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POEMS WRITT Violets and daisies. It might make one The Past ve with death, to think that one should be Sonnet ("ed in so sweet a place.1

Fragment to

bud?

Invocation e genius of the lamented person to whose
Stanzas, w I have dedicated these unworthy verses
To Mary ( ›ry
'here") Lot less delicate and fragile than it was
Song, on a iful; and, where cankerworms abound,
The Wood wonder if its young flower was blighted
Fragment o
The savage criticism on his
Fragment (ion, which appeared in The Quarterly
Fragment("produced the most violent effect on
Fragment ("eptible mind; the agitation thus origi-
Song for "Ta led in the rupture of a blood-vessel
Marenghi
rapid consumption ensued, and
acknowledgments from more
f the true greatness of his
"ectual to heal the wound thus

Scene from

d that these wretched men y do. They scatter their anders without heed as to ned shaft lights on a heart many blows, or one like 1 of more penetrable stuff. iates is, to my knowledge, a principled calumniator. As as it a poem, whatever might be treated contemptuously by

avoid recalling Keats's own words htingale

many a time nalt in love with easeful Death.-ED. of the attack of The Quarterly Review een greatly overrated. No doubt the tone of the article caused him conance; but the writer was not responath, which was caused by the family ɔtion.-ED.

those who had celebrated, with various degrees of complacency 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 sensitive 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. 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 recom

He

pense 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 careermay the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name!

ADONAIS.

I.

I WEEP for Adonais-he is dead!

O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all
years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure com-

peers,

And teach them thine own sorrow, say: with

me

Died Adonais; till the Future dares

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity.

II.

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,

When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies

In darkness? where was lorn Urania When Adonais died? With veilèd eyes, 'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise

She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,

Rekindled all the fading melodies,

With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,

He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of

death.

III.

O, weep for Adonais-he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burn-

ing bed

Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep, Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep; For he is gone, where all things wise and fair Descend;-oh, dream not that the amorous Deep

Will yet restore him to the vital air; Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

IV.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania!-He died,

Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride,

The priest, the slave, and the liberticide, Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite

Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,

Into the gulph of death; but his clear Sprite Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.1

V.

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;

The allusion to Milton as "the third among the sons of light" should be read in connexion with passages on epic poetry and epic poets in Shelley's Defence of Poetry. The first and second " among the sons of light" referred to in this stanza are probably Homer and Dante.-ED.

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