Of the Fancy's silken leash;

Quickly break her prison-string

And such joys as these she'll bring.—

Let the winged Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home.

90

Thou shalt have that tressed hair
Adonis tangled all for spite
And the mouth he would not kiss
And the treasure he would miss ;
And the hand he would not press
And the warmth he would distress
O the ravishment-the bliss-
Fancy has her-there she is!
Never fulsome-ever new

There she steps! and tell me who

Has a mistress so divine?

Be the palate ne'er so fine

She cannot sicken. Break the mesh

Of the Fancy's silken leash

Where she's tether'd to the heart

Quick break her prison string...

ODE.

[Written on the blank page before Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-Comedy "The Fair Maid of the Inn."]

BARDS of Passion and of Mirth,

Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-liv'd in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond'rous,
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns.

Brows'd by none but Dian's fawns;

5

10

From the fact that this poem is written in Keats's Beaumont and Fletcher, now in Sir Charles Dilke's possession, and from internal evidence, we may judge it to be addressed to the brother poets of passion and mirth who wrote the tragi-comedy of The Fair Maid of the Inn, and not to the poets at large, as indicated by the title given in The Golden Treasury, to wit Ode on the Poets. (4) Cancelled line in the manuscript after line 4– With the earth ones I am talking.

(5-6) Cancelled manuscript reading,—

that of heaven communes

With the spheres of Suns and Moons...

(10) In the manuscript, another's.

(19-20) In the manuscript there is the following uncancelled reading of this couplet

But melodious truth divine

Philosophic numbers fine,...

Compare Milton's Comus, lines 476-8,

How charming is divine Philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,...

(21) Cancelled reading, Stories for Tales.

(29) Cancelled reading, loves for souls.

(30-1) In the manuscript we read

To mortals of the little Week

They must sojourn—

The rest of line 31 has had too much cut off to be legible; but I do

Of their passions and their spites;

Of their glory and their shame;

What doth strengthen and what maim.
Thus ye teach us, every day,
Wisdom, though fled far away.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Ye have souls in heaven too,
Double-liv'd in regions new!

35

40

not think it can have rhymed either with week or with delights; and probably its rhymelessness led to its rejection, and to the reading of the text.

(40) The idea of the double life of the poetic soul is not uncommon; but perhaps the most noteworthy parallel is to be found in the two following stanzas from the poem which Wordsworth wrote in 1803

on the banks of Nith, near the poet's [Burns's] residence" (the third poem of the Memorials of a Tour in Scotland) :

Through busiest street and loneliest glen

Are felt the flashes of his pen ;

He rules 'mid winter snows, and when
Bees fill their hives;

Deep in the general heart of men
His power survives.

What need of fields in some far clime
Where Heroes, Sages, Bards sublime,
And all that fetched the flowing rhyme
From genuine springs,

Shall dwell together till old Time
Folds up his wings?

LINES

ON

THE MERMAID TAVERN.

SOULS of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.

I have heard that on a day
Mine host's sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till

An astrologer's old quill

5

ΙΟ

15

When Mr. Palgrave issued his beautiful Golden Treasury he felt it necessary to explain in connexion with this poem that "the Mermaid was the club-house of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other choice spirits of that age." Probably such an explanation is considerably less necessary now than then. In Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion is a fair manuscript of this poem, dated 1818. which shows the variations noted below.

(4) The manuscript reads Fairer for Choicer.

(9) The manuscript has Old in place of O.