'Mid water-mint and cresses dim;
And the flowers, in sweet troubles,
Lift their eyes above the bubbles,

Like our Queen, when she would please
To sleep, and Oberon will teaze.

Love me, blue-ey'd Faery, true!

Soothly I am sick for you.

Zephyr.

Gentle Breama! by the first
Violet young nature nurst,
I will bathe myself with thee,
So you sometimes follow me
To my home, far, far, in west,
Beyond the nimble-wheeled quest
Of the golden-browed sun:
Come with me, o'er tops of trees,
To my fragrant palaces,
Where they ever floating are
Beneath the cherish of a star
Call'd Vesper, who with silver veil
Ever hides his brilliance pale,
Ever gently-drows'd doth keep
Twilight for the Fayes to sleep.
Fear not that your watery hair
Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there;
Clouds of stored summer rains
Thou shalt taste, before the stains
Of the mountain soil they take,
And too unlucent for thee make.
I love thee, crystal Faery, true!
Sooth I am as sick for you!

Salamander.

Out, ye aguish Faeries, out!
Chilly lovers, what a rout
Keep ye with your frozen breath,
Colder than the mortal death.
Adder-ey'd Dusketha, speak,
Shall we leave these, and go seek
In the earth's wide entrails old
Couches warm as their's are cold?
O for a fiery gloom and thee,

Far in the west where the May-cloud lowers;

And the beams of still Vesper, when winds are all wist,
Are shed thro' the rain and the milder mist,

And twilight your floating bowers.

TWO SONNETS ON FAME.*

I.

`AME, like a wayward girl, will still be coy

FAN

To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gipsey, will not speak to those

Who have not learnt to be content without her;

A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd close,

Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gipsey is she, Nilus-born,

Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;

Ye love-sick Bards, repay her scorn for scorn,
Ye Artists lovelorn, madmen that ye are !
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

IOC

II.

"You cannot eat your cake and have it too." - Proverb.

WOW fever'd is the man, who cannot look

How for his mortal days with temperate blood,

Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book,
And robs his fair name of its maidenhood;

It is as if the rose should pluck herself,

Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom,

As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf,

Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom,

Both these sonnets were given among the Literary Remains in the Life, Letters &c., with the date 1819, which they also bear in the manuscript at the end of Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion. This manuscript shows no variation beyond a few stops.

But the rose leaves herself upon the briar,
For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed,
And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire,
The undisturbed lake has crystal space,

Why then should man, teazing the world for grace,
Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed?

SONNET TO SLEEP.*

SOFT embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign,

Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:

O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,

In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,

This sonnet was first given by Lord Houghton among the Literary Remains in 1848. Keats appears to have drafted twelve lines of it in the copy of Milton's Paradise Lost which he annotated and gave to Mr. and Mrs. Dilke; and there is a complete fair manuscript dated 1819 in Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion. The text as given above accords entirely with the fair manuscript, save that I have adopted Lord Houghton's reading lulling for dewy in line 8, as probably from another and later manuscript. The draft, which was published in The Athenæum for the 26th of October 1872, reads finally thus (I transcribe directly from the manuscript): O soft embalmer of the still Midnight

Shutting with careful fingers and benign

Our gloom pleas'd eyes embowered from the light

As wearisome as darkness is divine

soothest sleep, if so it please thee close

My willing eyes in midst of this thine hymn

Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws

Its sweet-death dews o'er every pulse and limb

Then shut the hushed Casket of my soul

And turn the key round in the oiled wards

And let it rest until the morn has stole,

Bright tressed From the grey east's shuddering bourn...

There is a cancelled opening for line 4, Of sun or teasing candles; in line 6 Mine has been but imperfectly altered to My; in line II the words has stole are struck through, but without anything being substituted for them; and of line 12 there is an incomplete cancelled reading

From the west's shuddering bourn...

Though the manuscript is a little blotty there is but one word about which there is any doubt, namely the compound sweet-death; and I have no serious doubt as to that; but literally it looks like sweet-dath, the a however having the appearance of an e and an a run together. The hyphen between sweet and death should perhaps be between death and dews; and in line 11 of the text the word lords should probably be hoards, from which Keats would not have been unlikely to drop the a. That

Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;

Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,

Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

A PARTY OF LOVERS.*

PENSIVE they sit, and roll their languid eyes,

Nibble their toast, and cool their tea with sighs,
Or else forget the purpose of the night,

Forget their tea

forget their appetite. See with cross'd arms they sit

ah! happy crew,

5

The fire is going out and no one rings

For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings.

A fly is in the milk-pot

By a humane society?

must he die

he did not add the final two lines to the draft is a great loss to students of his way of work; for this is one of the most notable instances of a good draft being converted into a far better poem. The transposition and transplantation of lines 9 and 10 of the draft, so as to bring the hushed casket of the soul to the end, was a master-stroke of the highest poetic instinct.

This is one of the many varieties of the Winchester journal-letter of September 1819, as published in the New York World of the 25th of June 1877. Keats characterizes the jeu d'esprit as " a few nonsense verses.' They were probably written on the 17th of September; and they illustrated the following passage in the journalletter:

"Nothing strikes me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as love. A man in love I do think cuts the sorriest figure in the world. Even when I know a poor fool to be really in pain about it I could burst out laughing in his face. His pathetic visage becomes irresistible. Not that I take H. as a pattern for lovers; he is a very worthy man and a good friend. His love is very amusing. Somewhere in the Spectator is related an account of a man inviting a party of stutterers and squinters to his table. It would please me more to scrape together a party of lovers; not to dinner no, to tea. There would be no fighting as among knights of old."