What when a stout unbending champion

awes

Envy, and Malice to their native sty? Unnumber'd souls breathe out a still applause,

Proud to behold him in his country's eye.

TO KOSCIUSKO

First published in The Examiner, where it is dated Dec., 1816.' It is included in the 1817 volume.

GOOD Kosciusko, thy great name alone

Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;

It comes upon us like the glorious pealing Of the wide spheres - an everlasting tone. And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown,

The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing,

Are changed to harmonies, for ever stealing

Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne.

It tells me too, that on a happy day, When some good spirit walks upon the earth,

Thy name with Alfred's, and the great of yore,

Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth

To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away To where the great God lives for ever

more.

TO G. A. W.

Georgiana Augusta Wylie, who afterward married George Keats. For other verses addressed to this lady see pp. 11, 240, 243.

This sonnet in Tom Keats's copybook is dated December, 1816; it was published in the 1817 volume."

NYMPH of the downward smile and sidelong glance,

In what diviner moments of the day Art thou most lovely? When gone far astray

Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance?
Or when serenely wand'ring in a trance
Of sober thought? Or when starting

away,

With careless robe, to meet the morning

ray,

Thou spar'st the flowers in thy mazy dance? Haply 't is when thy ruby lips part sweetly, And so remain, because thou listenest: But thou to please wert nurtured so completely

That I can never tell what mood is best. I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly

Trips it before Apollo than the rest.

STANZAS

There is no date given to this poem by Lord Houghton, who published it in the 1848 edition, and no reference occurs to it in the Letters. It was probably an early careless poem, very likely a set of album verses.

IN a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:

The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember

Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

Ah! would 't were so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any

Writh'd not at passèd joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,

This stood as dedication to the 1817 volume, which was published in the month of March. Charles Cowden Clarke makes the statement: 'On the evening when the last proof sheet was brought from the printer, it was accompanied by the information that if a "dedication to the book was intended, it must be sent forthwith." Whereupon he withdrew to a side table, and in the buzz of a mixed conversation (for there were several friends in the room) he composed and brought to Charles Ollier, the publisher, the dedication sonnet to Leigh Hunt.'

ON THE SEA

Sent in a letter to Reynolds, dated April 17, 1817. 'From want of regular rest,' Keats says, 'I have been rather narvus, and the passage in Lear"Do you not hear the sea?" has haunted me intensely.' He then copies the sonnet, which was published in The Champion, August 17 of the same year. The letter was written from Carisbrooke. He had been sent away from London by his brothers a month before, shortly after the appearance of his first volume of Poems, and his letters show the nervous, restless condition into which he had been driven by that venture.

- whether it existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our passions as of Love they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty. In a word, you may know my favourite speculation by my first Book, and the little Song I sent in my last, which is a representation from the fancy of the probable mode of operating in these matters.'

UNFELT, unheard, unseen,

I've left my little queen,

Her languid arms in silver slumber lying: Ah! through their nestling touch, Who who could tell how much There is for madness-cruel, or complying?

Those faery lids how sleek!

Those lips how moist !- they speak, In ripest quiet, shadows of sweet sounds: Into my fancy's ear

Melting a burden dear,

How 'Love doth know no fulness, and no bounds.'

True! tender monitors!
I bend unto your laws:

This sweetest day for dalliance was born!
So, without more ado,

I'll feel my heaven anew,
For all the blushing of the hasty morn.

ON

Published with the date 1817 by Lord Houghton in Life, Letters and Literary Remains, but slightly varied in form when reprinted in the Aldine edition.

THINK not of it, sweet one, so;Give it not a tear;

Sigh thou mayst, and bid it go Any-any where.

Do not look so sad, sweet one, Sad and fadingly;

Shed one drop, then it is gone, Oh! 't was born to die!

COME hither, all sweet maidens soberly, Down-looking aye, and with a chasten'd light

Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white, And meekly let your fair hands joined be, As if so gentle that ye could not see,

Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright, Sinking away to his young spirit's night, Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea: 'Tis young Leander toiling to his death; Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips

For Hero's cheek, and smiles against
her smile.

O horrid dream! see how his body dips
Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam

awhile:

He's gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!

ON LEIGH HUNT'S POEM, 'THE STORY OF RIMINI'

Dated 1817 in the Life, Letters and Literary Remains, and placed next after the preceding.