3. 4. Fancy... deceiving elf:-Professor A. C. Bradley has called my attention to a similarity of phrase in Wordsworth's Duddon Sonnets xxiv. 10, "the Fancy, too industrious elf". This sonnet was written in 1820, and it seems likely that Wordsworth had seen the Ode to the Nightingale when it appeared in the Annals of the Fine Arts in the previous July. Haydon was the inspiring genius of that magazine, and would doubtless send him a copy of it. Wordsworth never appreciated the genius of Keats, and it is significant that he should here re-echo what is undoubtedly the weakest passage in Keats's great Ode. 9. Was it a vision, etc. : Was it a vision real or waking dream Fled is that Music-do I wake or sleep.-D. ODE ON A GRECIAN URN:-Written in February or March, 1819, and first published early in 1820 in no. xv. of the Annals of the Fine Arts. The Annals affords some variant readings, others are to be found in the MSS. of Sir Charles Dilke and at the British Museum. As Mr. Colvin points out, the poem was inspired by no single extant work of antiquity, but was imagined by a "combination of sculptures actually seen in the British Museum with others known to him only from engravings, and particularly from Piranesi's etchings. Lord Holland's urn (often spoken of as though it were the sole inspiration of the poem) is duly figured there in the Vasi de Candelabri of that admirable master" (EML, p. 174). It is difficult indeed to believe that the lines on the sacrifice and the picture of the "heifer lowing at the skies" were not suggested solely by the Elgin marbles. In his expression of the main idea upon which the poem is based-the permanent character of the beautiful in art as opposed to its mortality and change in nature and humanity-Keats was echoing a thought which must have been an inspiration to many of the greatest artists. It is concentrated by Leonardo da Vinci into one pregnant phrase which Keats might well have taken as the motto of his poem : Cosa bella mortal passa e non d'arte and there can be little doubt that here, as often, Wordsworth was not without his influence upon him. Cf. the sonnet Upon the Sight of a Beautiful Picture (publ. 1815). Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay Which stopped that band of travellers on their way, Ere they were lost within the shady wood; Soul soothing Art, whom Morning, Noontide, Even, Thou, with Ambition modest yet sublime, To one brief moment caught from fleeting time The appropriate calm of blest eternity. (N.B. espec. 11. 7, 8). Wordsworth, too, had called his attention to the music of silence : music of finer tone; a harmony So do I call it, though it be the hand Of silence, though there be no voice.-Excursion, iii. 710. And in another passage, well known to Keats, had actually suggested something of the phraseology by which to express it : sweetest melodies Are those which are by distance made more sweet.1 -Personal Talk, 25, 26, publ. 1807. But it was left for Keats to realise the full significance of the idea and to give it adequate expression. In the Epistle to Reynolds (vide p. 270) written 25th March, 1818, are to be found two anticipations of this Ode: The sacrifice goes on; the pontiff knife Gleams in the Sun, the milk-white heifer lows, Things cannot to the will Be settled, but they tease us out of thought.—77, 78. For Keats's use of brede cf. Appendix C, p. 583. I. 8. What men or gods: what Gods or Men Annals. 9. What mad pursuit ? what love? what dance? Annals. II. 6. nor ever can those trees be bare: nor ever bid the spring adieu Annals. Beauty is truth, truth Beauty-That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.-Annals. ODE TO PSYCHE:-Writing to his brother George on 15th April, 1819, Keats sends this Ode and speaks of it as "the last I have written -the first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have for the most part dash'd 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. 1 Wordsworth was himself indebted to Collins, The Passions, 60. "In notes by distance made more sweet. " 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 copy of the poem included in the letter affords several variant readings. The Psyche legend was known to Keats in Spence (and Mr. Forman thinks that an engraving in Spence had suggested the picture in the first stanza), Mrs. Tighe and Spenser, and he had already treated it in I stood tip-toe, 140 (vide note). Keats's reference to the story in Apuleius may be due to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholie, which he was reading at the time. "If he be a man of extraordinary parts, they will flock afar off to hear him, as they did in Apuleius, to see Psyche. ... Many mortal men came to see fair Psyche, the glory of her age: they did admire her, commend, desire her for her divine beauty, and gaze upon her but as on a picture' (pt. i. sect. ii. mem. iii. subs. xv.). " Palgrave suggests that in writing this Ode Keats had Gray and Collins in mind, but what literary obligation there is rather is to Milton. The opening couplet recalls both in idea and cadence the "bitter constraint and sad occasion dear" of Lycidas, and later on there is an obvious debt to the Ode on the Nativity. It is strange to read (vide supra) that Keats took unusual pains over the poem, for it is not flawless as are some of the other Odes which were apparently written far more rapidly; but despite occasional weaknesses in it, it is a magnificent example of that blending of a delicate feeling for Nature with a sense of the true significance of ancient legend which is peculiarly characteristic of him. This was, in all probability, the last of the Odes written by Keats in the Spring of 1819; it is interesting to notice how it knits them all together by re-echoing a phrase from each. "Their lips touched not but had not bade adieu" (cf. Grecian Urn, iii. 2; its idea a contrast with ii. 7, and the Ode on Melancholy, iii. 2, 3) and "the casement ope at night" (cf. Ode to the Nightingale, vii. 9). The manuscript letter supplies the following variant readings:-10. roof: fan. 14. silver-white, and budded Tyrian: freckle pink and budded Tyrian. 17. bade 32-5. : bid. 23. true! true? 36. brightest : bloomiest. No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. Cf. Milton, Ode on the Nativity, xix. :— No voice or hideous humm Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Can no more divine, With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos leaving. Inspires the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell. 52-5. Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep. This wonderful passage affords a deeply interesting example of the way in which literary reminiscence combined in Keats's mind with accurate and impassioned observation to form some of his greatest pictures. The first appearance of the "Mountain pine" in his poems (I stood tip-toe, 128) is obviously a purely literary reminiscence, and suggests neither feeling nor observation. But he came across two passages in the Faithful Shepherdess, which had evidently sunk into some "backward corner of the brain". In the first Act he read : "Straighter than the straightest pine upon the steep In the fourth Act: "Sailing pines that edge yon mountain in.” 1 Then, in the summer of 1818, he visited the Lakes, and seeing now with his own eyes what had before only been imaged in his mind, at once made it his own, touching it with a vivid imagination far beyond Fletcher's reach. Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep. Of Lodore he had said in a letter to his brother Tom (29th June, 1818), "There is no great body of water, but the accompaniment is delightful; for it oozes out from a cleft in perpendicular rocks, all fledged with ash and other beautiful trees". An exactly parallel example of the manner in which Keats's imagination was stimulated by the combined influence of literature and nature is to be found in his debt for the picture (q.v.) of the fallen Titans, to Chapman, Wordsworth and the Druid Stones near Keswick. FANCY, included together with Bards of Passion and I had a Dove in Keats's Journal Letter to his brother and sister in America under the date 2nd Jan., 1819, and presumably written shortly before. Keats prefaces them with the words, "Here are the poems-they will explain themselves -as all poems should do without any comment". This and the four following poems are written in the four-accent metre which Keats had employed in his lines to G. A. W. (p. 16). It had been common in English poetry since Chaucer, but Keats's use of it suggests especially Milton and Fletcher; and while the poem is perfectly original and independent, the style of description and much of the cadence of the verse seem to recall L'Allegro. Keats is hardly at home in the four-accent verse, which was not entirely suited to his genius. He is evidently troubled with the weight of his unaccented syllables (e.g., ll. 7, 8, 17, 38) and was never completely successful with the metre till he wrote the Eve of St. Mark. 1In Endymion, i. 85, 86, we have a similar picture, in The freshness of the space of heaven above, But of the lyrics written in this measure Fancy is certainly the most charming, the treatment of the Seasons is felicitous throughout and the language is nowhere marred (except perhaps in the use of "so" in 76) by the peculiar faults of Keats's style. 1. The story of " Ceres' daughter" (81) was a special favourite of Keats's (vide Lamia note). For Hebe (85) the goddess of youth and cupbearer of Jove, cf. End. iv. 415. The following interesting variants and rejected passages are supplied by the manuscript letter: 6. Through the thought: Towards heaven MS. 24, 25. Even ... there: Vesper . . . then MS. 29. bring, in spite : bring thee spite MS. 33, 34. All the buds, etc. : All the faery buds of May On spring turf or scented spray; MS. 43-45. And, in the same moment, etc. : And in the same moment hark To the early April lark And the rooks with busy caw MS. 57. And the snake, etc. : And the snake all winter-shrank Cast its skin on sunny bank MS. 67, 68. For these two lines the manuscript letter gives six :— For the same sleek throated mouse To store up in its winter house. O sweet Fancy let her loose! Not a Mistress but doth cloy. 89. And Jove grew languid. The letter here adds the following lines : And Jove grew languid. Mistress fair! Thou shalt have that tressed hair Adonis tangled all for spite And the mouth he would not kiss And the treasure he would miss ; There she steps! and tell me who Has a mistress so divine? Be the palate ne'er so fine She cannot sicken. |