Yet if we could scorn'
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

KEATS.

Keats, born in 1796, died the year before Shelley, and, of course, at a still earlier age. But his poetry is younger than Shelley's in a degree beyond the difference of their years. He was richly endowed by nature with the poetical faculty, and all that he has written is stamped with originality and power; it is probable, too, that he would soon have supplied, as far as was necessary or important, the defects of his education, as indeed he had actually done to a considerable extent, for he was full of ambition as well as genius; but he can scarcely be said to have given assurance by anything he has left that he might in time have produced a great poetical work. The character of his mental constitution, explosive and volcanic, was adverse to every kind of restraint and cultivation; and his poetry is a tangled forest, beautiful indeed and glorious with many a majestic oak and sunny glade, but still with the unpruned, untrained

savagery everywhere, which it could not lose without ceasing altogether to be what it is. Keats's' Endymion' was published in 1817; his 'Lamia,'' Isabella,' The Eve of St. Agnes,' and 'Hyperion,' together in 1820. The latter volume also contained several shorter pieces, one of which of great beauty, the 'Ode to a Nightingale,' may serve as a companion to Shelley's' Skylark:'

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-ward 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.

O for a draught of vintage that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blissful 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:

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 grey 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.

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 in the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered 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.

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, covered up in leaves;
And mid-day's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eve.

Darkling I listen, and, for many a time,

I have been half in love with easeful Death,*
Called 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 seize upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still would'st thou sing, and I have ears in vain-
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;

*Shelley had probably this line in his ear, when in the Preface to his Adonais, which is an elegy on Keats, he wrote -describing "the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants" at Rome, where his friend was buried-"The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place."

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

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faerv lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my soul's 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 '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?

HUNT.

These last names can hardly be mentioned without suggesting another that of one who still remains among us, and it is to be hoped with yet many years before him in which to live and write. Leigh Hunt, the friend of Shelley and Keats, had attracted the attention of the world by much that he had done, both in verse and prose, long before the appearance of either. Whatever may be thought of some peculiarities in his manner of writing, nobody will now be found to dispute either the originality of his genius, or his claim to the title of a true poet. Into whatever he has written he has put a living soul; and much of what he has produced is brilliant either with wit and humour, or with tenderness and beauty. In some of the best of his pieces too there is scarcely to be found a trace of anything illegitimate or

doubtful in the matter of diction or versification.

Where,

for example, can we have more unexceptionable English than in the following noble version of the Eastern Tale ?

There came a man, making his hasty moan,
Before the Sultan Mahmoud on his throne,
And crying out-"My sorrow is my right,
And I will see the Sultan, and to-night."

66

Sorrow," said Mahmoud, " is a reverend thing;
I recognise its right, as king with king;

Speak on." "A fiend has got into my house,"
Exclaimed the staring man, "and tortures us;
One of thine officers-he comes, the abhorred,
And takes possession of my house, my board,
My bed:-I have two daughters and a wife,

And the wild villain comes, and makes me mad with life."
"Is he there now ?" said Mahmoud :-" No; he left
The house when I did, of my wits bereft ;

And laughed me down the street, because I vowed
I'd bring the prince himself to lay him in his shroud.
I'm mad with want-I'm mad with misery,

And, oh thou Sultan Mahmoud, God cries out for thee!"

The Sultan comforted the man, and said, "Go home, and I will send thee wine and bread," (For he was poor)" and other comforts. Go; And, should the wretch return, let Sultan Mahmoud know."

In three days' time, with haggard eyes and beard,
And shaken voice, the suitor re-appeared,

And said, "He's come."-Mahmoud said not a word,
But rose and took four slaves, each with a sword,

And went with the vexed man. They reach the place,
And hear a voice, and see a female face,

That to the window fluttered in affright:

"Go in," said Mahmoud, "and put out the light; But tell the females first to leave the room;

And, when the drunkard follows them, we come."

The man went in. There was a cry, and hark! A table falls, the window is struck dark:

VOL. VI.

K