Whose heart goes fluttering for you every. where,

Nor, when away you roam,

Dare keep its wretched home :

Love, love alone, has pains severe and
many:

Then, loveliest! keep me free
From torturing jealousy.

Ah! if you prize my subdued soul above The poor, the fading, brief pride of an hour;

Let none profane my Holy See of love,
Or with a rude hand break

The sacramental cake:

Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;

If not may my eyes close, Love! on their last repose.

To George and Georgiana Keats, April 18 or 19, 1819, Keats writes: "The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more - it is that one in which he meets with Paolo and Francesca. I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated about the whirling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined as it seemed for an age -and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm

even flowery tree-tops sprung up, and we rested on them, sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew us away again. I tried a sonnet upon it-there are fourteen lines, but nothing of what I felt in it—O that I could dream it every night.' Keats afterwards printed the sonnet in The Indicator for June 28, 1820.

As Hermes once took to his feathers light, When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and

slept

So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright

So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft

The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away ·
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove grieved a
day;

But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and
the flaw

Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips

I saw, Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

V

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

VI

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.

VII

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;

And sure in language strange she said'I love thee true.'

CHORUS OF FAIRIES

Inclosed in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, April 28, 1819, and printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.

FIRE, AIR, EARTH, AND WATER SALAMANDER, ZEPHYR, DUSKETHA, AND BREAMA

SALAMANDER

HAPPY, happy glowing fire!

ZEPHYR

Fragrant air! delicious light!

DUSKETHA

Let me to my glooms retire !

BREAMA

I to green-weed rivers bright!

SALAMANDER

Happy, happy glowing fire!
Dazzling bowers of soft retire,
Ever let my nourish'd wing,
Like a bat's, still wandering,
Faintly fan your fiery spaces,
Spirit sole in deadly places.
In unhaunted roar and blaze,
Open eyes that never daze,
Let me see the myriad shapes
Of men, and beasts, and fish, and apes,
Portray'd in many a fiery den,
And wrought by spumy bitumen.
On the deep intenser roof,
Arched every way, aloof,
Let me breathe upon my skies,
And anger their live tapestries;
Free from cold, and every care,
Of chilly rain, and shivering air.

ZEPHYR

Spright of Fire! away! away!
Or your very roundelay

Will sear my plumage newly budded
From its quilled sheath, and studded
With the self-same dews that fell
On the May-grown Asphodel.
Spright of Fire-away! away!

ΙΟ

20

BREAMA

Spright of Fire-away! away !
Zephyr, blue-eyed Faery, turn,
And see my cool sedge-shaded urn,
Where it rests its mossy brim
'Mid water-mint and cresses dim;
And the flowers, in sweet troubles,
Lift their eyes above the bubbles,
Like our Queen, when she would please
To sleep, and Oberon will tease.
Love me, blue-eyed Faery! true,
Soothly I am sick for
you.

ZEPHYR

Gentle Breama! by the first
Violet young nature nurst,
I will bathe myself with thee,
So you sometime follow me
To my home, far, far, in west,
Far beyond the search and quest
Of the golden-browed sun.
Come with me, o'er tops of trees,
To my fragrant palaces,
Where they ever floating are
Beneath the cherish of a star

Call'd Vesper, who with silver veil
Ever hides his brilliance pale,
Ever gently-drowsed doth keep
Twilight for the Fays to sleep.
Fear not that your watery hair
Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there;
Clouds of stored summer rains
Thou shalt taste, before the stains
Of the mountain soil they take,
And too unlucent for thee make.
I love thee, crystal Faery, true!
Sooth I am as sick for you!

SALAMANDER

Out, ye aguish Faeries, out!
Chilly lovers, what a rout
Keep ye with your frozen breath,
Colder than the mortal death.
Adder-eyed Dusketha, speak,
Shall we leave them, and go seek
In the earth's wide entrails old
Couches warm as theirs is cold?
O for a fiery gloom and thee,

30

48

50

60

70

ON FAME

'You cannot eat your cake and have it too.' - Proverb.

Sent with the next two to George and Georgiana Keats, April 30, 1819, and printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.

How fever'd is that man, who cannot look Upon his mortal days with temperate blood,

Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book, And robs his fair name of its maidenhood:

It is as if the rose should pluck herself,
Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom;
As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf,

Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom.

But the rose leaves herself upon the brier, For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed,

And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire,

The undisturbed lake has crystal space:
Why then should man, teasing the

world for grace,

Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed?

Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!

Make your best bow to her and bid adieu, Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

TO SLEEP

O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light,

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,

In midst of this thine hymn, my willing

eyes,

Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its dewy charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will
shine

Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;

Save me from curious conscience, that

still lords

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;

Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

ten

ODE TO PSYCHE

"The following poem the last I have writ- is the first and 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.' Keats to his Brother and Sister, April 30, 1819. He afterward included the poem in his volume, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems, 1820.