416 FRAGMENTS CONNECTED WITH EPIPSYCHIDION With one sad friend, and many a jealous Of some sublimer spirit. The dreariest and the longest journey go. And as to friend or mistress, 'tis a form; Perhaps I wish you were one. Some declare Free love has this, different from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. You a familiar spirit, as you are; a woman, more inhuman Like ocean, which the general north | Hint that, though not my wife, you are wind breaks Into ten thousand waves, and each one What is the colour of your eyes and hair? makes A mirror of the moon-like some great Why, if you were a lady, it were fair The world should know-but, as I am glass, Which did distort whatever form might pass, Dashed into fragments by a playful child, Which then reflects its eyes and forehead mild; Giving for one, which it could ne'er express, A thousand images of loveliness. afraid, The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed; And if, as it will be sport to see them stumble Over all sorts of scandals, hear them mumble Their litany of curses-some guess right, And others swear you're a Hermaphrodite; If I were one whom the loud world Like that sweet marble monster of both held wise, I should disdain to quote authorities Who wrote a book called Nature, 'tis to Reviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly; sexes, With looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes The very soul that the soul is gone Which lifted from her limbs the veil of stone. It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm, A happy and auspicious bird of calm, And to forgive their mutual faults, and A God that broods o'er chaos in com smother The Devil of disunion in their souls. motion; A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are, I love you!- Listen, O embodied Ray Lifts its bold head into the world's frore Of the great Brightness; I must pass Whose coming is as light and music are 'Mid dissonance and gloom-a star Which moves not 'mid the moving heavens alone A smile among dark frowns-a gentle tone Among rude voices, a beloved light, If I had but a friend! Why, I have three Even by my own confession; there may be Some more, for what I know, for 'tis my mind Instructed the instructor, and why he Was as the lovely star when morn has broke The roof of darkness, in the golden dawn, My hopes of Heaven-you know what they are worth That the presumptuous pedagogues of Earth, If they could tell the riddle offered here To call my friends all who are wise Would scorn to be, or being to appear and kind, And these, Heaven knows, at best are very few; But none can ever be more dear than you. Why should they be? My muse has lost her wings, Or like a dying swan who soars and sings, I should describe you in heroic style, But as it is, are you not void of guile? A lovely soul, formed to be blest and bless : A well of sealed and secret happiness; A lute which those whom Love has taught to play Make music on to cheer the roughest day, And enchant sadness till it sleeps? To the oblivion whither I and thou, meet In one Elysium or one winding sheet! If any should be curious to discover Whether to you I am a friend or lover, Let them read Shakespeare's sonnets, taking thence A whetstone for their dull intelligence That tears and will not cut, or let them guess How Diotima, the wise prophetess, And then withdrawn, and with incon- When everything familiar seemed to be Wonderful, and the immortality stant glance Flash from the spirit to the countenance There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God Which makes in mortal hearts its brief abode, A Pythian exhalation, which inspires Love, only love—a wind which o'er the wires Of the soul's giant harp There is a mood which language faints beneath; You feel it striding, as Almighty Death His bloodless steed. And what is that most brief and bright delight Which rushes through the touch and through the sight, Of this great world, which all things must inherit, Was felt as one with the awakening spirit, Unconscious of itself, and of the strange Distinctions which in its proceeding change It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were A desolation. Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily, For all those exiles from the dull insane Who vex this pleasant world with pride and pain, For all that band of sister-spirits known And stands before the spirit's inmost To one another by a voiceless tone? Into the light of morning, to the grave Φάρμακον ἦλθε, Βίων, ποτὶ σὸν στόμα, As to an ocean. What is that joy which serene infancy Perceives not, as the hours content them by, Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys The shapes of this new world, in giant toys Wrought by the busy ever new? φάρμακον εἶδες. MOSCHUS, EPITAPH. BION. Remembrance borrows Fancy's glass, IT is my intention to subjoin to the 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. I 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 "" "'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. shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none. Nor 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! ADONAIS I I WEEP for Adonais-he is dead! 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 compeers, 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 Ishaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania When Adonais died? With veiled 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 Oh weep for Adonais-he is dead! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning 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 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 road, Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode. VI But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished, The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, |