of humanity. All its more ponderous and bulky worth Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth A steady splendour; but at the tip-top There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop Of light, and that is love: its influence, Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense, At which we start and fret; till in the end, Melting into its radiance, we blend, Mingle, and so become a part of it,? Nor with aught else can our souls interknit So wingedly: when we combine therewith, Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith,9 And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.1 Aye, so delicious is the unsating food,2 That men, who might have tower'd in the van? forefront Of all the congregated world, to fan And winnow from the coming step of time All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime Left by men-slugs and human serpentry, Have been content to let occasion die, Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium.? heaven And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb, Than speak against this ardent listlessness: For I have ever thought that it might bless The world with benefits unknowingly; As does the nightingale, upperched high, And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves? She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood.3 Just so may love, although 'tis understood The mere commingling of passionate breath, Produce more than our searching witnesseth: What I know not: but who, of men, can tell
7. Make a sound. nourished by another's life, with which it fuses in 8. The musician of Greek legend, whose beautiful love. music could move even inanimate things. 2. Food that never satiates, that never ceases to 9. Its own elemental substance. satisfy. 1. Young pelicans were once thought to feed on 3. I.e., in order to hear better. their mother's flesh. In a parallel way our life is
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ON SITTING DOWN TO READ KING LEAR ONCE AGAIN / 887
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
840 The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, If human souls did never kiss and greet?
'Now, if this earthly love has power to make Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake
845 Ambition from their memories, and brim Their measure of content; what merest whim, Seems all this poor endeavour after fame, To one, who keeps within his stedfast aim A love immortal, an immortal too.
850 Look not so wilder'd; for these things are true, And never can be born of atomies0 mites That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies, Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I'm sure, My restless spirit never could endure
855 To brood so long upon one luxury, Unless it did, though fearfully, espy A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.'
Apr.?Nov. 1817 1818
On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again1
O golden-tongued Romance, with serene lute! Fair plumed syren,2 queen of far-away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute.
5 Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay Must I burn through; once more humbly assay0 test
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearean fruit. Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,3 io 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 consumed in the fire, Give me new phoenix4 wings to fly at my desire.
Jan. 22, 1818 1838
1. Keats pauses, while revising Endymion: A 2. Syrens (sirens) were sea nymphs whose singing Poetic Romance, to read again Shakespeare's great lured listeners to their deaths. tragedy. The word 'syren' (line 2) indicates Keats's 3. Old name for England. King Lear is set in Celtic feeling that 'Romance' was enticing him from the Britain. poet's prime duty, to deal with 'the agonies, the 4. The fabulous bird that periodically burns itself strife / Of human hearts' (Sleep and Poetry, lines to death to rise anew from the ashes. 124-25).
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88 8 / JOHN KEATS
When I have fears that I may cease to be1 510When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charactry,2 Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the fairy power Of unreflecting love;?then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. Jan. 1818 1848
To Homer
Standing aloof in giant ignorance, Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,1 As one who sits ashore and longs perchance To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. 5 So wast thou blind;?but then the veil was rent, For Jove uncurtain'd heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent, And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive; Aye on the shores of darkness there is light, 10 And precipices show untrodden green, There is a budding morrow in midnight,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen; Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.2
1818 1848
The Eve of St. Agnes1
i
St. Agnes' Eve?Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
1. The first, and one of the most successful, of three-figured goddess, the deity of nature and of Keats's attempts at the sonnet in the Shakespear-the moon as well as the queen of hell. The 'triple ean rhyme scheme. sight' that blind Homer paradoxically commands 2. Characters; printed letters of the alphabet. is of these three
