XLII.

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago 370 These lovers fled away into the storm. That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform; The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.

POEMS.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

1.

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-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,-- That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10

2.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O 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: 20

3.

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. 30

4.

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, Cluster'd 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. 40

5.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50

6.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused 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. 60

7.

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 oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70

8.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd 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 waking dream? Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep? 80

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

1.

Thou still unravish'd 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-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10

2.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, 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, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20

3.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30

4.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 40

5.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 50

ODE TO PSYCHE.

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, And pardon that thy secrets should be sung Even into thine own soft-conched ear: Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes? I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly, And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof 10 Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran A brooklet, scarce espied: 'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass; Their arms embraced, and their pinions too; Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu, As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, And ready still past kisses to outnumber At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love: 20 The winged boy I knew; But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? His Psyche true!

O latest born and loveliest vision far Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy! Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star, Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan 30 Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

O brightest! though too late for antique vows, Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, When holy were the haunted forest boughs, Holy the air, the water, and the fire; Yet even in these days so far retir'd 40 From happy pieties, thy lucent fans, Fluttering among the faint Olympians, I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired. So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet From swinged censer teeming; Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane 50 In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness A rosy sanctuary will I dress With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain, 60 With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same: And there shall be for thee all soft delight That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!

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 winged 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 spoilt by use, 10 And the enjoying of the Spring Fades as does its blossoming; Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too, Blushing through the mist and dew, Cloys with tasting: What do then? Sit thee by the ingle, when The sear faggot blazes bright, Spirit of a winter's night; When the soundless earth is muffled, And the caked snow is shuffled 20 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-overaw'd, Fancy, high-commission'd:--send her! She has vassals to attend her: She will bring, in spite of frost, Beauties that the earth hath lost; 30 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 heaped 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; 40 Rustle of the reaped 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-plum'd lilies, and the first Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst; 50 Shaded hyacinth, alway Sapphire queen of the mid-May; And every leaf, and every flower Pearled with the self-same shower. Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep Meagre from its celled sleep; And the snake all winter-thin Cast on sunny bank its skin; Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, 60 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.

Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose; Every thing is spoilt by use: Where's the cheek that doth not fade, Too much gaz'd at? Where's the maid 70 Whose lip mature is ever new? Where's the eye, however blue, Doth 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, winged Fancy find Thee a mistress to thy mind: 80 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 Slipt 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; 90 Quickly break her prison-string And such joys as these she'll bring.-- Let the winged Fancy roam Pleasure never is at home.

ODE.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived 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 10 Seated on Elysian lawns Brows'd by none but Dian's fawns Underneath large blue-bells tented, Where the daisies are rose-scented, And the rose herself has got Perfume which on earth is not; Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth; Philosophic numbers smooth; 20 Tales and golden histories Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then On the earth ye live again; And the souls ye left behind you Teach us, here, the way to find you, Where your other souls are joying, Never slumber'd, never cloying. Here, your earth-born souls still speak To mortals, of their little week; 30 Of their sorrows and delights; 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-lived in regions new! 40

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 10 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 To a sheepskin gave the story, Said he saw you in your glory, Underneath a new old-sign Sipping beverage divine, 20 And pledging with contented smack The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

ROBIN HOOD.

TO A FRIEND.

No! those days are gone away, And their hours are old and gray, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden pall Of the leaves of many years: Many times have winter's shears, Frozen North, and chilling East, Sounded tempests to the feast Of the forest's whispering fleeces, Since men knew nor rent nor leases. 10

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, 20 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 To fair hostess Merriment, Down beside the pasture Trent; 30 For he left the merry tale Messenger for spicy ale.

Gone, the merry morris din; Gone, the song of Gamelyn; Gone, the tough-belted outlaw Idling in the "grenè shawe;" All are gone away and past! And if Robin should be cast Sudden from his turfed grave, And if Marian should have 40 Once again her forest days, She would weep, and he would craze: He would swear, for all his oaks, Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes, Have rotted on the briny seas; She would weep that her wild bees Sang not to her--strange! that honey Can't be got without hard money!

So it is: yet let us sing, Honour to the old bow-string! 50 Honour to the bugle-horn! Honour to the woods unshorn! Honour to the Lincoln green! Honour to the archer keen! Honour to tight little John, And the horse he rode upon! Honour to bold Robin Hood, Sleeping in the underwood! Honour to maid Marian, And to all the Sherwood-clan! 60 Though their days have hurried by Let us two a burden try.

TO AUTUMN.

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, 10 For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20 Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-- While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30 Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

ODE ON MELANCHOLY.

1.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. 10

2.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globed peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. 20

3.

She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung. 30

HYPERION.

A FRAGMENT.

## BOOK I.

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair; Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. 10 A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more By reason of his fallen divinity Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, No further than to where his feet had stray'd, And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; While his bow'd head seem'd list'ning to the Earth, 20 His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

It seem'd no force could wake him from his place; But there came one, who with a kindred hand Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low With reverence, though to one who knew it not. She was a Goddess of the infant world; By her in stature the tall Amazon Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en Achilles by the hair and bent his neck; Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. 30 Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, Pedestal'd haply in a palace court, When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore. But oh! how unlike marble was that face: How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self. There was a listening fear in her regard, As if calamity had but begun; As if the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear 40 Was with its stored thunder labouring up. One hand she press'd upon that aching spot Where beats the human heart, as if just there, Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain: The other upon Saturn's bended neck She laid, and to the level of his ear Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake In solemn tenour and deep organ tone: Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue Would come in these like accents; O how frail 50 To that large utterance of the early Gods! "Saturn, look up!--though wherefore, poor old King? I have no comfort for thee, no not one: I cannot say, 'O wherefore sleepest thou?' For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God; And ocean too, with all its solemn noise, Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air Is emptied of thine hoary majesty. Thy thunder, conscious of the new command, 60 Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house; And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands Scorches and burns our once serene domain. O aching time! O moments big as years! All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth, And press it so upon our weary griefs That unbelief has not a space to breathe. Saturn, sleep on:--O thoughtless, why did I Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude? Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes? 70 Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep."

As when, upon a tranced summer-night, Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir, Save from one gradual solitary gust Which comes upon the silence, and dies off, As if the ebbing air had but one wave; So came these words and went; the while in tears She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground, 80 Just where her falling hair might be outspread A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet. One moon, with alteration slow, had shed Her silver seasons four upon the night, And still these two were postured motionless, Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern; The frozen God still couchant on the earth, And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet: Until at length old Saturn lifted up His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone, 90 And all the gloom and sorrow of the place, And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake, As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard Shook horrid with such aspen-malady: "O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face; Look up, and let me see our doom in it; Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape Is Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling brow, 100 Naked and bare of its great diadem, Peers like the front of Saturn. Who had power To make me desolate? whence came the strength? How was it nurtur'd to such bursting forth, While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp? But it is so; and I am smother'd up, And buried from all godlike exercise Of influence benign on planets pale, Of admonitions to the winds and seas, Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting, 110 And all those acts which Deity supreme Doth ease its heart of love in.--I am gone Away from my own bosom: I have left My strong identity, my real self, Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search! Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round Upon all space: space starr'd, and lorn of light; Space region'd with life-air; and barren void; Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.-- 120 Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest A certain shape or shadow, making way With wings or chariot fierce to repossess A heaven he lost erewhile: it must--it must Be of ripe progress--Saturn must be King. Yes, there must be a golden victory; There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival Upon the gold clouds metropolitan, Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir 130 Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be Beautiful things made new, for the surprise Of the sky-children; I will give command: Thea! Thea! Thea! where is Saturn?"

This passion lifted him upon his feet, And made his hands to struggle in the air, His Druid locks to shake and ooze with sweat, His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease. He stood, and heard not Thea's sobbing deep; A little time, and then again he snatch'd 140 Utterance thus.--"But cannot I create? Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth Another world, another universe, To overbear and crumble this to nought? Where is another chaos? Where?"--That word Found way unto Olympus, and made quake The rebel three.--Thea was startled up, And in her bearing was a sort of hope, As thus she quick-voic'd spake, yet full of awe.

"This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends, 150 O Saturn! come away, and give them heart; I know the covert, for thence came I hither." Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went With backward footing through the shade a space: He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way Through aged boughs, that yielded like the mist Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest.

Meanwhile in other realms big tears were shed, More sorrow like to this, and such like woe, Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe: 160 The Titans fierce, self-hid, or prison-bound, Groan'd for the old allegiance once more, And listen'd in sharp pain for Saturn's voice. But one of the whole mammoth-brood still kept His sov'reignty, and rule, and majesty;-- Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire Still sat, still snuff'd the incense, teeming up From man to the sun's God; yet unsecure: For as among us mortals omens drear Fright and perplex, so also shuddered he-- 170 Not at dog's howl, or gloom-bird's hated screech, Or the familiar visiting of one Upon the first toll of his passing-bell, Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp; But horrors, portion'd to a giant nerve, Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold, And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks, Glar'd a blood-red through all its thousand courts, Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries; 180 And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds Flush'd angerly: while sometimes eagle's wings, Unseen before by Gods or wondering men, Darken'd the place; and neighing steeds were heard, Not heard before by Gods or wondering men. Also, when he would taste the spicy wreaths Of incense, breath'd aloft from sacred hills, Instead of sweets, his ample palate took Savour of poisonous brass and metal sick: And so, when harbour'd in the sleepy west, 190 After the full completion of fair day,-- For rest divine upon exalted couch And slumber in the arms of melody, He pac'd away the pleasant hours of ease With stride colossal, on from hall to hall; While far within each aisle and deep recess, His winged minions in close clusters stood, Amaz'd and full of fear; like anxious men Who on wide plains gather in panting troops, When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers. 200 Even now, while Saturn, rous'd from icy trance, Went step for step with Thea through the woods, Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear, Came slope upon the threshold of the west; Then, as was wont, his palace-door flew ope In smoothest silence, save what solemn tubes, Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies; And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape, In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye, 210 That inlet to severe magnificence Stood full blown, for the God to enter in.

He enter'd, but he enter'd full of wrath; His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels, And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire, That scar'd away the meek ethereal Hours And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared, From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault, Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light, And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades, 220 Until he reach'd the great main cupola; There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot, And from the basements deep to the high towers Jarr'd his own golden region; and before The quavering thunder thereupon had ceas'd, His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb, To this result: "O dreams of day and night! O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain! O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom! O lank-eared Phantoms of black-weeded pools! 230 Why do I know ye? why have I seen ye? why Is my eternal essence thus distraught To see and to behold these horrors new? Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall? Am I to leave this haven of my rest, This cradle of my glory, this soft clime, This calm luxuriance of blissful light, These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes, Of all my lucent empire? It is left Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine. 240 The blaze, the splendor, and the symmetry, I cannot see--but darkness, death and darkness. Even here, into my centre of repose, The shady visions come to domineer, Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp.-- Fall!--No, by Tellus and her briny robes! Over the fiery frontier of my realms I will advance a terrible right arm Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove, And bid old Saturn take his throne again."-- 250 He spake, and ceas'd, the while a heavier threat Held struggle with his throat but came not forth; For as in theatres of crowded men Hubbub increases more they call out "Hush!" So at Hyperion's words the Phantoms pale Bestirr'd themselves, thrice horrible and cold; And from the mirror'd level where he stood A mist arose, as from a scummy marsh. At this, through all his bulk an agony Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown, 260 Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular Making slow way, with head and neck convuls'd From over-strained might. Releas'd, he fled To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours Before the dawn in season due should blush, He breath'd fierce breath against the sleepy portals, Clear'd them of heavy vapours, burst them wide Suddenly on the ocean's chilly streams. The planet orb of fire, whereon he rode Each day from east to west the heavens through, 270 Spun round in sable curtaining of clouds; Not therefore veiled quite, blindfold, and hid, But ever and anon the glancing spheres, Circles, and arcs, and broad-belting colure, Glow'd through, and wrought upon the muffling dark Sweet-shaped lightnings from the nadir deep Up to the zenith,--hieroglyphics old, Which sages and keen-eyed astrologers Then living on the earth, with labouring thought Won from the gaze of many centuries: 280 Now lost, save what we find on remnants huge Of stone, or marble swart; their import gone, Their wisdom long since fled.--Two wings this orb Possess'd for glory, two fair argent wings, Ever exalted at the God's approach: And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense Rose, one by one, till all outspreaded were; While still the dazzling globe maintain'd eclipse, Awaiting for Hyperion's command. Fain would he have commanded, fain took throne 290 And bid the day begin, if but for change. He might not:--No, though a primeval God: The sacred seasons might not be disturb'd. Therefore the operations of the dawn Stay'd in their birth, even as here 'tis told. Those silver wings expanded sisterly, Eager to sail their orb; the porches wide Open'd upon the dusk demesnes of night And the bright Titan, phrenzied with new woes, Unus'd to bend, by hard compulsion bent 300 His spirit to the sorrow of the time; And all along a dismal rack of clouds, Upon the boundaries of day and night, He stretch'd himself in grief and radiance faint. There as he lay, the Heaven with its stars Look'd down on him with pity, and the voice Of Coelus, from the universal space, Thus whisper'd low and solemn in his ear. "O brightest of my children dear, earth-born And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries 310 All unrevealed even to the powers Which met at thy creating; at whose joys And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft, I, Coelus, wonder, how they came and whence; And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be, Distinct, and visible; symbols divine, Manifestations of that beauteous life Diffus'd unseen throughout eternal space: Of these new-form'd art thou, oh brightest child! Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses! 320 There is sad feud among ye, and rebellion Of son against his sire. I saw him fall, I saw my first-born tumbled from his throne! To me his arms were spread, to me his voice Found way from forth the thunders round his head! Pale wox I, and in vapours hid my face. Art thou, too, near such doom? vague fear there is: For I have seen my sons most unlike Gods. Divine ye were created, and divine In sad demeanour, solemn, undisturb'd, 330 Unruffled, like high Gods, ye liv'd and ruled: Now I behold in you fear, hope, and wrath;

## Actions of rage and passion; even as

I see them, on the mortal world beneath, In men who die.--This is the grief, O Son! Sad sign of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall! Yet do thou strive; as thou art capable, As thou canst move about, an evident God; And canst oppose to each malignant hour Ethereal presence:--I am but a voice; 340 My life is but the life of winds and tides, No more than winds and tides can I avail:-- But thou canst.--Be thou therefore in the van Of circumstance; yea, seize the arrow's barb Before the tense string murmur.--To the earth! For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes. Meantime I will keep watch on thy bright sun, And of thy seasons be a careful nurse."-- Ere half this region-whisper had come down, Hyperion arose, and on the stars 350 Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide Until it ceas'd; and still he kept them wide: And still they were the same bright, patient stars. Then with a slow incline of his broad breast, Like to a diver in the pearly seas, Forward he stoop'd over the airy shore, And plung'd all noiseless into the deep night.

## BOOK II.

Just at the self-same beat of Time's wide wings Hyperion slid into the rustled air, And Saturn gain'd with Thea that sad place Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn'd. It was a den where no insulting light Could glimmer on their tears; where their own groans They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse, Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where. Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem'd 10 Ever as if just rising from a sleep, Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns; And thus in thousand hugest phantasies Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe. Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon, Couches of rugged stone, and slaty ridge Stubborn'd with iron. All were not assembled: Some chain'd in torture, and some wandering. Coeus, and Gyges, and Briareüs, Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion, 20 With many more, the brawniest in assault, Were pent in regions of laborious breath; Dungeon'd in opaque element, to keep Their clenched teeth still clench'd, and all their limbs Lock'd up like veins of metal, crampt and screw'd; Without a motion, save of their big hearts Heaving in pain, and horribly convuls'd With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse. Mnemosyne was straying in the world; Far from her moon had Phoebe wandered; 30 And many else were free to roam abroad, But for the main, here found they covert drear. Scarce images of life, one here, one there, Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor, When the chill rain begins at shut of eve, In dull November, and their chancel vault, The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night. Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave Or word, or look, or action of despair. 40 Creüs was one; his ponderous iron mace Lay by him, and a shatter'd rib of rock Told of his rage, ere he thus sank and pined. Iäpetus another; in his grasp, A serpent's plashy neck; its barbed tongue Squeez'd from the gorge, and all its uncurl'd length Dead; and because the creature could not spit Its poison in the eyes of conquering Jove. Next Cottus: prone he lay, chin uppermost, As though in pain; for still upon the flint 50 He ground severe his skull, with open mouth And eyes at horrid working. Nearest him Asia, born of most enormous Caf, Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs, Though feminine, than any of her sons: More thought than woe was in her dusky face, For she was prophesying of her glory; And in her wide imagination stood Palm-shaded temples, and high rival fanes, By Oxus or in Ganges' sacred isles. 60 Even as Hope upon her anchor leans, So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk Shed from the broadest of her elephants. Above her, on a crag's uneasy shelve, Upon his elbow rais'd, all prostrate else, Shadow'd Enceladus; once tame and mild As grazing ox unworried in the meads; Now tiger-passion'd, lion-thoughted, wroth, He meditated, plotted, and even now Was hurling mountains in that second war, 70 Not long delay'd, that scar'd the younger Gods To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird. Not far hence Atlas; and beside him prone Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons. Neighbour'd close Oceanus, and Tethys, in whose lap Sobb'd Clymene among her tangled hair. In midst of all lay Themis, at the feet Of Ops the queen all clouded round from sight; No shape distinguishable, more than when Thick night confounds the pine-tops with the clouds: 80 And many else whose names may not be told. For when the Muse's wings are air-ward spread, Who shall delay her flight? And she must chaunt Of Saturn, and his guide, who now had climb'd With damp and slippery footing from a depth More horrid still. Above a sombre cliff Their heads appear'd, and up their stature grew Till on the level height their steps found ease: Then Thea spread abroad her trembling arms Upon the precincts of this nest of pain, 90 And sidelong fix'd her eye on Saturn's face: There saw she direst strife; the supreme God At war with all the frailty of grief, Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge, Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair. Against these plagues he strove in vain; for Fate Had pour'd a mortal oil upon his head, A disanointing poison: so that Thea, Affrighted, kept her still, and let him pass First onwards in, among the fallen tribe. 100

As with us mortal men, the laden heart Is persecuted more, and fever'd more, When it is nighing to the mournful house Where other hearts are sick of the same bruise; So Saturn, as he walk'd into the midst, Felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest, But that he met Enceladus's eye, Whose mightiness, and awe of him, at once Came like an inspiration; and he shouted, "Titans, behold your God!" at which some groan'd; 110 Some started on their feet; some also shouted; Some wept, some wail'd, all bow'd with reverence; And Ops, uplifting her black folded veil, Show'd her pale cheeks, and all her forehead wan, Her eye-brows thin and jet, and hollow eyes. There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines When Winter lifts his voice; there is a noise Among immortals when a God gives sign, With hushing finger, how he means to load His tongue with the full weight of utterless thought, 120 With thunder, and with music, and with pomp: Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines; Which, when it ceases in this mountain'd world, No other sound succeeds; but ceasing here, Among these fallen, Saturn's voice therefrom Grew up like organ, that begins anew Its strain, when other harmonies, stopt short, Leave the dinn'd air vibrating silverly. Thus grew it up--"Not in my own sad breast, Which is its own great judge and searcher out, 130 Can I find reason why ye should be thus: Not in the legends of the first of days, Studied from that old spirit-leaved book Which starry Uranus with finger bright Sav'd from the shores of darkness, when the waves Low-ebb'd still hid it up in shallow gloom;-- And the which book ye know I ever kept For my firm-based footstool:--Ah, infirm! Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent Of element, earth, water, air, and fire,-- 140 At war, at peace, or inter-quarreling One against one, or two, or three, or all Each several one against the other three, As fire with air loud warring when rain-floods Drown both, and press them both against earth's face, Where, finding sulphur, a quadruple wrath Unhinges the poor world;--not in that strife, Wherefrom I take strange lore, and read it deep, Can I find reason why ye should be thus: No, no-where can unriddle, though I search, 150 And pore on Nature's universal scroll Even to swooning, why ye, Divinities, The first-born of all shap'd and palpable Gods, Should cower beneath what, in comparison, Is untremendous might. Yet ye are here, O'erwhelm'd, and spurn'd, and batter'd, ye are here! O Titans, shall I say 'Arise!'--Ye groan: Shall I say 'Crouch!'--Ye groan. What can I then? O Heaven wide! O unseen parent dear! What can I? Tell me, all ye brethren Gods, 160 How we can war, how engine our great wrath! O speak your counsel now, for Saturn's ear Is all a-hunger'd. Thou, Oceanus, Ponderest high and deep; and in thy face I see, astonied, that severe content Which comes of thought and musing: give us help!"

So ended Saturn; and the God of the Sea, Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove, But cogitation in his watery shades, Arose, with locks not oozy, and began, 170 In murmurs, which his first-endeavouring tongue Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands. "O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung, Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies! Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears, My voice is not a bellows unto ire. Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop: And in the proof much comfort will I give, If ye will take that comfort in its truth. 180 We fall by course of Nature's law, not force Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou Hast sifted well the atom-universe; But for this reason, that thou art the King, And only blind from sheer supremacy, One avenue was shaded from thine eyes, Through which I wandered to eternal truth. And first, as thou wast not the first of powers, So art thou not the last; it cannot be: Thou art not the beginning nor the end. 190 From chaos and parental darkness came Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil, That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came, And with it light, and light, engendering Upon its own producer, forthwith touch'd The whole enormous matter into life. Upon that very hour, our parentage, The Heavens and the Earth, were manifest: Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race, 200 Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms. Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain; O folly! for to bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well! As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth In form and shape compact and beautiful, In will, in action free, companionship, 210 And thousand other signs of purer life; So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us And fated to excel us, as we pass In glory that old Darkness: nor are we Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed, And feedeth still, more comely than itself? Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves? 220 Or shall the tree be envious of the dove Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings To wander wherewithal and find its joys? We are such forest-trees, and our fair boughs Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves, But eagles golden-feather'd, who do tower Above us in their beauty, and must reign In right thereof; for 'tis the eternal law That first in beauty should be first in might: Yea, by that law, another race may drive 230 Our conquerors to mourn as we do now. Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas, My dispossessor? Have ye seen his face? Have ye beheld his chariot, foam'd along By noble winged creatures he hath made? I saw him on the calmed waters scud, With such a glow of beauty in his eyes, That it enforc'd me to bid sad farewell To all my empire: farewell sad I took, And hither came, to see how dolorous fate 240 Had wrought upon ye; and how I might best Give consolation in this woe extreme. Receive the truth, and let it be your balm."

Whether through poz'd conviction, or disdain, They guarded silence, when Oceanus Left murmuring, what deepest thought can tell? But so it was, none answer'd for a space, Save one whom none regarded, Clymene; And yet she answer'd not, only complain'd, With hectic lips, and eyes up-looking mild, 250 Thus wording timidly among the fierce: "O Father, I am here the simplest voice, And all my knowledge is that joy is gone, And this thing woe crept in among our hearts, There to remain for ever, as I fear: I would not bode of evil, if I thought So weak a creature could turn off the help Which by just right should come of mighty Gods; Yet let me tell my sorrow, let me tell Of what I heard, and how it made me weep, 260 And know that we had parted from all hope. I stood upon a shore, a pleasant shore, Where a sweet clime was breathed from a land Of fragrance, quietness, and trees, and flowers. Full of calm joy it was, as I of grief; Too full of joy and soft delicious warmth; So that I felt a movement in my heart To chide, and to reproach that solitude With songs of misery, music of our woes; And sat me down, and took a mouthed shell 270 And murmur'd into it, and made melody-- O melody no more! for while I sang, And with poor skill let pass into the breeze The dull shell's echo, from a bowery strand Just opposite, an island of the sea, There came enchantment with the shifting wind, That did both drown and keep alive my ears. I threw my shell away upon the sand, And a wave fill'd it, as my sense was fill'd With that new blissful golden melody. 280 A living death was in each gush of sounds, Each family of rapturous hurried notes, That fell, one after one, yet all at once, Like pearl beads dropping sudden from their string: And then another, then another strain, Each like a dove leaving its olive perch, With music wing'd instead of silent plumes, To hover round my head, and make me sick Of joy and grief at once. Grief overcame, And I was stopping up my frantic ears, 290 When, past all hindrance of my trembling hands, A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune, And still it cried, 'Apollo! young Apollo! The morning-bright Apollo! young Apollo!' I fled, it follow'd me, and cried 'Apollo!' O Father, and O Brethren, had ye felt Those pains of mine; O Saturn, hadst thou felt, Ye would not call this too indulged tongue Presumptuous, in thus venturing to be heard."

So far her voice flow'd on, like timorous brook 300 That, lingering along a pebbled coast, Doth fear to meet the sea: but sea it met, And shudder'd; for the overwhelming voice Of huge Enceladus swallow'd it in wrath: The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks, Came booming thus, while still upon his arm He lean'd; not rising, from supreme contempt. "Or shall we listen to the over-wise, Or to the over-foolish, Giant-Gods? 310 Not thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all That rebel Jove's whole armoury were spent, Not world on world upon these shoulders piled, Could agonize me more than baby-words In midst of this dethronement horrible. Speak! roar! shout! yell! ye sleepy Titans all. Do ye forget the blows, the buffets vile? Are ye not smitten by a youngling arm? Dost thou forget, sham Monarch of the Waves, Thy scalding in the seas? What, have I rous'd 320 Your spleens with so few simple words as these? O joy! for now I see ye are not lost: O joy! for now I see a thousand eyes Wide glaring for revenge!"--As this he said, He lifted up his stature vast, and stood, Still without intermission speaking thus: "Now ye are flames, I'll tell you how to burn, And purge the ether of our enemies; How to feed fierce the crooked stings of fire, And singe away the swollen clouds of Jove, 330 Stifling that puny essence in its tent. O let him feel the evil he hath done; For though I scorn Oceanus's lore, Much pain have I for more than loss of realms: The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled; Those days, all innocent of scathing war, When all the fair Existences of heaven Came open-eyed to guess what we would speak:-- That was before our brows were taught to frown, Before our lips knew else but solemn sounds; 340 That was before we knew the winged thing, Victory, might be lost, or might be won. And be ye mindful that Hyperion, Our brightest brother, still is undisgraced-- Hyperion, lo! his radiance is here!"

All eyes were on Enceladus's face, And they beheld, while still Hyperion's name Flew from his lips up to the vaulted rocks, A pallid gleam across his features stern: Not savage, for he saw full many a God 350 Wroth as himself. He look'd upon them all, And in each face he saw a gleam of light, But splendider in Saturn's, whose hoar locks Shone like the bubbling foam about a keel When the prow sweeps into a midnight cove. In pale and silver silence they remain'd, Till suddenly a splendour, like the morn, Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps, All the sad spaces of oblivion, And every gulf, and every chasm old, 360 And every height, and every sullen depth, Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams: And all the everlasting cataracts, And all the headlong torrents far and near, Mantled before in darkness and huge shade, Now saw the light and made it terrible. It was Hyperion:--a granite peak His bright feet touch'd, and there he stay'd to view The misery his brilliance had betray'd To the most hateful seeing of itself. 370 Golden his hair of short Numidian curl, Regal his shape majestic, a vast shade In midst of his own brightness, like the bulk Of Memnon's image at the set of sun To one who travels from the dusking East: Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon's harp He utter'd, while his hands contemplative He press'd together, and in silence stood. Despondence seiz'd again the fallen Gods At sight of the dejected King of Day, 380 And many hid their faces from the light: But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes Among the brotherhood; and, at their glare, Uprose Iäpetus, and Creüs too, And Phorcus, sea-born, and together strode To where he towered on his eminence. There those four shouted forth old Saturn's name; Hyperion from the peak loud answered, "Saturn!" Saturn sat near the Mother of the Gods, In whose face was no joy, though all the Gods 390 Gave from their hollow throats the name of "Saturn!"

## BOOK III.

Thus in alternate uproar and sad peace, Amazed were those Titans utterly. O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes; For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire: A solitary sorrow best befits Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief. Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find Many a fallen old Divinity Wandering in vain about bewildered shores. Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp, 10 And not a wind of heaven but will breathe In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute; For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse. Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue, Let the rose glow intense and warm the air, And let the clouds of even and of morn Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills; Let the red wine within the goblet boil, Cold as a bubbling well; let faint-lipp'd shells, On sands, or in great deeps, vermilion turn 20 Through all their labyrinths; and let the maid Blush keenly, as with some warm kiss surpris'd. Chief isle of the embowered Cyclades, Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives green, And poplars, and lawn-shading palms, and beech, In which the Zephyr breathes the loudest song, And hazels thick, dark-stemm'd beneath the shade: Apollo is once more the golden theme! Where was he, when the Giant of the Sun Stood bright, amid the sorrow of his peers? 30 Together had he left his mother fair And his twin-sister sleeping in their bower, And in the morning twilight wandered forth Beside the osiers of a rivulet, Full ankle-deep in lilies of the vale. The nightingale had ceas'd, and a few stars Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle There was no covert, no retired cave Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves, 40 Though scarcely heard in many a green recess. He listen'd, and he wept, and his bright tears Went trickling down the golden bow he held. Thus with half-shut suffused eyes he stood, While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by With solemn step an awful Goddess came, And there was purport in her looks for him, Which he with eager guess began to read Perplex'd, the while melodiously he said: "How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea? 50 Or hath that antique mien and robed form Mov'd in these vales invisible till now? Sure I have heard those vestments sweeping o'er The fallen leaves, when I have sat alone In cool mid-forest. Surely I have traced The rustle of those ample skirts about These grassy solitudes, and seen the flowers Lift up their heads, as still the whisper pass'd. Goddess! I have beheld those eyes before, And their eternal calm, and all that face, 60 Or I have dream'd."--"Yes," said the supreme shape, "Thou hast dream'd of me; and awaking up Didst find a lyre all golden by thy side, Whose strings touch'd by thy fingers, all the vast Unwearied ear of the whole universe Listen'd in pain and pleasure at the birth Of such new tuneful wonder. Is't not strange That thou shouldst weep, so gifted? Tell me, youth, What sorrow thou canst feel; for I am sad When thou dost shed a tear: explain thy griefs 70 To one who in this lonely isle hath been The watcher of thy sleep and hours of life, From the young day when first thy infant hand Pluck'd witless the weak flowers, till thine arm Could bend that bow heroic to all times. Show thy heart's secret to an ancient Power Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones For prophecies of thee, and for the sake Of loveliness new born."--Apollo then, With sudden scrutiny and gloomless eyes, 80 Thus answer'd, while his white melodious throat Throbb'd with the syllables.--"Mnemosyne! Thy name is on my tongue, I know not how; Why should I tell thee what thou so well seest? Why should I strive to show what from thy lips Would come no mystery? For me, dark, dark, And painful vile oblivion seals my eyes: I strive to search wherefore I am so sad, Until a melancholy numbs my limbs; And then upon the grass I sit, and moan, 90 Like one who once had wings.--O why should I Feel curs'd and thwarted, when the liegeless air Yields to my step aspirant? why should I Spurn the green turf as hateful to my feet? Goddess benign, point forth some unknown thing: Are there not other regions than this isle? What are the stars? There is the sun, the sun! And the most patient brilliance of the moon! And stars by thousands! Point me out the way To any one particular beauteous star, 100 And I will flit into it with my lyre, And make its silvery splendour pant with bliss. I have heard the cloudy thunder: Where is power? Whose hand, whose essence, what divinity Makes this alarum in the elements, While I here idle listen on the shores In fearless yet in aching ignorance? O tell me, lonely Goddess, by thy harp, That waileth every morn and eventide, Tell me why thus I rave, about these groves! 110 Mute thou remainest--Mute! yet I can read A wondrous lesson in thy silent face: Knowledge enormous makes a God of me. Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, Majesties, sovran voices, agonies, Creations and destroyings, all at once Pour into the wide hollows of my brain, And deify me, as if some blithe wine Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk, And so become immortal."--Thus the God, 120 While his enkindled eyes, with level glance Beneath his white soft temples, stedfast kept Trembling with light upon Mnemosyne. Soon wild commotions shook him, and made flush All the immortal fairness of his limbs; Most like the struggle at the gate of death; Or liker still to one who should take leave Of pale immortal death, and with a pang As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse Die into life: so young Apollo anguish'd: 130 His very hair, his golden tresses famed Kept undulation round his eager neck. During the pain Mnemosyne upheld Her arms as one who prophesied.--At length Apollo shriek'd;--and lo! from all his limbs Celestial * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE END.

NOTE.

PAGE 184, l. 310. over-foolish, Giant-Gods? _MS._: over-foolish giant, Gods? _1820._

NOTES.

ADVERTISEMENT.

PAGE 2. See Introduction to _Hyperion_, p. 245.

INTRODUCTION TO LAMIA.

_Lamia_, like _Endymion_, is written in the heroic couplet, but the difference in style is very marked. The influence of Dryden's narrative-poems (his translations from Boccaccio and Chaucer) is clearly traceable in the metre, style, and construction of the later poem. Like Dryden, Keats now makes frequent use of the Alexandrine, or 6-foot line, and of the triplet. He has also restrained the exuberance of his language and gained force, whilst in imaginative power and felicity of diction he surpasses anything of which Dryden was capable. The flaws in his style are mainly due to carelessness in the rimes and some questionable coining of words. He also occasionally lapses into the vulgarity and triviality which marred certain of his early poems.

The best he gained from his study of Dryden's _Fables_, a debt perhaps to Chaucer rather than to Dryden, was a notable advance in constructive power. In _Lamia_ he shows a very much greater sense of proportion and power of selection than in his earlier work. There is, as it were, more light and shade.

Thus we find that whenever the occasion demands it his style rises to supreme force and beauty. The metamorphosis of the serpent, the entry of Lamia and Lycius into Corinth, the building by Lamia of the Fairy Hall, and her final withering under the eye of Apollonius--these are the most important points in the story, and the passages in which they are described are also the most striking in the poem.

The allegorical meaning of the story seems to be, that it is fatal to attempt to separate the sensuous and emotional life from the life of reason. Philosophy alone is cold and destructive, but the pleasures of the senses alone are unreal and unsatisfying. The man who attempts such a divorce between the two parts of his nature will fail miserably as did Lycius, who, unable permanently to exclude reason, was compelled to face the death of his illusions, and could not, himself, survive them.

Of the poem Keats himself says, writing to his brother in September, 1819: 'I have been reading over a part of a short poem I have composed lately, called _Lamia_, and I am certain there is that sort of fire in it that must take hold of people some way; give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensation--what they want is a sensation of some sort.' But to the greatest of Keats's critics, Charles Lamb, the poem appealed somewhat differently, for he writes, 'More exuberantly rich in imagery and painting [than _Isabella_] is the story of _Lamia_. It is of as gorgeous stuff as ever romance was composed of,' and, after enumerating the most striking pictures in the poem, he adds, '[these] are all that fairy-land can do for us.' _Lamia_ struck his imagination, but his heart was given to _Isabella_.

NOTES ON LAMIA.

## PART I.

PAGE 3. ll. 1-6. _before the faery broods . . . lawns_, i.e. before mediaeval fairy-lore had superseded classical mythology.

l. 2. _Satyr_, a horned and goat-legged demi-god of the woods.

l. 5. _Dryads_, wood-nymphs, who lived in trees. The life of each terminated with that of the tree over which she presided. Cf. Landor's 'Hamadryad'.

l. 5. _Fauns._ The Roman name corresponding to the Greek Satyr.

l. 7. _Hermes_, or Mercury, the messenger of the Gods. He is always represented with winged shoes, a winged helmet, and a winged staff, bound about with living serpents.

PAGE 4. l. 15. _Tritons_, sea-gods, half-man, half-fish. Cf. Wordsworth, 'Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn' (Sonnet--'The World is too much with us').

l. 19. _unknown to any Muse_, beyond the imagination of any poet.

PAGE 5. l. 28. _passion new._ He has often before been to earth on similar errands. Cf. _ever-smitten_, l. 7, also ll. 80-93.

l. 42. _dove-footed._ Cf. note on l. 7.

PAGE 6. l. 46. _cirque-couchant_, lying twisted into a circle. Cf. _wreathed tomb_, l. 38.

l. 47. _gordian_, knotted, from the famous knot in the harness of Gordius, King of Phrygia, which only the conqueror of the world was to be able to untie. Alexander cut it with his sword. Cf. _Henry V_, I. i. 46.

l. 58. _Ariadne's tiar._ Ariadne was a nymph beloved of Bacchus, the god of wine. He gave her a crown of seven stars, which, after her death, was made into a constellation. Keats has, no doubt, in his mind Titian's picture of Bacchus and Ariadne in the National Gallery. Cf. _Ode to Sorrow_, _Endymion_.

PAGE 7. l. 63. _As Proserpine . . . air._ Proserpine, gathering flowers in the Vale of Enna, in Sicily, was carried off by Pluto, the king of the underworld, to be his queen. Cf. _Winter's Tale_, IV. iii, and _Paradise Lost_, iv. 268, known to be a favourite passage with Keats.

l. 75. _his throbbing . . . moan._ Cf. _Hyperion_, iii. 81.

l. 77. _as morning breaks_, the freshness and splendour of the youthful god.

PAGE 8. l. 78. _Phoebean dart_, a ray of the sun, Phoebus being the god of the sun.

l. 80. _Too gentle Hermes._ Cf. l. 28 and note.

l. 81. _not delay'd_: classical construction. See Introduction to Hyperion.

_Star of Lethe._ Hermes is so called because he had to lead the souls of the dead to Hades, where was Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. Lamb comments: '. . . Hermes, the _Star of Lethe_, as he is called by one of those prodigal phrases which Mr. Keats abounds in, which are each a poem in a word, and which in this instance lays open to us at once, like a picture, all the dim regions and their habitants, and the sudden coming of a celestial among them.'

l. 91. The line dances along like a leaf before the wind.

l. 92. Miltonic construction and phraseology.

PAGE 9. l. 98. _weary tendrils_, tired with holding up the boughs, heavy with fruit.

l. 103. _Silenus_, the nurse and teacher of Bacchus--a demigod of the woods.

PAGE 10. l. 115. _Circean._ Circe was the great enchantress who turned the followers of Ulysses into swine. Cf. _Comus_, ll. 46-54, and _Odyssey_, x.

PAGE 11. l. 132. _swoon'd serpent._ Evidently, in the exercise of her magic, power had gone out of her.

l. 133. _lythe_, quick-acting.

_Caducean charm._ Caduceus was the name of Hermes' staff of wondrous powers, the touch of which, evidently, was powerful to give the serpent human form.

l. 136. _like a moon in wane._ Cf. the picture of Cynthia, _Endymion_, iii. 72 sq.

l. 138. _like a flower . . . hour._ Perhaps a reminiscence of Milton's 'at shut of evening flowers.' _Paradise Lost_, ix. 278.

PAGE 12. l. 148. _besprent_, sprinkled.

l. 158. _brede_, embroidery. Cf. _Ode on a Grecian Urn_, v. 1.

PAGE 13. l. 178. _rack._ Cf. _The Tempest_, IV. i. 156, 'leave not a rack behind.' _Hyperion_, i. 302, note.

l. 180. This gives us a feeling of weakness and weariness as well as measuring the distance.

PAGE 14. l. 184. Cf. Wordsworth:

And then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils.

ll. 191-200. Cf. _Ode on Melancholy_, where Keats tells us that melancholy lives with Beauty, joy, pleasure, and delight. Lamia can separate the elements and give beauty and pleasure unalloyed.

l. 195. _Intrigue with the specious chaos_, enter on an understanding with the fair-looking confusion of joy and pain.

l. 198. _unshent_, unreproached.

PAGE 15. l. 207. _Nereids_, sea-nymphs.

l. 208. _Thetis_, one of the sea deities.

l. 210. _glutinous_, referring to the sticky substance which oozes from the pine-trunk. Cf. _Comus_, l. 917, 'smeared with gums of glutinous heat.'

l. 211. Cf. l. 63, note.

l. 212. _Mulciber_, Vulcan, the smith of the Gods. His fall from Heaven is described by Milton, _Paradise Lost_, i. 739-42.

_piazzian_, forming covered walks supported by pillars, a word coined by Keats.

PAGE 16. l. 236. _In the calm'd . . . shades._ In consideration of Plato's mystic and imaginative philosophy.

PAGE 17. l. 248. Refers to the story of Orpheus' attempt to rescue his wife Eurydice from Hades. With his exquisite music he charmed Cerberus, the fierce dog who guarded hell-gates, into submission, and won Pluto's consent that he should lead Eurydice back to the upper world on one condition--that he would not look back to see that she was following. When he was almost at the gates, love and curiosity overpowered him, and he looked back--to see Eurydice fall back into Hades whence he now might never win her.

PAGE 18. l. 262. _thy far wishes_, your wishes when you are far off.

l. 265. _Pleiad._ The Pleiades are seven stars making a constellation. Cf. Walt Whitman, 'On the beach at night.'

ll. 266-7. _keep in tune Thy spheres._ Refers to the music which the heavenly bodies were supposed to make as they moved round the earth. Cf. _Merchant of Venice_, V. i. 60.

PAGE 20. l. 294. _new lips._ Cf. l. 191.

l. 297. _Into another_, i.e. into the trance of passion from which he only wakes to die.

PAGE 21. l. 320. _Adonian feast._ Adonis was a beautiful youth beloved of Venus. He was killed by a wild boar when hunting, and Venus then had him borne to Elysium, where he sleeps pillowed on flowers. Cf. _Endymion_, ii. 387.

PAGE 22. l. 329. _Peris_, in Persian story fairies, descended from the fallen angels.

ll. 330-2. The vulgarity of these lines we may attribute partly to the influence of Leigh Hunt, who himself wrote of

The two divinest things the world has got-- A lovely woman and a rural spot.

It was an influence which Keats, with the development of his own character and genius, was rapidly outgrowing.

l. 333. _Pyrrha's pebbles._ There is a legend that, after the flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha cast stones behind them which became men, thus re-peopling the world.

PAGE 23. ll. 350-4. Keats brings the very atmosphere of a dream about us in these lines, and makes us hear the murmur of the city as something remote from the chief actors.

l. 352. _lewd_, ignorant. The original meaning of the word which came later to mean dissolute.

PAGE 24. l. 360. _corniced shade._ Cf. _Eve of St. Agnes_, ix, 'Buttress'd from moonlight.'

ll. 363-77. Note the feeling of fate in the first appearance of Apollonius.

PAGE 25. l. 377. _dreams._ Lycius is conscious that it is an illusion even whilst he yields himself up to it.

l. 386. _Aeolian._ Aeolus was the god of the winds.

PAGE 26. l. 394. _flitter-winged._ Imagining the poem winging its way along like a bird. _Flitter_, cf. flittermouse = bat.

## PART II.

PAGE 27. ll. 1-9. Again a passage unworthy of Keats's genius. Perhaps the attempt to be light, like his seventeenth-century model, Dryden, led him for the moment to adopt something of the cynicism of that age about love.

ll. 7-9. i.e. If Lycius had lived longer his experience might have either contradicted or corroborated this saying.

PAGE 28. l. 27. _Deafening_, in the unusual sense of making inaudible.

ll. 27-8. _came a thrill Of trumpets._ From the first moment that the outside world makes its claim felt there is no happiness for the man who, like Lycius, is living a life of selfish pleasure.

PAGE 29. l. 39. _passing bell._ Either the bell rung for a condemned man the night before his execution, or the bell rung when a man was dying that men might pray for the departing soul.

PAGE 31. ll. 72-4. _Besides . . . new._ An indication of the selfish nature of Lycius's love.

l. 80. _serpent._ See how skilfully this allusion is introduced and our attention called to it by his very denial that it applies to Lamia.

PAGE 32. l. 97. _I neglect the holy rite._ It is her duty to burn incense and tend the sepulchres of her dead kindred.

PAGE 33. l. 107. _blushing._ We see in the glow of the sunset a reflection of the blush of the bride.

PAGE 34. ll. 122-3. _sole perhaps . . . roof._ Notice that Keats only says 'perhaps', but it gives a trembling unreality at once to the magic palace. Cf. Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_:

With music loud and long I would build that dome in air.

PAGE 36. l. 155. _demesne_, dwelling. More commonly a domain. _Hyperion_, i. 298. _Sonnet_--'On first looking into Chapman's Homer.'

PAGE 38. l. 187. _Ceres' horn._ Ceres was the goddess of harvest, the mother of Proserpine (_Lamia_, i. 63, note). Her horn is filled with the fruits of the earth, and is symbolic of plenty.

PAGE 39. l. 200. _vowel'd undersong_, in contrast to the harsh, guttural and consonantal sound of Teutonic languages.

PAGE 40. l. 213. _meridian_, mid-day. Bacchus was supreme, as is the sun at mid-day.

ll. 215-29. Cf. _The Winter's Tale_, IV. iv. 73, &c., where Perdita gives to each guest suitable flowers. Cf. also Ophelia's flowers, _Hamlet_, IV. v. 175, etc.

l. 217. _osier'd gold._ The gold was woven into baskets, as though it were osiers.

l. 224. _willow_, the weeping willow, so-called because its branches with their long leaves droop to the ground, like dropping tears. It has always been sacred to deserted or unhappy lovers. Cf. _Othello_, IV. iii. 24 seq.

_adder's tongue._ For was she not a serpent?

l. 226. _thyrsus._ A rod wreathed with ivy and crowned with a fir-cone, used by Bacchus and his followers.

l. 228. _spear-grass . . . thistle._ Because of what he is about to do.

PAGE 41. ll. 229-38. Not to be taken as a serious expression of Keats's view of life. Rather he is looking at it, at this moment, through the eyes of the chief actors in his drama, and feeling with them.

PAGE 43. l. 263. Notice the horror of the deadly hush and the sudden fading of the flowers.

l. 266. _step by step_, prepares us for the thought of the silence as a horrid presence.

ll. 274-5. _to illume the deep-recessed vision._ We at once see her dull and sunken eyes.

PAGE 45. l. 301. _perceant_, piercing--a Spenserian word.

INTRODUCTION TO ISABELLA AND THE EVE OF ST. AGNES

In _Lamia_ and _Hyperion_, as in _Endymion_, we find Keats inspired by classic story, though the inspiration in each case came to him through Elizabethan writers. Here, on the other hand, mediaeval legend is his inspiration; the 'faery broods' have driven 'nymph and satyr from the prosperous woods'. Akin to the Greeks as he was in spirit, in his instinctive personification of the lovely manifestations of nature, his style and method were really more naturally suited to the portrayal of mediaeval scenes, where he found the richness and warmth of colour in which his soul delighted.

The story of _Isabella_ he took from Boccaccio, an Italian writer of the fourteenth century, whose _Decameron_, a collection of one hundred stories, has been a store-house of plots for English writers. By Boccaccio the tale is very shortly and simply told, being evidently interesting to him mainly for its plot. Keats was attracted to it not so much by the action as by the passion involved, so that his enlargement of it means little elaboration of incident, but very much more dwelling on the psychological aspect. That is to say, he does not care so much what happens, as what the personages of the poem think and feel.

Thus we see that the main incident of the story, the murder of Lorenzo, is passed over in a line--'Thus was Lorenzo slain and buried in,' the next line, 'There, in that forest, did his great love cease,' bringing us back at once from the physical reality of the murder to the thought of his love, which is to Keats the central fact of the story.

In the delineation of Isabella, her first tender passion of love, her agony of apprehension giving way to dull despair, her sudden wakening to a brief period of frenzied action, described in stanzas of incomparable dramatic force, and the 'peace' which followed when she

Forgot the stars, the moon, the sun, And she forgot the blue above the trees, And she forgot the dells where waters run, And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; She had no knowledge when the day was done, And the new morn she saw not--

culminating in the piteous death 'too lone and incomplete'--in the delineation of all this Keats shows supreme power and insight.

In the conception, too, of the tragic loneliness of Lorenzo's ghost we feel that nothing could be changed, added, or taken away.

Not quite equally happy are the descriptions of the cruel brothers, and of Lorenzo as the young lover. There is a tendency to exaggerate both their inhumanity and his gentleness, for purposes of contrast, which weakens where it would give strength.

_The Eve of St. Agnes_, founded on a popular mediaeval legend, not being a tragedy like _Isabella_, cannot be expected to rival it in depth and intensity; but in every other poetic quality it equals, where it does not surpass, the former poem.

To be specially noted is the skilful use which Keats here makes of contrast--between the cruel cold without and the warm love within; the palsied age of the Bedesman and Angela, and the eager youth of Porphyro and Madeline; the noise and revel and the hush of Madeline's bedroom, and, as Mr. Colvin has pointed out, in the moonlight which, chill and sepulchral when it strikes elsewhere, to Madeline is as a halo of glory, an angelic light.

A mysterious charm is given to the poem by the way in which Keats endows inanimate things with a sort of half-conscious life. The knights and ladies of stone arouse the bedesman's shuddering sympathy when he thinks of the cold they must be enduring; 'the carven angels' '_star'd_' '_eager-eyed_' from the roof of the chapel, and the scutcheon in Madeline's window '_blush'd_ with blood of queens and kings'.

Keats's characteristic method of description--the way in which, by his masterly choice of significant detail, he gives us the whole feeling of the situation, is here seen in its perfection. In stanza 1 each line is a picture and each picture contributes to the whole effect of painful chill. The silence of the sheep, the old man's breath visible in the frosty air,--these are things which many people would not notice, but it is such little things that make the whole scene real to us.

There is another method of description, quite as beautiful in its way, which Coleridge adopted with magic effect in _Christabel_. This is to use the power of suggestion, to say very little, but that little of a kind to awaken the reader's imagination and make him complete the picture. For example, we are told of Christabel--

Her gentle limbs did she undress And lay down in her loveliness.

Compare this with stanza xxvi of _The Eve of St. Agnes_.

That Keats was a master of both ways of obtaining a romantic effect is shown by his _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_, considered by some people his masterpiece, where the rich detail of _The Eve of St. Agnes_ is replaced by reserve and suggestion.

As the poem was not included in the volume published in 1820, it is given here.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI.

Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the Lake And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms So haggard, and so woe begone? The Squirrel's granary is full And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow With anguish moist and fever dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too.

I met a Lady in the Meads Full beautiful, a faery's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone, She look'd at me as she did love And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend and sing A Faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna dew, And sure in language strange she said I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream'd, Ah! Woe betide! The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill side.

I saw pale Kings, and Princes too, Pale warriors, death pale were they all; They cried, La belle dame sans merci, Thee hath in thrall.

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke, and found me here On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here Alone and palely loitering; Though the sedge is withered from the Lake And no birds sing. . ..

NOTES ON ISABELLA.

_Metre._ The _ottava rima_ of the Italians, the natural outcome of Keats's turning to Italy for his story. This stanza had been used by Chaucer and the Elizabethans, and recently by Hookham Frere in _The Monks and the Giants_ and by Byron in _Don Juan_. Compare Keats's use of the form with that of either of his contemporaries, and notice how he avoids the epigrammatic close, telling in satire and mock-heroic, but inappropriate to a serious and romantic poem.

PAGE 49. l. 2. _palmer_, pilgrim. As the pilgrim seeks for a shrine where, through the patron saint, he may worship God, so Lorenzo needs a woman to worship, through whom he may worship Love.

PAGE 50. l. 21. _constant as her vespers_, as often as she said her evening-prayers.

PAGE 51. l. 34. _within . . . domain_, where it should, naturally, have been rosy.

PAGE 52. l. 46. _Fever'd . . . bridge._ Made his sense of her worth more passionate.

ll. 51-2. _wed To every symbol._ Able to read every sign.

PAGE 53. l. 62. _fear_, make afraid. So used by Shakespeare: e.g. 'Fear boys with bugs,' _Taming of the Shrew_, I. ii. 211.

l. 64. _shrive_, confess. As the pilgrim cannot be at peace till he has confessed his sins and received absolution, so Lorenzo feels the necessity of confessing his love.

PAGE 54. ll. 81-2. _before the dusk . . . veil._ A vivid picture of the twilight time, after sunset, but before it is dark enough for the stars to shine brightly.

ll. 83-4. The repetition of the same words helps us to feel the unchanging nature of their devotion and joy in one another.

PAGE 55. l. 91. _in fee_, in payment for their trouble.

l. 95. _Theseus' spouse._ Ariadne, who was deserted by Theseus after having saved his life and left her home for him. _Odyssey_, xi. 321-5.

l. 99. _Dido._ Queen of Carthage, whom Aeneas, in his wanderings, wooed and would have married, but the Gods bade him leave her.

_silent . . . undergrove._ When Aeneas saw Dido in Hades, amongst those who had died for love, he spoke to her pityingly. But she answered him not a word, turning from him into the grove to Lychaeus, her former husband, who comforted her. Vergil, _Aeneid_, Bk. VI, l. 450 ff.

l. 103. _almsmen_, receivers of alms, since they take honey from the flowers.

PAGE 56. l. 107. _swelt_, faint. Cf. Chaucer, _Troilus and Cressida_, iii. 347.

l. 109. _proud-quiver'd_, proudly girt with quivers of arrows.

l. 112. _rich-ored driftings._ The sand of the river in which gold was to be found.

PAGE 57. l. 124. _lazar_, leper, or any wretched beggar; from the parable of Dives and Lazarus.

_stairs_, steps on which they sat to beg.

l. 125. _red-lin'd accounts_, vividly picturing their neat account-books, and at the same time, perhaps, suggesting the human blood for which their accumulation of wealth was responsible.

l. 130. _gainful cowardice._ A telling expression for the dread of loss which haunts so many wealthy people.

l. 133. _hawks . . . forests._ As a hawk pounces on its prey, so they fell on the trading-vessels which put into port.

ll. 133-4. _the untired . . . lies._ They were always ready for any dishonourable transaction by which money might be made.

l. 134. _ducats._ Italian pieces of money worth about 4_s._ 4_d._ Cf. Shylock, _Merchant of Venice_, II. vii. 15, 'My ducats.'

l. 135. _Quick . . . away._ They would undertake to fleece unsuspecting strangers in their town.

PAGE 58. l. 137. _ledger-men._ As if they only lived in their account-books. Cf. l. 142.

l. 140. _Hot Egypt's pest_, the plague of Egypt.

ll. 145-52. As in _Lycidas_ Milton apologizes for the introduction of his attack on the Church, so Keats apologizes for the introduction of this outburst of indignation against cruel and dishonourable dealers, which he feels is unsuited to the tender and pitiful story.

l. 150. _ghittern_, an instrument like a guitar, strung with wire.

PAGE 59. ll. 153-60. Keats wants to make it clear that he is not trying to surpass Boccaccio, but to give him currency amongst English-speaking people.

l. 159. _stead thee_, do thee service.

l. 168. _olive-trees._ In which (through the oil they yield) a great part of the wealth of the Italians lies.

PAGE 60. l. 174. _Cut . . . bone._ This is not only a vivid way of describing the banishment of all their natural pity. It also, by the metaphor used, gives us a sort of premonitory shudder as at Lorenzo's death. Indeed, in that moment the murder is, to all intents and purposes, done. In stanza xxvii they are described as riding 'with their murder'd man'.

PAGE 61. ll. 187-8. _ere . . . eglantine._ The sun, drying up the dew drop by drop from the sweet-briar is pictured as passing beads along a string, as the Roman Catholics do when they say their prayers.

PAGE 62. l. 209. _their . . . man._ Cf. l. 174, note. Notice the extraordinary vividness of the picture here--the quiet rural scene and the intrusion of human passion with the reflection in the clear water of the pale murderers, sick with suspense, and the unsuspecting victim, full of glowing life.

l. 212. _bream_, a kind of fish found in lakes and deep water. Obviously Keats was not an angler.

_freshets_, little streams of fresh water.

PAGE 63. l. 217. Notice the reticence with which the mere fact of the murder is stated--no details given. Keats wants the prevailing feeling to be one of pity rather than of horror.

ll. 219-20. _Ah . . . loneliness._ We perpetually come upon this old belief--that the souls of the murdered cannot rest in peace. Cf. _Hamlet_, I. v. 8, &c.

l. 221. _break-covert . . . sin._ The blood-hounds employed for tracking down a murderer will find him under any concealment, and never rest till he is found. So restless is the soul of the victim.

l. 222. _They . . . water._ That water which had reflected the three faces as they went across.

_tease_, torment.

l. 223. _convulsed spur_, they spurred their horses violently and uncertainly, scarce knowing what they did.

l. 224. _Each richer . . . murderer._ This is what they have gained by their deed--the guilt of murder--that is all.

l. 229. _stifling_: partly literal, since the widow's weed is close-wrapping and voluminous--partly metaphorical, since the acceptance of fate stifles complaint.

l. 230. _accursed bands._ So long as a man hopes he is not free, but at the mercy of continual imaginings and fresh disappointments. When hope is laid aside, fear and disappointment go with it.

PAGE 64. l. 241. _Selfishness, Love's cousin._ For the two aspects of love, as a selfish and unselfish passion, see Blake's two poems, _Love seeketh only self to please_, and, _Love seeketh not itself to please_.

l. 242. _single breast_, one-thoughted, being full of love for Lorenzo.

PAGE 65. ll. 249 seq. Cf. Shelley's _Ode to the West Wind_.

l. 252. _roundelay_, a dance in a circle.

l. 259. _Striving . . . itself._ Her distrust of her brothers is shown in her effort not to betray her fears to them.

_dungeon climes._ Wherever it is, it is a prison which keeps him from her. Cf. _Hamlet_, II. ii. 250-4.

l. 262. _Hinnom's Vale_, the valley of Moloch's sacrifices, _Paradise Lost_, i. 392-405.

l. 264. _snowy shroud_, a truly prophetic dream.

PAGE 66. ll. 267 seq. These comparisons help us to realize her experience as sharp anguish, rousing her from the lethargy of despair, and endowing her for a brief space with almost supernatural energy and willpower.

PAGE 67. l. 286. _palsied Druid._ The Druids, or priests of ancient Britain, are always pictured as old men with long beards. The conception of such an old man, tremblingly trying to get music from a broken harp, adds to the pathos and mystery of the vision.

l. 288. _Like . . . among._ Take this line word by word, and see how many different ideas go to create the incomparably ghostly effect.

ll. 289 seq. Horror is skilfully kept from this picture and only tragedy left. The horror is for the eyes of his murderers, not for his love.

l. 292. _unthread . . . woof._ His narration and explanation of what has gone before is pictured as the disentangling of woven threads.

l. 293. _darken'd._ In many senses, since their crime was (1) concealed from Isabella, (2) darkly evil, (3) done in the darkness of the wood.

PAGE 68. ll. 305 seq. The whole sound of this stanza is that of a faint and far-away echo.

l. 308. _knelling._ Every sound is like a death-bell to him.

PAGE 69. l. 316. _That paleness._ Her paleness showing her great love for him; and, moreover, indicating that they will soon be reunited.

l. 317. _bright abyss_, the bright hollow of heaven.

l. 322. _The atom . . . turmoil._ Every one must know the sensation of looking into the darkness, straining one's eyes, until the darkness itself seems to be composed of moving atoms. The experience with which Keats, in the next lines, compares it, is, we are told, a common experience in the early stages of consumption.

PAGE 70. l. 334. _school'd my infancy._ She was as a child in her ignorance of evil, and he has taught her the hard lesson that our misery is not always due to the dealings of a blind fate, but sometimes to the deliberate crime and cruelty of those whom we have trusted.

l. 344. _forest-hearse._ To Isabella the whole forest is but the receptacle of her lover's corpse.

PAGE 71. l. 347. _champaign_, country. We can picture Isabel, as they 'creep' along, furtively glancing round, and then producing her knife with a smile so terrible that the old nurse can only fear that she is delirious, as her sudden vigour would also suggest.

PAGE 72. st. xlvi-xlviii. These are the stanzas of which Lamb says, 'there is nothing more awfully simple in diction, more nakedly grand and moving in sentiment, in Dante, in Chaucer, or in Spenser'--and again, after an appreciation of _Lamia_, whose fairy splendours are 'for younger impressibilities', he reverts to them, saying: 'To _us_ an ounce of feeling is worth a pound of fancy; and therefore we recur again, with a warmer gratitude, to the story of Isabella and the pot of basil, and those never-cloying stanzas which we have cited, and which we think should disarm criticism, if it be not in its nature cruel; if it would not deny to honey its sweetness, nor to roses redness, nor light to the stars in Heaven; if it would not bay the moon out of the skies, rather than acknowledge she is fair.'--_The New Times_, July 19, 1820.

l. 361. _fresh-thrown mould_, a corroboration of her fears. Mr. Colvin has pointed out how the horror is throughout relieved by the beauty of the images called up by the similes, e.g. 'a crystal well,' 'a native lily of the dell.'

l. 370. _Her silk . . . phantasies_, i.e. which she had embroidered fancifully for him.

PAGE 73. l. 385. _wormy circumstance_, ghastly detail. Keats envies the un-self-conscious simplicity of the old ballad-writers in treating such a theme as this, and bids the reader turn to Boccaccio, whose description of the scene he cannot hope to rival. Boccaccio writes: 'Nor had she dug long before she found the body of her hapless lover, whereon as yet there was no trace of corruption or decay; and thus she saw without any manner of doubt that her vision was true. And so, saddest of women, knowing that she might not bewail him there, she would gladly, if she could, have carried away the body and given it more honourable sepulture elsewhere; but as she might not do so, she took a knife, and, as best she could, severed the head from the trunk, and wrapped it in a napkin and laid it in the lap of the maid; and having covered the rest of the corpse with earth, she left the spot, having been seen by none, and went home.'

PAGE 74. l. 393. _Perséan sword._ The sword of sharpness given to Perseus by Hermes, with which he cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa, a monster with the head of a woman, and snaky locks, the sight of whom turned those who looked on her into stone. Perseus escaped by looking only at her reflection in his shield.

l. 406. _chilly_: tears, not passionate, but of cold despair.

PAGE 75. l. 410. _pluck'd in Araby._ Cf. Lady Macbeth, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,' _Macbeth_, V. ii. 55.

l. 412. _serpent-pipe_, twisted pipe.

l. 416. _Sweet Basil_, a fragrant aromatic plant.

ll. 417-20. The repetition makes us feel the monotony of her days and nights of grief.

PAGE 76. l. 432. _leafits_, leaflets, little leaves. An old botanical term, but obsolete in Keats's time. Coleridge uses it in l. 65 of 'The Nightingale' in _Lyrical Ballads_. In later editions he altered it to 'leaflets'.

l. 436. _Lethean_, in Hades, the dark underworld of the dead. Compare the conception of melancholy in the _Ode on Melancholy_, where it is said to neighbour joy. Contrast Stanza lxi.

l. 439. _cypress_, dark trees which in Italy are always planted in cemeteries. They stand by Keats's own grave.

PAGE 77. l. 442. _Melpomene_, the Muse of tragedy.

l. 451. _Baälites of pelf_, worshippers of ill-gotten gains.

l. 453. _elf_, man. The word is used in this sense by Spenser in _The Faerie Queene_.

PAGE 78. l. 467. _chapel-shrift_, confession. Cf. l. 64.

ll. 469-72. _And when . . . hair._ The pathos of this picture is intensified by its suggestions of the wife- and mother-hood which Isabel can now never know. Cf. st. xlvii, where the idea is still more beautifully suggested.

PAGE 79. l. 475. _vile . . . spot._ The one touch of descriptive horror--powerful in its reticence.

PAGE 80. l. 489. _on . . . things._ Her love and her hope is with the dead rather than with the living.

l. 492. _lorn voice._ Cf. st. xxxv. She is approaching her lover. Note that in each case the metaphor is of a stringed instrument.

l. 493. _Pilgrim in his wanderings._ Cf. st. i, 'a young palmer in Love's eye.'

l. 503. _burthen_, refrain. Cf. _Tempest_, I. ii. Ariel's songs.

NOTES ON THE EVE OF ST. AGNES.

See Introduction to _Isabella_ and _The Eve of St. Agnes_, p. 212.

St. Agnes was a martyr of the Christian Church who was beheaded just outside Rome in 304 because she refused to marry a Pagan, holding herself to be a bride of Christ. She was only 13--so small and slender that the smallest fetters they could find slipped over her little wrists and fell to the ground. But they stripped, tortured, and killed her. A week after her death her parents dreamed that they saw her in glory with a white lamb, the sign of purity, beside her. Hence she is always pictured with lambs (as her name signifies), and to the place of her martyrdom two lambs are yearly taken on the anniversary and blessed. Then their wool is cut off and woven by the nuns into the archbishop's cloak, or pallium (see l. 70).

For the legend connected with the Eve of the Saint's anniversary, to which Keats refers, see st. vi.

_Metre._ That of the _Faerie Queene_.

PAGE 83. ll. 5-6. _told His rosary._ Cf. _Isabella_, ll. 87-8.

l. 8. _without a death._ The 'flight to heaven' obscures the simile of the incense, and his breath is thought of as a departing soul.

PAGE 84. l. 12. _meagre, barefoot, wan._ Such a compression of a description into three bare epithets is frequent in Keats's poetry. He shows his marvellous power in the unerring choice of adjective; and their enumeration in this way has, from its very simplicity, an extraordinary force.

l. 15. _purgatorial rails_, rails which enclose them in a place of torture.

l. 16. _dumb orat'ries._ The transference of the adjective from person to place helps to give us the mysterious sense of life in inanimate things. Cf. _Hyperion_, iii. 8; _Ode to a Nightingale_, l. 66.

l. 22. _already . . . rung._ He was dead to the world. But this hint should also prepare us for the conclusion of the poem.

PAGE 85. l. 31. _'gan to chide._ l. 32. _ready with their pride._ l. 34. _ever eager-eyed._ l. 36. _with hair . . . breasts._ As if trumpets, rooms, and carved angels were all alive. See Introduction, p. 212.

l. 37. _argent_, silver. They were all glittering with rich robes and arms.

PAGE 86. l. 56. _yearning . . . pain_, expressing all the exquisite beauty and pathos of the music; and moreover seeming to give it conscious life.

PAGE 87. l. 64. _danc'd_, conveying all her restlessness and impatience as well as the lightness of her step.

l. 70. _amort_, deadened, dull. Cf. _Taming of the Shrew_, IV. iii. 36, 'What sweeting! all amort.'

l. 71. See note on St. Agnes, p. 224.

l. 77. _Buttress'd from moonlight._ A picture of the castle and of the night, as well as of Porphyro's position.

PAGE 88. ll. 82 seq. Compare the situation of these lovers with that of Romeo and Juliet.

l. 90. _beldame_, old woman. Shakespeare generally uses the word in an uncomplimentary sense--'hag'--but it is not so used here. The word is used by Spenser in its derivative sense, 'Fair lady,' _Faerie Queene_, ii. 43.

PAGE 89. l. 110. _Brushing . . . plume._ This line both adds to our picture of Porphyro and vividly brings before us the character of the place he was entering--unsuited to the splendid cavalier.

l. 113. _Pale, lattic'd, chill._ Cf. l. 12, note.

l. 115. _by the holy loom_, on which the nuns spin. See l. 71 and note on St. Agnes, p. 224.

PAGE 90. l. 120. _Thou must . . . sieve._ Supposed to be one of the commonest signs of supernatural power. Cf. _Macbeth_, I. iii. 8.

l. 133. _brook_, check. An incorrect use of the word, which really means _bear_ or _permit_.

PAGE 92. ll. 155-6. _churchyard . . . toll._ Unconscious prophecy. Cf. _The Bedesman_, l. 22.

l. 168. _While . . . coverlet._ All the wonders of Madeline's imagination.

l. 171. _Since Merlin . . . debt._ Referring to the old legend that Merlin had for father an incubus or demon, and was himself a demon of evil, though his innate wickedness was driven out by baptism. Thus his 'debt' to the demon was his existence, which he paid when Vivien compassed his destruction by means of a spell which he had taught her. Keats refers to the storm which is said to have raged that night, which Tennyson also describes in _Merlin and Vivien_. The source whence the story came to Keats has not been ascertained.

PAGE 93. l. 173. _cates_, provisions. Cf. _Taming of the Shrew_, II. i. 187:--

Kate of Kate Hall--my super-dainty Kate, For dainties are all cates.

We still use the verb 'to cater' as in l. 177.

l. 174. _tambour frame_, embroidery-frame.

l. 185. _espied_, spying. _Dim_, because it would be from a dark corner; also the spy would be but dimly visible to her old eyes.

l. 187. _silken . . . chaste._ Cf. ll. 12, 113.

l. 188. _covert_, hiding. Cf. _Isabella_, l. 221.

PAGE 94. l. 198. _fray'd_, frightened.

l. 203. _No uttered . . . betide._ Another of the conditions of the vision was evidently silence.

PAGE 95. ll. 208 seq. Compare Coleridge's description of Christabel's room: _Christabel_, i. 175-83.

l. 218. _gules_, blood-red.

PAGE 96. l. 226. _Vespers._ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 21, ll. 226-34. See Introduction, p. 213.

l. 237. _poppied_, because of the sleep-giving property of the poppy-heads.

l. 241. _Clasp'd . . . pray._ The sacredness of her beauty is felt here.

_missal_, prayer-book.

PAGE 97. l. 247. _To wake . . . tenderness._ He waited to hear, by the sound of her breathing, that she was asleep.

l. 250. _Noiseless . . . wilderness._ We picture a man creeping over a wide plain, fearing that any sound he makes will arouse some wild beast or other frightful thing.

l. 257. _Morphean._ Morpheus was the god of sleep.

_amulet_, charm.

l. 258. _boisterous . . . festive._ Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187.

l. 261. _and . . . gone._ The cadence of this line is peculiarly adapted to express a dying-away of sound.

PAGE 98. l. 266. _soother_, sweeter, more delightful. An incorrect use of the word. Sooth really means truth.

l. 267. _tinct_, flavoured; usually applied to colour, not to taste.

l. 268. _argosy_, merchant-ship. Cf. _Merchant of Venice_, I. i. 9, 'Your argosies with portly sail.'

PAGE 99. l. 287. Before he desired a 'Morphean amulet'; now he wishes to release his lady's eyes from the charm of sleep.

l. 288. _woofed phantasies._ Fancies confused as woven threads. Cf. _Isabella_, l. 292.

l. 292. '_La belle . . . mercy._' This stirred Keats's imagination, and he produced the wonderful, mystic ballad of this title (see p. 213).

l. 296. _affrayed_, frightened. Cf. l. 198.

PAGE 100. ll. 298-9. Cf. Donne's poem, _The Dream_:--

My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it.

l. 300. _painful change_, his paleness.

l. 311. _pallid, chill, and drear._ Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187, 258.

PAGE 101. l. 323. _Love's alarum_, warning them to speed away.

l. 325. _flaw_, gust of wind. Cf. _Coriolanus_, V. iii. 74; _Hamlet_, V. i. 239.

l. 333. _unpruned_, not trimmed.

PAGE 102. l. 343. _elfin-storm._ The beldame has suggested that he must be 'liege-lord of all the elves and fays'.

l. 351. _o'er . . . moors._ A happy suggestion of a warmer clime.

PAGE 103. l. 355. _darkling._ Cf. _King Lear_, I. iv. 237: 'So out went the candle and we were left darkling.' Cf. _Ode to a Nightingale_, l. 51.

l. 360. _And . . . floor._ There is the very sound of the wind in this line.

PAGE 104. ll. 375-8. _Angela . . . cold._ The death of these two leaves us with the thought of a young, bright world for the lovers to enjoy; whilst at the same time it completes the contrast, which the first introduction of the old bedesman suggested, between the old, the poor, and the joyless, and the young, the rich, and the happy.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, ODE ON A GRECIAN URN, ODE ON MELANCHOLY, AND TO AUTUMN.

These four odes, which were all written in 1819, the first three in the early months of that year, ought to be considered together, since the same strain of thought runs through them all and, taken all together, they seem to sum up Keats's philosophy.

In all of them the poet looks upon life as it is, and the eternal principle of beauty, in the first three seeing them in sharp contrast; in the last reconciling them, and leaving us content.

The first-written of the four, the _Ode to a Nightingale_, is the most passionately human and personal of them all. For Keats wrote it soon after the death of his brother Tom, whom he had loved devotedly and himself nursed to the end. He was feeling keenly the tragedy of a world 'where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies', and the song of the nightingale, heard in a friend's garden at Hampstead, made him long to escape with it from this world of realities and sorrows to the world of ideal beauty, which it seemed to him somehow to stand for and suggest. He did not think of the nightingale as an individual bird, but of its song, which had been beautiful for centuries and would continue to be beautiful long after his generation had passed away; and the thought of this undying loveliness he contrasted bitterly with our feverishly sad and short life. When, by the power of imagination, he had left the world behind him and was absorbed in the vision of beauty roused by the bird's song, he longed for death rather than a return to disillusionment.

So in the _Grecian Urn_ he contrasts unsatisfying human life with art, which is everlastingly beautiful. The figures on the vase lack one thing only--reality,--whilst on the other hand they are happy in not being subject to trouble, change, or death. The thought is sad, yet Keats closes this ode triumphantly, not, as in _The Nightingale_, on a note of disappointment. The beauty of this Greek sculpture, truly felt, teaches us that beauty at any rate is real and lasting, and that utter belief in beauty is the one thing needful in life.

In the _Ode on Melancholy_ Keats, in a more bitter mood, finds the presence, in a fleeting world, of eternal beauty the source of the deepest melancholy. To encourage your melancholy mood, he tells us, do not look on the things counted sad, but on the most beautiful, which are only quickly-fading manifestations of the everlasting principle of beauty. It is then, when a man most deeply loves the beautiful, when he uses his capacities of joy to the utmost, that the full bitterness of the contrast between the real and the ideal comes home to him and crushes him. If he did not feel so much he would not suffer so much; if he loved beauty less he would care less that he could not hold it long.

But in the ode _To Autumn_ Keats attains to the serenity he has been seeking. In this unparalleled description of a richly beautiful autumn day he conveys to us all the peace and comfort which his spirit receives. He does not philosophize upon the spectacle or draw a moral from it, but he shows us how in nature beauty is ever present. To the momentary regret for spring he replies with praise of the present hour, concluding with an exquisite description of the sounds of autumn--its music, as beautiful as that of spring. Hitherto he has lamented the insecurity of a man's hold upon the beautiful, though he has never doubted the reality of beauty and the worth of its worship to man. Now, under the influence of nature, he intuitively knows that beauty once seen and grasped is man's possession for ever. He is in much the same position that Wordsworth was when he declared that

Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings.

This was not the last poem that Keats wrote, but it was the last which he wrote in the fulness of his powers. We can scarcely help wishing that, beautiful as were some of the productions of his last feverish year of life, this perfect ode, expressing so serene and untroubled a mood, might have been his last word to the world.

NOTES ON THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

In the early months of 1819 Keats was living with his friend Brown at Hampstead (Wentworth Place). In April a nightingale built her nest in the garden, and Brown writes: 'Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass-plot under a plum, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feeling on the song of our nightingale. The writing was not well legible, and it was difficult to arrange the stanza on so many scraps. With his assistance I succeeded, and this was his _Ode to a Nightingale_.'

PAGE 107. l. 4. _Lethe._ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 81, note.

l. 7. _Dryad._ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 5, note.

PAGE 108. l. 13. _Flora_, the goddess of flowers.

l. 14. _sunburnt mirth._ An instance of Keats's power of concentration. The _people_ are not mentioned at all, yet this phrase conjures up a picture of merry, laughing, sunburnt peasants, as surely as could a long and elaborate description.

l. 15. _the warm South._ As if the wine brought all this with it.

l. 16. _Hippocrene_, the spring of the Muses on Mount Helicon.

l. 23. _The weariness . . . fret._ Cf. 'The fretful stir unprofitable and the fever of the world' in Wordsworth's _Tintern Abbey_, which Keats well knew.

PAGE 109. l. 26. _Where youth . . . dies._ See Introduction to the Odes, p. 230.

l. 29. _Beauty . . . eyes._ Cf. _Ode on Melancholy_, 'Beauty that must die.'

l. 32. _Not . . . pards._ Not wine, but poetry, shall give him release from the cares of this world. Keats is again obviously thinking of Titian's picture (Cf. _Lamia_, i. 58, note).

l. 40. Notice the balmy softness which is given to this line by the use of long vowels and liquid consonants.

PAGE 110. ll. 41 seq. The dark, warm, sweet atmosphere seems to enfold us. It would be hard to find a more fragrant passage.

l. 50. _The murmurous . . . eves._ We seem to hear them. Tennyson, inspired by Keats, with more self-conscious art, uses somewhat similar effects, e.g.:

The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.

_The Princess_, vii.

l. 51. _Darkling._ Cf. _The Eve of St. Agnes_, l. 355, note.

l. 61. _Thou . . . Bird._ Because, so far as we are concerned, the nightingale we heard years ago is the same as the one we hear to-night. The next lines make it clear that this is what Keats means.

l. 64. _clown_, peasant.

l. 67. _alien corn._ Transference of the adjective from person to surroundings. Cf. _Eve of St. Agnes_, l. 16; _Hyperion_, iii. 9.

ll. 69-70. _magic . . . forlorn._ Perhaps inspired by a picture of Claude's, 'The Enchanted Castle,' of which Keats had written before in a poetical epistle to his friend Reynolds--'The windows [look] as if latch'd by Fays and Elves.'

PAGE 112. l. 72. _Toll._ To him it has a deeply melancholy sound, and it strikes the death-blow to his illusion.

l. 75. _plaintive._ It did not sound sad to Keats at first, but as it dies away it takes colour from his own melancholy and sounds pathetic to him. Cf. _Ode on Melancholy_: he finds both bliss and pain in the contemplation of beauty.

ll. 76-8. _Past . . . glades._ The whole country speeds past our eyes in these three lines.

NOTES ON THE ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

This poem is not, apparently, inspired by any one actual vase, but by many Greek sculptures, some seen in the British Museum, some known only from engravings. Keats, in his imagination, combines them all into one work of supreme beauty.

Perhaps Keats had some recollection of Wordsworth's sonnet 'Upon the sight of a beautiful picture,' beginning 'Praised be the art.'

PAGE 113. l. 2. _foster-child._ The child of its maker, but preserved and cared for by these foster-parents.

l. 7. _Tempe_ was a famous glen in Thessaly.

_Arcady._ Arcadia, a very mountainous country, the centre of the Peloponnese, was the last stronghold of the aboriginal Greeks. The people were largely shepherds and goatherds, and Pan was a local Arcadian god till the Persian wars (c. 400 B.C.). In late Greek and in Roman pastoral poetry, as in modern literature, Arcadia is a sort of ideal land of poetic shepherds.

PAGE 114. ll. 17-18. _Bold . . . goal._ The one thing denied to the figures--actual life. But Keats quickly turns to their rich compensations.

PAGE 115. ll. 28-30. _All . . . tongue._ Cf. Shelley's _To a Skylark_:

Thou lovest--but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

ll. 31 seq. Keats is now looking at the other side of the urn. This verse strongly recalls certain parts of the frieze of the Parthenon (British Museum).

PAGE 116. l. 41. _Attic_, Greek.

_brede_, embroidery. Cf. _Lamia_, i. 159. Here used of carving.

l. 44. _tease us out of thought._ Make us think till thought is lost in mystery.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO PSYCHE.

In one of his long journal-letters to his brother George, Keats writes, at the beginning of May, 1819: 'The following poem--the last I have written--is the first and the only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have for the most part dashed 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. 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 Ode to Psyche_ follows.

The story of Psyche may be best told in the words of William Morris in the 'argument' to 'the story of Cupid and Psyche' in his _Earthly Paradise_:

'Psyche, a king's daughter, by her exceeding beauty caused the people to forget Venus; therefore the goddess would fain have destroyed her: nevertheless she became the bride of Love, yet in an unhappy moment lost him by her own fault, and wandering through the world suffered many evils at the hands of Venus, for whom she must accomplish fearful tasks. But the gods and all nature helped her, and in process of time she was re-united to Love, forgiven by Venus, and made immortal by the Father of gods and men.'

Psyche is supposed to symbolize the human soul made immortal through love.

NOTES ON THE ODE TO PSYCHE.

PAGE 117. l. 2. _sweet . . . dear._ Cf. _Lycidas_, 'Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear.'

l. 4. _soft-conched._ Metaphor of a sea-shell giving an impression of exquisite colour and delicate form.

PAGE 118. l. 13. _'Mid . . . eyed._ Nature in its appeal to every sense. In this line we have the essence of all that makes the beauty of flowers satisfying and comforting.

l. 14. _Tyrian_, purple, from a certain dye made at Tyre.

l. 20. _aurorean._ Aurora is the goddess of dawn. Cf. _Hyperion_, i. 181.

l. 25. _Olympus._ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 9, note.

_hierarchy._ The orders of gods, with Jupiter as head.

l. 26. _Phoebe_, or Diana, goddess of the moon.

l. 27. _Vesper_, the evening star.

PAGE 119. l. 34. _oracle_, a sacred place where the god was supposed to answer questions of vital import asked him by his worshippers.

l. 37. _fond believing_, foolishly credulous.

l. 41. _lucent fans_, luminous wings.

PAGE 120. l. 55. _fledge . . . steep._ Probably a recollection of what he had seen in the Lakes, for on June 29, 1818, he writes to Tom from Keswick of a waterfall which 'oozes out from a cleft in perpendicular Rocks, all fledged with Ash and other beautiful trees'.

l. 57. _Dryads._ Cf. _Lamia_, l. 5, note.

INTRODUCTION TO FANCY.

This poem, although so much lighter in spirit, bears a certain relation in thought to Keats's other odes. In the _Nightingale_ the tragedy of this life made him long to escape, on the wings of imagination, to the ideal world of beauty symbolized by the song of the bird. Here finding all real things, even the most beautiful, pall upon him, he extols the fancy, which can escape from reality and is not tied by place or season in its search for new joys. This is, of course, only a passing mood, as the extempore character of the poetry indicates. We see more of settled conviction in the deeply-meditative _Ode to Autumn_, where he finds the ideal in the rich and ever-changing real.

This poem is written in the four-accent metre employed by Milton in _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, and we can often detect a similarity of cadence, and a resemblance in the scenes imagined.

NOTES ON FANCY.

PAGE 123. l. 16. _ingle_, chimney-nook.

PAGE 126. l. 81. _Ceres' daughter_, Proserpina. Cf. _Lamia_, i. 63, note.

l. 82. _God of torment._ Pluto, who presides over the torments of the souls in Hades.

PAGE 127. l. 85. _Hebe_, the cup-bearer of Jove.

l. 89. _And Jove grew languid._ Observe the fitting slowness of the first half of the line, and the sudden leap forward of the second.

NOTES ON ODE

['BARDS OF PASSION AND OF MIRTH'].

PAGE 128. l. 1. _Bards_, poets and singers.

l. 8. _parle_, French _parler_. Cf. _Hamlet_, I. i. 62.

l. 12. _Dian's fawns._ Diana was the goddess of hunting.

INTRODUCTION TO LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.

The Mermaid Tavern was an old inn in Bread Street, Cheapside. Tradition says that the literary club there was established by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603. In any case it was, in Shakespeare's time, frequented by the chief writers of the day, amongst them Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Donne, and Shakespeare himself. Beaumont, in a poetical epistle to Ben Jonson, writes:

What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame, As if that any one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And has resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life.

NOTES ON LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.

PAGE 131. l. 10. _bold Robin Hood._ Cf. _Robin Hood_, p. 133.

l. 12. _bowse_, drink.

PAGE 132. ll. 16-17. _an astrologer's . . . story._ The astrologer would record, on parchment, what he had seen in the heavens.

l. 22. _The Mermaid . . . Zodiac._ The zodiac was an imaginary belt across the heavens within which the sun and planets were supposed to move. It was divided into twelve parts corresponding to the twelve months of the year, according to the position of the moon when full. Each of these parts had a sign by which it was known, and the sign of the tenth was a fish-tailed goat, to which Keats refers as the Mermaid. The word _zodiac_ comes from the Greek +zôdion+, meaning a little animal, since originally all the signs were animals.

INTRODUCTION TO ROBIN HOOD.

Early in 1818 John Hamilton Reynolds, a friend of Keats, sent him two sonnets which he had written 'On Robin Hood'. Keats, in his letter of thanks, after giving an appreciation of Reynolds's production, says: 'In return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they'll look pretty.' Then follow these lines, entitled, 'To J. H. R. in answer to his Robin Hood sonnets.' At the end he writes: 'I hope you will like them--they are at least written in the spirit of outlawry.'

Robin Hood, the outlaw, was a popular hero of the Middle Ages. He was a great poacher of deer, brave, chivalrous, generous, full of fun, and absolutely without respect for law and order. He robbed the rich to give to the poor, and waged ceaseless war against the wealthy prelates of the church. Indeed, of his endless practical jokes, the majority were played upon sheriffs and bishops. He lived, with his 'merry men', in Sherwood Forest, where a hollow tree, said to be his 'larder', is still shown.

Innumerable ballads telling of his exploits were composed, the first reference to which is in the second edition of Langland's _Piers Plowman_, c. 1377. Many of these ballads still survive, but in all these traditions it is quite impossible to disentangle fact from fiction.

NOTES ON ROBIN HOOD.

PAGE 133. l. 4. _pall._ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 268.

l. 9. _fleeces_, the leaves of the forest, cut from them by the wind as the wool is shorn from the sheep's back.

PAGE 134. l. 13. _ivory shrill_, the shrill sound of the ivory horn.

ll. 15-18. Keats imagines some man who has not heard the laugh hearing with bewilderment its echo in the depths of the forest.

l. 21. _seven stars_, Charles's Wain or the Big Bear.

l. 22. _polar ray_, the light of the Pole, or North, star.

l. 30. _pasture Trent_, the fields about the Trent, the river of Nottingham, which runs by Sherwood forest.

PAGE 135. l. 33. _morris._ A dance in costume which, in the Tudor period, formed a part of every village festivity. It was generally danced by five men and a boy in girl's dress, who represented Maid Marian. Later it came to be associated with the May games, and other characters of the Robin Hood epic were introduced. It was abolished, with other village gaieties, by the Puritans, and though at the Restoration it was revived it never regained its former importance.

l. 34. _Gamelyn._ The hero of a tale (_The Tale of Gamelyn_) attributed to Chaucer, and given in some MSS. as _The Cook's Tale_ in _The Canterbury Tales_. The story of Orlando's ill-usage, prowess, and banishment, in _As You Like It_, Shakespeare derived from this source, and Keats is thinking of the merry life of the hero amongst the outlaws.

l. 36. '_grenè shawe_,' green wood.

PAGE 136. l. 53. _Lincoln green._ In the Middle Ages Lincoln was very famous for dyeing green cloth, and this green cloth was the characteristic garb of the forester and outlaw.

l. 62. _burden._ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 503.

NOTES ON 'TO AUTUMN'.

In a letter written to Reynolds from Winchester, in September, 1819, Keats says: 'How beautiful the season is now--How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather--Dian skies--I never liked stubble-fields so much as now--Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.' What he composed was the Ode _To Autumn_.

PAGE 137. ll. 1 seq. The extraordinary concentration and richness of this description reminds us of Keats's advice to Shelley--'Load every rift of your subject with ore.' The whole poem seems to be painted in tints of red, brown, and gold.

PAGE 138. ll. 12 seq. From the picture of an autumn day we proceed to the characteristic sights and occupations of autumn, personified in the spirit of the season.

l. 18. _swath_, the width of the sweep of the scythe.

ll. 23 seq. Now the sounds of autumn are added to complete the impression.

ll. 25-6. Compare letter quoted above.

PAGE 139. l. 28. _sallows_, trees or low shrubs of the willowy kind.

ll. 28-9. _borne . . . dies._ Notice how the cadence of the line fits the sense. It seems to rise and fall and rise and fall again.

NOTES ON ODE ON MELANCHOLY.

PAGE 140. l. 1. _Lethe._ See _Lamia_, i. 81, note.

l. 2. _Wolf's-bane_, aconite or hellebore--a poisonous plant.

l. 4. _nightshade_, a deadly poison.

_ruby . . . Proserpine._ Cf. Swinburne's _Garden of Proserpine_.

_Proserpine._ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 63, note.

l. 5. _yew-berries._ The yew, a dark funereal-looking tree, is constantly planted in churchyards.

l. 7. _your mournful Psyche._ See Introduction to the _Ode to Psyche_, p. 236.

PAGE 141. l. 12. _weeping cloud._ l. 14. _shroud._ Giving a touch of mystery and sadness to the otherwise light and tender picture.

l. 16. _on . . . sand-wave_, the iridescence sometimes seen on the ribbed sand left by the tide.

l. 21. _She_, i.e. Melancholy--now personified as a goddess. Compare this conception of melancholy with the passage in _Lamia_, i. 190-200. Cf. also Milton's personifications of Melancholy in _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_.

PAGE 142. l. 30. _cloudy_, mysteriously concealed, seen of few.

INTRODUCTION TO HYPERION.

This poem deals with the overthrow of the primaeval order of Gods by Jupiter, son of Saturn the old king. There are many versions of the fable in Greek mythology, and there are many sources from which it may have come to Keats. At school he is said to have known the classical dictionary by heart, but his inspiration is more likely to have been due to his later reading of the Elizabethan poets, and their translations of classic story. One thing is certain, that he did not confine himself to any one authority, nor did he consider it necessary to be circumscribed by authorities at all. He used, rather than followed, the Greek fable, dealing freely with it and giving it his own interpretation.

The situation when the poem opens is as follows:--Saturn, king of the gods, has been driven from Olympus down into a deep dell, by his son Jupiter, who has seized and used his father's weapon, the thunderbolt. A similar fate has overtaken nearly all his brethren, who are called by Keats Titans and Giants indiscriminately, though in Greek mythology the two races are quite distinct. These Titans are the children of Tellus and Coelus, the earth and sky, thus representing, as it were, the first birth of form and personality from formless nature. Before the separation of earth and sky, Chaos, a confusion of the elements of all things, had reigned supreme. One only of the Titans, Hyperion the sun-god, still keeps his kingdom, and he is about to be superseded by young Apollo, the god of light and song.

In the second book we hear Oceanus and Clymene his daughter tell how both were defeated not by battle or violence, but by the irresistible beauty of their dispossessors; and from this Oceanus deduces 'the eternal law, that first in beauty should be first in might'. He recalls the fact that Saturn himself was not the first ruler, but received his kingdom from his parents, the earth and sky, and he prophesies that progress will continue in the overthrow of Jove by a yet brighter and better order. Enceladus is, however, furious at what he considers a cowardly acceptance of their fate, and urges his brethren to resist.

In Book I we saw Hyperion, though still a god, distressed by portents, and now in Book III we see the rise to divinity of his successor, the young Apollo. The poem breaks off short at the moment of Apollo's metamorphosis, and how Keats intended to complete it we can never know.

It is certain that he originally meant to write an epic in ten books, and the publisher's remark[245:1] at the beginning of the 1820 volume would lead us to think that he was in the same mind when he wrote the poem. This statement, however, must be altogether discounted, as Keats, in his copy of the poems, crossed it right out and wrote above, 'I had no part in this; I was ill at the time.'

Moreover, the last sentence (from 'but' to 'proceeding') he bracketed, writing below, 'This is a lie.'

This, together with other evidence external and internal, has led Dr. de Sélincourt to the conclusion that Keats had modified his plan and, when he was writing the poem, intended to conclude it in four books. Of the probable contents of the one-and-half unwritten books Mr. de Sélincourt writes: 'I conceive that Apollo, now conscious of his divinity, would have gone to Olympus, heard from the lips of Jove of his newly-acquired supremacy, and been called upon by the rebel three to secure the kingdom that awaited him. He would have gone forth to meet Hyperion, who, struck by the power of supreme beauty, would have found resistance impossible. Critics have inclined to take for granted the supposition that an actual battle was contemplated by Keats, but I do not believe that such was, at least, his final intention. In the first place, he had the example of Milton, whom he was studying very closely, to warn him of its dangers; in the second, if Hyperion had been meant to fight he would hardly be represented as already, before the battle, shorn of much of his strength; thus making the victory of Apollo depend upon his enemy's unnatural weakness and not upon his own strength. One may add that a combat would have been completely alien to the whole idea of the poem as Keats conceived it, and as, in fact, it is universally interpreted from the speech of Oceanus in the second book. The resistance of Enceladus and the Giants, themselves rebels against an order already established, would have been dealt with summarily, and the poem would have closed with a description of the new age which had been inaugurated by the triumph of the Olympians, and, in particular, of Apollo the god of light and song.'

The central idea, then, of the poem is that the new age triumphs over the old by virtue of its acknowledged superiority--that intellectual supremacy makes physical force feel its power and yield. Dignity and moral conquest lies, for the conquered, in the capacity to recognize the truth and look upon the inevitable undismayed.

Keats broke the poem off because it was too 'Miltonic', and it is easy to see what he meant. Not only does the treatment of the subject recall that of _Paradise Lost_, the council of the fallen gods bearing special resemblance to that of the fallen angels in Book II of Milton's epic, but in its style and syntax the influence of Milton is everywhere apparent. It is to be seen in the restraint and concentration of the language, which is in marked contrast to the wordiness of Keats's early work, as well as in the constant use of classical constructions,[247:1] Miltonic inversions[247:2] and repetitions,[247:3] and in occasional reminiscences of actual lines and phrases in _Paradise Lost_.[247:4]

In _Hyperion_ we see, too, the influence of the study of Greek sculpture upon Keats's mind and art. This study had taught him that the highest beauty is not incompatible with definiteness of form and clearness of detail. To his romantic appreciation of mystery was now added an equal sense of the importance of simplicity, form, and proportion, these being, from its nature, inevitable characteristics of the art of sculpture. So we see that again and again the figures described in _Hyperion_ are like great statues--clear-cut, massive, and motionless. Such are the pictures of Saturn and Thea in Book I, and of each of the group of Titans at the opening of Book II.

Striking too is Keats's very Greek identification of the gods with the powers of Nature which they represent. It is this attitude of mind which has led some people--Shelley and Landor among them--to declare Keats, in spite of his ignorance of the language, the most truly Greek of all English poets. Very beautiful instances of this are the sunset and sunrise in Book I, when the departure of the sun-god and his return to earth are so described that the pictures we see are of an evening and morning sky, an angry sunset, and a grey and misty dawn.

But neither Miltonic nor Greek is Keats's marvellous treatment of nature as he feels, and makes us feel, the magic of its mystery in such a picture as that of the

tall oaks Branch-charmèd by the earnest stars,

or of the

dismal cirque Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor, When the chill rain begins at shut of eve, In dull November, and their chancel vault, The heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.

This Keats, and Keats alone, could do; and his achievement is unique in throwing all the glamour of romance over a fragment 'sublime as Aeschylus'.

NOTES ON HYPERION.

## BOOK I.

PAGE 145. ll. 2-3. By thus giving us a vivid picture of the changing day--at morning, noon, and night--Keats makes us realize the terrible loneliness and gloom of a place too deep to feel these changes.

l. 10. See how the sense is expressed in the cadence of the line.

PAGE 146. l. 11. _voiceless._ As if it felt and knew, and were deliberately silent.

ll. 13, 14. Influence of Greek sculpture. See Introduction, p. 248.

l. 18. _nerveless . . . dead._ Cf. _Eve of St. Agnes_, l. 12, note.

l. 19. _realmless eyes._ The tragedy of his fall is felt in every feature.

ll. 20, 21. _Earth, His ancient mother._ Tellus. See Introduction, p. 244.

PAGE 147. l. 27. _Amazon._ The Amazons were a warlike race of women of whom many traditions exist. On the frieze of the Mausoleum (British Museum) they are seen warring with the Centaurs.

l. 30. _Ixion's wheel._ For insolence to Jove, Ixion was tied to an ever-revolving wheel in Hell.

l. 31. _Memphian sphinx._ Memphis was a town in Egypt near to which the pyramids were built. A sphinx is a great stone image with human head and breast and the body of a lion.

PAGE 148. ll. 60-3. The thunderbolts, being Jove's own weapons, are unwilling to be used against their former master.

PAGE 149. l. 74. _branch-charmed . . . stars._ All the magic of the still night is here.

ll. 76-8. _Save . . . wave._ See how the gust of wind comes and goes in the rise and fall of these lines, which begin and end on the same sound.

PAGE 150. l. 86. See Introduction, p. 248.

l. 94. _aspen-malady_, trembling like the leaves of the aspen-poplar.

PAGE 151. ll. 98 seq. Cf. _King Lear_. Throughout the figure of Saturn--the old man robbed of his kingdom--reminds us of Lear, and sometimes we seem to detect actual reminiscences of Shakespeare's treatment. Cf. _Hyperion_, i. 98; and _King Lear_, I. iv. 248-52.

l. 102. _front_, forehead.

l. 105. _nervous_, used in its original sense of powerful, sinewy.

ll. 107 seq. In Saturn's reign was the Golden Age.

PAGE 152. l. 125. _of ripe progress_, near at hand.

l. 129. _metropolitan_, around the chief city.

l. 131. _strings in hollow shells._ The first stringed instruments were said to be made of tortoise-shells with strings stretched across.

PAGE 153. l. 145. _chaos._ The confusion of elements from which the world was created. See _Paradise Lost_, i. 891-919.

l. 147. _rebel three._ Jove, Neptune, and Pluto.

PAGE 154. l. 152. _covert._ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 221; _Eve of St. Agnes_, l. 188.

ll. 156-7. All the dignity and majesty of the goddess is in this comparison.

PAGE 155. l. 171. _gloom-bird_, the owl, whose cry is supposed to portend death. Cf. Milton's method of description, 'Not that fair field,' etc. _Paradise Lost_, iv. 268.

l. 172. _familiar visiting_, ghostly apparition.

PAGE 157. ll. 205-8. Cf. the opening of the gates of heaven. _Paradise Lost_, vii. 205-7.

ll. 213 seq. See Introduction, p. 248.

PAGE 158. l. 228. _effigies_, visions.

l. 230. _O . . . pools._ A picture of inimitable chilly horror.

l. 238. _fanes._ Cf. _Psyche_, l. 50.

PAGE 159. l. 246. _Tellus . . . robes_, the earth mantled by the salt sea.

PAGE 160. ll. 274-7. _colure._ One of two great circles supposed to intersect at right angles at the poles. The nadir is the lowest point in the heavens and the zenith is the highest.

PAGE 161. ll. 279-80. _with labouring . . . centuries._ By studying the sky for many hundreds of years wise men found there signs and symbols which they read and interpreted.

PAGE 162. l. 298. _demesnes._ Cf. _Lamia_, ii. 155, note.

ll. 302-4. _all along . . . faint._ As in l. 286, the god and the sunrise are indistinguishable to Keats. We see them both, and both in one. See Introduction, p. 248.

l. 302. _rack_, a drifting mass of distant clouds. Cf. _Lamia_, i. 178, and _Tempest_, IV. i. 156.

PAGE 163. ll. 311-12. _the powers . . . creating._ Coelus and Terra (or Tellus), the sky and earth.

PAGE 164. l. 345. _Before . . . murmur._ Before the string is drawn tight to let the arrow fly.

PAGE 165. l. 349. _region-whisper_, whisper from the wide air.

## BOOK II.

PAGE 167. l. 4. _Cybele_, the wife of Saturn.

PAGE 168. l. 17. _stubborn'd_, made strong, a characteristic coinage of Keats, after the Elizabethan manner; cf. _Romeo and Juliet_, IV. i. 16.

ll. 22 seq. Cf. i. 161.

l. 28. _gurge_, whirlpool.

PAGE 169. l. 35. _Of . . . moor_, suggested by Druid stones near Keswick.

l. 37. _chancel vault._ As if they stood in a great temple domed by the sky.

PAGE 171. l. 66. _Shadow'd_, literally and also metaphorically, in the darkness of his wrath.

l. 70. _that second war._ An indication that Keats did not intend to recount this 'second war'; it is not likely that he would have forestalled its chief incident.

l. 78. _Ops_, the same as Cybele.

l. 79. _No shape distinguishable._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, ii. 666-8.

PAGE 172. l. 97. _mortal_, making him mortal.

l. 98. _A disanointing poison_, taking away his kingship and his godhead.

PAGE 173. ll. 116-17. _There is . . . voice._ Cf. i. 72-8. The mysterious grandeur of the wind in the trees, whether in calm or storm.

PAGE 174. ll. 133-5. _that old . . . darkness._ Uranus was the same as Coelus, the god of the sky. The 'book' is the sky, from which ancient sages drew their lore. Cf. i. 277-80.

PAGE 175. l. 153. _palpable_, having material existence; literally, touchable.

PAGE 176. l. 159. _unseen parent dear._ Coelus, since the air is invisible.

l. 168. _no . . . grove._ 'Sophist and sage' suggests the philosophers of ancient Greece.

l. 170. _locks not oozy._ Cf. _Lycidas_, l. 175, 'oozy locks'. This use of the negative is a reminiscence of Milton.

ll. 171-2. _murmurs . . . sands._ In this description of the god's utterance is the whole spirit of the element which he personifies.

PAGE 177. ll. 182-7. Wise as Saturn was, the greatness of his power had prevented him from realizing that he was neither the beginning nor the end, but a link in the chain of progress.

PAGE 178. ll. 203-5. In their hour of downfall a new dominion is revealed to them--a dominion of the soul which rules so long as it is not afraid to see and know.

l. 207. _though once chiefs._ Though Chaos and Darkness once had the sovereignty. From Chaos and Darkness developed Heaven and Earth, and from them the Titans in all their glory and power. Now from them develops the new order of Gods, surpassing them in beauty as they surpassed their parents.

PAGE 180. ll. 228-9. The key of the whole situation.

ll. 237-41. No fight has taken place. The god has seen his doom and accepted the inevitable.

PAGE 181. l. 244. _poz'd_, settled, firm.

PAGE 183. l. 284. _Like . . . string._ In this expressive line we hear the quick patter of the beads. Clymene has had much the same experience as Oceanus, though she does not philosophize upon it. She has succumbed to the beauty of her successor.

PAGE 184. ll. 300-7. We feel the great elemental nature of the Titans in these powerful similes.

l. 310. _Giant-Gods?_ In the edition of 1820 printed 'giant, Gods?' Mr. Forman suggested the above emendation, which has since been discovered to be the true MS. reading.

PAGE 185. l. 328. _purge the ether_, clear the air.

l. 331. As if Jove's appearance of strength were a deception, masking his real weakness.

PAGE 186. l. 339. Cf. i. 328-35, ii. 96.

ll. 346-56. As the silver wings of dawn preceded Hyperion's rising so now a silver light heralds his approach.

PAGE 187. l. 357. See how the light breaks in with this line.

l. 366. _and made it terrible._ There is no joy in the light which reveals such terrors.

PAGE 188. l. 374. _Memnon's image._ Memnon was a famous king of Egypt who was killed in the Trojan war. His people erected a wonderful statue to his memory, which uttered a melodious sound at dawn, when the sun fell on it. At sunset it uttered a sad sound.

l. 375. _dusking East._ Since the light fades first from the eastern sky.

## BOOK III.

PAGE 191. l. 9. _bewildered shores._ The attribute of the wanderer transferred to the shore. Cf. _Nightingale_, ll. 14, 67.

l. 10. _Delphic._ At Delphi worship was given to Apollo, the inventor and god of music.

PAGE 192. l. 12. _Dorian._ There were several 'modes' in Greek music, of which the chief were Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian. Each was supposed to possess certain definite ethical characteristics. Dorian music was martial and manly. Cf. _Paradise Lost_, i. 549-53.

l. 13. _Father of all verse._ Apollo, the god of light and song.

ll. 18-19. _Let the red . . . well._ Cf. _Nightingale_, st. 2.

l. 19. _faint-lipp'd._ Cf. ii. 270, 'mouthed shell.'

l. 23. _Cyclades._ Islands in the Aegean sea, so called because they surrounded Delos in a circle.

l. 24. _Delos_, the island where Apollo was born.

PAGE 193. l. 31. _mother fair_, Leto (Latona).

l. 32. _twin-sister_, Artemis (Diana).

l. 40. _murmurous . . . waves._ We hear their soft breaking.

PAGE 196. ll. 81-2. Cf. _Lamia_, i. 75.

l. 82. _Mnemosyne_, daughter of Coelus and Terra, and mother of the Muses. Her name signifies Memory.

l. 86. Cf. _Samson Agonistes_, ll. 80-2.

l. 87. Cf. _Merchant of Venice_, I. i. 1-7.

l. 92. _liegeless_, independent--acknowledging no allegiance.

l. 93. _aspirant_, ascending. The air will not bear him up.

PAGE 197. l. 98. _patient . . . moon._ Cf. i. 353, 'patient stars.' Their still, steady light.

l. 113. So Apollo reaches his divinity--by knowledge which includes experience of human suffering--feeling 'the giant-agony of the world'.

PAGE 198. l. 114. _gray_, hoary with antiquity.

l. 128. _immortal death._ Cf. Swinburne's _Garden of Proserpine_, st. 7.

Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands.

PAGE 199. l. 136. Filled in, in pencil, in a transcript of _Hyperion_ by Keats's friend Richard Woodhouse--

Glory dawn'd, he was a god.

FOOTNOTES:

[245:1] 'If any apology be thought necessary for the appearance of the unfinished poem of Hyperion, the publishers beg to state that they alone are responsible, as it was printed at their particular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was intended to have been of equal length with Endymion, but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding.'

[247:1]

e.g. i. 56 Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a god i. 206 save what solemn tubes . . . gave ii. 70 that second war Not long delayed.

[247:2]

e.g. ii. 8 torrents hoarse 32 covert drear i. 265 season due 286 plumes immense

[247:3]

e.g. i. 35 How beautiful . . . self 182 While sometimes . . . wondering men ii. 116, 122 Such noise . . . pines.

[247:4] e.g. ii. 79 No shape distinguishable. Cf. _Paradise Lost_, ii. 667.

i. 2 breath of morn. Cf. _Paradise Lost_, iv. 641.

HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

* * * * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

Line numbers are placed every ten lines. In the original, due to space constraints, this is not always the case.

On page 237, the note for l. 25 refers to "_Lamia_, i. 9, note". There is no such note.

The following words appear with and without hyphens. They have been left as in the original.

bed-side bedside church-yard churchyard death-bell deathbell demi-god demigod no-where nowhere re-united reunited sun-rise sunrise under-grove undergrove under-song undersong

The following words have variations in spelling. They have been left as in the original.

Æolian Aeolian Amaz'd Amazed branch-charmed Branch-charmèd faery fairy should'st shouldst splendor splendour

The following words use an oe ligature in the poems but not in the notes section.

Coeus Coelus Phoebe Phoebe's Phoebean Phoenician