Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finish'd: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.

50

55

And now at once, adventuresome, I send

My herald thought into a wilderness :

There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress

бо

My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

Upon the sides of Latmus was outspread
A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed
So plenteously all weed-hidden roots

65

Into o'er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits.
And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,

Where no man went; and if from shepherd's keep
A lamb stray'd far a-down those inmost glens,
Never again saw he the happy pens
Whither his brethren, bleating with content,
Over the hills at every nightfall went.
Among the shepherds, 't was believed ever,
That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever
From the white flock, but pass'd unworried
By angry wolf, or pard with prying head,
Until it came to some unfooted plains

Where fed the herds of Pan: aye great his gains

Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many,
Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,

And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly

To a wide lawn, whence one could only see

(50) Keats originally wrote this word vermil both here and in line 696 of this Book. Whether he adopted it from Spenser or some other writer I know not; but in Spenser it is vermell: see Faerie Queene, Book II, Canto X, stanza 24.

(58) In the manuscript there is a comma after now and none after adventuresome. (71) The manuscript reads To which for Whither.

(74) In the manuscript, fleecy is altered to fleecing, which, in turn, is altered back to fleecy.

(78) In the manuscript,

aye great his gains

Who thus but one did lose.

The reading of the text is supplied, as an alternative, in pencil. In the first edi tion ay is printed for aye.

Stems thronging all around between the swell
Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell
The freshness of the space of heaven above,

Edg'd round with dark tree tops? through which a dove
Would often beat its wings, and often too
A little cloud would move across the blue.

Full in the middle of this pleasantness
There stood a marble altar, with a tress
of flowers budded newly; and the dew
Had taken fairy phantasies to strew
Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,
And so the dawned light in pomp receive.
For 't was the morn: Apollo's upward fire
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Of brightness so unsully'd, that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.

Now while the silent workings of the dawn
Were busiest, into that self-same lawn
All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped
A troop of little children garlanded;
Who gathering round the altar, seem'd to pry
Earnestly round as wishing to espy

Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited
For many moments, ere their ears were sated
With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then

(83) This line originally stood a foot short in the manuscript, thus Stems thronging round between the swell...

(94) Cancelled manuscript reading, coming light for dawned light. (99) Cancelled manuscript reading, pure for fine.

85

90

95

100

105

110

115

(107) In the manuscript, originally, these silent workings, altered to the, seemingly in consequence of a marginal query in another handwriting, but finally changed back again to these. I presume Keats was eventually convinced that these silent workings might seem to include man's voice on the mountains.

(115) In the manuscript the contraction for even is clearly e'en, not ev'n as in the printed text.

Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,

To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking

Through copse-clad vallies, - ere their death, o'ertaking
The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.

And now, as deep into the wood as we

120

O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter

With April's tender younglings: next, well trimm'd,

(119) Cancelled manuscript reading, and for in.

(125) The manuscript has showing, Keats's usual orthography, the first edition shewing.

(128) In the manuscript Keats had cancelled the whole of this invocation, sacrificing with it the lovely line 127; but the passage was finally restored by means of a pencilled Stet.

(132) The word unmew, in the sense of enfranchise, may probably be a relic of Shakespearean study. Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene iv, line 11

To-night she is mew'd up to her heaviness.

(135) This and the next two lines exercised the poet's fastidious taste greatly. They stood originally thus:

In front some pretty Damsels danced along,
Bearing the Burden of a shepherd Song;
And each with handy wicker over brimmed...

and even then he had begun to write may day Song instead of shepherd Song. Then there is an intermediate reading for line 135, before that of the text is sup plied

And in the front young Damsels danced along, while two rejected marginal readings for line 137 are —

and

Each bringing a white wicker over brimmed

Each brought a little wicker over brimmed.

A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books;
Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe,
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,

140

Let his divinity o'er-flowing die

In music, through the vales of Thessaly:

Some idly trail'd their sheep-hooks on the ground,

145

And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound

With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,

Now coming from beneath the forest trees,

A venerable priest full soberly,

Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye

150

Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept,

And after him his sacred vestments swept.

From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white,

Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light;

And in his left he held a basket full

155

Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull:

Wild thyme, and valley-lillies whiter still
Than Leda's love, and cresses from the rill.

His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath,
Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth

Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd
Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud

Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd,

160

(144) A lovely allusion to the lovely story of Apollo's nine years' sojourn on sarth as the herdsman of Admetus, when banished from Olympus for killing the Cyclops who had forged the thunder-bolts wherewith Esculapius had been slain. (150) Begirt with ministring looks is perhaps somewhat licentiously elliptical; but there is no doubt that was what Keats wrote, and I presume there can be none as to the meaning - surrounded by people whose looks showed their eagerness to do their ministering part.

(153) This couplet originally stood thus

From his right hand there swung a milk white vase
Of mingled wines, outsparkling like the Stars -

the less vigorous reading of the text being evidently supplied to get rid of the false Thyme. It is to be noted, however, that the bare idea of rhyming vase and stars shows that Keats no longer pronounced vase as if it rhymed with pace, as at page 23 of this volume.

(157) The motive of amending the rhyme was probably not the only one for the next erasure. Lines 157 and 158 were originally

Wild thyme, and valley lillies white as Leda's

Bosom, and choicest strips from mountain Cedars.

Then blossoms from the rill has place in the manuscript before the final cresses from the rill is supplied. Whiter than Leda's love (Jupiter in the form of a swan) is an obviously better comparison than white as Leda's bosom.

(163) In the manuscript o' the Ditty.

Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd

Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car,
Easily rolling so as scarce to mar

The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown:
Who stood therein did seem of great renown
Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,
Showing like Ganymede to manhood grown;
And, for those simple times, his garments were
A chieftain king's: beneath his breast, half bare,
Was hung a silver bugle, and between

His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen.
A smile was on his countenance; he seem'd,
To common lookers on, like one who dream'd
Of idleness in groves Elysian:

But there were some who feelingly could scan
A lurking trouble in his nether lip,

165

170

175

And see that oftentimes the reins would slip

180

Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,

And think of yellow leaves, of owlets' cry,

Of logs pil'd solemnly. Ah, well-a-day,

Why should our young Endymion pine away!

Soon the assembly, in a circle rang'd,

185

Stood silent round the shrine: each look was chang'd

To sudden veneration : women meek

Beckon'd their sons to silence; while each cheek

Of virgin bloom pal'd gently for slight fear.
Endymion too, without a forest peer,

Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face,
Among his brothers of the mountain chace.
In midst of all, the venerable priest

Ey'd them with joy from greatest to the least,
And, after lifting up his aged hands,
Thus spake he:
Men of Latmos! shepherd bands!
Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks:
Whether descended from beneath the rocks
That overtop your mountains; whether come
From vallies where the pipe is never dumb;

Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs

(168) In the manuscript, sat is here cancelled in favour of stood. (170) In the first edition Shewing.

(191) Cancelled manuscript reading, a bowed face for an awed face.

190

195

200

(192) In the first edition chase here, though chace in line 532 of the same Book. The manuscript gives chace in both instances, as at page 24 of the present volume.