For ever and for ever!

O what a mad endeavor

Worketh He,

Who to thy sacred and ennobled hearse
Would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse
And melody.

How heaven-ward thou soundest !

Live Temple of sweet noise,
And Discord unconfoundest,

Giving Delight new joys,
And Pleasure nobler pinions:
O where are thy dominions?

Lend thine ear

To a young Delian oath-aye, by thy soul,
By all that from thy mortal lips did roll,
And by the kernel of thy earthly love,
Beauty in things on earth and things above,
I swear!

When every childish fashion
Has vanished from my rhyme,
Will I, gray gone in passion,
Leave to an after-time,

Hymning and Harmony

Of thee and of thy works, and of thy life;
But vain is now the burning and the strife:
Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife
With old Philosophy,

And wed with glimpses of futurity.

For many years my offerings must be hushed;
When I do speak, I'll think upon this hour,
Because I feel my forehead hot and flushed,
Even at the simplest vassal of thy power.
A lock of thy bright hair,-

Sudden it came,

And I was startled when I caught thy name

Coupled so unaware;

Yet at the moment temperate was my blood

I thought I had beheld it from the flood!

This I did at Hunt's, at his request. Perhaps I should have

done something better alone and at home.

I have sent my first book to the press, and this afternoon shall begin preparing the second. My visit to you will be a great spur to quicken the proceeding. I have not had your sermon returned. I long to make it the subject of a letter to you. What do they say at Oxford ?

I trust you and Gleig pass much fine time together. Remember me to him and Whitehead. My brother Tom is getting stronger, but his spitting of blood continues.

I sat down to read "King Lear" yesterday, and felt the greatness of the thing up to the writing of a sonnet preparatory thereto : in my next you shall have it.

There was some miserable reports of Rice's health-I went, and lo! Master Jemmy had been to the play the night before, and was out at the time. He always comes on his legs like

a cat.

I have seen a good deal of Wordsworth. Hazlitt is lecturing on Poetry at the Surrey Institution. I shall be there next Tuesday.

Your most affectionate friend,

JOHN KEATS.

The assumption, in the above lines, of Beauty being "the kernel" of Milton's love, rather accords with the opinion of many of Keats's friends, that at this time he had not studied "Paradise Lost," as he did afterwards. His taste would naturally have rather attracted him to those poems which Milton had drawn out of the heart of old mythology, "Lycidas" and "Comus ;" and those "two exquisite jewels, hung, as it were, in the ears of antiquity," the "Penseroso" and "Allegro," had no doubt been well enjoyed; but his full appreciation of the great Poem was reserved for the period which produced " Hyperion" as clearly under Miltonic influence, as "Endymion" is imbued with the spirit of Spenser, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson.

From a letter to Mr. Reynolds.

HAMPSTEAD, Jan. 31st, 1818.

Now I purposed to write to you a serious poetical letter, but I find that a maxim I met with the other day is a just one: "On

cause mieux quand on ne dit pas causons." I was hindered, however, from my first intention by a mere muslin handkerchief, very neatly pinned-but "Hence, vain deluding," &c. Yet I cannot write in prose; it is a sunshiny day and I cannot, so here goes.

Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port,

Away with old Hock and Madeira,
Too earthly ye are for my sport;

There's a beverage brighter and clearer
Instead of a pitiful rummer,

My wine overbrims a whole summer ;
My bowl is the sky,

And I drink at my eye,

Till I feel in the brain

A Delphian pain

Then follow, my Caius! then follow:

On the green of the hill

We will drink our fill

Of golden sunshine

Till our brains intertwine

With the glory and grace of Apollo !

God of the Meridian,

And of the East and West,

To thee my soul is flown,

And my body is earthward press'd.—

It is an awful mission,

A terrible division;

And leaves a gulf austere

To be fill'd with worldly fear.

Aye, when the soul is fled

To high above our head,

Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze,
As doth a mother wild,
When her young infant child
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 bow'rs

More unalarm'd!

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, &c.*

I must take a turn, and then write to Teignmouth. Remember me to all, not excepting yourself.

MY DEAR REYNOLDS,

Your sincere friend,

JOHN KEATS.

HAMPSTEAD, Feb. 3, 1818.

Would

I thank you for your dish of filberts.

I could get a basket of them by way of dessert every day for the sum of twopence (two sonnets on Robin Hood sent by the twopenny post). 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. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that Wordsworth, &c., 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 bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a journey heavenward as well as any body. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand

* See the "Literary Remains."

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, aud 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 "niceeyed 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," &c. 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 any body's life and opinions.

?

In return for your dish of filberts, I have gathered a few catkins.* I hope they'll look pretty.

"No, those days are gone away," &c.

* Mr. Reynolds had inclosed Keats some Sonnets on Robin Hood, to which these fine lines are an answer.