Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
Autumn's red-lipped fruitage too
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with kissing. What do then?
Sit thee in an ingle when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter night:
When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the Ploughboy's heavy shoon:
When the night doth meet the moon
In a dark conspiracy
To banish vesper from the sky.
Sit thee then and send abroad
With a Mind self-overaw'd
Fancy high-commission'd; send her,--
She'll have vassals to attend her--
She will bring thee, spite of frost,
Beauties that the Earth has lost;
She will bring thee all together
All delights of summer weather;
All the faery buds of May,
On spring turf or scented spray;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth
With a still mysterious stealth;
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup
And thou shalt quaff it--Thou shalt hear
Instant harvest carols clear,
Bustle of the reaped corn
Sweet Birds antheming the Morn;
And in the same moment hark
To the early April lark,
And the rooks with busy caw
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt at one glance behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White plumed lilies and the first
Hedgerow primrose that hath burst;
Shaded Hyacinth alway
Sapphire Queen of the Mid-may;
And every leaf and every flower
Pearled with the same soft shower.
Thou shalt see the fieldmouse creep
Meagre from its celled sleep,
And the snake all winter shrank
Cast its skin on sunny bank;
Freckled nest eggs shalt thou see
Hatching in the hawthorn tree;
When the hen-bird's wing doth rest
Quiet on its mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm
When the Beehive casts its swarm--
Acorns ripe down scattering
While the autumn breezes sing,
For the same sleek throated mouse
To store up in its winter house.
O, sweet Fancy, let her loose!
Every joy is spoilt by use:
Every pleasure, every joy--
Not a Mistress but doth cloy.
Where's the cheek that doth not fade,
Too much gaz'd at? Where's the Maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice however soft
One would hear too oft and oft?
At a touch sweet pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let then winged fancy find
Thee a Mistress to thy mind.
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter
Ere the God of torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide:
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe's when her Zone
Slipp'd its golden clasp, and down
Fell her Kirtle to her feet
While she held the goblet sweet,
And Jove grew languid--Mistress fair!
Thou shalt have that tressed hair
Adonis tangled all for spite;
And the mouth he would not kiss,
And the treasure he would miss;
And the hand he would not press
And the warmth he would distress.
O the Ravishment--the Bliss!
Fancy has her there she is--
Never fulsome, ever new,
There she steps! and tell me who
Has a Mistress so divine?
Be the palate ne'er so fine
She cannot sicken. Break the Mesh
Of the Fancy's silken leash;
Where she's tether'd to the heart.
Quickly break her prison string
And such joys as these she'll bring,
Let the winged fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
I did not think this had been so long a Poem. I have another not so
long--but as it will more conveniently be copied on the other side I will
just put down here some observations on Caleb Williams by Hazlitt--I meant
to say St. Leon, for although he has mentioned all the Novels of Godwin
very freely I do not quote them, but this only on account of its being a
specimen of his usual abrupt manner, and fiery laconicism. He says of St.
Leon--
"He is a limb torn off society. In possession of eternal youth and
beauty he can feel no love; surrounded, tantalised, and tormented
with riches, he can do no good. The faces of Men pass before him as
in a speculum; but he is attached to them by no common tie of
sympathy or suffering. He is thrown back into himself and his own
thoughts. He lives in the solitude of his own breast--without wife
or child or friend or Enemy in the world. _This is the solitude of
the soul, not of woods or trees or mountains_--but the desert of
society--the waste and oblivion of the heart. He is himself alone.
His existence is purely intellectual, and is therefore intolerable to
one who has felt the rapture of affection, or the anguish of woe."
As I am about it I might as well give you his character of Godwin as a
Romancer:--
"Whoever else is, it is pretty clear that the author of Caleb
Williams is not the author of Waverley. Nothing can be more distinct
or excellent in their several ways than these two writers. If the one
owes almost everything to external observations and traditional
character, the other owes everything to internal conception and
contemplation of the possible workings of the human Mind. There is
little knowledge of the world, little variety, neither an eye for the
picturesque nor a talent for the humorous in Caleb Williams, for
instance, but you cannot doubt for a moment of the originality of the
work and the force of the conception. The impression made upon the
reader is the exact measure of the strength of the author's genius.
For the effect both in Caleb Williams and St. Leon is entirely made
out, not by facts nor dates, by blackletter, or magazine learning, by
transcript nor record, but by intense and patient study of the human
heart, and by an imagination projecting itself into certain
situations, and capable of working up its imaginary feelings to the
height of reality."
This appears to me quite correct--Now I will copy the other Poem--it is on
the double immortality of Poets--
Bards of Passion and of Mirth
Ye have left your souls on earth--
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double liv'd in regions new?
Yes--and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of Sun and Moon;
With the noise of fountains wondrous
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the Whisper of heaven's trees,
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on elysian Lawns
Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;
Underneath large bluebells tented,
Where the daisies are rose scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume that on Earth is not.
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing;
But melodious truth divine,
Philosophic numbers fine;
Tales and golden histories
Of Heaven and its Mysteries.
Thus ye live on Earth, and then
On the Earth ye live again;
And the souls ye left behind you
Teach us here the way to find you,
Where your other souls are joying
Never slumber'd, never cloying.
Here your earth born souls still speak
To mortals of the little week
They must sojourn with their cares;
Of their sorrows and delights
Of their Passions and their spites;
Of their glory and their shame--
What doth strengthen and what maim.
Thus ye teach us every day
Wisdom though fled far away.
Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your Souls on Earth!
Ye have souls in heaven too,
Double liv'd in Regions new!
These are specimens of a sort of rondeau which I think I shall become
partial to--because you have one idea amplified with greater ease and more
delight and freedom than in the sonnet. It is my intention to wait a few
years before I publish any minor poems--and then I hope to have a volume
of some worth--and which those people will relish who cannot bear the
burthen of a long poem. In my journal I intend to copy the poems I write
the days they are written--There is just room, I see, in this page to copy
a little thing I wrote off to some Music as it was playing--
I had a dove and the sweet dove died,
And I have thought it died of grieving:
O what could it mourn for? it was tied
With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving.
Sweet little red-feet why did you die?
Why would you leave me--sweet dove why?
You lived alone on the forest tree.
Why pretty thing could you not live with me?
I kissed you oft and I gave you white peas.
Why not live sweetly as in the green trees?
Sunday [January 3].
I have been dining with Dilke to-day--He is up to his Ears in Walpole's
letters. Mr. Manker is there, and I have come round to see if I can
conjure up anything for you. Kirkman came down to see me this morning--his
family has been very badly off lately. He told me of a villainous trick of
his Uncle William in Newgate Street, who became sole Creditor to his
father under pretence of serving him, and put an execution on his own
Sister's goods. He went in to the family at Portsmouth; conversed with
them, went out and sent in the Sherriff's officer. He tells me too of
abominable behaviour of Archer to Caroline Mathew--Archer has lived nearly
at the Mathews these two years; he has been amusing Caroline--and now he
has written a Letter to Mrs. M. declining, on pretence of inability to
support a wife as he would wish, all thoughts of marriage. What is the
worst is Caroline is 27 years old. It is an abominable matter. He has
called upon me twice lately--I was out both times. What can it be
for?--There is a letter to-day in the Examiner to the Electors of
Westminster on Mr. Hobhouse's account. In it there is a good character of
Cobbett--I have not the paper by me or I would copy it. I do not think I
have mentioned the discovery of an African Kingdom--the account is much
the same as the first accounts of Mexico--all magnificence--There is a
Book being written about it. I will read it and give you the cream in my
next. The romance we have heard upon it runs thus: They have window frames
of gold--100,000 infantry--human sacrifices. The Gentleman who is the
Adventurer has his wife with him--she, I am told, is a beautiful little
sylphid woman--her husband was to have been sacrificed to their Gods and
was led through a Chamber filled with different instruments of torture
with privilege to choose what death he would die, without their having a
thought of his aversion to such a death, they considering it a supreme
distinction. However he was let off, and became a favourite with the King,
who at last openly patronised him, though at first on account of the
Jealousy of his Ministers he was wont to hold conversations with his
Majesty in the dark middle of the night. All this sounds a little
Bluebeardish--but I hope it is true. There is another thing I must mention
of the momentous kind;--but I must mind my periods in it--Mrs. Dilke has
two Cats--a Mother and a Daughter--now the Mother is a tabby and the
daughter a black and white like the spotted child. Now it appears to me,
for the doors of both houses are opened frequently, so that there is a
complete thoroughfare for both Cats (there being no board up to the
contrary), they may one and several of them come into my room ad libitum.
But no--the Tabby only comes--whether from sympathy for Ann the Maid or me
I cannot tell--or whether Brown has left behind him any atmospheric spirit
of Maidenhood I cannot tell. The Cat is not an old Maid herself--her
daughter is a proof of it--I have questioned her--I have look'd at the
lines of her paw--I have felt her pulse--to no purpose. Why should the
_old_ Cat come to me? I ask myself--and myself has not a word to answer.
It may come to light some day; if it does you shall hear of it.
Kirkman this morning promised to write a few lines to you and send them to
Haslam. I do not think I have anything to say in the Business way. You