SONNET.

To John Hamilton Reynolds.

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THAT a week could be an age, and we

Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,

So a day's journey in oblivious haze

To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate.

O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!

To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant!

In little time a host of joys to bind,

And keep our souls in one eternal pant!

This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught
Me how to harbour such a happy thought.

First given among the Literary Remains, in the Life, Letters &c. (1848), not dated, but standing next to the sonnet on blue eyes, which is dated February 1818.

TEIGNMOUTH:

"SOME DOGGEREL,"

SENT IN A LETTER TO B. R. HAYDON.

I.

HERE all the summer could I stay,

For there's Bishop's teign

And King's teign

And Coomb at the clear teign head

Where close by the stream

You may have your cream
All spread upon barley bread.

2.

There's arch Brook

And there's larch Brook
Both turning many a mill;
And cooling the drouth
Of the salmon's mouth,
And fattening his silver gill.

Keats's correspondence for the Spring of 1818 shows that on his arrival in Devonshire he had on his hands, besides attendance on his sick brother, the final work connected with the publication of Endymion. At the end of the first ten days he writes to Haydon of having copied the fourth book for the press; and between the completion of that operation and the end of April, when the poem was out, he must have been more or less busy with it. Probably also the greater part of Isabella was composed at Teignmouth,

3.

There is Wild wood,

A Mild hood

To the sheep on the lea o' the down,
Where the golden furze,

With its green, thin spurs,
Doth catch at the maiden's gown.

4.

There is Newton marsh

With its spear grass harsh

A pleasant summer level

Where the maidens sweet

Of the Market Street,

Do meet in the dusk to revel.

seeing that it was from that place that he wrote of it to Reynolds towards the end of his stay, as about to be copied out. These circumstances would account for the limited extent of the series of poems special to Devonshire. These, although inferior in interest to the Scottish series of the Summer of 1818, are full of the individuality of Keats. The first piece we may safely assign to the 14th of March 1818. It occurs in a letter to Haydon published by Mr. Tom Taylor in Haydon's Autobiography without any date beyond "Teignmouth, Saturday morning"; but the verses form, with the next song, the staple of the letter, and appear from the context to have been written off as a part of it, and not copied into it. The date of the letter is to be fixed thus: Keats says in the prose paragraph of which the verses are the continuation-" The six first days I was here it did nothing but rain; and at that time, having to write to a friend, I gave Devonshire a good blowing-up. It has been fine for almost three days, and I was coming round a bit, but to-day it rains again. With me the county is on its good behaviour. I have enjoyed the most delightful walks these three fine days, beautiful enough to make me content." Now on the 25th of March Keats wrote to Reynolds of the weather as if the county's trial had lasted three weeks: this gives the 4th as the day of his arrival ;

5.

There's the Barton rich

With dyke and ditch

And hedge for the thrush to live in

And the hollow tree

For the buzzing bee

And a bank for the wasp to hive in.

And O, and O

6.

The daisies blow

And the primroses are waken'd,

And the violets white

Sit in silver plight,

And the green bud's as long as the spike end.

66

and the tenth day from that (when he was writing to Haydon) would be the 14th, which was a Saturday. Keats describes these verses as some doggrel." If he had gathered all their local details in the three fine days, he had not been idle; for he had been exploring both sides of the Estuary of the Teign. Starting from Teignmouth along the right-hand bank he would come to Bishop's Teignton about three miles distant, and King's Teignton or Teignton Regis about five miles distant; and crossing the ferry at Teignmouth to get to the left-hand bank he would go through Shaldon and Ringmore to get to the village of Coomb-in-TeignHead-perhaps three or four miles from his lodgings. He could not have had his cream and barley bread close to the stream in the village proper; but twenty or thirty years later, and onwards, there was certainly every accommodation of that kind in a group of curious old cottages perched up over the mud-banks, and known as Coomb Cellars-a favourite place for pic-nics, not so celebrated for cream as for cockles, raked out of the mud bottom of the Estuary at low tide. There were two brooks in and near Teignmouthone in Brimley Vale and the other in Coomb Vale (nothing to do with Coomb-in-Teign-Head on the Shaldon bank); but I never heard these called Arch Brook and Larch Brook.

The "Wild

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7.

Then who would go

Into dark Soho,

And chatter with dack'd hair'd critics,

When he can stay

For the new-mown hay,

And startle the dappled Prickets?

wood" of stanza 3 answers to any of the thick plantations of Little Haldon on the Exeter road,—a down such as Keats describesfurze and all. Newton Abbot or Newton Bushel, about six miles from Teignmouth, lies in a marshy situation enough, though the name of "the Marsh" has been appropriated to a spot near the Railway station. The town still has, like most country towns of any consequence, a Market Street. Of the dykes, ditches &c. of "the Barton" I can give no account, as I do not know to what particular manor-house and demesne the term was ever applied at Teignmouth. There is a touch of "local colour" in the white violets of stanza 6; for though primroses and violets are found in almost all parts of the country, white violets are not quite common about Teignmouth, but are to be found at Bishop's Teignton. It is a pity that this choice little bit of trifling should be disfigured by the false rhyme critics and Prickets. Keats does not seem to have been quite certain when he despatched his letter whether his doggerel" had been written seriously or not; for he resumes prose with "I know not if this rhyming fit has done anything; it will be safe with you, if worthy to put among my Lyrics." We must consider these trifles worthy to go among his lyrics, in virtue of their fine sense of rhythm and their keen relish for out of door life. It is clearly to the present poem, and not to the Epistle to Reynolds, that the title Teignmouth belongs of right; and I have therefore headed it accordingly. The text has been very copiously amended from the original letter quite clearly written; and I need not detain the reader with the details of the absurd perversion of it by Mr. Taylor. But I must mention that "Barton " as a place-name instead of "the Barton" was suspicious on the face of it, as there is no such place there; that the critics are clearly described, not as dark-hair'd or as dank-hair'd, but as dack'd hair'd (= shock-headed); and that the dappled creatures are certainly not crickets but Prickets, or two-year-old deer.