TO A YOUNG LADY WHO SENT ME A LAUREL CROWN

6

lair:

For I am brimful of the friendliness

Published in the 1817 volume. Lord Hough- Or of the distance from home's pleasant ton states that this sonnet was the means of introducing Keats to Mr. Leigh Hunt's society. Mr. Cowden Clarke had brought some of his young friend's verses and read them aloud. Mr. Horace Smith, who happened to be there, was struck with the last six lines, especially the penultimate, saying "what a well condensed expression!" and Keats was shortly after introduced to the literary circle.' This would appear to fix the date as not later than the summer of 1815.

That in a little cottage I have found;
Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress,
And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,
And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd.

SPENSERIAN STANZA

WRITTEN AT THE CLOSE OF CANTO II.
BOOK V. OF 'THE FAERIE QUEENE'

Given by Lord Houghton in Life, Letters and Literary Remains, who comments as follows. 'His sympathies were very much on the side of the revolutionary Giant, who "undertook for to repair" the "realms and nations run awry." and to suppress "tyrants that make men subject to their law," "and lordings curbe that commons over-aw," while he grudged the legitimate victory, as he rejected the conservative philosophy, of the "righteous Artegall' and his comrade, the fierce defender of privilege and order. And he expressed in this ex post facto prophecy, his conviction of the

ultimate triumph of freedom and equality by
the power of transmitted knowledge.' No
date is assigned, and the verse may as well be
placed in the early period of Keats's acquaint-
ance with Spenser and friendship with Leigh
Hunt.

IN after-time, a sage of mickle lore
Yelep'd Typographus, the Giant took,
And did refit his limbs as heretofore,
And made him read in many a learned
book,

And into many a lively legend look;

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO
CHAPMAN'S HOMER

It was Charles Cowden Clarke who was with Keats when the friends made the acquaintance of this translation of Homer by the Elizabethan poet. The two young men had sat up nearly all one night in the summer of 1815 in Clarke's lodging, reading from a folio volume of the book which they had borrowed. Keats left for his own lodgings at dawn, and when Clarke came down to breakfast the next morn

Thereby in goodly themes so training ing, he found this sonnet which Keats had

him,

That all his brutishness he quite forsook,

When, meeting Artegall and Talus grim, The one be struck stone-blind, the other's eyes wox dim.

ON LEAVING SOME FRIENDS
AT AN EARLY HOUR

Written, as Clarke intimates, in connection with Keats's visits to Leigh Hunt in the Vale of Health. Published in the 1817 volume.

GIVE me a golden pen, and let me lean
On heap'd-up flowers, in regions clear
and far;

Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,
Or hand of hymning angel, when 't is seen
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:
And let there glide by many a pearly

car,

Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,

And half-discover'd wings, and glances
keen.

The while let music wander round my ears,
And as it reaches each delicious ending,
Let me write down a line of glorious
tone,
And full of many wonders of the spheres:
For what a height my spirit is contend-
ing!

"Tis not content so soon to be alone.

sent him.

O Mathew, lend thy And, as for him some gift she was devising, Beheld thee, pluck'd thee, cast thee in the