JOHN KEATS.

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which has been strangely attributed to him in a late publication. In fact, he had so much of the reverse, though in no unbecoming degree, that he might be supposed to maintain a certain jealous care of the appearance and bearing of a gentleman, in the consciousness of his genius, and perhaps not without some sense of his origin. His face was handsome and sensitive, with a look in the eyes at once earnest and tender; and his hair grew in delicate brown ringlets, of remarkable beauty.

JOHN KEATS, one of the most poetical of Poets, Mr. Keats was under the middle size, and someand therefore by nature one of the most refined of what large above, in proportion to his lower men, was of the humblest origin, having been limbs,-which, however, were neatly formed; born, October the 29th, 1796, at a livery-stable and he had any thing in his dress and general in Moorfields, which belonged to his family. He demeanour but that appearance of "laxity," received the rudiments of a classical education at the school of Mr. Clarke, at Enfield, where, in the person of the master's son, Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke, the editor of the Riches of Chaucer," he had the luck of finding a friend possessed of discernment enough to see his genius, and warm-heartedness to encourage it. He was afterwards apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary; but inheriting a small independence (which, nowever, he used in the most generous manner,) he did not stop long with him, but devoted himself entirely to poetry. Mr. Clarke introduced him to Mr. Leigh Hunt, and Mr. Leigh Hunt, through the medium of the " Examiner," to the public, which introduction, while it procured instant recognition of his genius, attracted towards him, in consequence of the party-politics then raging, the hostility of the critics on the opposite side, who paid him the unhappy compliment of being unusually bitter and ungenerous. The result was, not his death, as some have supposed, but undoubtedly an embitterment of the causes which were then leading to it, and which originated in a consumptive tendency. Mr. Keats left England in the year 1820, to try the warmer climate of Italy, and, on the 24th of February, in the year following, died at Rome in the arms of his friend, Mr. Severn, the artist, who had accompanied him on the voyage, and who attended his bedside like a brother. Mr. Shelley, who loved him, and who enthusiastically admired his genius (as he has evinced in the beautiful elegy, entitled "Adonais,") invited him to come and take up his abode with himself; and he would have done so, had life been spared him. But fate had disposed otherwise; and the ashes of his inviter, no great while afterwards, went to take up their own abode in the same burial-ground. His death was embittered by a passion he had for a young lady, who returned his affection; but, amidst all his sufferings, his love of poetical beauty did not forsake him. He said, in anticipation of his grave, that he already "felt the daisies growing over him." He requested, however, in the anguish of disappointed hope, that his friends would inscribe upon his tomb, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water;" and they did so.

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Mr. Keats may truly be pronounced a Poet of the most poetical order, for he gave himself up entirely to the beautiful, and had powers of expression equal to an excess of sensibility. His earlier poems, especially the "Endymion," are like a luxuriant wilderness of flowers and weeds ("weeds of glorious feature ;") his latest, the "Hyperion," was a growing wood of oaks, from which the deepest oracles of the art might have been looked for. Indeed, there they were, as far as he gave his thoughts utterance. It has been justly said, that he is "the greatest YOUNG Poet that ever appeared in the language;" that is to say, the greatest that did not live to be old, and whose whole memory will be identified with something both young and great. His lyrics (the Odes to the Nightingale and the Grecian Vase) are equal to the very finest we possess, both for subtile feeling and music. His "Eve of St. Agnes," is as full of beauty as the famous painted window he describes in it; and there was such a profusion in him of fancies and imaginations. analogous to the beautiful forms of the genius of the ancient Poets, that a university-man expressed his astonishment at hearing he was not a Greek scholar. Of our lately deceased Poets, if you want imaginative satire, or bitter wailing, you must go to the writings of Lord Byron; if a thoughtful, dulcet, and wild dreaminess, you must go to Coleridge; if a startling appeal to the first elements of your nature and sympathies (most musical also,) to Shelley; if a thorough enjoyment of the beautiful-for beauty's sakelike a walk on a summer's noon in a land of woods and meadows, you must embower yourself in the luxuries of Keats.

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LAMIA.

PART I.

UPON a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous
woods,

Before King Oberon's bright diadem,

Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem,
Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns
From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd
lawns,

The ever-smitten Hermes empty left

His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft:
From high Olympus had he stolen light,
On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight
Of his great summoner, and made retreat
Into a forest on the shores of Crete.
For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt
A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt;
At whose white feet the languid Tritons pour'd
Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored.
Fast by the springs where she to bathe was

wont,

And in those meads where sometimes she might
haunt,

Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse,
Though Fancy's casket were unlock'd to choose.
Ah, what a world of love was at her feet!
So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat
Burnt from his winged heels to either ear,
That from a whiteness, as the lily clear,
Blush'd into roses 'mid his golden hair,
Fallen in jealous curls about his shoulders bare.
From vale to vale, from wood to wood, he flew,
Breathing upon the flowers his passion new,
And wound with many a river to its head,
To find where this sweet nymph prepared her
secret bed:

In vain; the sweet nymph might nowhere be
found,

And so he rested, on the lonely ground,
Pensive, and full of painful jealousies

Of the Wood-Gods, and even the very trees.
There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice,
Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys
All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake :
"When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake?
When move in a sweet body fit for life,
And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife
Of hearts and lips? Ah, miserable me!"
The God, dove-footed, glided silently
Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed,
The taller grasses and full-flowering weed,
Until he found a palpitating snake,
Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake.

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson-barr'd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolved, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries-
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,

She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls

ous moan.

I dreamt I saw thee, robed in purple flakes,
Break amorous through the clouds, as morning
breaks,

And, swiftly as a bright Phobean dart,
Strike for the Cretan isle; and here thou art!
Too gentle Hermes, has thou found the maid ?"
Whereat the star of Lethe not delay'd
His rosy eloquence, and thus inquired:
"Thou smooth-lipp'd serpent, surely high in-
spired!

Thou beauteous wreath with melancholy eyes,
Possess whatever bliss thou canst devise,
Telling me only where my nymph is fled,-
Where she doth breathe!" "Bright planet, thou
hast said,"

Return'd the snake, "but seal with oaths, fair
God!"

"I swear," said Hermes, "by my serpent rod,
And by thine eyes, and by thy starry crown!"
Light flew his earnest words, among the blossoms
blown.

Then thus again the brilliance feminine:

Too frail of heart! for this lost nymph of thine,
Free as the air, invisibly, she strays
About these thornless wilds; her pleasant days
She tastes unseen; unseen her nimble feet
Leave traces in the grass and flowers sweet:
From weary tendrils, and bow'd branches green,
She plucks the fruit unseen, she bathes unseen:
And by my power is her beauty veil'd
To keep it unaffronted, unassail'd
By the love-glances of unlovely eyes,
Of Satyrs, Fauns, and blear'd Silenus' sighs.
Pale grew her immortality, for woe
Of all these lovers, and she grieved so
I took compassion on her, bade her steep
Her hair in weird syrops, that would keep
Her loveliness invisible, yet free

To wander as she loves, in liberty.
Thou shalt behold her, Hermes, thou alone,
If thou wilt, as thou swearest, grant my boon!"
Then, once again, the charmed God began

Give me my woman's form, and place me where Stretches, with all its mist and cloudy rack,

Ah, happy Lycius !-for she was a maid
More beautiful than ever twisted braid,
Or sigh'd, or blush'd, or on spring-flower'd lea
Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy:
A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore

Dash'd by the wood-nymph's beauty, so he Of love deep learn'd to the red heart's core:

Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain
To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain;
Define their pettish limits, and estrange
Their points of contact, and swift counterchange;
Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart
Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art;

And towards her stept: she, like a moon in As though in Cupid's college she had spent

And by mysterious sleights a hundred thirsts ap- So noiseless, and he never thought to know.