Keats

es-The Eve of St Mark-La Belle Dame

eadlong into the sea, and boldly tried his strength on the composition of a long mythological romance-half romance, half parable of that passion for universal beauty of which he felt in his own bosom the restless and compulsive workings. In the execution, he had done injustice to the power of poetry that was in him by letting both the exuberance of fancy and invention, and the caprice of rhyme, run away with him, and by substituting for the worn-out verbal currency o

youth in the employ of her merchant-brothers, with its tragic close and pathetic sequel[51]. Keats for some reason transfers the scene of the story from Messina to Florence. Nothing can be less sentimental than Boccaccio's temper, nothing more direct and free from superflui

straitened banks,

ncing bulrush,

against the

up. These things he does-but no longer inordinately as heretofore. His powers of imagination and of expression have alike gained strength and discipline; and through the shining veil

le timid li

with hers in

d taste not infrequent in his earliest verses. A

pose, aye this

leagues toward

ray thee, ere t

sary on the

utter it. Moreover the language of Isabella is still occasionally slipshod, and there are turns and passages where we feel, as we felt so often in Endymion, that the

s, however, contrived generally to avoid this effect, and handles the measure flowingly and well in a manner suited to his tale of pathos. Over the purely musical and emotional resources of his art he shows a singular command in stanzas like that beginning, 'O Melancholy, linger here awhile,' repeated with variations as a kind of melodious interlude of the main narrative. And there is a brilliant alertness of imagination in such episodical pass

h wild, were sti

kept all phan

girl by magic

invested by this touch, and all its charnel horror and grimness mitigated! Or

the fresh thrown

fully all its

aw, as other

bottom of a

rous spot she

ative lily

knife, all sud

fervently th

d up a soiled

play'd in pur

ith a lip more

her bosom, w

utterly un

made to still a

ork again; nor

ck at times her

he relative strength of passions might be drawn from this simple text):-then the first reward of her toil, in the shape of a relic not ghastly, but beautiful both in itself and for the tenderness of which it is a token: her womanly action in kissing it and putting it in her bosom, while all the woman and mother in her is in the same words revealed to us as blighted by the tragedy of her life: then the resumption and continuance of her labours, with gestures once more of vital dramatic truth as well as grace:-to imagine and to write like this is the privilege of the best poets only, and even the best have not often combined such concentrated force

his art from what they call the 'dead' mythology of ancient Greece. As if that mythology could ever die: as if the ancient fables, in passing out of the transitory state of things believed, into the state of things remembered and cherished in imagination, had not put on a second life more enduring and more fruitful than the first. Faiths, as faiths, perish one after another: but each in passing away bequeaths for the enrichment of the after-world whatever elements it has contained of imaginative or moral truth or beauty. The polytheism of ancient Greece, embodying the instinctive effort of the brightliest-gifted human race to explain its earliest experiences of nature and civilization, of the thousand moral and material forces, cruel or kindly, which environ and control the life of man on earth, is rich beyond measure in such elements; and if the modern world at any time fails to value them, it is the modern mind which is in so far dead and not they. One of the great symptoms of returning vitality in the imagination of Europe, toward the close of the last century, was its awak

hantments of the Middle Age, another the Greek beauty and joy of life. Keats when his time came showed himself, all young and untutored as he was, freshly and powerfully inspired to sing of all three alike. He does not, as we have said, write of Greek things in a Greek manner. Something indeed in Hyperion-at least in the first two books-he has caught from Paradise Lost of the high restraint and calm which was co

on a tranced

bed senators o

ch-charmed by t

ream all night

once, to the most fugitive, which a forest scene by starlight can have upon the mind: the pre-eminence of the oaks among the other trees-their aspect of human venerableness-their verdure,

t many points have been arbitrary, mixing up Latin conceptions and nomenclature with Greek, and introducing much new matter of his own invention. But as to the essential meaning of that warfare and its result-the dethronement of an older and ruder worship by one more advanced and humane, in which ideas of ethics and of arts held a larger place beside ideas of nature and her brute powers,-as to this, it could not possibly be divined more truly, or illustrated with more

aring in the b

ts his voice; t

als when a G

finger, how h

he full weight of

and with music

ke the roar of b

us answering hi

urn; and the

age, from no

on in his wa

locks not oo

ch his first-en

ike from the fa

lymene followed by

e flow'd on, lik

ing along a

eet the sea: b

; for the ove

adus swallow'

syllables, lik

utted hollows

ooming

e resplendent one of Hyperion threatened in his 'lucent empire'; nor the intensity of the unfinished third, where we leave Apollo undergoing a convulsive change under the afflatus of

un and continued: partly (if we may trust the statement of the publishers) to disappointment at the reception of Endymion: and partly, it is clear, to something not wholly congenial to his powers in the task itself. When after letting the poem lie by through the greater part of the spring and summer of 1819, he in September made up his mind to give it up, he wrote to Reynolds explaining his reasons as follows. "There were too many Miltonic inversions in it-Mil

able and technical differences only:-in the matter of rhythm, Keats's blank verse has not the flight of Milton's. Its periods do not wheel through such stately evolutions to so solemn and far-foreseen a close; though it indeed lacks neither power nor music, and ranks unquestionably with the finest blank-verse written since Milton,-beside that of Shelley's Alastor,-perhaps a little below that of Wordsworth when Wordsworth is at his infrequent best. As to

retch'd

stward to the

cia, built by

sons of Ede

in Tel

ilton a match for Kea

out all

covert, no

he murmurous n

heard in many

partiality for a Latin use of the relative pronoun and the double negative, and for scholarly Latin tu

steel than th

no formless mo

n, as in the introduction already quoted

wont, his pala

lence, save wha

erious Zephyrs

ounds, slow-bre

's technical manner as he seems to have supposed. Yet he had adopt

at his ease, though with results to us so masterly, in the paths of Milton, we find him in fact tempted aside on an excursion into the regions beloved by Chatterton. We know not how much of Hyperion had been written when he laid it aside in January to take up the composition of St Agnes' Eve, that unsurpassed example-nay, must we not rather call it unequalled?-of the pure charm of coloured and romantic narrative in English verse. As this poem does not attempt the elemental grandeur of Hyperion, so neither does it approach the human pathos

tness combines (wherein lies the great secret of his ripened art) a never-failing richness and concentration of poetic meaning and suggestion. From the opening stanza, which makes us feel the chill of the season to our bones,-telling us first of its effect on the wild and tame creatures of wood and field, and next how the frozen breath of the old beadsman in the chapel aisle 'seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,'-from thence to the close, where the lovers make their way past the sleeping porter and the friendly bloodhound into the night, the poetry seems to throb in every line with the life o

es, praying in

; and his wea

may ache in icy

of the corbels in the banquet

angels, ever

on their heads t

and hands put cross-w

ndow, instead of trying to pick out

of stains and

r-moth's deep-d

e reader, giving it at the same time a sufficient clue by the simile drawn from

n blush'd with blood

ror it is, which has led him to heighten, by these saintly splendours of colour, the sentiment of a scene wherein a voluptuous glow is so exquisitely attempered with chivalrous chastity and awe. When Madeline unclasps her jewels, a weaker poet would have dwelt on their lustre or other visible qualities: Keats puts those aside, and speaks straight to our spirits in an e

amarcand to ce

y go. What can be better touched than the figures of the beadsman and the nurse, who live just long enough to share in the wonders of the night, and die quietly of age when their parts are over[55]: especially th

syllable, or

art, her hear

eloquence her

nds her lover beside her, and contrast

!' said she,

at sweet tremb

with every

eyes were spir

art! how pallid,

after all the trait belongs not more to the poet individually than to his time. Lovers in prose romances of that date are constantly overcome in like manner. And we may well pardon Porphyro his weakness, in consideration of t

ef about St Mark's Eve was that a person stationed near a church porch at twilight on that anniversary would see entering the church the apparitions of those about to die, or be brought near death, in the ensuing year. Keats's fragment breaks off before the story is well engaged, and it is not easy to see how his opening would have led up to incidents illustrating this belief. Neither is it clear whether he intended to place them in medi?val or in relatively modern times. The demure Protestant air which he gives the Sunday streets, the Oriental furniture and curiosities of the lady's chamber, might seem to indicate the latter: but we must remember that he was never strict in his arch?ology-witness, for instance, the line which tells how 'the long carpets rose along the gusty floor' in the Eve o

reets were c

me drench of

western w

sunset fa

ed green v

thorny bloo

w with sprin

secretary and court poet of Charles VI. and Charles VII. of France,-of which an English translation used to be attributed to Chaucer, and is included in

ditty, lon

l'd 'La belle d

wasting power of love, when either adverse fate or deluded choice makes of love not a blessing but a bane. The plight which the poet thus shadows forth is partly that of his own soul in thraldom. Every reader must feel how truly the imagery expresses the passion: how powerfully, through these fascinating old-world symbols, the universal heart of man is made to speak. To many students (of

chantments, who loves a youth of Corinth, and builds for him by her art a palace of delights, until their happiness is shattered by the scrutiny of intrusive and cold-blooded wisdom. Keats had found the germ of the story, quoted from Philostratus, in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. In versifying it he went back once more to rhymed heroics; handling them, however, not as in Endymion, but in a manner founded on that of Dryden, with

ne! Look back!

es can ever t

not this sad

vanishest s

a Naiad of th

shes will thy

e greenest wood

n drink up th

ended Pleiad,

onious sister

nd as thy silv

the power and reality

in a dream, s

her palac

ulous streets a

tempest in the

readed night a

h and poor, in

sandals o'er th

r alone; whil

d there, from w

r moving shado

luster'd in the

emple door, or d

is illusion forfeits life. This thrilling vividness of narration in particular points, and the fine melodious vigour of much of the verse, have caused some students to give Lamia almost the first, if not the first, place among Keats's narrative poems. But surely for this it is in some parts too feverish, and in others too unequal. It contains descriptions not entirely successful, as for instance that of the palace reared by Lamia's magic; which will not bear comparison with other and earlier dream-palaces of the poet's building. And it has reflective passages, as that in the first book beginning, 'Let the mad poets say whate'er they please,' and the first fifteen lines of the second, where from the winning and truly poetic ease of his style at i

st attaching too much importance to any opinion which in a momentary mood we may find him uttering. But the doctrine he s

all ch

touch of col

wful rainbow o

of, her textur

atalogue of c

ill clip an

ysteries by r

unted air an

inbow, as it

on'd Lamia melt

ut one sounder, braver, and of better hope, by which Keats would have

nor much resembling any contemporary, verse. In what he calls the 'roundelay' of the Indian maiden in Endymion he had made his most elaborate lyrical attempt until now; and while for once approaching Shelley in lyric ardour and height of pitch, had equalled Coleridge in touches of wild musical beauty and far-sought romance. His new odes are comparatively simple and regular in form. They are written in a strain intense indeed, but meditative

nuptial odes, but not regularly repeated,) Keats recurs to a theme of which he had long

ho first told

wind to realms

charm of flowers, of their power to minister to the spirit of man through all his senses at once? Such felicity in compound epithets is by this time habitual with Keats, and of Spenser, with his 'sea-shouldering whales,' he is now in his own manner the equal. The 'azure-lidded sleep' of the maiden in St Agnes' Eve is matched in this ode by the 'moss-lain Dryads' and the 'soft-conchèd ear' of Psyche; though the last epithe

e thy priest,

odden region

ughts, new-blown w

es shall murmu

the threshold of the sanctuary prepared by the 'gardener Fancy,' his ear charmed by the glow and music of the verse, with its h

on, of a piece of ancient sculpture had set the poet's mind at work, on the one hand conjuring up the scenes of ancient life and worship which lay behind and suggested the sculptured images; on the other, speculating on the abstract relations of plastic art to life. The opening invocation is followed by a string of questions which flash their own answer upon us out of the darkness of antiquity-interrogatories which are at the same time pictures,-'What men o

town by river

uilt with pea

its folk, th

answeri

own, thy stree

be; and not

desolate, can

n farther back, a necessary condition in the sphere of art, having in that sphere its own compensations. But it is a dissonance which the attentive reader can easily reconcile for himself: and none

st of o

end to man, to w

truth, tru

ings of reason and the flux of things is to the poet and

urse no subject is commoner in Greek relief-sculpture than a Bacchanalian procession. But the two subjects do not, so far as I know, occur together on any single work of ancient art: and Keats probably imagined his urn by a combination of sculptures actually seen

leasan

opening a

lready find a proof of familiarity with this particular print, as well as an

ric presences of Love, Ambition, and Poetry to have appeared to him in a day-dream. This ode, less highly wrought and more unequal than the rest, contains the imaginative record of a passing mood (mentioned also in his correspondence) when the wonted intensity of his emotional life was suspended under the spell of an agreea

ntial

liss from its

ats the theme of Beaumont and of Milton in a manner entirely his own: expressing his experience of the habitual int

e very Temp

oly has her so

one save him whos

grape against

taste the sadne

her cloudy tr

he darkness, by that gift whereby his mind is a match for nature, all the secrets of the season and the night. In this joy he remembers how often the thought of death has seemed welcome to him, and thinks it would be more welcome now than ever. The nightingale would not cease her song-and here, by a breach of logic which is also, I think, a flaw in the poetry, he contrasts the transitoriness of human life, meaning the life of the individual, with the permanence of the song-bird's life, meaning the life of the type. This last thought leads him off into the ages, whence he brings back those memorable touches of far-off Bible and legendary romance in the stanza closing with the words 'in faery lands forlorn': and then, catching up his own last word, 'forlorn,' with an abrupt change of mood and meaning, he returns to daily consciousness, and with the fading away of his forest dream the poem closes. In this group of the odes it takes rank beside the Grecian Urn in the other. Neither is

sts and mello

riend of the

th him how to

nes that round th

ples the moss'd

uit with ripene

urd, and plump

kernel; to se

, later flower

nk warm days w

o'er-brimm'd th

een thee oft a

ever seeks ab

careless on a

lifted by the

reap'd furrow

fume of poppies

swath and all it

like a gleaner

aden head ac

-press, with

he last oozings

ngs of Spring? A

hem, thou hast

ouds bloom the

stubble-plains

ul choir the sm

ver sallows,

the light wind

ambs loud bleat

sing; and now w

whistles from

wallows twitter

ter by sympathy into the hearts of men and women: while Brown contributed his amateur stage-craft, such as it was. But these things were not enough. The power of sympathetic insight had not yet developed in Keats into one of dramatic creation: and the joint work of the friends is confused in order and sequence, and far from masterly in conception. Keats indeed makes the characters speak in lines flashing with all the hues of poetry. But in themselves they have the effect only of puppets inexpertly agitated: Otho, a puppet type of royal dignity and fatherly affection, Ludolph of febrile passion and vacillation, Erminia of maidenly purity, Conrad and Auranthe of ambitious lust and treachery. At least until the end of the fourth act these strictures hold good. From that point Keats worked alone, and the fifth act, probably in consequence, shows a great improvement. There

had been determined that neither this nor any other of h