VII.

TO HAMPSTEAD.

["Examiner," Nov. 12th, 1815. "Foliage," 1818. "Rimini," &c., 1844.]

STEEPLE issuing from a leafy rise, With farmy fields in front, and sloping green,

Dear Hampstead, is thy southern face

serene,

Silently smiling on approaching eyes,
Within, thine ever-shifting looks surprise,
Streets, hills, and dells, trees overhead now seen,
Now down below, with smoking roofs between,—
A village, revelling in varieties.

Then northward what a range,—with heath and

pond,

Nature's own ground; woods that let mansions through,

And cottaged vales with pillowy fields beyond, And clump of darkening pines, and prospects blue, And that clear path through all, where daily meet Cool cheeks, and brilliant eyes, and morn-elastic feet.

TO KOSCIUSKO.1

Who took part neither with Bonaparte in the height of his power, nor with the allies in the height of theirs.

["Examiner," Nov. 19th, 1815. "Foliage," 1818. "Living Poets of England" (Paris), 1827. "Works,' 1832, 1844, 1857, 1860. "Book of Sonnets," 1867. "Canterbury Poets," 1889.]

IS like thy patient valour thus to keep,
Great Kosciusko, to the rural shade,
While Freedom's ill-found amulet
still is made

Pretence for old aggression, and a heap
Of selfish mockeries. There, as in the sweep
Of stormier fields, thou earnest with thy blade,
Transformed, not inly altered, to the spade,
Thy never yielding right to a calm sleep.

Nature, 'twould seem, would leave to man's worse

wit,

The small and noisier part of this world's frame, And keep the calm, green amplitudes of it Sacred from fopperies and inconstant blame. Cities may change, and sovereigns, but 'tis fit, Thou and the country old be still the same!

1 In the 1832 and later editions the second verse was printed thus:

"There came a wanderer, borne from land to land
Upon a couch, pale, many-wounded, mild,

His brow with patient pain dulcetly sour.
Men stoop'd with awful sweetness on his hand,
And kiss'd it; and collected Virtue smiled,

To think how sovereign her enduring hour."

THE POETS.

[The "Examiner," Dec. 24th, 1815.]

ERE I to name, out of the times gone by,

The poets dearest to me, I should

say,

Pulci for spirits, and a fine free way; Chaucer for manners, and close, silent eye; Milton for classic taste, and harp strung high; Spenser for luxury, and sweet, sylvan play; Horace for chatting with from day to day; Shakespeare for all, but most society.

But which take with me, could I take but one? Shakespeare-as long as I was unoppressed With the world's weight, making sad thoughts intenser ;

But did I wish, out of the common sun,

To lay a wounded heart in leafy rest, And dream of things far off and healing-Spenser.

PROVIDENCE.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF FILICIA.

["Examiner," March 10th, 1816.]

UST as a mother with sweet pious face
Yearns towards her little children

from her seat,

Gives one a kiss, another an embrace,

Takes this upon her knee, that on her feet;

And while from actions, looks, complaints, pre

tences

She learns their feelings and their various will, To this a look, to that a word dispenses,

And whether stern or smiling, loves them still : So Providence for us, high, infinite,

Makes our necessities its watchful task,

Hearkens to all our prayers, helps all our wants;
And even if it denies what seems our right,
Either denies because 'twould have us ask,
Or seems but to deny, or in denying grants.

ON A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR.1

["Foliage," 1818.

"Works," 1832, 1844, 1857, 1860. "Book of Sonnets," 1867. "Favourite Poems," 1877. Kent, 1889. "Canterbury Poets," 1889.]

T lies before me there, and my own breath

Stirs its thin outer threads, as though beside

The living head I stood in honoured pride, Talking of lovely things that conquer death. Perhaps he pressed it once, or underneath

Ran his fine fingers, when he leant, blank-eyed, And saw, in fancy, Adam and his bride

With their rich locks, or his own Delphic wreath.

1 Leigh Hunt refers to this particular lock, and to his collection of the hair of great men, in one of the "New Wishing-Cap Papers," in "Tait's Magazine," 1833. Keats also wrote a few verses on this subject, perhaps inspired by the same lock, for he speaks of only seeing one, not possessing it.-ED.

There seems a love in hair, though it be dead. It is the gentlest, yet the strongest thread

Of our frail plant,-Surviving the proud trunk :—as though it said Patience and Gentleness is Power. Behold affectionate eternity.

--a blossom from the tree

In me

THE NILE.1

["Foliage," 1818. "Living Poets of England" (Paris), 1827. "Works," 1832, 1857, 1860. "Book of Sonnets," 1867. "Rimini," &c., 1844. "Canterbury Poets," 1889. "Macmillan's Magazine," 1889.]

T flows through old hushed Ægypt and its sands,

Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,

And times and things, as in that vision, seem

Keeping along it their eternal stands,

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory

extreme

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong, As of a world left empty of its throng,

1 "The Wednesday before last, Shelley, Hunt, and I, wrote each a sonnet on the river Nile; some day you shall read them all." Letter of John Keats, February, 1818. All three sonnets are printed in the Aldine Edition of Keats' Works.-ED.