And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, And on the stream whose inconstant bosom Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, And starry river-buds glimmered by, And around them the soft stream did glide and dance With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells And from this undefiled Paradise The flowers-as an infant's awakening eyes Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet Can first lull, and at last must awaken it When heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them, For each one was interpenetrated But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, Received more than all, it loved more than ever, Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver; For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; The light winds which, from unsustaining wings, The plumed insects swift and free, The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie The quivering vapours of dim noontide, Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide, In which every sound, and odour, and beam, Move as reeds in a single stream; Each and all like ministering angels were For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by, Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky. And when evening descended from heaven above, And the earth was all rest, and the air was all love, And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep, And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned In an ocean of dreams without a sound; (Only overhead the sweet nightingale Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant.) The Sensitive Plant was the earliest Up-gathered into the bosom of rest;' A sweet child weary of its delight, The feeblest and yet the favourite, Cradled within the embrace of night. [Forest Scenery.] [From Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude.] Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, But undulating woods, and silent well, And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming The wandering airs they faint On the dark and silent stream, The Champak odours fail Like sweet thoughts in a dream; The nightingale's complaint, It dies upon her heart, As I must do on thine, O, beloved as thou art! * Captain Medwin, a biographer of Shelley, and one of his lines, and to the Stanzas on Dejection. A young married lady, of noble connections and considerable fortune, visited the poet before he left London in 1814, and offered to relinquish all that belonged to her position, and share her future life and fortune with him. The poet, it is said, delivered himself with signal address and grace from this embarrassing situation; but the lady followed him to Geneva. On his return to England, he thought she had long forgotten him, but her constancy was untired. During his journey to Rome and most intimate friends, attaches a romantic origin to the above Naples, she once lodged with him at the same hotel, en route, and finally arrived at the latter city on the same day as him self. They met at Naples, and the lady told him of her wanderings, of which he had been previously ignorant-and at Naples she died. The perusal of Shelley's Queen Mab had inspired this infatuated attachment. John Keats. apprenticed to a surgeon. Most of his time, however, was devoted to the cultivation of his literary talents, which were early conspicuous. During his apprenticeship, he made and carefully wrote out a literal translation of Virgil's Eneid, and instructed himself also in some knowledge of Greek and Italian. One of his earliest friends and critics was Mr Leigh Hunt, who, being shewn some of his poetical pieces, was struck, he says, with the exuberant specimens of genuine though young poetry that were laid before him, and the promise of which was seconded by the fine fervid countenance of the writer. A volume of these juvenile poems was published in 1817. published his Endymion, a Poetic Romance, defective in many parts, but evincing rich though undisciplined powers of imagination. The poem was criticised, in a strain of contemptuous severity, by Mr John Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review; and such was the sensitiveness of the young poet In 1818 Keats truth.' The readers of poetry confirmed this judg- panting for distinction, and flattered by a few private friends-that the critique imbittered his existence. "The first effects,' says Shelley, are described to me to have resembled insanity, and it was by assiduous watching that he was restrained from effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and the usual process of consumption appears to have begun.' The process had begun, as was too soon apparent; but the disease was a family one, and would probably have appeared had no hostile criticism existed. Mr Monckton Milnes, Keats's biographer, states that the young poet profited by the attacks of the critics, their effect being 'to purify his style, correct his tendency to exaggeration, enlarge his poetical studies, and produce, among other improved efforts, that very Hyperion which called forth from Byron a eulogy as violent and unqualified as the former onslaught.' Byron had termed the juvenile poetry of Keats, the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.' Keats's poetry falling into the hands of Jeffrey, he criticised it in the Edinburgh Review, in a spirit of kindliness and just appreciation which formed a strong contrast to the criticism in the Quarterly. But this genial critique did not appear till 1820, too late to cheer the then dying poet. 'Mr Keats,' says the eloquent critic, 'is, we understand, still a very young man; and his whole works, indeed, bear evidence enough of the fact. They manifestly require, therefore, all the indulgence that can be claimed for a first attempt; but we think it no less plain that they deserve it; for they are flushed all over with the rich lights of fancy, and so coloured and bestrown with the flowers of poetry, that, even while perplexed and bewildered in their labyrinths, it is impossible to resist the intoxication of their sweetness, or to shut our hearts to the enchantments they so lavishly present. The models upon which he has formed himself in the Endymion, the earliest and by much the most considerable of his poems, are obviously the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher, and the Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson, the exquisite metres and inspired diction of which he has copied with great boldness and fidelity; and, like his great originals, has also contrived to impart to the whole piece that true rural and poetical air which breathes only in them and in Theocritus-which is at once homely and majestic, luxurious and rude, and sets before us the genuine sights, and sounds, and smells of the country, with all the magic and grace of Elysium. His subject has the disadvantage of being mythological; and in this respect, as well as on account of the raised and rapturous tone it consequently assumes, his poetry may be better compared his friend, who rendered his situation doubly unpleasant by perhaps to the Comus and the Arcades of Milton, of the violence of his passions, exhibited even towards him, so His intervals of which, also, there are many traces of imitation. The much that he might be judged insane. great distinction, however, between him and these the heir of what little Keats left behind him at Rome, has remorse, too, were poignantly bitter. I believe that Mr Severn, divine authors is, that imagination in them is only come into possession of very few manuscripts of his subordinate to reason and judgment, while, with friend. The poetical volume which was the inseparable comhim, it is paramount and supreme; that their orna-panion of Keats, and which he took for his most darling model ments and images are employed to embellish and in composition, was the Minor Poems of Shakspeare.' Byronrecommend just sentiments, engaging incidents, and natural characters, while his are poured out without measure or restraint, and with no apparent design but to unburden the breast of the author, and give vent to the overflowing vein of his fancy. There is no work from which a malicious critic could cull more matter for ridicule, or select more obscure, unnatural, or absurd passages. But we do not take that to be our office; and just beg leave, on the contrary, to say, that any one who, on this account, would represent the whole poem as despicable, must either have no notion of poetry or no regard to had almost risked his own life by unwearied attendance upon who thought the death of Keats a loss to our literature, and John Keats, who was killed off by one critique, condemned. The former was owing to the generous partialities of friendship, somewhat obtrusively displayed; the latter, in some degree, to resentment of that friendship, connected as it was with party politics and peculiar views of society as well as of poetry. In the one case his faults, and in the other his merits, were entirely overlooked. A few years dispelled these illusions and prejudices. Keats was a true poet. If we consider his extreme youth and delicate health, his solitary and interesting selfinstruction, the severity of the attacks made upon him by his hostile and powerful critics, and, above all, the original richness and picturesqueness of his conceptions and imagery, even when they run to waste, he appears to be one of the greatest of the young poets-resembling the Milton of Lycidas, or the Spenser of the Tears of the Muses. What easy, finished, statuesque beauty and classic expression, for example, are displayed in this picture of Saturn and Thea! [Saturn and Thea.] [From Hyperion.] Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, Along the margin sand large footmarks went But there came one, who with a kindred hand Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en I cannot say, "O wherefore sleepest thou?" As when, upon a tranced summer night, The antique grace and solemnity of passages like these must be felt by every lover of poetry. The chief defects of Keats are his want of distinctness and precision, and the carelessness of his style. There would seem to have been even affectation in his disregard of order and regularity; and he heaps up images and conceits in such profusion, that they often form grotesque and absurd combinations, which fatigue the reader. Deep feeling and passion are rarely given to young poets redolent of fancy and warm from the perusal of the ancient authors. The difficulty with which Keats had mastered the classic mythology gave it an undue importance in his mind: a more perfect knowledge would have harmonised its materials, and shewn him the beauty of chasteness and simplicity of style-the last but the greatest advantage of classic studies. In poets like Gray, Rogers, and Campbell, we see the ultimate effects of this taste; in Keats we have only the materials, unselected, and often shapeless. His imagination was prolific of forms of beauty and grandeur, but the judgment was wanting to symmetrise and arrange them, assigning to each its due proportion and its proper place. His fragments, however, are the fragments of true genius-rich, original, and various; and Mr Leigh Hunt is right in his opinion, that the poems of Keats, with all their defects, will be the 'sure companions in field and grove' of those who love to escape 'out of the strife of commonplaces into the haven of solitude and imagination.' One line in Endymion has become familiar as a 'household word' wherever the English language is spoken A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. [The Lady Madeline at her Devotions.] [From the Eve of St Agnes.] Out went the taper as she hurried in ; Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died: She closed the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air and visions wide: No uttered syllable, or, woe betide! But to her heart her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side; As though a tongueless nightingale should swell Her throat in vain, and die heart-stifled in her dell. |