I must have one sweet Buss - I must and shall! Red Crag!- What! Madam, can you then repent Of all the toil and vigour you have spent make her feel. There lies beneath my east leg's northern heel A cave of young earth dragons; - well my boy Go thither quick and so complete my joy. Until ten thousand now no bigger than Of northern whale then for the tender prize O Muses, weep the rest The Lady fainted and he thought her dead; So pulled the clouds again about his head And went to sleep again; soon she was rous'd By her affrighted servants - - next day, hous'd Safe on the lowly ground she bless'd her fate That fainting fit was not delayed too late. -- But what surprised me above all is how the lady got down again. I felt it horribly. 'T was the most vile descent - shook me all to pieces. SHARING EVE'S APPLE Printed by Mr. Forman and assigned to 1818. Mr. Forman does not give his authority, save to say that the verses have been handed about in manuscript. O BLUSH not so! O blush not so! There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't, And a blush for having done it: There's a blush for thought and a blush for nought, And a blush for just begun it. O sigh not so! O sigh not so! For it sounds of Eve's sweet pippin; By these loosen'd lips you have tasted the pips And fought in an amorous nipping. Will you play once more at nice-cut-core, There's a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no, And a sigh for I can't bear it! O what can be done, shall we stay or run? O cut the sweet apple and share it! And the Moon is waxing warm To hear what I shall say. Moon! keep wide thy golden ears Hearken, Stars! and hearken, Spheres! I sing an infant's Lullaby, Listen, listen, listen, listen, Though the Rushes, that will make - Child, I see thee! Child, I've found thee See, see, the Lyre, the Lyre, Upon the little cradle's top It stares, it stares, it stares. It lifts its little hand into the flame -- WHEN they were come into the Faery's Court Ape, Dwarf, and Fool, why stand you gaping there, Burst the door open, quick or I declare time The dwarf with piteous face began to rhyme. Know you the three great crimes in Faeryland? He fell a snoring at a faery Ball. Yon poor Ape was a Prince, and he poor thing Picklock'd a faery's boudoir - now no king But ape -so pray your highness stay awhile, 'Tis sooth indeed, we know it to our sorrow — Persist and you may be an ape to-morrow.' While the Dwarf spake, the Princess, all for spite, Peel'd the brown hazel twig to lily white, Clench'd her small teeth, and held her lips apart, Try'd to look unconcern'd with beating heart. 'My darling Ape, I wont whip you to-day, Yet lingering by did the sad Ape forth draw At the close of a letter, April 17, 1819, to his sister Fanny, Keats writes: 'Mr. and Mrs. Dilke are coming to dine with us to-day [at Wentworth Place]. They will enjoy the country after Westminster. O there is nothing like fine weather, and health, and Books, and a fine country, and a contented Mind, and diligent habit of reading and thinking, and an amulet against the ennui—and, please heaven, a little claret wine cool out of a cellar a mile deep with a few or a good many ratafia cakes a rocky basin to bathe in, a strawberry bed to say your prayers to Flora in, a pad nag to go you ten miles or so; two or three sensible people to chat with; two or three spiteful folks to spar with; two or three odd fishes to laugh at and two or three numskulls to argue with-instead of using dumb bells on a rainy day.' A PARTY OF LOVERS 'Somewhere in the Spectator is related an account of a man inviting a party of stutterers and squinters to his table. It would please me more to scrape together a party of lovers not to dinner but to tea. There would be no fighting as among knights of old.' Keats to George and Georgiana Keats, September 17, 1819. The play on names seems to indicate some trifling reference to Keats's publishers of Taylor and Hessey. ized to refer this poem to John Keats. It is not impossible that it was written by Tom Keats in 1818. BROTHER belov'd if health shall smile again, Well may thy brow the placid glow retain Of sweet content and thy pleas'd eye may speak The conscious self applause, but should I seek To utter what this heart can feel, - Ah! vain Were the attempt! Yet kindest friends while o'er My couch ye bend, and watch with tenderness The being whom your cares could e'en restore, From the cold grasp of Death, say can you guess The feelings which these lips can ne'er express? Feelings, deep fix'd in grateful memory's store. ON OXFORD Charles Armitage Brown, writing to Henry Snook from Hampstead 24 March, 1820, says: 'Tom shall have one of his [Keats's] bits of comic verses, I met with them only yesterday, but they have been written long ago, it is a song on the City of Oxford.' The verses were also copied by Keats in a letter to Reynolds, given below on p. 269, as a satirical criticism of Wordsworth. THE Gothic looks solemn, Supports an old Bishop and Crozier ; With those bright languid segments green, and prick Those velvet ears - but pr'ythee do not stick Of many a maid has given thee many a maul, Still is that fur as soft as when the lists In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall. |