beings; and the gods live in the distance, amid notes of majestic thunder. I do not say that no "surfeit" is ever there; but I do, that there is no end to the "nectared sweets." In what other English poet (however superior to him in other respects) are you so certain of never opening a page without lighting upon the loveliest imagery and the most eloquent expressions? Name one. Compare any succession of their pages at random, and see if the young poet is not sure to present his stock of beauty; crude it may be, in many instances; too indiscriminate in general; never, perhaps, thoroughly perfect in cultivation; but there it is, exquisite of its kind, and filling envy with despair. He died at five-and-twenty; he had not revised his earlier works, nor given his genius its last pruning. His Endymion, in resolving to be free from all critical trammels, had no versification; and his last noble fragment, Hyperion, is not faultless,-but it is nearly So. The Eve of St. Agnes betrays morbidity only in one in. stance (noticed in the comment). Even in his earliest productions, which are to be considered as those of youth just emerging from boyhood, are to be found passages of as masculine a beauty as ever were written. Witness the Sonnet on reading Chapman's Homer,-epical in the splendor and dignity of its images, and terminating with the noblest Greek simplicity. Among his finished productions, however, of any length, the Eve of St. Agnes still appears to me the most delightful and complete specimen of his genius. It stands mid-way between his most sensitive ones (which, though of rare beauty, occasionally sink into feebleness) and the less generally characteristic majesty of the fragment of Hyperion. Doubtless his greatest poetry is to be found in Hyperion; and had he lived, there is little doubt he would have written chiefly in that strain; rising superior to those languishments of love which made the critics so angry, and which they might so easily have pardoned at his time of life. But the Eve of St. Agnes had already bid most of them adieu,— exquisitely loving as it is. It is young, but full-grown poetry of the rarest description; graceful as the beardless Apollo; glowing and gorgeous with the colors of romance. I have therefore reprinted the whole of it in the present volume, together with the comment alluded to in the Preface; especially as, in

addition to felicity of treatment, its subject is in every respect a happy one, and helps to "paint" this our bower of “ poetry with delight." Melancholy, it is true, will "break in" when the reader thinks of the early death of such a writer; but it is one of the benevolent provisions of nature, that all good things tend to pleasure in the recollection; when the bitterness of their loss 's past, their own sweetness embalms them.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

While writing this paragraph, a hand-organ out-of-doors has been playing one of the mournfullest and loveliest of the airs of Bellini-another genius who died young. The sound of music always gives a feeling either of triumph or tenderness to the state of mind in which it is heard: in this instance it seemed like one departed spirit come to bear testimony of another, and to say how true indeed may be the union of sorrowful and sweet recollections.

Keats knew the youthful faults of his poetry as well as any man, as the reader may see by the preface to Endymion, and its touching though manly acknowledgment of them to critical candor. I have this moment read it again, after a lapse of years, and have been astonished to think how anybody could answer such an appeal to the mercy of strength, with the cruelty of weakness. All the good for which Mr. Gifford pretended to be zealous, he might have effected with pain to no one, and glory to himself; and therefore all the evil he mixed with it was of his own making. But the secret at the bottom of such unprovoked censure is exasperated inferiority. Young poets, upon the whole,—at least very young poets,-had better not publish at all. They are pretty sure to have faults; and jealousy and envy are sure to find them out, and wreak upon them their own disappointments. The critic is often an unsuccessful author, almost always an inferior one to a man of genius, and possesses his sensibility neither to beauty nor to pain. If he does, if by any chance he is a man of genius himself (and such things have been), sure and certain will be his regret, some day, for having given pains which he might have turned into

noble pleasures; and nothing will console him but that very charity towards himself, the grace of which can only be secured to us by our having denied it to no one.

Let the student of poetry observe, that in all the luxury of the Eve of Saint Agnes there is nothing of the conventional craft of artificial writers; no heaping up of words or similes for their own sakes or the rhyme's sake; no gaudy common-places; no borrowed airs of earnestness; no tricks of inversion; no substitution of reading or of ingenious thoughts for feeling or spontaneity; no irrelevancy or unfitness of any sort. All flows out of sincerity and passion. The writer is as much in love with the heroine as his hero is; his description of the painted window, however gorgeous, has not an untrue or superfluous word; and the only speck of a fault in the whole poem arises from an excess of emotion.

THE EVE OF SAINT AGNES.1

X

1.

St. Agnes' Eve-Ah! bitter chill it was:
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;2

The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold;

Numb were the beadsman's fingers while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem'd taking flight for heaven without a death
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.3

II.

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man,

Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,

And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,
Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:

The sculptur'd dead on each side seem'd to freeze,
Imprison'd in black, purgatorial rails:
Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat❜ries,
He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails

To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails ♦

III.

Northward he turneth through a little door,
And scarce three steps, ere music's golden tongue
Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor :5
But no; already had his death-bell rung:
The joys of all his life were said and sung:
His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve:
Another way he went, and soon among
Rough ashes sat he, for his soul's reprieve;
And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve.

IV.

That ancient beadsman heard the prelude soft;
And so it chanc'd (for many a door was wide,
From hurry to and fro) soon up aloft

The silver-snarling trumpets 'gan to chide;
The level chambers ready with their pride,
Were glowing to receive a thousand guests:
And carved angels, ever eager-eyed,

Stared, where upon their heads the cornice rests,

With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts:

V.

At length burst in the argent revelry
With plume, tiara, and all rich array,
Numerous as shadows haunting fairily

The brain, new stuff'd, in youth, with triumphs gay
Of old romance. These let us wish away,
And turn, sole-thoughted, to one lady there,
Whose heart had brooded all that wintry day
On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care,
As she had heard old dames full many times declare

VI.

They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight;
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey'd middle of the night
If ceremonies due they did aright;
As, supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties, lily white:
Nor look behind or sideways, but require

Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

VII.

Full of this whim was youthful Madeline;
The music, yearning, like a god in pain,
She scarcely heard; her maiden eyes divine,
Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train
Pass by, she heeded not at all; in vain
Came many a tip-toe amorous cavalier,

And back retired, not cool'd by high disdain,
But she saw not; her heart was otherwhere;

She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year. X

VIII.

She danc'd along with vague, regardless eyes,

Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short;
The hallow'd hour was near at hand: she sighs
Amid the timbrels and the throng'd resort
Of whisperers in anger or in sport;

'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn;
Hoodwink'd with faery fancy; all amort,

Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn, And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn.

IX.

So, purposing each moment to retire,

She linger'd still. Meantime across the moors,
Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire
For Madeline. Beside the portal doors

Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores
All saints to give him sight of Madeline,

But for one moment in the tedious hours,

That he might gaze and worship all unseen,

Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss ;-in sooth such things have been

X.

He ventures in, let no buzz'd whisper tell;
All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords
Will storm his heart, Love's feverous citadel.
For him those chambers had barbarian hordes,
Hyæna foemen, and hot-blooded lords,
Whose very dogs would execrations howl
Against his lineage. Not one breast affords
Him any mercy, in that mansion foul,
Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul.

XI.

Ah! happy chance! the aged creature came
Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand,