A winding-sheet, ah me! I must away
To No. 7, just beyond the circus gay.
Alas, my friend! your coat sits very well;
Where may your tailor live?' I may not tell.
O pardon me I'm absent now and then.
Where might my tailor live? I say again

I cannot tell, let me no more be teaz'd

He lives in Wapping, might live where he pleas'd.'

SONNET.*

HE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!

THE

Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,

Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang`rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,

Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,

Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,

Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise -
Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday- - or holinight

Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I've read love's missal through to-day,
He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

20

LINES TO FANNY.†

HAT I do to drive away

W Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen,

Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!

Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,

(19) In The World we read Taylor, with a capital T, both here and in line 21, as if Keats were thinking of his publisher; but I doubt whether that pleasantry was intentional, because I cannot see any point or meaning in it; and I think Keats was quite capable of spelling the common noun tailor in that fashion without any arrière pensée.

* This sonnet was first given among the Literary Remains in 1848, with the date 1819. There is a letter to Miss Brawne posted on the 11th of October at Westminster, which corresponds with the sonnet in subject; so that this poem may very well belong to the 10th of October 1819.

These lines, first given in the Life, Letters &c., were there dated October 1819;

What can I do to kill it and be free

In my old liberty?

When every fair one that I saw was fair,
Enough to catch me in but half a snare,

Not keep me there :

When, howe'er poor or particolour'd things,
My muse had wings,

And ever ready was to take her course
Whither I bent her force,

Unintellectual, yet divine to me; ·

-

Divine, I say! What sea-bird o'er the sea
Is a philosopher the while he goes
Winging along where the great water throes?

How shall I do

To get anew

Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more

Above, above

The reach of fluttering Love,

And make him cower lowly while I soar?

Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism,

A heresy and schism,

Foisted into the canon law of love;

No, wine is only sweet to happy men;
More dismal cares

Seize on me unawares,

5

ΙΟ

15

20

25

Where shall I learn to get my peace again?

To banish thoughts of that most hateful land,

30

Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand
Where they were wreck'd and live a wrecked life;
That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour,
Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore,
Unown'd of any weedy-haired gods;

35

and I should be disposed to assign them to the 12th of that month, the day before that on which Keats posted a letter at Westminster to Miss Brawne, saying inter alia that he has set himself to copy some verses out fair, and adding "I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time." The text appears to me to need revision in certain points; but I know of no authority for change. Thus, in line 3, the word and or but has probably dropped out after Aye. (33) Probably wrecked should be wretched. There seems a want of aptness in making use of wreck'd (monosyllable) and wrecked (dissyllable) in such sharp counterpoint; and Keats would be quite likely to write wreched without the t and thus leave the word easy to mistake for wrecked.

(35) I should think Even a likelier initial word here than Ever.

Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods,
Ic'd in the great lakes, to afflict mankind;
Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind,
Would fright a Dryad; whose harsh herbag'd meads
Make lean and lank the starv'd ox while he feeds;
There bad flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song,
And great unerring Nature once seems wrong.

40

O, for some sunny spell

To dissipate the shadows of this hell!

45

Say they are gone, — with the new dawning light
Steps forth my lady bright!

O, let me once more rest

My soul upon that dazzling breast!

Let once again these aching arms be plac'd,

50

The tender gaolers of thy waist!

And let me feel that warm breath here and there

One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask'd, and being seen — - without a blot!

O! let me have thee whole, — all — all — be mine!

That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, — those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, -
Yourself— your soul — in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die,

Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,

the palate of my mind

Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

First given among the Literary Remains in 1848, dated 1819. I have no data upon which to suggest the period more exactly; but the desperation of tone may perhaps indicate that the sonnet was composed late in the year.

SONNET TO GEORGE KEATS:*

WRITTEN IN SICKNESS.

ROTHER belov'd if health shall smile again,

If e'er returning vigour bid these weak
`And languid limbs their gladsome strength regain,
Well may thy brow the placid glow retain

Of sweet content and thy pleas'd eye may speak
The conscious self applause, but should I seek
To utter what this heart can feel, Ah! vain
Were the attempt! Yet kindest friends while o'er
My couch ye bend, and watch with tenderness
The being whom your cares could e'en restore,
From the cold grasp of Death, say can you guess
The feelings which these lips can ne'er express;
Feelings, deep fix'd in grateful memory's store.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI.†

I.

H, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;

The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

This sonnet is from a transcript in the handwriting of George Keats, which bears the date 1819; but I am disposed to think this date must have been wrongly affixed from memory. The entire absence of high poetic feeling indicates a time of utter physical prostration; and I should imagine that the sonnet might possibly have been written in February 1820, when Keats was still so ill as to be forbidden to write, and that it might have been sent to George with the announcement of the illness; but it seems likelier that it was composed later on in the year, in reply to some letter written by George on receiving that news-a letter in which the younger brother might have reproached himself for leaving the elder, low in health and funds, and for rushing back to America to mend his own fortunes.

This poem was first published by Leigh Hunt in The Indicator for the roth of May 1820 (No. XXXI), with some introductory remarks which will be found in the Appendix. The signature used by Keats on this occasion, as on that of issuing the Sonnet on a Dream (page 433) was "Caviare." In 1848 Lord Houghton gave the poem among the Literary Remains, apparently from a manuscript source, for the variations are very considerable. I think there can be no doubt that the Indicator version is a revision of the other, and I have therefore adopted it in the

2.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

3.

I see a lilly on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

4.

I met a lady in the meads

Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

5.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.

6.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look'd at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

text, noting the variations as of the highest interest. In one of the late Gabriel Rossetti's letters he characterizes this poem as "the wondrous Belle Dame sans Merci." I have no positive information as to the date at which it was composed; but I am fain to regard it as a crowning essay in perfect imaginative utterance, written between the poet's partial recovery and his departure to seek health and find a grave in Italy.

(1-2) The first line in each of these stanzas is, in Lord Houghton's version, O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

and in line 3 of stanza 1 has stands for is.

3

(3) Lord Houghton reads cheeks in line 3 of stanza 3.

(5) This and the next stanza are transposed in the other version; and in the third line we read sidelong would she bend. The reading of the text probably arose from the desire to avoid the repetition of long.