And there shall be for thee all soft delight To let the warm Love in! SONNET In copying his 'Ode to Psyche,' Keats added the flourish Here endethe ye Ode to Psyche,' and went on 'Incipit altera soneta.' 'I have been endeavouring,' he writes, 'to discover a better Sonnet Stanza than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language over well from the pouncing rhymes - the other kind appears too elegiac and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a pleasing effect - I do not pretend to have succeeded- it will explain itself.' The sonnet was printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. IF by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd, And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness; Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd, Sandals more interwoven and complete To fit the naked foot of poesy; Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd By ear industrious, and attention meet; Misers of sound and syllable, no less Than Midas of his coinage, let us be Jealous of dead leaves in the bay-wreath crown: So, if we may not let the Muse be free, own. > ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE First published in the July, 1819, Annals of the Fine Arts and included in the 1820 volume. It was composed in May, 1819. In the Aldine edition of 1876 Lord Houghton prefixes this note: In the spring of 1819 a nightingale built her nest next Mr. Bevan's house. Keats took great pleasure in her song, and one morning took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass plot under a plum tree, where he remained between two and three hours. He then reached the house with some scraps of paper in his hand, which he soon put together in the form of this Ode.' Haydon in a letter to Miss Mitford says: "The death of his brother [in December, 1818] wounded him deeply, and it appeared to me from that hour he began to droop. He wrote his exquisite 'Ode to the Nightingale' at this time, and as we were one evening walking in the Kilburn meadows he repeated it to me, before he put it to paper, in a low, tremulous undertone which affected me extremely.' It may well be that Tom Keats was in the poet's mind when he wrote line 26. に to have of stanza of the highlight you! the 6 moment in to become like a fisan. THE POEMS OF 1818-1819 Forlorn! the very word is like a bell self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 't is buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:- do I wake or sleep? rasy open o LAMIAŁ 80 In the early summer of 1819 Keats felt the pressure of want of money and determined to go into the country, where he could live cheaply, and devote himself to writing. He went accordingly to Shanklin, Isle of Wight, and wrote thence to Reynolds, July 12, 'I have finished the Act [the first of Otho the Great], and in the interval of beginning the 2nd have proceeded pretty well with Lamia, finishing the first part which consists of about 400 lines. I have great hope of success [in this enterprise of maintenance], because I make use of my judgment more deliberately than I have yet done.' He continued to work at Lamia in connection with the tragedy, completing it in August at Winchester. It formed the leading poem in the volume Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems, published in 1820. Keats's own judgment of it is in his words: 'I am certain there is that sort of fire in it which must take hold of people in some way—give them either pleasant or unpleasant association.' He found the germ of the story in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, where it is credited to Philostratus. The passage will be found in the Notes. Lord Houghton says, on the authority of Brown, that Keats wrote the poem after much study of Dryden's versification. PART I UPON a time, before the faery broods Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, The ever-smitten Hermes empty left From high Olympus had he stolen light, ΙΟ And thus; while Hermes on his pinions lay, Like a stoop'd falcon ere he takes his prey: 'Fair Hermes! crown'd with feathers, fluttering light, 70 I had a splendid dream of thee last night: Nor even Apollo when he sang alone, I dreamt I saw thee, robed in purple flakes, Break amorous through the clouds, as morning breaks, And, swiftly as a bright Phœbean dart, Strike for the Cretan isle; and here thou |