Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers

Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,

When in an Eye thou art, alive with fate!

TO JOHN HAMILTON

REYNOLDS

Undated, but placed by Lord Houghton directly after the preceding in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.

O THAT a week could be an age, and we Felt parting and warm meeting every week;

Then one poor year a thousand years would be,

The flush of welcome ever on the cheek: So could we live long life in little space, So time itself would be annihilate, So a day's journey in oblivious haze

To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate.

O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind! To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant!

In little time a host of joys to bind,

And keep our souls in one eternal pant !

This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught

Me how to harbor such a happy thought.

THE HUMAN SEASONS

This sonnet was sent by Keats in a letter to Benjamin Bailey, from Teignmouth, March 13, 1818, and was printed the next year in Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book, but Keats did not include the verses in his 1820 volume.

FOUR Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of

man:

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honied cud of youthful thought
he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

KEATS began this poem in the spring of 1817 and finished it and saw it through the press in just about a year. It is interesting to follow in his correspondence the growth of the poem. The subject in general had been in his mind at least since the summer of 1816, when he wrote I stood tiptoe upon a little hill, and the poem Sleep and Poetry hints also at the occupation of his mind, though through all the earlier and partly imitative period of his poetical growth he was drawn almost equally by the romance to which Spenser and Leigh Hunt introduced him, and the classic themes which his early studies, Chapman and the Elgin marbles, all conspired to make real. In April, 1817, he writes as one absorbed in the delights of poetry and stimulated by it to production. 'I find,' he writes to Reynolds from Carisbrooke, April 18, 'I cannot exist without Poetry- - half the day I will not do the whole of it - I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan. I had become all in a Tremble from not having written anything of late

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was his great occupation, and he had the alternate exhilaration and depression which such an undertaking naturally would produce in a temperament as sensitive as his; indeed, one is not surprised to find him near the end of September expressing himself to Haydon as tired of the poem, and looking forward to a Romance to which he meant to devote himself the next summer, for so did his mind swing back and forth, though in truth romance was always uppermost, whether expressed in terms of Grecian mythology or mediævalism. But the main signicance of Endymion, as one traces the growth of Keats's mind, is in the strong impulse which possessed him to try his wings in a great flight. In a letter to Bailey, October 8, 1817, he quotes from his own letter to George Keats in the spring,' and thus at the very time of his setting forth on his great venture, the following notable passage : —

'As to what you say about my being a Poet, I can return no answer but by saying that the high idea I have of poetical fame makes me think I see it towering too high above me. At any rate I have no right to talk until Endymion is finished - it will be a test, a trial of my Powers of Imagination, and chiefly of my invention, which is a rare thing indeed-by which I must make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with Poetry: and when I consider that this is a great task, and that when done it will take me but a dozen paces towards the temple of fame-it makes me say: God forbid that I should be without such a task! I have heard Hunt say, and I may be asked - "Why endeavour after a long Poem? To which I would answer, Do not the lovers of poetry like to have a little region to wander in, where

they may pick and choose, and in which the images are so numerous that many are forgotten and found new in a second reading: which may be food for a week's stroll in summer? Do not they like this better than what they can read through before Mrs. Williams comes down stairs? a morning work at most.

'Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails, and Imagination the rudder. Did our great Poets ever write short Pieces? I mean in the shape of Tales this same invention seems indeed of late years to have been forgotten as a poetical excellence — But enough of this; I put on no laurels till I shall have finished Endymion.'

Keats was drawing near the end of his task when he wrote to Bailey November 22: At present I am just arrived at Dorking to change the scene, change the air

and give me a spur to wind up my Poem, of which there are wanting 500 lines.' And at the end of the first draft is written' Burford Bridge [near Dorking] November 28, 1817. Early in January, 1818, Keats gave the first book to Taylor, who 'seemed,' he says, 'more than satisfied with it,' and to Keats's surprise proposed issuing it in quarto if Haydon would make a drawing for a frontispiece. Haydon, when asked, was more eager to paint a picture from some scene in the book, but proposed now to make a finished chalk sketch of Keats's head to be engraved for a frontispiece; for some unmentioned reason, this plan was not carried out.

Keats was copying out the poem for the printer, giving it in book by book and reading the proofs until April, when it was ready save the Preface. This with dedication and title-page he had sent to his Publishers March 21. They were as follows:

dozen whom I was unacquainted with, who did not.

Now, when a dozen human beings are at words with another dozen, it becomes a matter of anxiety to side with one's friends

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more especially when excited thereto by a great love of Poetry. I fought under disadvantages. Before I began I had no inward feel of being able to finish; and as I proceeded my steps were all uncertain. So this Poem must rather be considered as an endeavour than as a thing accomplished; a poor prologue to what, if I live, I humbly hope to do. In duty to the Public I should have kept it back for a year or two, knowing it to be so faulty; but I really cannot do so, by repetition my favourite passages sound vapid in my ears, and I would rather redeem myself with a new Poem should this one be found of any interest.

I have to apologize to the lovers of simplicity for touching the spell of loneliness that hung about Endymion; if any of my lines plead for me with such people I shall be proud.

It has been too much the fashion of late to consider men bigoted and addicted to every word that may chance to escape their lips; now I here declare that I have not any particular affection for any particular phrase, word, or letter in the whole affair. I have written to please myself, and in hopes to please others, and for a love of fame; if I neither please myself, nor others, nor get fame, of what consequence is Phraseology.

I would fain escape the bickerings that all works not exactly in chime bring upon their begetters - but this is not fair to expect, there must be conversation of some sort and to object shows a man's consequence. In case of a London drizzle or a Scotch mist, the following quotation from Marston may perhaps 'stead me as an umbrella for an hour or so: 'let it be the curtesy of my peruser rather to pity my selfhindering labours than to malice me.'

One word more for we cannot help

seeing our own affairs in every point of view should any one call my dedication to Chatterton affected I answer as followeth: Were I dead, sir, I should like a book dedicated to me.' TEIGNMOUTH,

March 19th, 1818.

This Preface was shown either before or after it was in type to Reynolds and other friends, and Reynolds objected to it in terms which may be inferred from the following letter which Keats wrote him April 9, 1818, and which is so striking a reflection of his mind, when contemplating his finished work, that it should be read in connection with the poem:

'Since you all agree that the thing is bad, it must be so- though I am not aware there is anything like Hunt in it (and if there is, it is my natural way, and I have something in common with Hunt). Look it over again, and examine into the motives, the seeds, from which any one sentence sprung - I have not the slightest feel of humility toward the public—or to anything in existence, but the eternal Being, the Principle of Beauty, and the Memory of Great Men. When I am writing for myself for the mere sake of the moment's enjoyment, perhaps nature has its course with me- but a Preface is written to the Public; a thing I cannot help looking upon as an Enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of Hostility. If I write a Preface in a supple or subdued style, it will not be in character with me as a public speaker - I would be subdued before my friends, and thank them for subduing me but among Multitudes of Men- - I have no feel of stooping; I hate the idea of humility to them.

'I never wrote one single line of Poetry with the least Shadow of public thought.

'Forgive me for vexing you and making a Trojan horse of such a Trifle, both with respect to the matter in question, and myself but it eases me to tell you I could

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not live without the love of my friends - I would jump down Etna for any great Public good but I hate a mawkish Popularity. I cannot be subdued before them; my Glory would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers about pictures and books. I see swarms of Porcupines with their quills erect "like lime-twigs set to catch my winged book," and I would fright them away with a torch. You will say my Preface is not much of a Torch. It would have been too insulting "to begin from Jove," and I could not set a golden head upon a thing of clay. If there is any fault in the Preface it is not affectation, but an undersong of disrespect to the Public. If I write another Preface, it must be without a thought of those people- I will think about it. If it should not reach you in four or five days, tell Taylor to publish it without a Preface, and let the Dedication simply stand "Inscribed to the Memory of Thomas Chatterton."' The next day he wrote to his friend, inclosing a new draft: I am anxious you should find this Preface tolerable. If there is an affectation in it 't is natural to me. Do let the Printer's Devil cook it, and let me be as "the casing air." You are too good in this matter were I in your state, I am certain I should have no thought but of discontent and illness I might though be taught Patience: I had an idea of giving no Preface; however, don't you think this had better go? O, let it one should not be too timid of committing faults.' The Dedication stood as Keats proposed, and the new Preface, which is as follows:

PREFACE

KNOWING within myself the manner in which this Poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public.

What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the press; nor should they if I thought a year's castigation would do them any good; it will not: the foundations are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit to live.

This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a punishment: but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it: he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honour of English lit

erature.

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.

I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness: for I wish to try once more, before I bid it farewel. TEIGNMOUTH, April 10, 1818.