Then the hurry and alarm
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
Acorns ripe down-pattering
While the autumn breezes sing.

Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;

Every thing is spoilt by use;

Where's the cheek that doth not fade,
Too much gazed at? Where's the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, winged Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe's, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down

Fell her kirtle to her feet,

While she held the goblet sweet,

70

80

With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond'rous
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

10

20

30

40

'There is just room, I see, in this page to copy a little thing I wrote off to some Music as it was playing.' Keats to George and Georgiana Keats, January 2, 1819.

I HAD a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving:

Published in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems, 1820. There is no date affixed to it, but if it takes its color at all from Keats's own experience, it might not be amiss to refer it to the early part of 1819, when he had come under the influence of his passion for Fanny Brawne. In a letter to Haydon, written between January 7 and 14, 1819, Keats says: 'I have been writing a little now and then lately: but nothing to speak of - being discontented and as it were moulting. Yet I do not think I shall ever come to the rope or the pistol. For after a day or two's melancholy, although I smoke more and more my own insufficiency I see by little and little more of what is to be done, and how it is to be done, should I ever be able to do it.'

The first stanza, therefore, was the following: as grim a passage as Blake or Fuseli could have dreamed and painted :

66 Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones,
And rear a platform gibbet for a mast,
Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans
To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast;
Although your rudder be a dragon's tail
Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony,
Your cordage large uprootings from the skull
Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail
To find the Melancholy -
- whether she
Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull."

But no sooner was this written, than the poet became conscious that the coarseness of the contrast would destroy the general effect of luxurious tenderness which it was the object of the poem to produce, and he confined the gross notion of Melancholy to less violent images, and let the ode at once begin,

I

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poison

ous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd

By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, or the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy
owl

A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drows-

ily,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

II

But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hills in an April

shroud;

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt-sand wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless

eyes.

Begun early in 1819. In a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, dated February 14, 1819, Keats says: 'I was nearly a fortnight at Mr. John Snook's and a few days at old Mr. Dilke's (Chichester in Hampshire). Nothing worth speaking of happened at either place. I took down some thin paper and wrote on it a little poem called St. Agnes's Eve.' The poem

underwent a great deal of revision, and was not in final form before September; it was published in the 1820 volume.

III

Northward he turneth through a little door,

And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue

Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor;

But no- already had his death-bell rung; The joys of all his life were said and

sung:

His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve:

Another way he went, and soon among Rough ashes sat he for his soul's re

prieve,

And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve.

IV

That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft;

And so it chanced, for many a door was wide,

From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide:

The level chambers, ready with their pride,

Were glowing to receive a thousand guests:

The carved angels, ever eager-eyed,

Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords, Whose very dogs would execrations howl Against his lineage: not one breast affords

Him any mercy, in that mansion foul, Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul.

XI

Ah, happy chance! the aged creature

came,

Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand, To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame,

Behind a broad hall-pillar, far beyond The sound of merriment and chorus bland:

He startled her; but soon she knew his face,

And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand,

Saying, Mercy, Porphyro! hie thee from this place;

They are all here to-night, the whole bloodthirsty race!

XII

Get hence! get hence! there's dwarfish Hildebrand;

He had a fever late, and in the fit

He cursed thee and thine, both house and land:

Then there's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit

More tame for his gray hairs Alas me! flit !

Flit like a ghost away.'-'Ah, Gossip dear,

We're safe enough; here in this armchair sit,

And tell me how'-'Good Saints! not here, not here;

Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier.'

XIII

He follow'd through a lowly arched way, Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume;