ON SEEING A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR 'I was at Hunt's the other day,' writes Keats to Bailey, January 23, 1818, and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of Milton's Hair. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is as they say of a sheep in a Nursery Book.' 'This I did,' he adds, after copying the lines, at Hunt's at his request-perhaps I should have done Lord something better alone and at home.' Houghton printed the verse in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. 6 CHIEF of organic numbers! Old Scholar of the Spheres! O what a mad endeavour Who to thy sacred and ennobled hearse How heavenward thou soundest, To a young Delian oath, ay, by thy soul, When every childish fashion Hymning and harmony And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! Of thee, and of thy works, and of thy That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. life; But vain is now the burning and the strife, Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife With old Philosophy, And mad with glimpses of futurity! For many years my offering must be hush'd; When I do speak, I'll think upon this hour, Because I feel my forehead hot and flush'd. Even at the simplest vassal of thy power, A lock of thy bright hair - 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. ON SITTING DOWN TO READ 'KING LEAR' ONCE AGAIN In a letter to his brothers, dated January 23, 1818, Keats says: 'I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately I cannot bear to be uninterested or unemployed, I, who for so long a time have been addicted to passiveness. Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers. As an instance of this observe -I sat down yesterday to read King Lear once again: the thing appeared to demand the prologue of a sonnet, I wrote it, and began to read · (I know you would like to see it). So you see,' he goes on after copying the sonnet, 'I am getting at it with a sort of determination and strength, though verily I do not feel it at this moment.' The sonnet was printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. O GOLDEN-TONGUED Romance, with serene lute! Fair plumèd Syren, Queen of far away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute, Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay, assay The bitter sweet of this Shakespearean fruit: Chief Poet and ye clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme! When through the old oak forest I am gone, LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN In sending his Robin Hood verses to Reynolds (see next poem), Keats added the following, but from the tenor of his letter, it would appear that they had been written earlier and were sent at Reynolds's request. The poem was published by Keats in his Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems, 1820. The friends were then in full tide of sympathy with the Elizabethans, and would have been very much at home with Shakespeare, Jonson, and Marlowe at the Mermaid. SOULS of Poets dead and gone, I have heard that on a day Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? ΤΟ 20 ROBIN HOOD TO A FRIEND The friend was J. H. Reynolds, who had sent Keats two sonnets which he had written on Robin Hood. Keats's letter, dated February 8, 1818, is full of energetic pleasantry on the poetry which has a palpable design upon us,' and concludes: 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.' Keats included the poem in his Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems, 1820, with some trifling changes of text. No! those days are gone away, No, the bugle sounds no more, And the twanging bow no more; Silent is the ivory shrill Past the heath and up the hill; There is no mid-forest laugh, Where lone Echo gives the half To some wight, amaz'd to hear Jesting, deep in forest drear. On the fairest time of June You may go, with sun or moon, Or the seven stars to light you, Or the polar ray to right you; But you never may behold Little John, or Robin bold; Never one, of all the clan, Thrumming on an empty can Some old hunting ditty, while He doth his green way beguile 20 To fair hostess Merriment, Gone, the merry morris din; 30 40 50 60 Composed February 4, 1818, in company with Shelley and Hunt, who each wrote a sonnet on the same theme. It was first published by Lord Houghton in the Life, Letters and Literary Remains. SON of the old moon-mountains African! Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile ! We call thee fruitful, and that very while A desert fills our seeing's inward span; Nurse of swart nations since the world began, Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil, Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan ? O may dark fancies err! They surely do; 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too, And to the sea as happily dost haste. TO SPENSER Printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains, and undated. Afterward, when Lord Houghton printed it in the Aldine edition of 1876, he noted that he had seen a transcript given by Keats to Mrs. Longmore, a sister of Reynolds, dated by the recipient, February 5, 1818. But Lord Houghton is confident that the sonnet was written much earlier. SPENSER! a jealous honourer of thine, A forester deep in thy midmost trees, Did last eve ask my promise to refine Some English that might strive thine ear to please. But Elfin Poet, 't is impossible For an inhabitant of wintry earth To rise like Phoebus with a golden quill Fire-wing'd and make a morning in his mirth. It is impossible to escape from toil Before it can put forth its blossoming: Spirit here that painest! Spirit here that burnest! My forehead low, All passion-struck Spirit here that laughest! Spirit, with thee I join in the glee With a Bacchanal blush Just fresh from the Banquet of Fair and foul I love together. Meadows sweet where flames are under, And a giggle at a wonder; Visage sage at pantomime; With the aspic at her breast; WHAT THE THRUSH SAID In a long letter to Reynolds, dated February 19, 1818, Keats writes earnestly of the sources of inspiration to a poet, and especially of the need of a receptive attitude: 'Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive; budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit-Sap will be given us for meat, and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness. I have not read any Book O THOU whose face hath felt the Winter's wind, Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist, And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars, To thee the spring will be a harvest-time. O thou, whose only book has been the light Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on Night after night when Phoebus was away, To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn. O fret not after knowledge - I have none, And yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge I have none, Blue! 'Tis the life of waters And all its vassal streams, pools numberless, May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness. Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers, Forget-me-not, the blue bell, — and, that queen |