And, by the wandering melody, may trace Which way the tender-legged linnet hops. Oh! what a power has white simplicity!

What mighty power has this gentle story! I, that do ever feel athirst for glory, Could at this moment be content to lie Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings

Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.

ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES

This and the following sonnet were printed in The Examiner, March 9, 1817, and reprinted in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.

My spirit is too weak — mortality

Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky. Yet 't is a gentle luxury to weep That I have not the cloudy winds to keep,

Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. Such dim-conceivèd glories of the brain Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;

So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude

Wasting of old Time - with a billowy main

A sun-a shadow of a magnitude.

TO HAYDON

(WITH THE PRECEDING SONNET) HAYDON! forgive me that I cannot speak Definitively of these mighty things; Forgive me, that I have not Eagle's wings

That what I want I know not where to seek:

66

This stood as dedication to the 1817 volume, which was published in the month of March. Charles Cowden Clarke makes the statement: 'On the evening when the last proof sheet was brought from the printer, it was accompanied by the information that if a dedication to the book was intended, it must be sent forthwith." Whereupon he withdrew to a side table, and in the buzz of a mixed conversation (for there were several friends in the room) he composed and brought to Charles Ollier, the publisher, the dedication sonnet to Leigh Hunt.'

ON THE SEA

Sent in a letter to Reynolds, dated April 17, 1817. From want of regular rest,' Keats says, 'I have been rather narvus, and the passage in Lear" Do you not hear the sea?"has haunted me intensely.' He then copies the sonnet, which was published in The Champion, August 17 of the same year. The letter was written from Carisbrooke. He had been sent away from London by his brothers a month before, shortly after the appearance of his first volume of Poems, and his letters show the nervous, restless condition into which he had been driven by that venture.

IT keeps eternal whisperings around

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell

Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the

spell

Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.

Often 't is in such gentle temper found,

That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be mov'd for days from where it some

time fell,

When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.

O ye! who have your eyeballs vex'd and tir'd,

Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;

O ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude,

Or fed too much with cloying melody,

Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth,

and brood

Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!

LINES

First published, with the date 1817, in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. It is barely possible that this is the 'song' to which Keats refers in a letter to Benjamin Bailey, dated November 22, 1817, when he says: 'I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth

Still so pale? then dearest weep;
Weep, I'll count the tears,
For each will I invent a bliss
For thee in after years.

Brighter has it left thine eyes
Than a sunny rill;
And thy whispering melodies
Are more tender still.

Yet - as all things mourn awhile At fleeting blisses;

E'en let us too; but be our dirge A dirge of kisses.

ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER

This sonnet was printed in 1829 in The Gem, a Literary Annual, edited by Thomas Hood. It is not dated, but may fairly be assigned to this time.

COME hither, all sweet maidens soberly, Down-looking aye, and with a chasten'd light

Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white, And meekly let your fair hands joined be, As if so gentle that ye could not see,

Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright, Sinking away to his young spirit's night, Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea: 'Tis young Leander toiling to his death; Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips

For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile.

O horrid dream! see how his body dips Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile:

He's gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!

ON LEIGH HUNT'S POEM, 'THE STORY OF RIMINI'

Dated 1817 in the Life, Letters and Literary Remains, and placed next after the preceding.