VOL. VIII.

JOHN KEATS.

SON of Thomas and Frances Keats, John

A Keats was born on October 31st, 1795, in

Finsbury. His maternal grandfather had been a livery stable proprietor, and Thomas Keats, who was at one time a servant in the employ of the liveryman, eventually married his master's daughter and soon became possessed of the business. The issue of this marriage was four childrenthree sons and a daughter, John being the firstborn. In 1804 their father, Thomas Keats, was thrown from his horse and killed. His widow did not mourn him long, for we are told, that in 1805 she was married to Mr. William Rawlings, and the children, when rot in school, lived with their grandmother. Their mother died in 1810. John's education for a number of years was received in a school in Enfield, on leaving which he was apprenticed to a surgeon, Mr. Thomas Hammond, of Edmonton. From an early age his fondness for pure literature was noticed; he saw things from the artistic point of view, rather than the scientific. The earliest of his writings was a small poem in imitation of Spenser, written in 1812, about the time when his relations with Hammond became so strained as to lead to an open rupture, which ended in the relinquishment of his indentures. In 1813 he met Joseph Severn, and other of his friends were George Felton Mathews, the brilliant Charles Wells, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Leigh Hunt; and through Hunt he came to know Shelley, together with other men of genius. In speaking of Keats' friends, we must not overlook Charles Cowden Clark, who was his early and life-long friend. Keats followed his medical pursuits in practical fashion, as a student in Guy's Hospital. He appears to have abandoned medicine as a career just as he was qualified to enter upon it. In 1816 his first published poem appeared and in the course of the year a good deal of poetry. Early in 1817 came out his first small volume of poems. In the spring of 1817 he set serious

No. 2.

ly to work to write his long romantic classic poem, Endymion," moving from place to place in the country- the Isle of Wight, Margate, Oxford, Leatherhead, and finally Burford Bridge, near Dorking. Returning from these wanderings, after he had completed the draft, in November, 1817, he wintered in Hampstead, wrote one or two dramatic criticisms for The Champion, and began a fair copy of Endymion," of which Book I went to the press in January, 1818. The same year he met Fanny Brawne, and was soon desperately in love with her. It was probably about April, 1819, that they became engaged. In company with a friend, the poet visited the English lakes and roughed it a while in Scotland, exposing a not overstrong constitution. He caught a terrible cold and was advised to return to London, which he did, leaving his friend to finish the tour alone. He suffered from a severe sore throat, yet he bravely worked on and produced the "Ode to Psyche" and the fine "Ode to a Nightingale." January, 1820, his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" appeared, and in February his fatal malady declared itself unmistakably. In May, Hunt published Keats' beautiful ballad, "La Belle Dame sans Merci," in The Indicator; and about the same time Keats wrote the large fragment of a comic poem, "The Cap and Bells." Early in July his friends, Taylor and Hessey, who had published "Endymion," brought out the third and last volume of his poems, "Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes,” etc. Keats' literary work had not earned him a living; and his misfortunes culminated when a fresh attack of his malady made it clear that he must seek a warmer climate for his days were numbered. He went to Italy, but received no benefit from the change, and died in Rome on February 23, 1821. Thus ended the life of an unmistakable genius, who, young as he was, had won a secure place in English literature. He was loveable and manly, but was cruelly debarred from success and the enjoyments of life by his physical weakness.

I. R. W.

FANCY.

EVER let the fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;

Then let wingéd Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her;
Open wide the mind's cage-door,
She'll dart forth and cloudward soar.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoiled by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does the blossoming;
Autumn's red-lipped fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear fagot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the cakéd snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky,
-Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overawed,

Fancy, high-commissioned :-send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heapéd Autumn's wealth,
With a still mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,.

And thou shalt quaff it :-thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reapéd corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn ; And, in the same moment-hark! 'Tis the early April lark,

Or the rooks, with busy caw,

Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plumed lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
Shaded hyacinth, alway
Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf and every flower
Pearléd with the self-same shower.

Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
Meager from its celléd sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,
When the hen-bird's wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm

When the bee-hive casts its swarm;

Acorns ripe down-pattering,
While the autumn breezes sing.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Everything is spoiled by use :
Where's the cheek that does not fade,
Too much gazed at? where's the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Does not weary? where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, wingéd Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter,
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe's, when her zone
Slipped its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,

While she held the goblet sweet,

And Jove grew languid.—Break the mesh
Of the Fancy's silken leash;

Quickly break her prison-string,
And such joys as these she'll bring :-
-Let the wingéd Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-ward had sunk ;
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—
That thou, light-wingéd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Oh for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvéd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth !
Oh for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth ;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards :
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy

ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalméd darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorne, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunts of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a muséd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!-

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

61

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown :
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for
home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath Charmed with magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in fairy-lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back form thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a walking dream?
Fled is that music :— -Do I wake or sleep?

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

THOU still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Temple or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal-yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unweariéd,

Forever piping songs forever new ; More happy love! more happy, happy love! Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,

BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou artNot in lone splendor hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient, sleepless eremite, The moving waters at their priest-like task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moorsNo-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.

HOPE.

When by my solitary hearth I sit,

And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom; When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit, And the bare hearth of life presents no bloom; Sweet Hope! ethereal balm upon me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head.

-To Hope.