health or spirits by the task which now awaited him of tending on his dying brother. For the last two or three months of 1818, until Tom's death in December, he scarcely left the bedside, and it was well for him that his friend, Charles Armitage Brown, was at hand to help and comfort him after the long strain. Brown persuaded Keats at once to leave the house, with its sad associations, and to come and live with him.

Before long poetry absorbed Keats again; and the first few months of 1819 were the most fruitful of his life. Besides working at Hyperion, which he had begun during Tom's illness, he wrote The Eve of St. Agnes, The Eve of St. Mark, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and nearly all his famous odes.

Troubles however beset him. His friend Haydon was in difficulties and tormenting him, poor as he was, to lend him money; the state of his throat gave serious cause for alarm; and, above all, he was consumed by an unsatisfying passion for the daughter of a neighbour, Mrs. Brawne. She had rented Brown's house whilst they were in Scotland, and had now moved to a street near by. Miss Fanny Brawne returned his love, but she seems never to have understood his nature or his needs. High-spirited and fond of pleasure she did not apparently allow the thought of her invalid lover to interfere much with her enjoyment of life. She would not, however, abandon her engagement, and she probably gave him all which it was in her nature to give. Ill-health made him, on the other hand, morbidly dissatisfied and suspicious; and, as a result of his illness and her limitations, his love throughout brought him restlessness and torment rather than peace and comfort.

Towards the end of July he went to Shanklin and there, in collaboration with Brown, wrote a play, Otho the Great. Brown tells us how they used to sit, one on either side of a table, he sketching out the scenes and handing each one, as the outline was finished, to Keats to write. As Keats never knew what was coming it was quite impossible that the characters should be adequately conceived, or that the drama should be a united whole. Nevertheless there is much that is beautiful and promising in it. It should not be forgotten that Keats's 'greatest ambition' was, in his own words, 'the writing of a few fine plays'; and, with the increasing humanity and grasp which his poetry shows, there is no reason to suppose that, had he lived, he would not have fulfilled it.

At Shanklin, moreover, he had begun to write Lamia, and he continued it at Winchester. Here he stayed until the middle of October, excepting a few days which he spent in London to arrange about the sending of some money to his brother in America. George had been unsuccessful in his commercial enterprises, and Keats, in view of his family's ill-success, determined temporarily to abandon poetry, and by reviewing or journalism to support himself and earn money to help his brother. Then, when he could afford it, he would return to poetry.

Accordingly he came back to London, but his health was breaking down, and with it his resolution. He tried to re-write Hyperion, which he felt had been written too much under the influence of Milton and in 'the artist's humour'. The same independence of spirit which he had shown in the publication of Endymion urged him now to abandon a work the style of which he did not feel to be absolutely his own. The re-cast he wrote in the form of a vision, calling it The Fall of Hyperion, and in so doing he added much to his conception of the meaning of the story. In no poem does he show more of the profoundly philosophic spirit which characterizes many of his letters. But it was too late; his power was failing and, in spite of the beauty and interest of some of his additions, the alterations are mostly for the worse.

Whilst The Fall of Hyperion occupied his evenings his mornings were spent over a satirical fairy-poem, The Cap and Bells, in the metre of the Faerie Queene. This metre, however, was ill-suited to the subject; satire was not natural to him, and the poem has little intrinsic merit.

Neither this nor the re-cast of Hyperion was finished when, in February, 1820, he had an attack of illness in which the first definite symptom of consumption appeared. Brown tells how he came home on the evening of Thursday, February 3rd, in a state of high fever, chilled from having ridden outside the coach on a bitterly cold day. 'He mildly and instantly yielded to my request that he should go to bed . . . On entering the cold sheets, before his head was on the pillow, he slightly coughed, and I heard him say—"that is blood from my mouth". I went towards him: he was examining a single drop of blood upon the sheet. "Bring me the candle, Brown, and let me see this blood." After regarding it steadfastly he looked up in my face with a calmness of expression that I can never forget, and said, "I know the colour of that blood;—it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop of blood is my death warrant;—I must die."'

He lived for another year, but it was one long dying: he himself called it his 'posthumous life'.

Keats was one of the most charming of letter-writers. He had that rare quality of entering sympathetically into the mind of the friend to whom he was writing, so that his letters reveal to us much of the character of the recipient as well as of the writer. In the long journal-letters which he wrote to his brother and sister-in-law in America he is probably most fully himself, for there he is with the people who knew him best and on whose understanding and sympathy he could rely. But in none is the beauty of his character more fully revealed than in those to his little sister Fanny, now seventeen years old, and living with their guardian, Mr. Abbey. He had always been very anxious that they should 'become intimately acquainted, in order', as he says, 'that I may not only, as you grow up, love you as my only Sister, but confide in you as my dearest friend.' In his most harassing times he continued to write to her, directing her reading, sympathizing in her childish troubles, and constantly thinking of little presents to please her. Her health was to him a matter of paramount concern, and in his last letters to her we find him reiterating warnings to take care of herself—'You must be careful always to wear warm clothing not only in Frost but in a Thaw.'—'Be careful to let no fretting injure your health as I have suffered it—health is the greatest of blessings—with health and hope we should be content to live, and so you will find as you grow older.' The constant recurrence of this thought becomes, in the light of his own sufferings, almost unbearably pathetic.

During the first months of his illness Keats saw through the press his last volume of poetry, of which this is a reprint. The praise which it received from reviewers and public was in marked contrast to the scornful reception of his earlier works, and would have augured well for the future. But Keats was past caring much for poetic fame. He dragged on through the summer, with rallies and relapses, tormented above all by the thought that death would separate him from the woman he loved. Only Brown, of all his friends, knew what he was suffering, and it seems that he only knew fully after they were parted.

The doctors warned Keats that a winter in England would kill him, so in September, 1820, he left London for Naples, accompanied by a young artist, Joseph Severn, one of his many devoted friends. Shelley, who knew him slightly, invited him to stay at Pisa, but Keats refused. He had never cared for Shelley, though Shelley seems to have liked him, and, in his invalid state, he naturally shrank from being a burden to a mere acquaintance.

It was as they left England, off the coast of Dorsetshire, that Keats wrote his last beautiful sonnet on a blank leaf of his folio copy of Shakespeare, facing A Lover's Complaint:—

The friends reached Rome, and there Keats, after a brief rally, rapidly became worse. Severn nursed him with desperate devotion, and of Keats's sweet considerateness and patience he could never say enough. Indeed such was the force and lovableness of Keats's personality that though Severn lived fifty-eight years longer it was for the rest of his life a chief occupation to write and draw his memories of his friend.

On February 23rd, 1821, came the end for which Keats had begun to long. He died peacefully in Severn's arms. On the 26th he was buried in the beautiful little Protestant cemetery of which Shelley said that it 'made one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place'.

Great indignation was felt at the time by those who attributed his death, in part at least, to the cruel treatment which he had received from the critics. Shelley, in Adonais, withered them with his scorn, and Byron, in Don Juan, had his gibe both at the poet and at his enemies. But we know now how mistaken they were. Keats, in a normal state of mind and body, was never unduly depressed by harsh or unfair criticism. 'Praise or blame,' he wrote, 'has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works,' and this attitude he consistently maintained throughout his poetic career. No doubt the sense that his genius was unappreciated added something to the torment of mind which he suffered in Rome, and on his death-bed he asked that on his tombstone should be inscribed the words 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'. But it was apparently not said in bitterness, and the rest of the inscription[xxiii:1] expresses rather the natural anger of his friends at the treatment he had received than the mental attitude of the poet himself.

Fully to understand him we must read his poetry with the commentary of his letters which reveal in his character elements of humour, clear-sighted wisdom, frankness, strength, sympathy and tolerance. So doing we shall enter into the mind and heart of the friend who, speaking for many, described Keats as one 'whose genius I did not, and do not, more fully admire than I entirely loved the man'.

---

---

 

 

 

---

If any apology be thought necessary for the appearance of the unfinished poem of Hyperion, the publishers beg to state that they alone are responsible, as it was printed at their particular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was intended to have been of equal length with Endymion, but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding.

Fleet-Street, June 26, 1820.

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

THE END.

---

Page 184, l. 310 over-foolish, Giant-Gods? MS.: over-foolish giant, Gods? 1820.

---

ADVERTISEMENT.

Page 2. See Introduction to Hyperion, p. 245.

INTRODUCTION TO LAMIA.

Lamia, like Endymion, is written in the heroic couplet, but the difference in style is very marked. The influence of Dryden's narrative-poems (his translations from Boccaccio and Chaucer) is clearly traceable in the metre, style, and construction of the later poem. Like Dryden, Keats now makes frequent use of the Alexandrine, or 6-foot line, and of the triplet. He has also restrained the exuberance of his language and gained force, whilst in imaginative power and felicity of diction he surpasses anything of which Dryden was capable. The flaws in his style are mainly due to carelessness in the rimes and some questionable coining of words. He also occasionally lapses into the vulgarity and triviality which marred certain of his early poems.

The best he gained from his study of Dryden's Fables, a debt perhaps to Chaucer rather than to Dryden, was a notable advance in constructive power. In Lamia he shows a very much greater sense of proportion and power of selection than in his earlier work. There is, as it were, more light and shade.

Thus we find that whenever the occasion demands it his style rises to supreme force and beauty. The metamorphosis of the serpent, the entry of Lamia and Lycius into Corinth, the building by Lamia of the Fairy Hall, and her final withering under the eye of Apollonius—these are the most important points in the story, and the passages in which they are described are also the most striking in the poem.

The allegorical meaning of the story seems to be, that it is fatal to attempt to separate the sensuous and emotional life from the life of reason. Philosophy alone is cold and destructive, but the pleasures of the senses alone are unreal and unsatisfying. The man who attempts such a divorce between the two parts of his nature will fail miserably as did Lycius, who, unable permanently to exclude reason, was compelled to face the death of his illusions, and could not, himself, survive them.

Of the poem Keats himself says, writing to his brother in September, 1819: 'I have been reading over a part of a short poem I have composed lately, called Lamia, and I am certain there is that sort of fire in it that must take hold of people some way; give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensation—what they want is a sensation of some sort.' But to the greatest of Keats's critics, Charles Lamb, the poem appealed somewhat differently, for he writes, 'More exuberantly rich in imagery and painting [than Isabella] is the story of Lamia. It is of as gorgeous stuff as ever romance was composed of,' and, after enumerating the most striking pictures in the poem, he adds, '[these] are all that fairy-land can do for us.' Lamia struck his imagination, but his heart was given to Isabella.

NOTES ON LAMIA.

Part I.

Page 3. ll. 1-6. before the faery broods . . . lawns, i.e. before mediaeval fairy-lore had superseded classical mythology.

l. 2. Satyr, a horned and goat-legged demi-god of the woods.

l. 5. Dryads, wood-nymphs, who lived in trees. The life of each terminated with that of the tree over which she presided. Cf. Landor's 'Hamadryad'.

l. 5. Fauns. The Roman name corresponding to the Greek Satyr.

l. 7. Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger of the Gods. He is always represented with winged shoes, a winged helmet, and a winged staff, bound about with living serpents.

Page 4. l. 15. Tritons, sea-gods, half-man, half-fish. Cf. Wordsworth, 'Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn' (Sonnet—'The World is too much with us').

l. 19. unknown to any Muse, beyond the imagination of any poet.

Page 5. l. 28. passion new. He has often before been to earth on similar errands. Cf. ever-smitten, l. 7, also ll. 80-93.

l. 42. dove-footed. Cf. note on l. 7.

Page 6. l. 46. cirque-couchant, lying twisted into a circle. Cf. wreathed tomb, l. 38.

l. 47. gordian, knotted, from the famous knot in the harness of Gordius, King of Phrygia, which only the conqueror of the world was to be able to untie. Alexander cut it with his sword. Cf. Henry V, i. i. 46.

l. 58. Ariadne's tiar. Ariadne was a nymph beloved of Bacchus, the god of wine. He gave her a crown of seven stars, which, after her death, was made into a constellation. Keats has, no doubt, in his mind Titian's picture of Bacchus and Ariadne in the National Gallery. Cf. Ode to Sorrow, Endymion.

Page 7. l. 63. As Proserpine . . . air. Proserpine, gathering flowers in the Vale of Enna, in Sicily, was carried off by Pluto, the king of the underworld, to be his queen. Cf. Winter's Tale, iv. iii, and Paradise Lost, iv. 268, known to be a favourite passage with Keats.

l. 75. his throbbing . . . moan. Cf. Hyperion, iii. 81.

l. 77. as morning breaks, the freshness and splendour of the youthful god.

Page 8. l. 78. Phoebean dart, a ray of the sun, Phoebus being the god of the sun.

l. 80. Too gentle Hermes. Cf. l. 28 and note.

l. 81. not delay'd: classical construction. See Introduction to Hyperion.

Star of Lethe. Hermes is so called because he had to lead the souls of the dead to Hades, where was Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. Lamb comments: '. . . Hermes, the Star of Lethe, as he is called by one of those prodigal phrases which Mr. Keats abounds in, which are each a poem in a word, and which in this instance lays open to us at once, like a picture, all the dim regions and their habitants, and the sudden coming of a celestial among them.'

l. 91. The line dances along like a leaf before the wind.

l. 92. Miltonic construction and phraseology.

Page 9. l. 98. weary tendrils, tired with holding up the boughs, heavy with fruit.

l. 103. Silenus, the nurse and teacher of Bacchus—a demigod of the woods.

Page 10. l. 115. Circean. Circe was the great enchantress who turned the followers of Ulysses into swine. Cf. Comus, ll. 46-54, and Odyssey, x.

Page 11. l. 132. swoon'd serpent. Evidently, in the exercise of her magic, power had gone out of her.

l. 133. lythe, quick-acting.

Caducean charm. Caduceus was the name of Hermes' staff of wondrous powers, the touch of which, evidently, was powerful to give the serpent human form.

l. 136. like a moon in wane. Cf. the picture of Cynthia, Endymion, iii. 72 sq.

l. 138. like a flower . . . hour. Perhaps a reminiscence of Milton's 'at shut of evening flowers.' Paradise Lost, ix. 278.

Page 12. l. 148. besprent, sprinkled.

l. 158. brede, embroidery. Cf. Ode on a Grecian Urn, v. 1.

Page 13. l. 178 rack. Cf. The Tempest, iv. i. 156, 'leave not a rack behind.' Hyperion, i. 302, note.

l. 180. This gives us a feeling of weakness and weariness as well as measuring the distance.

Page 14. l. 184. Cf. Wordsworth:

ll. 191-200. Cf. Ode on Melancholy, where Keats tells us that melancholy lives with Beauty, joy, pleasure, and delight. Lamia can separate the elements and give beauty and pleasure unalloyed.

l. 195. Intrigue with the specious chaos, enter on an understanding with the fair-looking confusion of joy and pain.

l. 198. unshent, unreproached.

Page 15. l. 207. Nereids, sea-nymphs.

l. 208. Thetis, one of the sea deities.

l. 210. glutinous, referring to the sticky substance which oozes from the pine-trunk. Cf. Comus, l. 917, 'smeared with gums of glutinous heat.'

l. 211. Cf. l. 63, note.

l. 212. Mulciber, Vulcan, the smith of the Gods. His fall from Heaven is described by Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 739-42.

piazzian, forming covered walks supported by pillars, a word coined by Keats.

Page 16. l. 236. In the calm'd . . . shades. In consideration of Plato's mystic and imaginative philosophy.

Page 17. l. 248. Refers to the story of Orpheus' attempt to rescue his wife Eurydice from Hades. With his exquisite music he charmed Cerberus, the fierce dog who guarded hell-gates, into submission, and won Pluto's consent that he should lead Eurydice back to the upper world on one condition—that he would not look back to see that she was following. When he was almost at the gates, love and curiosity overpowered him, and he looked back—to see Eurydice fall back into Hades whence he now might never win her.

Page 18. l. 262. thy far wishes, your wishes when you are far off.

l. 265. Pleiad. The Pleiades are seven stars making a constellation. Cf. Walt Whitman, 'On the beach at night.'

ll. 266-7. keep in tune Thy spheres. Refers to the music which the heavenly bodies were supposed to make as they moved round the earth. Cf. Merchant of Venice, v. i. 60.

Page 20. l. 294. new lips. Cf. l. 191

l. 297. Into another, i.e. into the trance of passion from which he only wakes to die.

Page 21. l. 320. Adonian feast. Adonis was a beautiful youth beloved of Venus. He was killed by a wild boar when hunting, and Venus then had him borne to Elysium, where he sleeps pillowed on flowers. Cf. Endymion, ii. 387.

Page 22. l. 329. Peris, in Persian story fairies, descended from the fallen angels.

ll. 330-2. The vulgarity of these lines we may attribute partly to the influence of Leigh Hunt, who himself wrote of

It was an influence which Keats, with the development of his own character and genius, was rapidly outgrowing.

l. 333. Pyrrha's pebbles. There is a legend that, after the flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha cast stones behind them which became men, thus re-peopling the world.

Page 23. ll. 350-4. Keats brings the very atmosphere of a dream about us in these lines, and makes us hear the murmur of the city as something remote from the chief actors.

l. 352. lewd, ignorant. The original meaning of the word which came later to mean dissolute.

Page 24. l. 360. corniced shade. Cf. Eve of St. Agnes, ix, 'Buttress'd from moonlight.'

ll. 363-77. Note the feeling of fate in the first appearance of Apollonius.

Page 25. l. 377. dreams. Lycius is conscious that it is an illusion even whilst he yields himself up to it.

l. 386. Aeolian. Aeolus was the god of the winds.

Page 26. l. 394. flitter-winged. Imagining the poem winging its way along like a bird. Flitter, cf. flittermouse = bat.

Part II.

Page 27. ll. 1-9. Again a passage unworthy of Keats's genius. Perhaps the attempt to be light, like his seventeenth-century model, Dryden, led him for the moment to adopt something of the cynicism of that age about love.

ll. 7-9. i.e. If Lycius had lived longer his experience might have either contradicted or corroborated this saying.

Page 28. l. 27. Deafening, in the unusual sense of making inaudible.

ll. 27-8. came a thrill Of trumpets. From the first moment that the outside world makes its claim felt there is no happiness for the man who, like Lycius, is living a life of selfish pleasure.

Page 29. l. 39. passing bell. Either the bell rung for a condemned man the night before his execution, or the bell rung when a man was dying that men might pray for the departing soul.

Page 31. ll. 72-4. Besides . . . new. An indication of the selfish nature of Lycius's love.

l. 80. serpent. See how skilfully this allusion is introduced and our attention called to it by his very denial that it applies to Lamia.

Page 32. l. 97. I neglect the holy rite. It is her duty to burn incense and tend the sepulchres of her dead kindred.

Page 33. l. 107. blushing. We see in the glow of the sunset a reflection of the blush of the bride.

Page 34. ll. 122-3. sole perhaps . . . roof. Notice that Keats only says 'perhaps', but it gives a trembling unreality at once to the magic palace. Cf. Coleridge's Kubla Khan:

Page 36. l. 155. demesne, dwelling. More commonly a domain. Hyperion, i. 298. Sonnet—'On first looking into Chapman's Homer.'

Page 38. l. 187. Ceres' horn. Ceres was the goddess of harvest, the mother of Proserpine (Lamia, i. 63, note). Her horn is filled with the fruits of the earth, and is symbolic of plenty.

Page 39. l. 200. vowel'd undersong, in contrast to the harsh, guttural and consonantal sound of Teutonic languages.

Page 40. l. 213. meridian, mid-day. Bacchus was supreme, as is the sun at mid-day.

ll. 215-29. Cf. The Winter's Tale, iv. iv. 73, &c., where Perdita gives to each guest suitable flowers. Cf. also Ophelia's flowers, Hamlet, iv. v. 175, etc.

l. 217. osier'd gold. The gold was woven into baskets, as though it were osiers.

l. 224. willow, the weeping willow, so-called because its branches with their long leaves droop to the ground, like dropping tears. It has always been sacred to deserted or unhappy lovers. Cf. Othello, iv. iii. 24 seq.

adder's tongue. For was she not a serpent?

l. 226. thyrsus. A rod wreathed with ivy and crowned with a fir-cone, used by Bacchus and his followers.

l. 228. spear-grass . . . thistle. Because of what he is about to do.

Page 41. ll. 229-38. Not to be taken as a serious expression of Keats's view of life. Rather he is looking at it, at this moment, through the eyes of the chief actors in his drama, and feeling with them.

Page 43. l. 263. Notice the horror of the deadly hush and the sudden fading of the flowers.

l. 266. step by step, prepares us for the thought of the silence as a horrid presence.

ll. 274-5. to illume the deep-recessed vision. We at once see her dull and sunken eyes.

Page 45. l. 301. perceant, piercing—a Spenserian word.

INTRODUCTION TO ISABELLA AND THE EVE OF ST. AGNES

In Lamia and Hyperion, as in Endymion, we find Keats inspired by classic story, though the inspiration in each case came to him through Elizabethan writers. Here, on the other hand, mediaeval legend is his inspiration; the 'faery broods' have driven 'nymph and satyr from the prosperous woods'. Akin to the Greeks as he was in spirit, in his instinctive personification of the lovely manifestations of nature, his style and method were really more naturally suited to the portrayal of mediaeval scenes, where he found the richness and warmth of colour in which his soul delighted.

The story of Isabella he took from Boccaccio, an Italian writer of the fourteenth century, whose Decameron, a collection of one hundred stories, has been a store-house of plots for English writers. By Boccaccio the tale is very shortly and simply told, being evidently interesting to him mainly for its plot. Keats was attracted to it not so much by the action as by the passion involved, so that his enlargement of it means little elaboration of incident, but very much more dwelling on the psychological aspect. That is to say, he does not care so much what happens, as what the personages of the poem think and feel.

Thus we see that the main incident of the story, the murder of Lorenzo, is passed over in a line—'Thus was Lorenzo slain and buried in,' the next line, 'There, in that forest, did his great love cease,' bringing us back at once from the physical reality of the murder to the thought of his love, which is to Keats the central fact of the story.

In the delineation of Isabella, her first tender passion of love, her agony of apprehension giving way to dull despair, her sudden wakening to a brief period of frenzied action, described in stanzas of incomparable dramatic force, and the 'peace' which followed when she

culminating in the piteous death 'too lone and incomplete'—in the delineation of all this Keats shows supreme power and insight.

In the conception, too, of the tragic loneliness of Lorenzo's ghost we feel that nothing could be changed, added, or taken away.

Not quite equally happy are the descriptions of the cruel brothers, and of Lorenzo as the young lover. There is a tendency to exaggerate both their inhumanity and his gentleness, for purposes of contrast, which weakens where it would give strength.

The Eve of St. Agnes, founded on a popular mediaeval legend, not being a tragedy like Isabella, cannot be expected to rival it in depth and intensity; but in every other poetic quality it equals, where it does not surpass, the former poem.

To be specially noted is the skilful use which Keats here makes of contrast—between the cruel cold without and the warm love within; the palsied age of the Bedesman and Angela, and the eager youth of Porphyro and Madeline; the noise and revel and the hush of Madeline's bedroom, and, as Mr. Colvin has pointed out, in the moonlight which, chill and sepulchral when it strikes elsewhere, to Madeline is as a halo of glory, an angelic light.

A mysterious charm is given to the poem by the way in which Keats endows inanimate things with a sort of half-conscious life. The knights and ladies of stone arouse the bedesman's shuddering sympathy when he thinks of the cold they must be enduring; 'the carven angels' 'star'd' 'eager-eyed' from the roof of the chapel, and the scutcheon in Madeline's window 'blush'd with blood of queens and kings'.

Keats's characteristic method of description—the way in which, by his masterly choice of significant detail, he gives us the whole feeling of the situation, is here seen in its perfection. In stanza 1 each line is a picture and each picture contributes to the whole effect of painful chill. The silence of the sheep, the old man's breath visible in the frosty air,—these are things which many people would not notice, but it is such little things that make the whole scene real to us.

There is another method of description, quite as beautiful in its way, which Coleridge adopted with magic effect in Christabel. This is to use the power of suggestion, to say very little, but that little of a kind to awaken the reader's imagination and make him complete the picture. For example, we are told of Christabel—

Compare this with stanza xxvi of The Eve of St. Agnes.

That Keats was a master of both ways of obtaining a romantic effect is shown by his La Belle Dame Sans Merci, considered by some people his masterpiece, where the rich detail of The Eve of St. Agnes is replaced by reserve and suggestion.

As the poem was not included in the volume published in 1820, it is given here.

NOTES ON ISABELLA.

Metre. The ottava rima of the Italians, the natural outcome of Keats's turning to Italy for his story. This stanza had been used by Chaucer and the Elizabethans, and recently by Hookham Frere in The Monks and the Giants and by Byron in Don Juan. Compare Keats's use of the form with that of either of his contemporaries, and notice how he avoids the epigrammatic close, telling in satire and mock-heroic, but inappropriate to a serious and romantic poem.

Page 49. l. 2. palmer, pilgrim. As the pilgrim seeks for a shrine where, through the patron saint, he may worship God, so Lorenzo needs a woman to worship, through whom he may worship Love.

Page 50. l. 21. constant as her vespers, as often as she said her evening-prayers.

Page 51. l. 34. within . . . domain, where it should, naturally, have been rosy.

Page 52. l. 46. Fever'd . . . bridge. Made his sense of her worth more passionate.

ll. 51-2. wed To every symbol. Able to read every sign.

Page 53. l. 62. fear, make afraid. So used by Shakespeare: e.g. 'Fear boys with bugs,' Taming of the Shrew, i. ii. 211.

l. 64. shrive, confess. As the pilgrim cannot be at peace till he has confessed his sins and received absolution, so Lorenzo feels the necessity of confessing his love.

Page 54. ll. 81-2. before the dusk . . . veil. A vivid picture of the twilight time, after sunset, but before it is dark enough for the stars to shine brightly.

ll. 83-4. The repetition of the same words helps us to feel the unchanging nature of their devotion and joy in one another.

Page 55. l. 91. in fee, in payment for their trouble.

l. 95. Theseus' spouse. Ariadne, who was deserted by Theseus after having saved his life and left her home for him. Odyssey, xi. 321-5.

l. 99. Dido. Queen of Carthage, whom Aeneas, in his wanderings, wooed and would have married, but the Gods bade him leave her.

silent . . . undergrove. When Aeneas saw Dido in Hades, amongst those who had died for love, he spoke to her pityingly. But she answered him not a word, turning from him into the grove to Lychaeus, her former husband, who comforted her. Vergil, Aeneid, Bk. VI, l. 450 ff.

l. 103. almsmen, receivers of alms, since they take honey from the flowers.

Page 56. l. 107. swelt, faint. Cf. Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, iii. 347.

l. 109. proud-quiver'd, proudly girt with quivers of arrows.

l. 112. rich-ored driftings. The sand of the river in which gold was to be found.

Page 57. l. 124. lazar, leper, or any wretched beggar; from the parable of Dives and Lazarus.

stairs, steps on which they sat to beg.

l. 125. red-lin'd accounts, vividly picturing their neat account-books, and at the same time, perhaps, suggesting the human blood for which their accumulation of wealth was responsible.

l. 130. gainful cowardice. A telling expression for the dread of loss which haunts so many wealthy people.

l. 133. hawks . . . forests. As a hawk pounces on its prey, so they fell on the trading-vessels which put into port.

ll. 133-4. the untired . . . lies. They were always ready for any dishonourable transaction by which money might be made.

l. 134. ducats. Italian pieces of money worth about 4s. 4d. Cf. Shylock, Merchant of Venice, ii. vii. 15, 'My ducats.'

l. 135. Quick . . . away. They would undertake to fleece unsuspecting strangers in their town.

Page 58. l. 137. ledger-men. As if they only lived in their account-books. Cf. l. 142.

l. 140. Hot Egypt's pest, the plague of Egypt.

ll. 145-52. As in Lycidas Milton apologizes for the introduction of his attack on the Church, so Keats apologizes for the introduction of this outburst of indignation against cruel and dishonourable dealers, which he feels is unsuited to the tender and pitiful story.

l. 150. ghittern, an instrument like a guitar, strung with wire.

Page 59. ll. 153-60. Keats wants to make it clear that he is not trying to surpass Boccaccio, but to give him currency amongst English-speaking people.

l. 159. stead thee, do thee service.

l. 168. olive-trees. In which (through the oil they yield) a great part of the wealth of the Italians lies.

Page 60. l. 174. Cut . . . bone. This is not only a vivid way of describing the banishment of all their natural pity. It also, by the metaphor used, gives us a sort of premonitory shudder as at Lorenzo's death. Indeed, in that moment the murder is, to all intents and purposes, done. In stanza xxvii they are described as riding 'with their murder'd man'.

Page 61. ll. 187-8. ere . . . eglantine. The sun, drying up the dew drop by drop from the sweet-briar is pictured as passing beads along a string, as the Roman Catholics do when they say their prayers.

Page 62. l. 209. their . . . man. Cf. l. 174, note. Notice the extraordinary vividness of the picture here—the quiet rural scene and the intrusion of human passion with the reflection in the clear water of the pale murderers, sick with suspense, and the unsuspecting victim, full of glowing life.

l. 212. bream, a kind of fish found in lakes and deep water. Obviously Keats was not an angler.

freshets, little streams of fresh water.

Page 63. l. 217. Notice the reticence with which the mere fact of the murder is stated—no details given. Keats wants the prevailing feeling to be one of pity rather than of horror.

ll. 219-20. Ah . . . loneliness. We perpetually come upon this old belief—that the souls of the murdered cannot rest in peace. Cf. Hamlet, i. v. 8, &c.

l. 221. break-covert . . . sin. The blood-hounds employed for tracking down a murderer will find him under any concealment, and never rest till he is found. So restless is the soul of the victim.

l. 222. They . . . water. That water which had reflected the three faces as they went across.

tease, torment.

l. 223. convulsed spur, they spurred their horses violently and uncertainly, scarce knowing what they did.

l. 224. Each richer . . . murderer. This is what they have gained by their deed—the guilt of murder—that is all.

l. 229. stifling: partly literal, since the widow's weed is close-wrapping and voluminous—partly metaphorical, since the acceptance of fate stifles complaint.

l. 230. accursed bands. So long as a man hopes he is not free, but at the mercy of continual imaginings and fresh disappointments. When hope is laid aside, fear and disappointment go with it.

Page 64. l. 241. Selfishness, Love's cousin. For the two aspects of love, as a selfish and unselfish passion, see Blake's two poems, Love seeketh only self to please, and, Love seeketh not itself to please.

l. 242. single breast, one-thoughted, being full of love for Lorenzo.

Page 65. ll. 249 seq. Cf. Shelley's Ode to the West Wind.

l. 252. roundelay, a dance in a circle.

l. 259. Striving . . . itself. Her distrust of her brothers is shown in her effort not to betray her fears to them.

dungeon climes. Wherever it is, it is a prison which keeps him from her. Cf. Hamlet, ii. ii. 250-4.

l. 262. Hinnom's Vale, the valley of Moloch's sacrifices, Paradise Lost, i. 392-405.

l. 264. snowy shroud, a truly prophetic dream.

Page 66. ll. 267 seq. These comparisons help us to realize her experience as sharp anguish, rousing her from the lethargy of despair, and endowing her for a brief space with almost supernatural energy and willpower.

Page 67. l. 286. palsied Druid. The Druids, or priests of ancient Britain, are always pictured as old men with long beards. The conception of such an old man, tremblingly trying to get music from a broken harp, adds to the pathos and mystery of the vision.

l. 288. Like . . . among. Take this line word by word, and see how many different ideas go to create the incomparably ghostly effect.

ll. 289 seq. Horror is skilfully kept from this picture and only tragedy left. The horror is for the eyes of his murderers, not for his love.

l. 292. unthread . . . woof. His narration and explanation of what has gone before is pictured as the disentangling of woven threads.

l. 293. darken'd. In many senses, since their crime was (1) concealed from Isabella, (2) darkly evil, (3) done in the darkness of the wood.

Page 68. ll. 305 seq. The whole sound of this stanza is that of a faint and far-away echo.

l. 308. knelling. Every sound is like a death-bell to him.

Page 69. l. 316. That paleness. Her paleness showing her great love for him; and, moreover, indicating that they will soon be reunited.

l. 317. bright abyss, the bright hollow of heaven.

l. 322. The atom . . . turmoil. Every one must know the sensation of looking into the darkness, straining one's eyes, until the darkness itself seems to be composed of moving atoms. The experience with which Keats, in the next lines, compares it, is, we are told, a common experience in the early stages of consumption.

Page 70. l. 334. school'd my infancy. She was as a child in her ignorance of evil, and he has taught her the hard lesson that our misery is not always due to the dealings of a blind fate, but sometimes to the deliberate crime and cruelty of those whom we have trusted.

l. 344. forest-hearse. To Isabella the whole forest is but the receptacle of her lover's corpse.

Page 71. l. 347. champaign, country. We can picture Isabel, as they 'creep' along, furtively glancing round, and then producing her knife with a smile so terrible that the old nurse can only fear that she is delirious, as her sudden vigour would also suggest.

Page 72. st. xlvi-xlviii. These are the stanzas of which Lamb says, 'there is nothing more awfully simple in diction, more nakedly grand and moving in sentiment, in Dante, in Chaucer, or in Spenser'—and again, after an appreciation of Lamia, whose fairy splendours are 'for younger impressibilities', he reverts to them, saying: 'To us an ounce of feeling is worth a pound of fancy; and therefore we recur again, with a warmer gratitude, to the story of Isabella and the pot of basil, and those never-cloying stanzas which we have cited, and which we think should disarm criticism, if it be not in its nature cruel; if it would not deny to honey its sweetness, nor to roses redness, nor light to the stars in Heaven; if it would not bay the moon out of the skies, rather than acknowledge she is fair.'—The New Times, July 19, 1820.

l. 361. fresh-thrown mould, a corroboration of her fears. Mr. Colvin has pointed out how the horror is throughout relieved by the beauty of the images called up by the similes, e.g. 'a crystal well,' 'a native lily of the dell.'

l. 370. Her silk . . . phantasies, i.e. which she had embroidered fancifully for him.

Page 73. l. 385. wormy circumstance, ghastly detail. Keats envies the un-self-conscious simplicity of the old ballad-writers in treating such a theme as this, and bids the reader turn to Boccaccio, whose description of the scene he cannot hope to rival. Boccaccio writes: 'Nor had she dug long before she found the body of her hapless lover, whereon as yet there was no trace of corruption or decay; and thus she saw without any manner of doubt that her vision was true. And so, saddest of women, knowing that she might not bewail him there, she would gladly, if she could, have carried away the body and given it more honourable sepulture elsewhere; but as she might not do so, she took a knife, and, as best she could, severed the head from the trunk, and wrapped it in a napkin and laid it in the lap of the maid; and having covered the rest of the corpse with earth, she left the spot, having been seen by none, and went home.'

Page 74. l. 393. Perséan sword. The sword of sharpness given to Perseus by Hermes, with which he cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa, a monster with the head of a woman, and snaky locks, the sight of whom turned those who looked on her into stone. Perseus escaped by looking only at her reflection in his shield.

l. 406. chilly: tears, not passionate, but of cold despair.

Page 75. l. 410. pluck'd in Araby. Cf. Lady Macbeth, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,' Macbeth, v. ii. 55.

l. 412. serpent-pipe, twisted pipe.

l. 416. Sweet Basil, a fragrant aromatic plant.

ll. 417-20. The repetition makes us feel the monotony of her days and nights of grief.

Page 76. l. 432. leafits, leaflets, little leaves. An old botanical term, but obsolete in Keats's time. Coleridge uses it in l. 65 of 'The Nightingale' in Lyrical Ballads. In later editions he altered it to 'leaflets'.

l. 436. Lethean, in Hades, the dark underworld of the dead. Compare the conception of melancholy in the Ode on Melancholy, where it is said to neighbour joy. Contrast Stanza lxi.

l. 439. cypress, dark trees which in Italy are always planted in cemeteries. They stand by Keats's own grave.

Page 77. l. 442. Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy.

l. 451. Baälites of pelf, worshippers of ill-gotten gains.

l. 453. elf, man. The word is used in this sense by Spenser in The Faerie Queene.

Page 78. l. 467. chapel-shrift, confession. Cf. l. 64.

ll. 469-72. And when . . . hair. The pathos of this picture is intensified by its suggestions of the wife- and mother-hood which Isabel can now never know. Cf. st. xlvii, where the idea is still more beautifully suggested.

Page 79. l. 475. vile . . . spot. The one touch of descriptive horror—powerful in its reticence.

Page 80. l. 489. on . . . things. Her love and her hope is with the dead rather than with the living.

l. 492. lorn voice. Cf. st. xxxv. She is approaching her lover. Note that in each case the metaphor is of a stringed instrument.

l. 493. Pilgrim in his wanderings. Cf. st. i, 'a young palmer in Love's eye.'

l. 503. burthen, refrain. Cf. Tempest, i. ii. Ariel's songs.

NOTES ON THE EVE OF ST. AGNES.

See Introduction to Isabella and The Eve of St. Agnes, p. 212.

St. Agnes was a martyr of the Christian Church who was beheaded just outside Rome in 304 because she refused to marry a Pagan, holding herself to be a bride of Christ. She was only 13—so small and slender that the smallest fetters they could find slipped over her little wrists and fell to the ground. But they stripped, tortured, and killed her. A week after her death her parents dreamed that they saw her in glory with a white lamb, the sign of purity, beside her. Hence she is always pictured with lambs (as her name signifies), and to the place of her martyrdom two lambs are yearly taken on the anniversary and blessed. Then their wool is cut off and woven by the nuns into the archbishop's cloak, or pallium (see l. 70).

For the legend connected with the Eve of the Saint's anniversary, to which Keats refers, see st. vi.

Metre. That of the Faerie Queene.

Page 83. ll. 5-6. told His rosary. Cf. Isabella, ll. 87-8.

l. 8. without a death. The 'flight to heaven' obscures the simile of the incense, and his breath is thought of as a departing soul.

Page 84. l. 12. meagre, barefoot, wan. Such a compression of a description into three bare epithets is frequent in Keats's poetry. He shows his marvellous power in the unerring choice of adjective; and their enumeration in this way has, from its very simplicity, an extraordinary force.

l. 15. purgatorial rails, rails which enclose them in a place of torture.

l. 16. dumb orat'ries. The transference of the adjective from person to place helps to give us the mysterious sense of life in inanimate things. Cf. Hyperion, iii. 8; Ode to a Nightingale, l. 66.

l. 22. already . . . rung. He was dead to the world. But this hint should also prepare us for the conclusion of the poem.

Page 85. l. 31. 'gan to chide. l. 32. ready with their pride. l. 34. ever eager-eyed. l. 36. with hair . . . breasts. As if trumpets, rooms, and carved angels were all alive. See Introduction, p. 212.

l. 37. argent, silver. They were all glittering with rich robes and arms.

Page 86. l. 56. yearning . . . pain, expressing all the exquisite beauty and pathos of the music; and moreover seeming to give it conscious life.

Page 87. l. 64. danc'd, conveying all her restlessness and impatience as well as the lightness of her step.

l. 70. amort, deadened, dull. Cf. Taming of the Shrew, iv. iii. 36, 'What sweeting! all amort.'

l. 71. See note on St. Agnes, p. 224.

l. 77. Buttress'd from moonlight. A picture of the castle and of the night, as well as of Porphyro's position.

Page 88. ll. 82 seq. Compare the situation of these lovers with that of Romeo and Juliet.

l. 90. beldame, old woman. Shakespeare generally uses the word in an uncomplimentary sense—'hag'—but it is not so used here. The word is used by Spenser in its derivative sense, 'Fair lady,' Faerie Queene, ii. 43.

Page 89. l. 110. Brushing . . . plume. This line both adds to our picture of Porphyro and vividly brings before us the character of the place he was entering—unsuited to the splendid cavalier.

l. 113. Pale, lattic'd, chill. Cf. l. 12, note.

l. 115. by the holy loom, on which the nuns spin. See l. 71 and note on St. Agnes, p. 224.

Page 90. l. 120. Thou must . . . sieve. Supposed to be one of the commonest signs of supernatural power. Cf. Macbeth, i. iii. 8.

l. 133. brook, check. An incorrect use of the word, which really means bear or permit.

Page 92. ll. 155-6. churchyard . . . toll. Unconscious prophecy. Cf. The Bedesman, l. 22.

l. 168. While . . . coverlet. All the wonders of Madeline's imagination.

l. 171. Since Merlin . . . debt. Referring to the old legend that Merlin had for father an incubus or demon, and was himself a demon of evil, though his innate wickedness was driven out by baptism. Thus his 'debt' to the demon was his existence, which he paid when Vivien compassed his destruction by means of a spell which he had taught her. Keats refers to the storm which is said to have raged that night, which Tennyson also describes in Merlin and Vivien. The source whence the story came to Keats has not been ascertained.

Page 93. l. 173. cates, provisions. Cf. Taming of the Shrew, ii. i. 187:—

We still use the verb 'to cater' as in l. 177.

l. 174. tambour frame, embroidery-frame.

l. 185. espied, spying. Dim, because it would be from a dark corner; also the spy would be but dimly visible to her old eyes.

l. 187. silken . . . chaste. Cf. ll. 12, 113.

l. 188. covert, hiding. Cf. Isabella, l. 221.

Page 94. l. 198. fray'd, frightened.

l. 203. No uttered . . . betide. Another of the conditions of the vision was evidently silence.

Page 95. ll. 208 seq. Compare Coleridge's description of Christabel's room: Christabel, i. 175-83.

l. 218. gules, blood-red.

Page 96. l. 226. Vespers. Cf. Isabella, l. 21, ll. 226-34. See Introduction, p. 213.

l. 237. poppied, because of the sleep-giving property of the poppy-heads.

l. 241. Clasp'd . . . pray. The sacredness of her beauty is felt here.

missal, prayer-book.

Page 97. l. 247. To wake . . . tenderness. He waited to hear, by the sound of her breathing, that she was asleep.

l. 250. Noiseless . . . wilderness. We picture a man creeping over a wide plain, fearing that any sound he makes will arouse some wild beast or other frightful thing.

l. 257. Morphean. Morpheus was the god of sleep.

amulet, charm.

l. 258. boisterous . . . festive. Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187.

l. 261. and . . . gone. The cadence of this line is peculiarly adapted to express a dying-away of sound.

Page 98. l. 266. soother, sweeter, more delightful. An incorrect use of the word. Sooth really means truth.

l. 267. tinct, flavoured; usually applied to colour, not to taste.

l. 268. argosy, merchant-ship. Cf. Merchant of Venice, i. i. 9, 'Your argosies with portly sail.'

Page 99. l. 287. Before he desired a 'Morphean amulet'; now he wishes to release his lady's eyes from the charm of sleep.

l. 288. woofed phantasies. Fancies confused as woven threads. Cf. Isabella, l. 292.

l. 292. 'La belle . . . mercy.' This stirred Keats's imagination, and he produced the wonderful, mystic ballad of this title (see p. 213).

l. 296. affrayed, frightened. Cf. l. 198.

Page 100. ll. 298-9. Cf. Donne's poem, The Dream:—

l. 300. painful change, his paleness.

l. 311. pallid, chill, and drear. Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187, 258.

Page 101. l. 323. Love's alarum, warning them to speed away.

l. 325. flaw, gust of wind. Cf. Coriolanus, v. iii. 74; Hamlet, v. i. 239.

l. 333. unpruned, not trimmed.

Page 102. l. 343. elfin-storm. The beldame has suggested that he must be 'liege-lord of all the elves and fays'.

l. 351. o'er . . . moors. A happy suggestion of a warmer clime.

Page 103. l. 355. darkling. Cf. King Lear, i. iv. 237: 'So out went the candle and we were left darkling.' Cf. Ode to a Nightingale, l. 51.

l. 360. And . . . floor. There is the very sound of the wind in this line.

Page 104. ll. 375-8. Angela . . . cold. The death of these two leaves us with the thought of a young, bright world for the lovers to enjoy; whilst at the same time it completes the contrast, which the first introduction of the old bedesman suggested, between the old, the poor, and the joyless, and the young, the rich, and the happy.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, ODE ON A GRECIAN URN, ODE ON MELANCHOLY, AND TO AUTUMN.

These four odes, which were all written in 1819, the first three in the early months of that year, ought to be considered together, since the same strain of thought runs through them all and, taken all together, they seem to sum up Keats's philosophy.

In all of them the poet looks upon life as it is, and the eternal principle of beauty, in the first three seeing them in sharp contrast; in the last reconciling them, and leaving us content.

The first-written of the four, the Ode to a Nightingale, is the most passionately human and personal of them all. For Keats wrote it soon after the death of his brother Tom, whom he had loved devotedly and himself nursed to the end. He was feeling keenly the tragedy of a world 'where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies', and the song of the nightingale, heard in a friend's garden at Hampstead, made him long to escape with it from this world of realities and sorrows to the world of ideal beauty, which it seemed to him somehow to stand for and suggest. He did not think of the nightingale as an individual bird, but of its song, which had been beautiful for centuries and would continue to be beautiful long after his generation had passed away; and the thought of this undying loveliness he contrasted bitterly with our feverishly sad and short life. When, by the power of imagination, he had left the world behind him and was absorbed in the vision of beauty roused by the bird's song, he longed for death rather than a return to disillusionment.

So in the Grecian Urn he contrasts unsatisfying human life with art, which is everlastingly beautiful. The figures on the vase lack one thing only—reality,—whilst on the other hand they are happy in not being subject to trouble, change, or death. The thought is sad, yet Keats closes this ode triumphantly, not, as in The Nightingale, on a note of disappointment. The beauty of this Greek sculpture, truly felt, teaches us that beauty at any rate is real and lasting, and that utter belief in beauty is the one thing needful in life.

In the Ode on Melancholy Keats, in a more bitter mood, finds the presence, in a fleeting world, of eternal beauty the source of the deepest melancholy. To encourage your melancholy mood, he tells us, do not look on the things counted sad, but on the most beautiful, which are only quickly-fading manifestations of the everlasting principle of beauty. It is then, when a man most deeply loves the beautiful, when he uses his capacities of joy to the utmost, that the full bitterness of the contrast between the real and the ideal comes home to him and crushes him. If he did not feel so much he would not suffer so much; if he loved beauty less he would care less that he could not hold it long.

But in the ode To Autumn Keats attains to the serenity he has been seeking. In this unparalleled description of a richly beautiful autumn day he conveys to us all the peace and comfort which his spirit receives. He does not philosophize upon the spectacle or draw a moral from it, but he shows us how in nature beauty is ever present. To the momentary regret for spring he replies with praise of the present hour, concluding with an exquisite description of the sounds of autumn—its music, as beautiful as that of spring. Hitherto he has lamented the insecurity of a man's hold upon the beautiful, though he has never doubted the reality of beauty and the worth of its worship to man. Now, under the influence of nature, he intuitively knows that beauty once seen and grasped is man's possession for ever. He is in much the same position that Wordsworth was when he declared that

This was not the last poem that Keats wrote, but it was the last which he wrote in the fulness of his powers. We can scarcely help wishing that, beautiful as were some of the productions of his last feverish year of life, this perfect ode, expressing so serene and untroubled a mood, might have been his last word to the world.

NOTES ON THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

In the early months of 1819 Keats was living with his friend Brown at Hampstead (Wentworth Place). In April a nightingale built her nest in the garden, and Brown writes: 'Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass-plot under a plum, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feeling on the song of our nightingale. The writing was not well legible, and it was difficult to arrange the stanza on so many scraps. With his assistance I succeeded, and this was his Ode to a Nightingale.'

Page 107. l. 4. Lethe. Cf. Lamia, i. 81, note.

l. 7. Dryad. Cf. Lamia, i. 5, note.

Page 108. l. 13. Flora, the goddess of flowers.

l. 14. sunburnt mirth. An instance of Keats's power of concentration. The people are not mentioned at all, yet this phrase conjures up a picture of merry, laughing, sunburnt peasants, as surely as could a long and elaborate description.

l. 15. the warm South. As if the wine brought all this with it.

l. 16. Hippocrene, the spring of the Muses on Mount Helicon.

l. 23. The weariness . . . fret. Cf. 'The fretful stir unprofitable and the fever of the world' in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, which Keats well knew.

Page 109. l. 26. Where youth . . . dies. See Introduction to the Odes, p. 230.

l. 29. Beauty . . . eyes. Cf. Ode on Melancholy, 'Beauty that must die.'

l. 32. Not . . . pards. Not wine, but poetry, shall give him release from the cares of this world. Keats is again obviously thinking of Titian's picture (Cf. Lamia, i. 58, note).

l. 40. Notice the balmy softness which is given to this line by the use of long vowels and liquid consonants.

Page 110. ll. 41 seq. The dark, warm, sweet atmosphere seems to enfold us. It would be hard to find a more fragrant passage.

l. 50. The murmurous . . . eves. We seem to hear them. Tennyson, inspired by Keats, with more self-conscious art, uses somewhat similar effects, e.g.:

l. 51. Darkling. Cf. The Eve of St. Agnes, l. 355, note.

l. 61. Thou . . . Bird. Because, so far as we are concerned, the nightingale we heard years ago is the same as the one we hear to-night. The next lines make it clear that this is what Keats means.

l. 64. clown, peasant.

l. 67. alien corn. Transference of the adjective from person to surroundings. Cf. Eve of St. Agnes, l. 16; Hyperion, iii. 9.

ll. 69-70. magic . . . forlorn. Perhaps inspired by a picture of Claude's, 'The Enchanted Castle,' of which Keats had written before in a poetical epistle to his friend Reynolds—'The windows [look] as if latch'd by Fays and Elves.'

Page 112. l. 72. Toll. To him it has a deeply melancholy sound, and it strikes the death-blow to his illusion.

l. 75. plaintive. It did not sound sad to Keats at first, but as it dies away it takes colour from his own melancholy and sounds pathetic to him. Cf. Ode on Melancholy: he finds both bliss and pain in the contemplation of beauty.

ll. 76-8. Past . . . glades. The whole country speeds past our eyes in these three lines.

NOTES ON THE ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

This poem is not, apparently, inspired by any one actual vase, but by many Greek sculptures, some seen in the British Museum, some known only from engravings. Keats, in his imagination, combines them all into one work of supreme beauty.

Perhaps Keats had some recollection of Wordsworth's sonnet 'Upon the sight of a beautiful picture,' beginning 'Praised be the art.'

Page 113. l. 2. foster-child. The child of its maker, but preserved and cared for by these foster-parents.

l. 7. Tempe was a famous glen in Thessaly.

Arcady. Arcadia, a very mountainous country, the centre of the Peloponnese, was the last stronghold of the aboriginal Greeks. The people were largely shepherds and goatherds, and Pan was a local Arcadian god till the Persian wars (c. 400 b.c.). In late Greek and in Roman pastoral poetry, as in modern literature, Arcadia is a sort of ideal land of poetic shepherds.

Page 114. ll. 17-18. Bold . . . goal. The one thing denied to the figures—actual life. But Keats quickly turns to their rich compensations.

Page 115. ll. 28-30. All . . . tongue. Cf. Shelley's To a Skylark:

ll. 31 seq. Keats is now looking at the other side of the urn. This verse strongly recalls certain parts of the frieze of the Parthenon (British Museum).

Page 116. l. 41. Attic, Greek.

brede, embroidery. Cf. Lamia, i. 159. Here used of carving.

l. 44. tease us out of thought. Make us think till thought is lost in mystery.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO PSYCHE.

In one of his long journal-letters to his brother George, Keats writes, at the beginning of May, 1819: '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 dashed 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 fervour, and perhaps never thought of in the old religion—I am more orthodox than to let a heathen goddess be so neglected.' The Ode to Psyche follows.

The story of Psyche may be best told in the words of William Morris in the 'argument' to 'the story of Cupid and Psyche' in his Earthly Paradise:

Psyche is supposed to symbolize the human soul made immortal through love.

NOTES ON THE ODE TO PSYCHE.

Page 117. l. 2. sweet . . . dear. Cf. Lycidas, 'Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear.'

l. 4. soft-conched. Metaphor of a sea-shell giving an impression of exquisite colour and delicate form.

Page 118. l. 13. 'Mid . . . eyed. Nature in its appeal to every sense. In this line we have the essence of all that makes the beauty of flowers satisfying and comforting.

l. 14. Tyrian, purple, from a certain dye made at Tyre.

l. 20. aurorean. Aurora is the goddess of dawn. Cf. Hyperion, i. 181.

l. 25. Olympus. Cf. Lamia, i. 9, note.

hierarchy. The orders of gods, with Jupiter as head.

l. 26. Phoebe, or Diana, goddess of the moon.

l. 27. Vesper, the evening star.

Page 119. l. 34. oracle, a sacred place where the god was supposed to answer questions of vital import asked him by his worshippers.

l. 37. fond believing, foolishly credulous.

l. 41. lucent fans, luminous wings.

Page 120. l. 55. fledge . . . steep. Probably a recollection of what he had seen in the Lakes, for on June 29, 1818, he writes to Tom from Keswick of a waterfall which 'oozes out from a cleft in perpendicular Rocks, all fledged with Ash and other beautiful trees'.

l. 57. Dryads. Cf. Lamia, l. 5, note.

INTRODUCTION TO FANCY.

This poem, although so much lighter in spirit, bears a certain relation in thought to Keats's other odes. In the Nightingale the tragedy of this life made him long to escape, on the wings of imagination, to the ideal world of beauty symbolized by the song of the bird. Here finding all real things, even the most beautiful, pall upon him, he extols the fancy, which can escape from reality and is not tied by place or season in its search for new joys. This is, of course, only a passing mood, as the extempore character of the poetry indicates. We see more of settled conviction in the deeply-meditative Ode to Autumn, where he finds the ideal in the rich and ever-changing real.

This poem is written in the four-accent metre employed by Milton in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, and we can often detect a similarity of cadence, and a resemblance in the scenes imagined.

NOTES ON FANCY.

Page 123. l. 16. ingle, chimney-nook.

Page 126. l. 81. Ceres' daughter, Proserpina. Cf. Lamia, i. 63, note.

l. 82. God of torment. Pluto, who presides over the torments of the souls in Hades.

Page 127. l. 85. Hebe, the cup-bearer of Jove.

l. 89. And Jove grew languid. Observe the fitting slowness of the first half of the line, and the sudden leap forward of the second.

NOTES ON ODE

['Bards of Passion and of Mirth'].

Page 128. l. 1. Bards, poets and singers.

l. 8. parle, French parler. Cf. Hamlet, i. i. 62.

l. 12. Dian's fawns. Diana was the goddess of hunting.

INTRODUCTION TO LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.

The Mermaid Tavern was an old inn in Bread Street, Cheapside. Tradition says that the literary club there was established by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603. In any case it was, in Shakespeare's time, frequented by the chief writers of the day, amongst them Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Donne, and Shakespeare himself. Beaumont, in a poetical epistle to Ben Jonson, writes:

NOTES ON LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.

Page 131. l. 10. bold Robin Hood. Cf. Robin Hood, p. 133.

l. 12. bowse, drink.

Page 132. ll. 16-17. an astrologer's . . . story. The astrologer would record, on parchment, what he had seen in the heavens.

l. 22. The Mermaid . . . Zodiac. The zodiac was an imaginary belt across the heavens within which the sun and planets were supposed to move. It was divided into twelve parts corresponding to the twelve months of the year, according to the position of the moon when full. Each of these parts had a sign by which it was known, and the sign of the tenth was a fish-tailed goat, to which Keats refers as the Mermaid. The word zodiac comes from the Greek ζῴδιον, meaning a little animal, since originally all the signs were animals.

INTRODUCTION TO ROBIN HOOD.

Early in 1818 John Hamilton Reynolds, a friend of Keats, sent him two sonnets which he had written 'On Robin Hood'. Keats, in his letter of thanks, after giving an appreciation of Reynolds's production, says: 'In return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they'll look pretty.' Then follow these lines, entitled, 'To J. H. R. in answer to his Robin Hood sonnets.' At the end he writes: 'I hope you will like them—they are at least written in the spirit of outlawry.'

Robin Hood, the outlaw, was a popular hero of the Middle Ages. He was a great poacher of deer, brave, chivalrous, generous, full of fun, and absolutely without respect for law and order. He robbed the rich to give to the poor, and waged ceaseless war against the wealthy prelates of the church. Indeed, of his endless practical jokes, the majority were played upon sheriffs and bishops. He lived, with his 'merry men', in Sherwood Forest, where a hollow tree, said to be his 'larder', is still shown.

Innumerable ballads telling of his exploits were composed, the first reference to which is in the second edition of Langland's Piers Plowman, c. 1377. Many of these ballads still survive, but in all these traditions it is quite impossible to disentangle fact from fiction.

NOTES ON ROBIN HOOD.

Page 133. l. 4. pall. Cf. Isabella, l. 268.

l. 9. fleeces, the leaves of the forest, cut from them by the wind as the wool is shorn from the sheep's back.

Page 134. l. 13. ivory shrill, the shrill sound of the ivory horn.

ll. 15-18. Keats imagines some man who has not heard the laugh hearing with bewilderment its echo in the depths of the forest.

l. 21. seven stars, Charles's Wain or the Big Bear.

l. 22. polar ray, the light of the Pole, or North, star.

l. 30. pasture Trent, the fields about the Trent, the river of Nottingham, which runs by Sherwood forest.

Page 135. l. 33. morris. A dance in costume which, in the Tudor period, formed a part of every village festivity. It was generally danced by five men and a boy in girl's dress, who represented Maid Marian. Later it came to be associated with the May games, and other characters of the Robin Hood epic were introduced. It was abolished, with other village gaieties, by the Puritans, and though at the Restoration it was revived it never regained its former importance.

l. 34. Gamelyn. The hero of a tale (The Tale of Gamelyn) attributed to Chaucer, and given in some MSS. as The Cook's Tale in The Canterbury Tales. The story of Orlando's ill-usage, prowess, and banishment, in As You Like It, Shakespeare derived from this source, and Keats is thinking of the merry life of the hero amongst the outlaws.

l. 36. 'grenè shawe,' green wood.

Page 136. l. 53. Lincoln green. In the Middle Ages Lincoln was very famous for dyeing green cloth, and this green cloth was the characteristic garb of the forester and outlaw.

l. 62. burden. Cf. Isabella, l. 503.

NOTES ON 'TO AUTUMN'.

In a letter written to Reynolds from Winchester, in September, 1819, Keats says: '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 stubble-fields 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.' What he composed was the Ode To Autumn.

Page 137. ll. 1 seq. The extraordinary concentration and richness of this description reminds us of Keats's advice to Shelley—'Load every rift of your subject with ore.' The whole poem seems to be painted in tints of red, brown, and gold.

Page 138. ll. 12 seq. From the picture of an autumn day we proceed to the characteristic sights and occupations of autumn, personified in the spirit of the season.

l. 18. swath, the width of the sweep of the scythe.

ll. 23 seq. Now the sounds of autumn are added to complete the impression.

ll. 25-6. Compare letter quoted above.

Page 139. l. 28. sallows, trees or low shrubs of the willowy kind.

ll. 28-9. borne . . . dies. Notice how the cadence of the line fits the sense. It seems to rise and fall and rise and fall again.

NOTES ON ODE ON MELANCHOLY.

Page 140. l. 1. Lethe. See Lamia, i. 81, note.

l. 2. Wolf's-bane, aconite or hellebore—a poisonous plant.

l. 4. nightshade, a deadly poison.

ruby . . . Proserpine. Cf. Swinburne's Garden of Proserpine.

Proserpine. Cf. Lamia, i. 63, note.

l. 5. yew-berries. The yew, a dark funereal-looking tree, is constantly planted in churchyards.

l. 7. your mournful Psyche. See Introduction to the Ode to Psyche, p. 236.

Page 141. l. 12. weeping cloud. l. 14. shroud. Giving a touch of mystery and sadness to the otherwise light and tender picture.

l. 16. on . . . sand-wave, the iridescence sometimes seen on the ribbed sand left by the tide.

l. 21. She, i.e. Melancholy—now personified as a goddess. Compare this conception of melancholy with the passage in Lamia, i. 190-200. Cf. also Milton's personifications of Melancholy in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.

Page 142. l. 30. cloudy, mysteriously concealed, seen of few.

INTRODUCTION TO HYPERION.

This poem deals with the overthrow of the primaeval order of Gods by Jupiter, son of Saturn the old king. There are many versions of the fable in Greek mythology, and there are many sources from which it may have come to Keats. At school he is said to have known the classical dictionary by heart, but his inspiration is more likely to have been due to his later reading of the Elizabethan poets, and their translations of classic story. One thing is certain, that he did not confine himself to any one authority, nor did he consider it necessary to be circumscribed by authorities at all. He used, rather than followed, the Greek fable, dealing freely with it and giving it his own interpretation.

The situation when the poem opens is as follows:—Saturn, king of the gods, has been driven from Olympus down into a deep dell, by his son Jupiter, who has seized and used his father's weapon, the thunderbolt. A similar fate has overtaken nearly all his brethren, who are called by Keats Titans and Giants indiscriminately, though in Greek mythology the two races are quite distinct. These Titans are the children of Tellus and Coelus, the earth and sky, thus representing, as it were, the first birth of form and personality from formless nature. Before the separation of earth and sky, Chaos, a confusion of the elements of all things, had reigned supreme. One only of the Titans, Hyperion the sun-god, still keeps his kingdom, and he is about to be superseded by young Apollo, the god of light and song.

In the second book we hear Oceanus and Clymene his daughter tell how both were defeated not by battle or violence, but by the irresistible beauty of their dispossessors; and from this Oceanus deduces 'the eternal law, that first in beauty should be first in might'. He recalls the fact that Saturn himself was not the first ruler, but received his kingdom from his parents, the earth and sky, and he prophesies that progress will continue in the overthrow of Jove by a yet brighter and better order. Enceladus is, however, furious at what he considers a cowardly acceptance of their fate, and urges his brethren to resist.

In Book I we saw Hyperion, though still a god, distressed by portents, and now in Book III we see the rise to divinity of his successor, the young Apollo. The poem breaks off short at the moment of Apollo's metamorphosis, and how Keats intended to complete it we can never know.

It is certain that he originally meant to write an epic in ten books, and the publisher's remark[245:1] at the beginning of the 1820 volume would lead us to think that he was in the same mind when he wrote the poem. This statement, however, must be altogether discounted, as Keats, in his copy of the poems, crossed it right out and wrote above, 'I had no part in this; I was ill at the time.'

Moreover, the last sentence (from 'but' to 'proceeding') he bracketed, writing below, 'This is a lie.'

This, together with other evidence external and internal, has led Dr. de Sélincourt to the conclusion that Keats had modified his plan and, when he was writing the poem, intended to conclude it in four books. Of the probable contents of the one-and-half unwritten books Mr. de Sélincourt writes: 'I conceive that Apollo, now conscious of his divinity, would have gone to Olympus, heard from the lips of Jove of his newly-acquired supremacy, and been called upon by the rebel three to secure the kingdom that awaited him. He would have gone forth to meet Hyperion, who, struck by the power of supreme beauty, would have found resistance impossible. Critics have inclined to take for granted the supposition that an actual battle was contemplated by Keats, but I do not believe that such was, at least, his final intention. In the first place, he had the example of Milton, whom he was studying very closely, to warn him of its dangers; in the second, if Hyperion had been meant to fight he would hardly be represented as already, before the battle, shorn of much of his strength; thus making the victory of Apollo depend upon his enemy's unnatural weakness and not upon his own strength. One may add that a combat would have been completely alien to the whole idea of the poem as Keats conceived it, and as, in fact, it is universally interpreted from the speech of Oceanus in the second book. The resistance of Enceladus and the Giants, themselves rebels against an order already established, would have been dealt with summarily, and the poem would have closed with a description of the new age which had been inaugurated by the triumph of the Olympians, and, in particular, of Apollo the god of light and song.'

The central idea, then, of the poem is that the new age triumphs over the old by virtue of its acknowledged superiority—that intellectual supremacy makes physical force feel its power and yield. Dignity and moral conquest lies, for the conquered, in the capacity to recognize the truth and look upon the inevitable undismayed.

Keats broke the poem off because it was too 'Miltonic', and it is easy to see what he meant. Not only does the treatment of the subject recall that of Paradise Lost, the council of the fallen gods bearing special resemblance to that of the fallen angels in Book II of Milton's epic, but in its style and syntax the influence of Milton is everywhere apparent. It is to be seen in the restraint and concentration of the language, which is in marked contrast to the wordiness of Keats's early work, as well as in the constant use of classical constructions,[247:1] Miltonic inversions[247:2] and repetitions,[247:3] and in occasional reminiscences of actual lines and phrases in Paradise Lost.[247:4]

In Hyperion we see, too, the influence of the study of Greek sculpture upon Keats's mind and art. This study had taught him that the highest beauty is not incompatible with definiteness of form and clearness of detail. To his romantic appreciation of mystery was now added an equal sense of the importance of simplicity, form, and proportion, these being, from its nature, inevitable characteristics of the art of sculpture. So we see that again and again the figures described in Hyperion are like great statues—clear-cut, massive, and motionless. Such are the pictures of Saturn and Thea in Book I, and of each of the group of Titans at the opening of Book II.

Striking too is Keats's very Greek identification of the gods with the powers of Nature which they represent. It is this attitude of mind which has led some people—Shelley and Landor among them—to declare Keats, in spite of his ignorance of the language, the most truly Greek of all English poets. Very beautiful instances of this are the sunset and sunrise in Book I, when the departure of the sun-god and his return to earth are so described that the pictures we see are of an evening and morning sky, an angry sunset, and a grey and misty dawn.

But neither Miltonic nor Greek is Keats's marvellous treatment of nature as he feels, and makes us feel, the magic of its mystery in such a picture as that of the

or of the

This Keats, and Keats alone, could do; and his achievement is unique in throwing all the glamour of romance over a fragment 'sublime as Aeschylus'.

NOTES ON HYPERION.

Book I.

Page 145. ll. 2-3. By thus giving us a vivid picture of the changing day—at morning, noon, and night—Keats makes us realize the terrible loneliness and gloom of a place too deep to feel these changes.

l. 10. See how the sense is expressed in the cadence of the line.

Page 146. l. 11. voiceless. As if it felt and knew, and were deliberately silent.

ll. 13, 14. Influence of Greek sculpture. See Introduction, p. 248.

l. 18. nerveless . . . dead. Cf. Eve of St. Agnes, l. 12, note.

l. 19. realmless eyes. The tragedy of his fall is felt in every feature.

ll. 20, 21. Earth, His ancient mother. Tellus. See Introduction, p. 244.

Page 147. l. 27. Amazon. The Amazons were a warlike race of women of whom many traditions exist. On the frieze of the Mausoleum (British Museum) they are seen warring with the Centaurs.

l. 30. Ixion's wheel. For insolence to Jove, Ixion was tied to an ever-revolving wheel in Hell.

l. 31. Memphian sphinx. Memphis was a town in Egypt near to which the pyramids were built. A sphinx is a great stone image with human head and breast and the body of a lion.

Page 148. ll. 60-3. The thunderbolts, being Jove's own weapons, are unwilling to be used against their former master.

Page 149. l. 74. branch-charmed . . . stars. All the magic of the still night is here.

ll. 76-8. Save . . . wave. See how the gust of wind comes and goes in the rise and fall of these lines, which begin and end on the same sound.

Page 150. l. 86. See Introduction, p. 248.

l. 94. aspen-malady, trembling like the leaves of the aspen-poplar.

Page 151. ll. 98 seq. Cf. King Lear. Throughout the figure of Saturn—the old man robbed of his kingdom—reminds us of Lear, and sometimes we seem to detect actual reminiscences of Shakespeare's treatment. Cf. Hyperion, i. 98; and King Lear, i. iv. 248-52.

l. 102. front, forehead.

l. 105. nervous, used in its original sense of powerful, sinewy.

ll. 107 seq. In Saturn's reign was the Golden Age.

Page 152. l. 125. of ripe progress, near at hand.

l. 129. metropolitan, around the chief city.

l. 131. strings in hollow shells. The first stringed instruments were said to be made of tortoise-shells with strings stretched across.

Page 153. l. 145. chaos. The confusion of elements from which the world was created. See Paradise Lost, i. 891-919.

l. 147. rebel three. Jove, Neptune, and Pluto.

Page 154. l. 152. covert. Cf. Isabella, l. 221; Eve of St. Agnes, l. 188.

ll. 156-7. All the dignity and majesty of the goddess is in this comparison.

Page 155. l. 171. gloom-bird, the owl, whose cry is supposed to portend death. Cf. Milton's method of description, 'Not that fair field,' etc. Paradise Lost, iv. 268.

l. 172. familiar visiting, ghostly apparition.

Page 157. ll. 205-8. Cf. the opening of the gates of heaven. Paradise Lost, vii. 205-7.

ll. 213 seq. See Introduction, p. 248.

Page 158. l. 228. effigies, visions.

l. 230. O . . . pools. A picture of inimitable chilly horror.

l. 238. fanes. Cf. Psyche, l. 50.

Page 159. l. 246. Tellus . . . robes, the earth mantled by the salt sea.

Page 160. ll. 274-7. colure. One of two great circles supposed to intersect at right angles at the poles. The nadir is the lowest point in the heavens and the zenith is the highest.

Page 161. ll. 279-80. with labouring . . . centuries. By studying the sky for many hundreds of years wise men found there signs and symbols which they read and interpreted.

Page 162. l. 298. demesnes. Cf. Lamia, ii. 155, note.

ll. 302-4. all along . . . faint. As in l. 286, the god and the sunrise are indistinguishable to Keats. We see them both, and both in one. See Introduction, p. 248.

l. 302. rack, a drifting mass of distant clouds. Cf. Lamia, i. 178, and Tempest, iv. i. 156.

Page 163. ll. 311-12. the powers . . . creating. Coelus and Terra (or Tellus), the sky and earth.

Page 164. l. 345. Before . . . murmur. Before the string is drawn tight to let the arrow fly.

Page 165. l. 349. region-whisper, whisper from the wide air.

Book II.

Page 167. l. 4. Cybele, the wife of Saturn.

Page 168. l. 17. stubborn'd, made strong, a characteristic coinage of Keats, after the Elizabethan manner; cf. Romeo and Juliet, iv. i. 16.

ll. 22 seq. Cf. i. 161.

l. 28. gurge, whirlpool.

Page 169. l. 35. Of . . . moor, suggested by Druid stones near Keswick.

l. 37. chancel vault. As if they stood in a great temple domed by the sky.

Page 171. l. 66. Shadow'd, literally and also metaphorically, in the darkness of his wrath.

l. 70. that second war. An indication that Keats did not intend to recount this 'second war'; it is not likely that he would have forestalled its chief incident.

l. 78. Ops, the same as Cybele.

l. 79. No shape distinguishable. Cf. Paradise Lost, ii. 666-8.

Page 172. l. 97. mortal, making him mortal.

l. 98. A disanointing poison, taking away his kingship and his godhead.

Page 173. ll. 116-17. There is . . . voice. Cf. i. 72-8. The mysterious grandeur of the wind in the trees, whether in calm or storm.

Page 174. ll. 133-5. that old . . . darkness. Uranus was the same as Coelus, the god of the sky. The 'book' is the sky, from which ancient sages drew their lore. Cf. i. 277-80.

Page 175. l. 153. palpable, having material existence; literally, touchable.

Page 176. l. 159. unseen parent dear. Coelus, since the air is invisible.

l. 168. no . . . grove. 'Sophist and sage' suggests the philosophers of ancient Greece.

l. 170. locks not oozy. Cf. Lycidas, l. 175, 'oozy locks'. This use of the negative is a reminiscence of Milton.

ll. 171-2. murmurs . . . sands. In this description of the god's utterance is the whole spirit of the element which he personifies.

Page 177. ll. 182-7. Wise as Saturn was, the greatness of his power had prevented him from realizing that he was neither the beginning nor the end, but a link in the chain of progress.

Page 178. ll. 203-5. In their hour of downfall a new dominion is revealed to them—a dominion of the soul which rules so long as it is not afraid to see and know.

l. 207. though once chiefs. Though Chaos and Darkness once had the sovereignty. From Chaos and Darkness developed Heaven and Earth, and from them the Titans in all their glory and power. Now from them develops the new order of Gods, surpassing them in beauty as they surpassed their parents.

Page 180. ll. 228-9. The key of the whole situation.

ll. 237-41. No fight has taken place. The god has seen his doom and accepted the inevitable.

Page 181. l. 244. poz'd, settled, firm.

Page 183. l. 284. Like . . . string. In this expressive line we hear the quick patter of the beads. Clymene has had much the same experience as Oceanus, though she does not philosophize upon it. She has succumbed to the beauty of her successor.

Page 184. ll. 300-7. We feel the great elemental nature of the Titans in these powerful similes.

l. 310. Giant-Gods? In the edition of 1820 printed 'giant, Gods?' Mr. Forman suggested the above emendation, which has since been discovered to be the true MS. reading.

Page 185. l. 328. purge the ether, clear the air.

l. 331. As if Jove's appearance of strength were a deception, masking his real weakness.

Page 186. l. 339. Cf. i. 328-35, ii. 96.

ll. 346-56. As the silver wings of dawn preceded Hyperion's rising so now a silver light heralds his approach.

Page 187. l. 357. See how the light breaks in with this line.

l. 366. and made it terrible. There is no joy in the light which reveals such terrors.

Page 188. l. 374. Memnon's image. Memnon was a famous king of Egypt who was killed in the Trojan war. His people erected a wonderful statue to his memory, which uttered a melodious sound at dawn, when the sun fell on it. At sunset it uttered a sad sound.

l. 375. dusking East. Since the light fades first from the eastern sky.

Book III.

Page 191. l. 9. bewildered shores. The attribute of the wanderer transferred to the shore. Cf. Nightingale, ll. 14, 67.

l. 10. Delphic. At Delphi worship was given to Apollo, the inventor and god of music.

Page 192. l. 12. Dorian. There were several 'modes' in Greek music, of which the chief were Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian. Each was supposed to possess certain definite ethical characteristics. Dorian music was martial and manly. Cf. Paradise Lost, i. 549-53.

l. 13. Father of all verse. Apollo, the god of light and song.

ll. 18-19. Let the red . . . well. Cf. Nightingale, st. 2.

l. 19. faint-lipp'd. Cf. ii. 270, 'mouthed shell.'

l. 23. Cyclades. Islands in the Aegean sea, so called because they surrounded Delos in a circle.

l. 24. Delos, the island where Apollo was born.

Page 193. l. 31. mother fair, Leto (Latona).

l. 32. twin-sister, Artemis (Diana).

l. 40. murmurous . . . waves. We hear their soft breaking.

Page 196. ll. 81-2. Cf. Lamia, i. 75.

l. 82. Mnemosyne, daughter of Coelus and Terra, and mother of the Muses. Her name signifies Memory.

l. 86. Cf. Samson Agonistes, ll. 80-2.

l. 87. Cf. Merchant of Venice, i. i. 1-7.

l. 92. liegeless, independent—acknowledging no allegiance.

l. 93. aspirant, ascending. The air will not bear him up.

Page 197. l. 98. patient . . . moon. Cf. i. 353, 'patient stars.' Their still, steady light.

l. 113. So Apollo reaches his divinity—by knowledge which includes experience of human suffering—feeling 'the giant-agony of the world'.

Page 198. l. 114. gray, hoary with antiquity.

l. 128. immortal death. Cf. Swinburne's Garden of Proserpine, st. 7.

Page 199. l. 136. Filled in, in pencil, in a transcript of Hyperion by Keats's friend Richard Woodhouse—

---

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

---