attends constantly on the human little more of a Philosopher than I was, conseindividual. quently a little less of a versifying Pet-lamb. . . . 5. In a letter of June 9, 1819, Keats wrote: 'I have You will judge of my 1819 temper when I tell you been very idle lately, very averse to writing; both that the thing I have most enjoyed this year has from the overpowering idea of our dead poets and been writing an ode to Indolence.'
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91 0 / JOHN KEATS
One Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, that going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which, taking him by the hand, carried him home to her house, in the suburbs of Corinth. . . . The young man, a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love, tarried with her a while to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who, by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia; and that all her furniture was, like Tantalus's gold, described by Homer, no substance but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant: many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the midst of Greece.
In ancient demonology a 'lamia' was a monster in woman's form who preyed on human beings. There are various clues that Keats invested the ancient legend with allegorical significance (see especially 2.229?38). Its interpretation, however, and even the inclination of Keats's sympathies in the contest between Lamia and Apollonius, have been disputed. Perhaps Keats simply failed to make up his mind or wavered in the course of composition. In any case the poem presents an inevitably fatal situation, in which no one is entirely blameless or blameworthy and no character monopolizes either our sympathy or our antipathy.
The poem, written between late June and early September 1819, is a return, after the Spenserian stanzas of The Eve of St. Agnes, to the pentameter couplets Keats had used in Endymion and other early poems. But Keats had in the meantime been studying John Dryden's closed and strong-paced couplets. The initial lines of Dryden's version of Boccaccio's story Cymon and Iphigenia demonstrate the kind of narrative model that helped Keats make the technical transition from the fluent but sprawling gracefulness of the opening of Endymion to the vigor and economy of the opening of Lamia:
In that sweet isle where Venus keeps her court, And every grace, and all the loves, resort; Where either sex is formed of softer earth, And takes the bent of pleasure from their birth; There lived a Cyprian lord, above the rest Wise, wealthy, with a numerous issue blessed. . . .
Lamia
Part 1
Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr1 from the prosperous woods,
Before King Oberon's bright diadem,
Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem,
5 Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns From rushes green, and brakes,0 and cowslip'd lawns, thickets The ever-smitten Hermes2 empty left
His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft:
From high Olympus had he stolen light,
1. Nymphs and satyrs?like the dryads and fauns beings of the postclassical era. in line 5?were minor classical deities of the woods 2. Or Mercury; wing-footed messenger at the and fields, said here to have been driven off by summons of Jove (line II), Hermes was notori- Oberon, king of the fairies, who were supernatural ously amorous.
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LAMI A / 91 1 On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight Of his great summoner, and made retreat Into a forest on the shores of Crete. For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt; 15 At whose white feet the languid Tritons' poured Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored. Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont, And in those meads where sometime she might haunt, Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse, Though Fancy's casket were unlock'd to choose. Ah, what a world of love was at her feet! So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat Burnt from his winged heels to either ear, That from a whiteness, as the lily clear, 25 Blush'd into roses 'mid his golden hair, Fallen in jealous curls about his shoulders bare.4 From vale to vale, from wood to wood, he flew, Breathing upon the flowers his passion new, And wound with many a river to its head, To find where this sweet nymph prepar'd her secret bed: In vain; the sweet nymph might nowhere be found, And so he rested, on the lonely ground, Pensive, and full of painful jealousies Of the Wood-Gods, and even the very trees. 35 There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice, Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake: 'When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake! When move in a sweet body fit for life, And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!' The God, dove- footed,5 glided silently Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed, The taller grasses and full-flowering weed, 45 Until he found a palpitating snake, Bright, and cirque-couchant6 in a dusky brake. She was a gordian7 shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,? leopard Eyed like a peacock,8 and all crimson barr'd; And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries? So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
3. Minor sea gods. 5. I.e., quietly as a dove. 4. I.e., the curls clung jealously to his bare shoul-6. Lying in a circular coil. Keats borrows the landers. This line is the first of a number of Alexan-guage of heraldry. drines, a six- foot line, used to vary the metrical 7. Intricately twisted, like the knot tied by King movement?a device that Keats learned from Gordius, which no one could undo. Dryden. Another such device is the triplet, occur-8. Having multicolored spots, like the 'eyes' in a ring first in lines 61?63. peacock's tail.
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91 2 / JOHN KEATS
55 She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf, Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self. Upon her crest she wore a wannish9 fire Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar:1 Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
60 She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls2 complete: And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair? As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.3 Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake
