stand. Observe that a facility of this sort cannot be a natural endowment, since we must still, as Sir Philip Sidney bewails, "be put to school to learn our mother-tongue"; and that it implies ascetic diligence in the artist compassing it. Moreover, Keats's craftsmanship is no menace to him. It is true that he carries, in general, no such hindering burden of thought along his lyre as Donne, Dryden, Wordsworth, Browning; but neither, once having learned his strength, does he ever fall into the mere teasing ecstasy of symbolic sound, as Shelley does often, as Swinburne does more often than not. Keats, unlike Shelley or a cherub, is not all wing; he "stands foursquare" when he wills, or moves like the men of the Parthenon frieze, with a health and joyous gravity entirely carnal. The most remarkable of all his powers is this power of deliciously presenting the inconceivable, without strain or fantasticality, so that it takes rank at once among laws which any one might have seen and said-laws necessary to man in his higher moods.. Neither Virgil, nor Dante, nor Milton, although he touches deep truths, and Keats only their beautiful analogies,—has a more illumining habit of speech. Mr. Bradford Torrey, in a recent essay in the Atlantic Monthly, cited, as master instances of "verbal magic" in English, a passage from Shakespeare, another from Wordsworth, which have long had the profound admiration of feeling hearts. These are—

and again

«-boughs that shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang,"

«-old unhappy far-off things, And battles long ago."

The condition of the best "magic" is surely that it shall be unaccountable; but the magnificent lines just cited are not at all so,— at least fundamentally, to any acquainted with what may be called their historic context. Shakespeare eyeing the melancholy winter trees as he writes his sonnet, and sympathetically conscious of the glorious abbey churches newly dismantled on every side, unroofed, emptied, discolored, their choral voices hushed; Wordsworth conjecturing the matter of his Scots girl-gleaner's song to have been (as indeed it must have been, caught from her aged grandsire's lips at home!) a memory of the Forty-five, an echo of the romantic Jacobite insurrection, enough in itself to inspire poets forever; - these are but transmuting their every-day tradition and impression into literature. But the "younger brother" is not so to be tracked; when we come to the finest definite images of his pages, such as

"Magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn,»

we feel that he lived in Illyria, rather than in the capital of his Sacred Majesty George the Fourth. Some conception which defies genesis is under his every stanza; word on word is wrought of miracles. Yet the whole is fragrant of obedience, temperance, labor. This it is which makes the art of Keats a very heartening spectacle, over and above its extreme solace and charm; and his own clan will always be his most vehement adorers, because they, better than any, have insight into his heroic temper.

Time, accumulatively wise with the imparted second thoughts of all men of genius, has not failed to make huge excisions in Keats's dramatic, satiric, and amatory work; and to name the earliest and the latest verses among utterances forgivably imperfect. But striking away from Keats's fame all which refuses to cohere, leaves large to the eye what a noble and endearing shrine of song! Far more effectually than any other at our command, the lad John Keats, being but heard and seen, bears in upon the docile intelligence what is meant by pure poesy; the most elemental and tangible, as well as the most occult and uncataloguable (if one may coin so fierce a word!) of mortal pleasures. Although he must always call forth personal love and reverence, his value is unmistakably super-personal. Keats is the Celt, the standard-bearer of revealed beauty, among the English, and carries her colors triumphantly into our actual air.

Louise Imogen Guinen.

ST.

FROM THE EVE OF ST. AGNES›

AGNES'S Eve-Ah, bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limped 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,

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

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 isle by slow degrees,

The sculptured dead, on each side, seem to freeze,

Emprisoned 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.

A casement high and triple-arched there was,
All garlanded with carven imageries

Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings;
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,

A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings,

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,

And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:

She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven;- Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,

In sort of wakeful swoon, perplexed she lay, Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed

Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away:
Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;
Blissfully havened both from joy and pain;

Clasped like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,

In blanched linen, smooth and lavendered,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrups, tinct with cinnamon;

Manna and dates, in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spicèd dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.

She hurried at his words, beset with fear,

For there were sleeping dragons all around, At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spear;

Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found. In all the house was heard no human sound. A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door; The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar;

And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

They glide like phantoms into the wide hall;
Like phantoms to the iron porch they glide,
Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,

With a huge empty flagon by his side;

The wakeful bloodhound rose and shook his hide, But his sagacious eye an inmate owns;

By one and one the bolts full easy slide;
The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;
The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

A

FROM ENDYMION>

THING of beauty is a joy for ever;

Its loveliness increases: it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:

An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,

Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

D

FROM HYPERION>

EEP in the shady sadness of a vale,

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair. Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud.

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, No further than to where his feet had strayed, And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; While his bowed head seemed listening to the Earth, His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

It seemed no force could wake him from his place;
But there came one who with a kindred hand
Touched his wide shoulders, after bending low
With reverence, though to one who knew it not.
She was a goddess of the infant world.

Her face was large as that of Memphian Sphinx,
Pedestaled haply in a palace court,
When sages looked to Egypt for their lore.
But oh! how unlike marble was that face:
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.
There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its storèd thunder laboring up.