WHY did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell;

No God, no Demon of severe response, Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell: Then to my human heart I turn at once. Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone; I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain! O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan, To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.

Why did I laugh? I know this Being's lease,

My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads; Yet would I on this very midnight cease, And the world's gaudy ensigns see in

To George and Georgiana Keats, April 18 or 19, 1819, Keats writes: The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more it is that one in which he meets with Paolo and Francesca. I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated about the whirling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined as it seemed for an age- and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm -even flowery tree-tops sprung up, and we rested on them, sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew us away again. I tried a sonnet upon it- there are fourteen lines, but nothing of what I felt in it- O that I could dream it every night.' Keats afterwards printed the sonnet in The Indicator for June 28, 1820.

As Hermes once took to his feathers light, When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and

slept

So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright

So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft

The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove grieved a
day;

But to that second circle of sad hell, Where 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw

Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips

I saw, Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

Sent in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, April 28, 1819, and printed by Leigh Hunt in The Indicator, May 10, 1820. Hunt says the poem was suggested by that title at the head of a translation from Alan Chartier at the end of Chaucer's works.

I

Aн, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest 's done.

III

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew; And on thy cheek a fading rose Fast withereth too.

IV

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful-a faery's child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

CHORUS OF FAIRIES

Inclosed in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, April 28, 1819, and printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.

FIRE, AIR, EARTH, AND WATER SALAMANDER, ZEPHYR, DUSKETHA, AND BREAMA

SALAMANDER

HAPPY, happy glowing fire!

ZEPHYR

Fragrant air! delicious light!

DUSKETHA

Let me to my glooms retire!

BREAMA

I to green-weed rivers bright!

SALAMANDER

Happy, happy glowing fire!
Dazzling bowers of soft retire,
Ever let my nourish'd wing,
Like a bat's, still wandering,
Faintly fan your fiery spaces,
Spirit sole in deadly places.
In unhaunted roar and blaze,
Open eyes that never daze,
Let me see the myriad shapes
Of men, and beasts, and fish, and apes,
Portray'd in many a fiery den,
And wrought by spumy bitumen.
On the deep intenser roof,
Arched every way, aloof,
Let me breathe upon my skies,
And anger their live tapestries;
Free from cold, and every care,
Of chilly rain, and shivering air.

ZEPHYR

Spright of Fire! away! away!
Or your very roundelay

Will sear my plumage newly budded
From its quilled sheath, and studded
With the self-same dews that fell
On the May-grown Asphodel.
Spright of Fire-away! away!

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BREAMA

Spright of Fire-away! away!
Zephyr, blue-eyed Faery, turn,
And see my cool sedge-shaded urn,
Where it rests its mossy brim
'Mid water-mint and cresses dim;
And the flowers, in sweet troubles,
Lift their eyes above the bubbles,
Like our Queen, when she would please
To sleep, and Oberon will tease.
Love me, blue-eyed Faery! true,
Soothly I am sick for you.

ZEPHYR

Gentle Breama! by the first
Violet young nature nurst,
I will bathe myself with thee,
So you sometime follow me
To my home, far, far, in west,
Far beyond the search and quest
Of the golden-browed sun.
Come with me, o'er tops of trees,
To my fragrant palaces,
Where they ever floating are
Beneath the cherish of a star

Call'd Vesper, who with silver veil
Ever hides his brilliance pale,
Ever gently-drowsed doth keep
Twilight for the Fays to sleep.
Fear not that your watery hair
Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there;
Clouds of stored summer rains
Thou shalt taste, before the stains
Of the mountain soil they take,
And too unlucent for thee make.
I love thee, crystal Faery, true!
Sooth I am as sick for you!

SALAMANDER

Out, ye aguish Faeries, out!
Chilly lovers, what a rout
Keep ye with your frozen breath,
Colder than the mortal death.
Adder-eyed Dusketha, speak,
Shall we leave them, and go seek
In the earth's wide entrails old
Couches warm as theirs is cold?
O for a fiery gloom and thee,

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