Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
This I did at Hunt's at his request--perhaps I should have done something
better alone and at home.--I have sent my first Book to the press, and
this afternoon shall begin preparing the Second--my visit to you will be a
great spur to quicken the proceeding.--I have not had your Sermon
returned--I long to make it the Subject of a Letter to you--What do they
say at Oxford?
I trust you and Gleig pass much fine time together. Remember me to him and
Whitehead. My Brother Tom is getting stronger, but his spitting of Blood
continues. I sat down to read King Lear yesterday, and felt the greatness
of the thing up to the Writing of a Sonnet preparatory thereto--in my next
you shall have it.--There were some miserable reports of Rice's health--I
went, and lo! Master Jemmy had been to the play the night before, and was
out at the time--he always comes on his legs like a Cat. I have seen a
good deal of Wordsworth. Hazlitt is lecturing on Poetry at the Surrey
Institution--I shall be there next Tuesday.
Your most affectionate friend
JOHN KEATS.
XXXII.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
[Hampstead, January 30, 1818.]
My dear Taylor--These lines as they now stand about "happiness," have rung
in my ears like "a chime a mending"--See here,
"Behold
Wherein lies happiness, Peona? fold, etc."
It appears to me the very contrary of blessed. I hope this will appear to
you more eligible.
"Wherein lies Happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with Essence till we shine
Full alchemised, and free of space--Behold
The clear religion of Heaven--fold, etc."
You must indulge me by putting this in, for setting aside the badness of
the other, such a preface is necessary to the subject. The whole thing
must, I think, have appeared to you, who are a consecutive man, as a thing
almost of mere words, but I assure you that, when I wrote it, it was a
regular stepping of the Imagination towards a truth. My having written
that argument will perhaps be of the greatest service to me of anything I
ever did. It set before me the gradations of happiness, even like a kind
of pleasure thermometer, and is my first step towards the chief attempt in
the drama. The playing of different natures with joy and Sorrow--Do me
this favour, and believe me
Your sincere friend
J. KEATS.
I hope your next work will be of a more general Interest. I suppose you
cogitate a little about it, now and then.
XXXIII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
Hampstead, Saturday [January 31, 1818].
My dear Reynolds--I have parcelled out this day for Letter Writing--more
resolved thereon because your Letter will come as a refreshment and will
have (sic parvis etc.) the same effect as a Kiss in certain situations
where people become over-generous. I have read this first sentence over,
and think it savours rather; however an inward innocence is like a nested
dove, as the old song says....
Now I purposed to write to you a serious poetical letter, but I find that
a maxim I met with the other day is a just one: "On cause mieux quand on
ne dit pas _causons_." I was hindered, however, from my first intention by
a mere muslin Handkerchief very neatly pinned--but "Hence, vain deluding,"
etc. Yet I cannot write in prose; it is a sunshiny day and I cannot, so
here goes,--
Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port,
Away with old Hock and Madeira,
Too earthly ye are for my sport;
There's a beverage brighter and clearer.
Instead of a pitiful rummer,
My wine overbrims a whole summer;
My bowl is the sky,
And I drink at my eye,
Till I feel in the brain
A Delphian pain--
Then follow, my Caius! then follow:
On the green of the hill
We will drink our fill
Of golden sunshine,
Till our brains intertwine
With the glory and grace of Apollo!
God of the Meridian,
And of the East and West,
To thee my soul is flown,
And my body is earthward press'd.--
It is an awful mission,
A terrible division;
And leaves a gulph austere
To be fill'd with worldly fear.
Aye, when the soul is fled
Too high above our head,
Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze,
As doth a mother wild,
When her young infant child
Is in an eagle's claws--
And is not this the cause
Of madness?--God of Song,
Thou bearest me along
Through sights I scarce can bear:
O let me, let me share
With the hot lyre and thee,
The staid Philosophy.
Temper my lonely hours,
And let me see thy bowers
More unalarm'd!
My dear Reynolds, you must forgive all this ranting--but the fact is, I
cannot write sense this Morning--however you shall have some--I will copy
out my last Sonnet.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled Books in charactery,
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 faery 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.
I must take a turn, and then write to Teignmouth. Remember me to all, not
excepting yourself.
Your sincere friend
JOHN KEATS.
XXXIV.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
Hampstead, Tuesday [February 3, 1818].
My dear Reynolds--I thank you for your dish of Filberts--would I could get
a basket of them by way of dessert every day for the sum of twopence.[45]
Would we were a sort of ethereal Pigs, and turned loose to feed upon
spiritual Mast and Acorns--which would be merely being a squirrel and
feeding upon filberts, for what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a
filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth
cracking, all I can say is, that where there are a throng of delightful
Images ready drawn, simplicity is the only thing. The first is the best on
account of the first line, and the "arrow, foil'd of its antler'd food,"
and moreover (and this is the only word or two I find fault with, the more
because I have had so much reason to shun it as a quicksand) the last has
"tender and true." We must cut this, and not be rattlesnaked into any more
of the like. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that
Wordsworth, etc., should have their due from us. But, for the sake of a
few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a
certain Philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist? Every man has
his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them till
he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to
the very bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his
half-seeing. Sancho will invent a Journey heavenward as well as anybody.
We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not
agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be
great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not
startle it or amaze it with itself--but with its subject. How beautiful
are the retired flowers!--how would they lose their beauty were they to
throng into the highway, crying out, "Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon
me, I am a primrose!" Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this:
each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state and
knows how many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in all his
dominions, and has a continual itching that all the Housewives should have
their coppers well scoured: The ancients were Emperors of vast Provinces,
they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them. I
will cut all this--I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in
particular--Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, when we can wander
with Esau? Why should we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on
Roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be eagles? Why be teased with
"nice-eyed wagtails," when we have in sight "the Cherub Contemplation"?
Why with Wordsworth's "Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand," when
we can have Jacques "under an oak," etc.? The secret of the Bough of
Wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew
spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, and because he happens in an
Evening Walk to imagine the figure of the old Man, he must stamp it down
in black and white, and it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny
Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be
teased with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and
unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its
sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of Childe Harold
and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return for your Dish of
Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they'll look pretty.
TO J. H. R. IN ANSWER TO HIS ROBIN HOOD SONNETS.
No! those days are gone away,
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years.
Many times have Winter's shears,
Frozen North and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men paid no rent on Leases.
No! the Bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill
Past the heath and up the Hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight amaz'd to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.
On the fairest time of June
You may go with Sun or Moon,
Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may behold
Little John or Robin bold;
Never any of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair Hostess Merriment
Down beside the pasture Trent,
For he left the merry tale,
Messenger for spicy ale.
Gone the merry morris din,
Gone the song of Gamelyn,
Gone the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grene shawe":
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin _should_ be cast
Sudden from his turfed grave,
And if Marian _should_ have
Once again her forest days,
She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the Dock-yard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her--"strange that honey
Can't be got without hard money!"
So it is! yet let us sing,
Honour to the old bow-string,
Honour to the bugle-horn,
Honour to the woods unshorn,
Honour to the Lincoln green,
Honour to the archer keen,
Honour to tight little John,
And the horse he rode upon:
Honour to bold Robin Hood,
Sleeping in the underwood!
Honour to maid Marian,
And to all the Sherwood clan--
Though their days have hurried by
Let us two a burden try.
I hope you will like them--they are at least written in the Spirit of
Outlawry. Here are the Mermaid lines,
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field, or mossy cavern,
Fairer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine Host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of Venison? O generous food
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would with his Maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
I have heard that, on a day,
Mine host's sign-board flew away,
No body knew whither, till