Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
headlong impetuosity of my Muse--she would have fain said "score" without
hurting the rhyme--but we must temper the Imagination, as the Critics say,
with Judgment. I was obliged to choose an even number, that both eyes
might have fair play, and to speak truly I think two a piece quite
sufficient. Suppose I had said seven there would have been three and a
half a piece--a very awkward affair, and well got out of on my side--
[Later.]
CHORUS OF FAIRIES. 4--FIRE, AIR, EARTH, AND WATER--SALAMANDER, ZEPHYR,
DUSKETHA, BREAMA.
_Sal._ Happy happy glowing fire!
_Zep._ Fragrant air, delicious light!
_Dusk._ Let me to my glooms retire.
_Bream._ I to greenweed rivers bright.
_Salam._
Happy, happy glowing fire!
Dazzling bowers of soft retire,
Ever let my nourish'd wing,
Like a bat's still wandering,
Faintly fan your fiery spaces
Spirit sole in deadly places,
In unhaunted roar and blaze
Open eyes that never daze
Let me see the myriad shapes
Of Men and Beasts and Fish and apes,
Portray'd in many a fiery den,
And wrought by spumy bitumen
On the deep intenser roof,
Arched every way aloof.
Let me breathe upon my skies,
And anger their live tapestries;
Free from cold and every care,
Of chilly rain and shivering air.
_Zephyr._
Spright of fire--away away!
Or your very roundelay
Will sear my plumage newly budded
From its quilled sheath and studded
With the self-same dews that fell
On the May-grown Asphodel.
Spright of fire away away!
_Breama._
Spright of fire away away!
Zephyr blue-eyed faery turn,
And see my cool sedge-shaded urn,
Where it rests its mossy brim
Mid water-mint and cresses dim;
And the flowers, in sweet troubles,
Lift their eyes above the bubbles,
Like our Queen when she would please
To sleep, and Oberon will tease--
Love me blue-eyed Faery true
Soothly I am sick for you.
_Zephyr._
Gentle Breama! by the first
Violet young nature nurst,
I will bathe myself with thee,
So you sometime follow me
To my home far far in west,
Far beyond the search and quest
Of the golden-browed sun.
Come with me, o'er tops of trees,
To my fragrant Palaces,
Where they ever-floating are
Beneath the cherish of a star
Call'd Vesper--who with silver veil
Ever Hides his brilliance pale,
Ever gently drows'd doth keep
Twilight of the Fays to sleep.
Fear not that your watery hair
Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there--
Clouds of stored summer rains
Thou shalt taste before the stains
Of the mountain soil they take,
And too unlucent for thee make.
I love thee, Crystal faery true
Sooth I am as sick for you--
_Salam._
Out ye agueish Faeries out!
Chilly Lovers, what a rout
Keep ye with your frozen breath
Colder than the mortal death--
Adder-eyed Dusketha speak,
Shall we leave them and go seek
In the Earth's wide Entrails old
Couches warm as their's is cold?
O for a fiery gloom and thee,
Dusketha, so enchantingly
Freckle-wing'd and lizard-sided!
_Dusketha._
By thee Spright will I be guided
I care not for cold or heat
Frost and Flame or sparks or sleet
To my essence are the same--
But I honour more the flame--
Spright of fire I follow thee
Wheresoever it may be;
To the torrid spouts and fountains,
Underneath earth-quaked mountains
Or at thy supreme desire,
Touch the very pulse of fire
With my bare unlidded eyes.
_Salam._
Sweet Dusketha! Paradise!
Off ye icy Spirits fly!
Frosty creatures of the Sky!
_Dusketha._
Breathe upon them fiery Spright!
_Zephyr, Breama (to each other)._
Away Away to our delight!
_Salam._
Go feed on icicles while we
Bedded in tongued-flames will be.
_Dusketha._
Lead me to those fev'rous glooms,
Spright of fire--
_Breama._
Me to the blooms
Blue-eyed Zephyr of those flowers
Far in the west where the May cloud lours;
And the beams of still Vesper, where winds are all whist
Are shed through the rain and the milder mist,
And twilight your floating bowers--
I have been reading lately two very different books, Robertson's America
and Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV. It is like walking arm and arm between
Pizarro and the great-little Monarch. In how lamentable a case do we see
the great body of the people in both instances; in the first, where Men
might seem to inherit quiet of Mind from unsophisticated senses; from
uncontamination of civilisation, and especially from their being, as it
were, estranged from the mutual helps of Society and its mutual
injuries--and thereby more immediately under the Protection of
Providence--even there they had mortal pains to bear as bad, or even worse
than Bailiffs, Debts, and Poverties of civilised Life. The whole appears
to resolve into this--that Man is originally a poor forked creature
subject to the same mischances as the beasts of the forest, destined to
hardships and disquietude of some kind or other. If he improves by
degrees his bodily accommodations and comforts--at each stage, at each
ascent there are waiting for him a fresh set of annoyances--he is mortal,
and there is still a heaven with its Stars above his head. The most
interesting question that can come before us is, How far by the
persevering endeavours of a seldom appearing Socrates Mankind may be made
happy--I can imagine such happiness carried to an extreme, but what must
it end in?--Death--and who could in such a case bear with death? The whole
troubles of life, which are now frittered away in a series of years, would
then be accumulated for the last days of a being who instead of hailing
its approach would leave this world as Eve left Paradise. But in truth I
do not at all believe in this sort of perfectibility--the nature of the
world will not admit of it--the inhabitants of the world will correspond
to itself. Let the fish Philosophise the ice away from the Rivers in
winter time, and they shall be at continual play in the tepid delight of
summer. Look at the Poles and at the Sands of Africa, whirlpools and
volcanoes--Let men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive at
earthly Happiness. The point at which Man may arrive is as far as the
parallel state in inanimate nature, and no further. For instance suppose a
rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morning, it enjoys
itself, but then comes a cold wind, a hot sun--it cannot escape it, it
cannot destroy its annoyances--they are as native to the world as itself:
no more can man be happy in spite, the worldly elements will prey upon his
nature. The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and
superstitious is "a vale of tears," from which we are to be redeemed by a
certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven--What a little
circumscribed straightened notion! Call the world if you please "The vale
of Soul-making." Then you will find out the use of the world (I am
speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be
immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a
thought which has struck me concerning it) I say '_Soul-making_'--Soul as
distinguished from an Intelligence. There may be intelligences or sparks
of the divinity in millions--but they are not Souls till they acquire
identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of
perception--they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are
God--how then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are
God to have identity given them--so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to
each one's individual existence? How, but by the medium of a world like
this? This point I sincerely wish to consider because I think it a grander
system of salvation than the Christian religion--or rather it is a system
of Spirit-creation--This is effected by three grand materials acting the
one upon the other for a series of years--These three Materials are the
_Intelligence_--the _human heart_ (as distinguished from intelligence or
Mind), and the _World_ or _Elemental space_ suited for the proper action
of _Mind and Heart_ on each other for the purpose of forming the _Soul_ or
_Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity_. I can scarcely
express what I but dimly perceive--and yet I think I perceive it--that you
may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible.
I will call the _world_ a School instituted for the purpose of teaching
little children to read--I will call the _human heart_ the _horn Book_
used in that School--and I will call the _Child able to read, the Soul_
made from that _School_ and its _horn book_. Do you not see how necessary
a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a
soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse
ways. Not merely is the Heart a Hornbook, It is the Mind's Bible, it is
the Mind's experience, it is the text from which the Mind or Intelligence
sucks its identity. As various as the Lives of Men are--so various become
their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical
Souls of the sparks of his own essence. This appears to me a faint sketch
of a system of Salvation which does not offend our reason and humanity--I
am convinced that many difficulties which Christians labour under would
vanish before it--there is one which even now strikes me--the salvation of
Children. In them the spark or intelligence returns to God without any
identity--it having had no time to learn of and be altered by the
heart--or seat of the human Passions. It is pretty generally suspected
that the Christian scheme has been copied from the ancient Persian and
Greek Philosophers. Why may they not have made this simple thing even more
simple for common apprehension by introducing Mediators and Personages, in
the same manner as in the heathen mythology abstractions are personified?
Seriously I think it probable that this system of Soul-making may have
been the Parent of all the more palpable and personal schemes of
Redemption among the Zoroastrians the Christians and the Hindoos. For as
one part of the human species must have their carved Jupiter; so another
part must have the palpable and named Mediator and Saviour, their Christ,
their Oromanes, and their Vishnu. If what I have said should not be plain
enough, as I fear it may not be, I will put you in the place where I began
in this series of thoughts--I mean I began by seeing how man was formed by
circumstances--and what are circumstances but touchstones of his heart?
and what are touchstones but provings of his heart, but fortifiers or
alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but his Soul?--and
what was his Soul before it came into the world and had these provings and
alterations and perfectionings?--An intelligence without Identity--and how
is this Identity to be made? Through the medium of the Heart? and how is
the heart to become this Medium but in a world of Circumstances?
There now I think what with Poetry and Theology, you may thank your stars
that my pen is not very long-winded. Yesterday I received two Letters from
your Mother and Henry, which I shall send by young Birkbeck with this.
Friday, April 30.
Brown has been here rummaging up some of my old sins--that is to say
sonnets. I do not think you remember them, so I will copy them out, as
well as two or three lately written. I have just written one on
Fame--which Brown is transcribing and he has his book and mine. I must
employ myself perhaps in a sonnet on the same subject--
ON FAME
_You cannot eat your cake and have it too._--Proverb.
How fever'd is that Man who cannot look
Upon his mortal days with temperate blood