ON SEEING A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR

'I was at Hunt's the other day,' writes Keats to Bailey, January 23, 1818, and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of Milton's Hair. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is - as they say of a sheep in a Nursery Book.' "This I did,' he adds, after copying the lines, at Hunt's at his request-perhaps I should have done something better alone and at home.' Lord Houghton printed the verse in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.

6

In a letter to his brothers, dated January 23, 1818, Keats says: 'I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately I cannot bear to be uninterested or unemployed, I, who for so long a time have been addicted to passiveness. Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers. As an instance of this observe-I sat down yesterday to read King Lear once again: the thing appeared to demand the prologue of a sonnet, I wrote it, and began to read(I know you would like to see it). So you see,' he goes on after copying the sonnet, 'I am getting at it with a sort of determination and strength, though verily I do not feel it at this moment.' The sonnet was printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.

-

O GOLDEN-TONGUED Romance, with serene lute!

Fair plumèd Syren, Queen of far away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,

Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay, Must I burn through; once more humbly

assay

The bitter sweet of this Shakespearean

fruit:

Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme!

When through the old oak forest I am gone,

Let me not wander in a barren dream, But when I am consumèd in the Fire, Give me new Phoenix-wings to fly at my desire.

LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN

In sending his Robin Hood verses to Reynolds (see next poem), Keats added the following, but from the tenor of his letter, it would appear that they had been written earlier and were sent at Reynolds's request. The poem was published by Keats in his Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems, 1820. The friends were then in full tide of sympathy with the Elizabethans, and would have been very much at home with Shakespeare, Jonson, and Marlowe at the Mermaid.

SOULS of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison ? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.

I have heard that on a day
Mine host's sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer's old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new-old sign
Sipping beverage divine,

And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

ΤΟ

20

ROBIN HOOD

TO A FRIEND

The friend was J. H. Reynolds, who had sent Keats two sonnets which he had written on Robin Hood. Keats's letter, dated February 3, 1818, is full of energetic pleasantry on the poetry which has a palpable design upon us,' and concludes: 'Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of Childe Harold, and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins. I hope they'll look pretty.' Keats included the poem in his Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems, 1820, with some trifling changes of text.

No! those days are gone away,
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have Winter's shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

No, the bugle sounds no more, And the twanging bow no more; Silent is the ivory shrill Past the heath and up the hill; There is no mid-forest laugh, Where lone Echo gives the half To some wight, amaz'd to hear Jesting, deep in forest drear.

On the fairest time of June You may go, with sun or moon, Or the seven stars to light you, Or the polar ray to right you; But you never may behold Little John, or Robin bold; Never one, of all the clan, Thrumming on an empty can Some old hunting ditty, while He doth his green way beguile

20

A desert fills our seeing's inward span; Nurse of swart nations since the world

began,

Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile

Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,

Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?

O may dark fancies err! They surely do;

'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste

The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too,

And to the sea as happily dost haste.

TO SPENSER

Printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains, and undated. Afterward, when Lord Houghton printed it in the Aldine edition of 1876, he noted that he had seen a transcript given by Keats to Mrs. Longmore, a sister of Reynolds, dated by the recipient, February 5, 1818. But Lord Houghton is confident that the sonnet was written much earlier.

SPENSER! a jealous honourer of thine,

A forester deep in thy midmost trees, Did last eve ask my promise to refine Some English that might strive thine ear to please.

But Elfin Poet, 't is impossible

For an inhabitant of wintry earth

To rise like Phoebus with a golden quill Fire-wing'd and make a morning in his mirth.

It is impossible to escape from toil
O' the sudden and receive thy spiriting:
The flower must drink the nature of the
soil

Before it can put forth its blossoming:
Be with me in the summer days, and I
Will for thine honour and his pleasure
try.

Fair and foul I love together.

Meadows sweet where flames are under,

And a giggle at a wonder;

Visage sage at pantomime;
Funeral, and steeple-chime;
Infant playing with a skull;

Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull;
Nightshade with the woodbine kissing;
Serpents in red roses hissing;
Cleopatra regal-dress'd

With the aspic at her breast;
Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright, and muses pale;
Sombre Saturn, Momus hale; -
Laugh and sigh, and laugh again;
Oh, the sweetness of the pain!
Muses bright and muses pale,
Bare your faces of the veil;
Let me see; and let me write
Of the day, and of the night —
Both together :- let me slake
All my thirst for sweet heart-ache !
Let my bower be of yew,
Interwreath'd with myrtles new;
Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
And my couch a low grass-tomb.

WHAT THE THRUSH SAID

In a long letter to Reynolds, dated February 19, 1818, Keats writes earnestly of the sources of inspiration to a poet, and especially of the need of a receptive attitude: 'Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive; budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit -- Sap will be given us for meat, and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness. I have not read any Book -the Morning said I was right - I had no idea but of the Morning, and the Thrush said I was right, seeming to say,' and then follows the poem. It was first printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.

-

O THOU whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,

Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,

And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars,

To thee the spring will be a harvest-time. O thou, whose only book has been the light Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on Night after night when Phoebus was away, To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn. O fret not after knowledge - I have none, And yet my song comes native with the I have none,

warmth.

O fret not after knowledge

And yet the Evening listens. He who sad

dens