Their filmy pennons at her word they furl, The Cloud.* I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet birds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; I sift the snow on the mountains below, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, Lured by the love of the genii that move Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 'The odes To the Skylark and The Cloud, in the opinion of many critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his productions. They were written as his mind prompted, listening to the carolling of the bird aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the cloud as it sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on the Thames. No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual pursuits, and rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations. Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, fraught with pain; to escape from such he delivered up his soul to poetry, and felt happy when he sheltered himself from the influence of human sympathies in the wildest regions of fancy.'MRS SHELLEY, Pref. to Poet. Works. May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone, From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-coloured bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, Better than all measures Of delight and sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! That thy brain must know, From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. From The Sensitive Plant.' A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, And the spring arose on the garden fair, But none ever trembled and panted with bliss The snowdrop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, It was felt like an odour within the sense; And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky; And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, And on the stream whose inconstant bosom, Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, And starry river-buds glimmered by, And around them the soft stream did glide and dance With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, Which led through the garden along and across, Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees, Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells And flowerets which, drooping as day drooped too, And from this undefiled Paradise The flowers-as an infant's awakening eyes When heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them, For each one was interpenetrated With the light and the odour its neighbour shed, Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear, Wrapt and filled by their mutual atmosphere. But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; The light winds which, from unsustaining wings, The plumed insects swift and free, The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie The quivering vapours of dim noontide, Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide, In which every sound, and odour, and beam, Move as reeds in a single stream; Each and all like ministering angels were For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by, Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky. And when evening descended from heaven above, And the earth was all rest, and the air was all love, And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep, And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned In an ocean of dreams without a sound; (Only overhead the sweet nightingale Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant); The Sensitive Plant was the earliest Forest Scenery. From Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude. Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine, A soul-dissolving odour, to invite To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples. The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, I see the deep's untrampled floor With green and purple sea-weeds strown ; I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown; I sit upon the sands alone, The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion; How sweet, did any heart now share in my emotion! To Music, when soft voices die, Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved's bed; JOHN KEATS. JOHN KEATS was born in London, October 29, 1795, in the house of his grandfather, who kept a livery-stable at Moorfields. He received his education at Enfield, and in his fifteenth year was apprenticed to a surgeon. Most of his time, however, was devoted to the cultivation of his literary talents, which were early conspicuous. During his apprenticeship, he made and carefully wrote out a literal translation of Virgil's Eneid, but he does not appear to have been familiar with more difficult Latin poetry, nor to have even commenced learning the Greek language (Lord Houghton). One of his earliest friends and critics was Mr Leigh Hunt, who, being shewn some of his poetical pieces, was struck, he says, with the exuberant specimens of genuine though young poetry that were laid before him, and the promise of which was seconded by the fine fervid countenance of the writer. A volume of these juvenile poems was published in 1817. In 1818 Keats published his Endymion, a Poetic Romance, defective in many parts, but evincing rich though undisciplined powers of imagination. The poem was criticised, in a strain of contemptuous severity, by Mr John Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review; and such was the sensitiveness of the young poet-panting for distinction, and flattered by a few private friends-that the critique imbittered his existence. The first effects,' says Shelley, 'are described to me to have resembled insanity, and it was by assiduous watching that he was restrained from effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and the usual process of consumption appears to have begun.’ The process had begun, as was too soon apparent; but the disease was a family one, and would probably have appeared had no hostile criticism existed. Lord Houghton, Keats's biographer, states that the young poet profited by the attacks of the critics, their effect being' to purify his style, correct his tendency to exaggeration, enlarge his poetical studies, and produce, among other improved efforts, that very Hyperion which called forth from Byron a eulogy as violent and unqualified as the former onslaught.' Byron had termed the juvenile poetry of Keats, 'the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.' Keats's poetry falling into the hands of Jeffrey, he criticised it in the Edinburgh Review, in a spirit of kindliness and just appreciation which formed a strong contrast to the criticism in the Quarterly. But this genial critique did not appear till 1820, too late to cheer the then dying poet. Mr Keats,' says the eloquent critic, is, we understand, still a very young man; and his whole works, indeed, bear evidence enough of the fact. They manifestly require, therefore, all the indulgence that can be claimed for a first attempt; but we think it no less plain that they deserve it; for they are flushed all over with the rich lights of fancy, and so coloured and bestrown with the flowers of poetry, that, even while perplexed and bewildered in their labyrinths, it is impossible to resist the intoxication of their sweetness, or to shut our hearts to the enchantments they so lavishly present. The models upon which he has formed himself in the Endymion, the earliest and by much the most considerable of his poems, are obviously the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher, and the Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson, the exquisite metres and inspired diction of which he has copied with great boldness and fidelity; and, like his great originals, has also contrived to impart to the whole piece that true rural and poetical air which breathes only in them and in Theocritus-which is at once homely and majestic, luxurious and rude, and sets before us the genuine sights, and sounds, and smells of the country, with all the magic and grace of Elysium.' The genius of the poet was still further displayed in his latest volume, Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St Agnes, &c. This volume was well received. The state of the poet's health now became so alarming that, as a last effort for life, he was advised to try the milder climate of Italy. A young friend, Mr Severn, an artist (now British consul at Rome), generously abandoned his professional __prospects at home, in order to accompany Keats; and they sailed in September 1820. The invalid suffered severely during the voyage, and he had to endure a ten days' quarantine at Naples. The thoughts of a young lady to whom he was betrothed, and the too great probability that he would see her no more, added a deeper gloom to his mind, and he seems never to have rallied from this depression. At Rome, Mr Severn watched over him with affectionate care; Dr Clark also was unremitting in his attendance; but he daily got worse, and died on the 23d of February 1821. Keats was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, one of the most beautiful spots on which the eye and heart of man can rest. inspired by the Titans: it is as sublime as Eschylus." It was the misfortune of Keats, as a poet, to be either extravagantly praised or unmercifully condemned. The former was owing to the generous partialities of friendship, somewhat obtrusively displayed; the latter, in some degree, to resentment of that friendship, connected as it was with party politics and peculiar views of society as well as of poetry. In the one case his faults, and in the other his merits, were entirely overlooked. A few years dispelled these illusions and prejudices. Keats was a true poet. If we consider his extreme youth and delicate health, his solitary and interesting self-instruction, the severity of the attacks made upon him by his hostile and powerful critics, and, above all, the original richness and picturesqueness of his conceptions and imagery, even when they run to waste, he appears to be one of the greatest of the young poets-resembling the Milton of Lycidas, or the Spenser of the Tears of the Muses. What easy, finished, statuesque beauty and classic expression, for example, are displayed in this picture of Saturn and Thea! Saturn and Thea.-From 'Hyperion.' Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds Along the margin sand large footmarks went It seemed no force could wake him from his place; 'It is,' says Lord Houghton, 'a grassy slope amid verdurous ruins of the Honorian walls of the diminished city, and surmounted by the pyramidal tomb which Petrarch attributed to Remus, but which antiquarian truth has ascribed to the humbler name of Caius Cestius, a Tribune of the people only remembered by his sepulchre. In one of those mental voyages into the past which often precede death, Keats had told Severn that thought the intensest pleasure he had received in life was in watching the growth of flowers;" and another time, after lying a while still and peaceful, he said: "I feel the flowers growing over me." And there they do grow even all the winter long-violets and daisies mingling with the fresh herbage, and, in the words of saying in Don Juan that Keats was killed off by one critique: Shelley, "making one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a he Byron could not, however, resist the seeming smartness of "Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, place." Keats had a few days before his death Mr Croker, writing to a friend about this article,' in a letter expressed a wish to Mr Severn that on his which we have seen, said: 'Gifford added some pepper to my gravestone should be the inscription: "Here grill." A miserable piece of cookery they made of it! High as is lies one whose name was writ in water." Shelley personal friends and by Shelley; and even ten years after his now the fame of Keats, it is said he died 'admired only by his honoured the memory of Keats with his exquisite death, when the first Memoir was proposed, the woman he had elegy Adonais. Even Byron felt that the young Mr Dilke: "The kindest act would be to let him rest for ever in loved had so little belief in his poetic reputation, that she wrote to poet's death was a loss to literature. The the obscurity to which circumstances have condemned him."fragment of Hyperion, he said, "seems actually Papers of a Critic, vol. i. p. 11. 137 |