In a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, dated February 14, 1819, Keats says that he means to send them in the next packet The Pot of Basil,' 'St. Agnes' Eve,' and 'if I should have finished it a little thing called "The Eve of St. Mark." He does not refer to the poem again directly, until writing from Winchester to the same, September 20, when he says: The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting. The palatine Vienna and the abbotine Winchester are equally interesting. Some time since I began a poem called "The Eve of St. Mark," quite in the spirit of town quietude. I think I will give you the sensation of walking about an old country town in a coolish evening. I know not whether I shall ever finish it. I will give it as far as I have gone.' The poem appears never to have been finished, and was published in this fragmentary form in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.

Mr. Forman gives an interesting extract from

UPON a Sabbath-day it fell;
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell,
That call'd the folk to evening prayer;
The city streets were clean and fair
From wholesome drench of April rains;
And, on the western window panes,
The chilly sunset faintly told
Of unmatured green valleys cold,
Of the green thorny bloomless hedge,
Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge,
Of primroses by shelter'd rills,
And daisies on the aguish hills.
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell:
The silent streets were crowded well
With staid and pious companies,
Warm from their fireside orat❜ries;
And moving, with demurest air,
To even-song, and vesper prayer.

10

a letter written him by Mr. Rossetti, which throws a possible light on the origin of the poem. He had been reading Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne, and writes: 'I should think it very conceivable - nay, I will say to myself highly probable and almost certain, — that the "Poem which I have in my head" referred to by Keats at page 106 was none other than the fragmentary "Eve of St. Mark." By the light of the extract, I judge that the heroine remorseful after trifling with a sick and now absent lover-might make her way to the minster-porch to learn his fate by the spell, and perhaps see his figure enter but not return.' The extract from Keats's letter is as follows: If my health would bear it, I could write a Poem which I have in my head, which would be a consolation for people in such a situation as mine. I would show some one in Love as I am, with a person living in such Liberty as you do.'

Perplex'd her with a thousand things,
The stars of Heaven, and angels' wings, 30
Martyrs in a fiery blaze,

Azure saints and silver rays,
Moses' breastplate, and the seven
Candlesticks John saw in Heaven,
The winged Lion of Saint Mark,

And the Covenantal Ark, With its many mysteries, Cherubim and golden mice.

Bertha was a maiden fair,
Dwelling in th' old Minster-square;
From her fireside she could see,
Sidelong, its rich antiquity,
Far as the Bishop's garden-wall;
Where sycamores and elm-trees tall,
Full-leaved, the forest had outstript,
By no sharp north-wind ever nipt,
So shelter'd by the mighty pile.
Bertha arose, and read awhile,
With forehead 'gainst the window-pane.
Again she tried, and then again,
Until the dusk eve left her dark
Upon the legend of St. Mark.
From plaited lawn-frill, fine and thin,
She lifted up her soft warm chin,
With aching neck and swimming eyes,
And dazed with saintly imag'ries.

All was gloom, and silent all,
Save now and then the still foot-fall
Of one returning homewards late,
Past the echoing minster-gate.
The clamorous daws, that all the day
Above tree-tops and towers play,
Pair by pair had gone to rest,
Each in its ancient belfry-nest,
Where asleep they fall betimes,
To music and the drowsy chimes.

All was silent, all was gloom, Abroad and in the homely room: Down she sat, poor cheated soul !

40

50

60

And struck a lamp from the dismal coal; 70
Lean'd forward, with bright drooping hair
And slant book, full against the glare.
Her shadow, in uneasy guise,
Hover'd about, a giant size,
On ceiling-beam and old oak chair,
The parrot's cage, and panel-square;

And the warm angled winter-screen,
On which were many monsters seen,
Call'd doves of Siam, Lima mice,
And legless birds of Paradise,
Macaw, and tender Avadavat,
And silken-furr'd Angora cat.
Untired she read, her shadow still
Glower'd about, as it would fill

The room with wildest forms and shades,
As though some ghostly queen of spades
Had come to mock behind her back,
And dance, and ruffle her garments black.
Untired she read the legend page,
Of holy Mark, from youth to age,
On land, on sea, in pagan chains,
Rejoicing for his many pains.
Sometimes the learned eremite,
With golden star, or dagger bright,
Referr❜d to pious poesies

Written in smallest crow-quill size
Beneath the text; and thus the rhyme
Was parcell'd out from time to time:
'Als writith he of swevenis,

80

99

100

Men han before they wake in bliss, Whanne that hir friendes thinke him bound

In crimped shroude farre under grounde; And how a litling child mote be

A saint er its nativitie,

Gif that the modre (God her blesse !)

Kepen in solitarinesse,

And kissen devoute the holy croce,
Of Goddes love, and Sathan's force,
He writith; and thinges many mo
Of swiche thinges I may not show.
Bot I must tellen verilie
Somdel of Saintè Cicilie,
And chieflie what he auctorethe
Of Sainte Markis life and dethe: '

At length her constant eyelids come
Upon the fervent martyrdom;
Then lastly to his holy shrine,
Exalt amid the tapers' shine
At Venice, -

I IC

The first mention of Hyperion in Keats's letters occurs in that written on Christmas day, 1818, to his brother and sister in America, in which he says: 'I think you knew before you left England that my next subject would be "the fall of Hyperion." I went on a little with it last night, but it will take some time to get into the vein again. I will not give you any extracts because I wish the whole to make an impression.' He speaks of it a week later as scarce begun.' Again, February 14, 1819, he writes to the same: 'I have not gone on with Hyperion for to tell the truth I have not been in great cue for writing lately — I must wait for the spring to rouse me up a little.' In August he told Bailey that he had been writing parts of Hyperion, but it is quite plain that he did little continuous work on it, but was drawn off by his tales and tragedy. From Winchester, September 22, 1819, he writes to Reynolds: 'I have given up Hyperion

there were too many Miltonic inversions in it - Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some lines from Hyperion, and put a mark to the false beauty proceeding from art, and one || to the true voice of feeling. Upon my soul 't was imagination - I cannot make the distinction- every now and then there is a Miltonic intonation but I cannot make the division properly.' From the silence regarding the poem in his after letters, it would appear that he left it at this stage.

--

That Keats designed a large epic in Hyperion, which was to be in ten books, is plain, but it is also tolerably clear that he abandoned his purpose, for he did not actually forbid the publication of the fragment, though it is doubtful if the whole reason for his action is given in the Publishers' Advertisement to the 1820 volume, containing the poem. 'If any apology be thought necessary,' it is there said, 'for the

appearance of the unfinished poem of Hyperion, the publishers beg to state that they alone are responsible, as it was printed at their particular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was intended to have been of equal length with Endymion, but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding.'

Keats's friend Woodhouse, in his interleaved and annotated copy of Endymion, says of Hyperion: The poem if completed would have treated of the dethronement of Hyperion, the former God of the Sun, by Apollo, and incidentally of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by Jupiter, etc., and of the war of the Giants for Saturn's reëstablishment, with other events, of which we have but very dark hints in the mythological poets of Greece and Rome.'

It is not impossible that besides the inertia produced by diminution of physical powers, another reason existed for Keats's failure to complete his poem. In the two full books which we have, he had stated so fully and explicitly the underlying thought in his interpretation of the myth that his interest in any delineation of a hopeless struggle might well have been unequal to the task. The speeches successively of Oceanus and Clymene which so enraged Enceladus were the masculine and feminine confessions that as their own supremacy over the antecedent chaos had been due to the law which made order expel disorder, so the supremacy of the new race of gods over them was due to the still further law

'That first in beauty should be first in might.' Nay, more, the vision they have is not of a restoration of the old order, but of the defeat of the new by some still more distant evolution. 'Another race may drive

Our conquerors to mourn as we do now.'

Of the relation of this poem to Hyperion, a Vision, see the Appendix, where the other fragment is printed.

Had stood a pigmy's height: she would

have ta'en

30

Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;
Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel.
Her face was large as that of Memphian
sphinx,

Pedestal'd haply in a palace-court,
When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.
But oh! how unlike marble was that face;
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.
There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up.
One hand she press'd upon that aching
spot

39

Where beats the human heart, as if just there,

Is Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice

101

Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling brow,
Naked and bare of its great diadem,
Peers like the front of Saturn. Who had
power

To make me desolate ? whence came the strength?

How was it nurtured to such bursting forth, While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp?

But it is so; and I am smother'd up.
And buried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale,
Of admonitions to the winds and seas, 109
Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.—I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne, and where
I sit

Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!

Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round

Upon all space: space starr'd, and lorn of

light;

Space region'd with life-air, and barren void;

Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell. 120 Search, Thea, search! and tell me if thou

seest

A certain shape or shadow, making way
With wings or chariot fierce to repossess
A heaven he lost erewhile: it must — it
must
Be of ripe progress

Saturn must be King
Yes, there must be a golden victory;
There must be Gods thrown down, and
trumpets blown

Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival.
Upon the gold clouds metropolitan,
Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir 130
Of strings in hollow shells; and there shali
be
Beautiful things made new, for the sur-

prise