stant glance

Flash from the spirit to the countenance There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God

Of this great world, which all things must inherit,

As to an ocean.

What is that joy which serene infancy

φάρμακον εἶδες.

Πῶς του τοῖς χείλεσσι ποτέδραμε, κοὐκ

ἐγλυκάνθη ;

them by,

του,

toys

Wrought by the busy

ever new?

ᾠδάν.

MOSCHUS, EPITAPH. BION.

to show

London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My

known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled prove at least that I am an impartial judge. consider the fragment of Hyperion, as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.

John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the of 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a bloodvessel in the lungs ; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.

It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows or one like Keats's composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to 44 'Endymion," was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated, with various degrees of com

placency and panegyric, "Paris," and 'Woman," and a 'Syrian Tale," and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none.

The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's life were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press. I am given to understand that the wound which his sensitives spirit had received from the criticism of Endymion was exasperated by the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius, than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been informed,

'almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend." Had I known these circumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from "such stuff as dreams are made of." His conduct is a golden augury of the success of his future career-may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name!

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!

Not all to that bright station dared to climb;

And happier they their happiness who knew,

Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time

In which suns perished; others more sublime,

Struck by the envious wrath of man or God,

Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;

And some yet live, treading the thorny Which leads, through toil and hate, to road,

Fame's serene abode.

cherished,

And fed with true love tears, instead

of dew;

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!

Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and

the last,

The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew

Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;

The broken lily lies-the storm is overpast.

VII

To that high Capital, where kingly
Death

Keeps his pale court in beauty and
decay,

He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,

A grave among the eternal.-Come away!

Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day

Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still

He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay; Awake him not! surely he takes his fill

Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

VIII

He will awake no more, oh, never more !

Within the twilight chamber spreads

арасе,

The shadow of white Death, and at the door

Invisible Corruption waits to trace His extreme way to her dim dwellingplace;

The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and

awe

Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface

So fair a prey, till darkness, and the

law

curtain draw.

IX

Oh weep for Adonais!-The quick
Dreams,

The passion wingèd Ministers of
thought,

Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams

Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught

The love which was its music, wander not,

Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,

But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot

Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,

They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.

Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem ;

Another in her wilful grief would break Her bow and winged reeds, as if to

stem

A greater loss with one which was more weak;

And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

XII

Another Splendour on his mouth alit, That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath

Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,

And pass into the panting heart be

neath

With lightning and with music: the
damp death

Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold
night clips,

It flushed through his pale limbs, and past to its eclipse.

XIII

And others came . . . Desires and Adorations,

Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,

Splendours, and Glooms, and glim

mering Incarnations

Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;

And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, And Pleasure, blind with tears, led

by the gleam

Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, Came in slow pomp;-the moving pomp might seem

Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal

stream.

XIV

All he had loved, and moulded into thought,

Lamented Adonais. Morning sought Her eastern watchtower, and her hair unbound,

Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,

Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;

Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

XV

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,

And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,

And will no more reply to winds or fountains,

Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,

Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;

Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear

Than those for whose disdain she

pined away

Into a shadow of all sounds:-a drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

XVI

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down

Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,

Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown

For whom should she have waked the

sullen year?

To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both Thou Adonais: wan they stand and

sere

Amid the faint companions of their youth,

sweet sound,

sighing ruth.