God of the Meridian, And of the East and West, To thee my soul is flown, And my body is earthward press'd. - A terrible division; And leaves a gulph austere To be fill'd with worldly fear. Too high above our head, As doth a mother wild, Is in an eagle's claws And is not this the cause Of madness ?-God of Song, Thou bearest me along Through sights I scarce can bear : O let me, let me share With the hot lyre and thee, The staid Philosophy. Temper my lonely hours, And let me see thy bowers My dear Reynolds, you must forgive all this ranting -but the fact is, I cannot write sense this Morning— however you shall have some— -I will copy out my last Sonnet. When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain- And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; Of the wide world I stand alone, and think I must take a turn, and then write to Teignmouth. Remember me to all, not excepting yourself. Your sincere friend JOHN KEATS. XXXIV. TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. Hampstead, Tuesday [February 3, 1818]. My dear Reynolds-I thank you for your dish of Filberts-would I could get a basket of them by way of dessert every day for the sum of twopence.1 Would we were a sort of ethereal Pigs, and turned loose to feed upon spiritual Mast and Acorns-which would be merely being a squirrel and feeding upon filberts, for what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth cracking, all I can say is, that where there are a throng of delightful Images ready drawn, simplicity is the only thing. The first is the best on account of the first line, and the "arrow, foil'd of its antler'd food," and moreover (and this is the only word or two I find fault with, the more because I have had so much reason to shun it as a quicksand) the last has "tender and true." We must cut this, and not be rattlesnaked into any more of the like. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that Wordsworth, etc., should have their due from us. But, for the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a certain Philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist? Every man has his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to the very. 4. bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a Journey heaven 1 Alluding to two sonnets of Reynolds On Robin Hood, copies of which Keats had just received from him by post. They were printed in the Yellow Dwarf (edited by John Hunt) for February 21, 1818, and again in the collection of poems published by Reynolds in 1821 under the title A Garden of Florence. FI,103 F1,103 ward as well as anybody. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway, crying out, "Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose !" Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this: each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state and knows how many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in all his dominions, and has a continual itching that all the Housewives should have their coppers well scoured: The ancients were Emperors of vast Provinces, they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them. I will cut all this-I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular—Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, when we can wander with Esau? Why should we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be eagles? Why be teased with "nice-eyed wagtails," when we have in sight "the Cherub Contemplation"? Why with Wordsworth's "Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand," when we can have Jacques "under an oak," etc. The secret of the Bough of Wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, and because he happens in an Evening Walk to imagine the figure of the old Man, he must stamp it down in black and white, and it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be teased with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of Childe Harold and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they'll look pretty. TO J. H. R. IN ANSWER TO HIS ROBIN HOOD SONNETS. No! those days are gone away, No! the Bugle sounds no more, Past the heath and up the Hill; On the fairest time of June Gone the merry morris din, She would weep, and he would craze : He would swear, for all his oaks, So it is! yet let us sing, And to all the Sherwood clan- I hope you will like them-they are at least written in the Spirit of Outlawry. Here are the Mermaid lines, Souls of Poets dead and gone, Have ye tippled drink more fine Sweeter than those dainty pies To a sheepskin gave the story, Said he saw you in your glory, And pledging with contented smack, |