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seem to be moved into their places in response to some hidden tune, wayward and strange in its movement, but always rounding into a perfect whole. Such a poem as that beginning "Swiftly Walk Over the Western Wave" obeys a higher law than that of regularity, and with all its waywardness it is as perfect in shape as a flower. The rhythmical structure of the "West Wind" should be studied as an example of Shelley's power to make the movement of verse embody its mood. In this ode, the impetuous sweep and tireless overflow of the terza rima,* ending after each twelfth line in a couplet, suggest with wonderful truth the streaming and volleying of the wind, interrupted now and then by a sudden lull. Likewise in the "Skylark," the fluttering lift of the bird's movement, the airy ecstasy and rippling gush of its song, are subtly mirrored in the rhythm.

Shelley's Myth-making Power; His "Unreality."—Another main peculiarity of Shelley as a poet is what may be called his "myth-making" power. His poetry is full of "personifications" which, although in origin not different from those which fill eighteenth-century poetry with dead abstractions like "smiling Hope" and "ruddy Cheer," are imagined with such power that they become real spiritual presences, inspiring wonder and awe. Such are the "Spirits of the Hours" in Prometheus Unbound, such is the spirit of the west wind in the ode just mentioned, the latter a sublime piece of myth-making. It is in "Adonais," however, that this quality is best exhibited. To mourn over the dead body of Keats there gather Splendors and Glooms, grief-clad Morning and wailing Spring, desolate Hours, winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, and the lovely dreams which were the exhalation of the poet's spirit in life.

Shelley deals less with actualities than does any other English poet. His imagery is that of a dream world, peopled by ethereal forms and bathed in prismatic light. He is at the other pole from Wordsworth's homeliness and large acceptance of nature as she is. Hence an air of unreality rests over Shelley's work, an unreality made more conspicuous by his unpractical theories of conduct and of society. Matthew

* Ten-syllable lines rhyming a b a, c b c, d c d, etc.

Arnold called him "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." But beauty such as Shelley's verse embodies cannot be ineffectual; and his burning plea for freedom, for justice, and for loving-kindness, has never ceased to be potent in the deepening earnestness of this century's search after social betterment.

VII. JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)

Keats's Early Life and Poetry.-John Keats was born in Finsbury, London, in 1795. His parentage was humble: his father had been head hostler in a livery stable, had married the daughter of his employer and succeeded to the business. At first the family lived over the stable, but as their affairs prospered they removed to a house in the neighborhood. Keats and his two younger brothers were sent to a good school, kept by the father of Charles Cowden Clark, the poet's intimate friend throughout life. As a schoolboy Keats was a spirited, pugnacious lad, a favorite with all for his "terrier courage," as well as for his "high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive, his placability, his generosity." A little later his impulsiveness and animal spirits turned into a headlong interest in books, which he devoured in season and out of season. He took up "for fun" the task of translating the entire Æneid into prose. His father had died when the boy was ten years old; on the death of his mother he was removed from school, at fifteen, and apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton, for a term of five years. He was released a year before this term was concluded, and went up to London to study in the hospitals, and to pass his examination for a surgeon's license. But his growing passion for poetry distracted him from his profession His last operation was the opening of a man's temporal artery. "I did it," he told a friend, "with the utmost nicety; but reflecting on what passed through my mind at the time, my dexterity seemed a miracle, and I never took up the lancet again." An acquaintanceship with Leigh Hunt opened up to him a circle of friends where his dawning talents found recognition. The circle included Haydon, the painter, who gave the poet

his first introduction to Greek art. Hunt turned his attention to the Elizabethans, to Milton, and to the great Italian poets. In these newly discovered glories of literature Keats revelled to intoxication. We are told that, in company with Charles Cowden Clark, he sat up one whole night reading Chapman's Homer; the next morning Keats sent his friend the magnificent sonnet," On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," by far the finest thing which had yet come from his pen. In 1817, a year after he gave up surgery, he published a little volume containing, besides this sonnet, a number of other early poems. The most interesting of these juvenile pieces is the one beginning, "I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill," which shows that his feeling for nature was already exquisite, and his observation keen; and “Sleep and Poetry," where his young devotion to his art is beautifully apparent.

"Endymion."-After the publication of his first volume of poems, Keats went to the Isle of Wight, and later to Margate on the seashore. He writes from there that he "thinks so much about poetry, and so long together, that he cannot get to sleep at night," and is "in continual burning of thought." By this time he was deep in his first long poem, Endymion, which tells the story of the Latmian shepherd beloved by the moon-goddess. Endymion was published in 1818. The opening passage of the poem, the Hymn to Pan, and many other lines and short passages, are worthy of the Keats that was to be; but as a whole Endymion is chaotic, and too full of ornament. Nobody knew this better than Keats himself, as is testified to both by his letters and by the proudly humble preface in which he describes the poem as a "feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished," and hopes that "while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit to live." This preface should have disarmed the most unfriendly of critics, but it did not. The Quarterly printed a sneering review, and Blackwood's rudely ordered him "back to the shop, Mr. John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment-boxes!"

Keats's Last Volume; His Death. To what purpose Keats "plotted," the wonderful volume published two years

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later, in 1820, shows. It was entitled Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems; besides the pieces named, it contained the great odes, "On Melancholy," "On a Grecian Urn," "To Psyche," and "To a Nightingale," and the heroic fragment, "Hyperion." Two years had done wonders in deepening and strengthening his gift. During these two years he had had experience of death, in the loss of his beloved brother Tom, by consumption; he had met Fanny Brawne, and conceived for her a consuming and hopeless love. The funds which he had inherited were all but exhausted, and he was confronted with poverty. His health began to fail; the disease which had carried off his brother progressed with dreadful rapidity in his highly-strung physique. To Shelley, who had invited him to stay at Pisa, he wrote in the summer of 1820, "There is no doubt that an English winter would put an end to me, and do so in a lingering and hateful manner." In September, under the care of his generous friend, the artist Joseph Severn, he took passage for Naples. While detained by contrary winds off the English coast he wrote his last sonnet, the beautiful one beginning "Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art," with its touching veiled tribute to Fanny Brawne, whom he was not to see again. The poct's eyes were already darkening when he reached Rome. In February of 1821, in a house overlooking the Piazza di Spagna, he died, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery by the Aurelian Wall, where Shelley's ashes were soon to be laid. On his tomb are carved, according to his own request, the words, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." In a hopefuller time and in a mood of noble simplicity, he had said, "I think I shall be among the English poets after my death."

Keats as a Man. Keats's appearance is thus summed-up by one of his later biographers, from the many descriptions left us by his friends: "A small, handsome, ardent looking youth the stature little over five feet; the figure compact and well-turned, with the neck thrust eagerly forward, carrying a strong and shapely head set off by thickly clustering gold-brown hair; the features powerful, finished, and mobile; the mouth rich and wide, with an expression at once combat

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