They wander by when heavy flowers are closing, E'en thus they haunt me with sweet sounds, till worn Oh! for the dove's swift wings, that I might flee away, And find mine ark !-yet whither?-I must bear I am of those o'er whom a breath of air- From the dim past, as from a wizard's cave!— Are they my own soft skies?—ye rest not here, my dead! A FATHER READING THE BIBLE. 'Twas early day, and sunlight stream'd For there, serene in happy age, A Father communed with the page Pure fell the beam, and meekly bright, On his gray holy hair, And touched the page with tenderest light, As if its shrine were there! But oh that patriarch's aspect shone A radiance all the spirit's own, Some word of life e'en then had met Some ancient promise, breathing yet Of Immortality! Some martyr's prayer, wherein the glow Of quenchless faith survives: While every feature said "I know That my Redeemer lives!" And silent stood his children by, Hushing their very breath, Before the solemn sanctity Of thoughts o'ersweeping death. THE CHILD'S FIRST GRIEF. "Oh! call my Brother back to me! The summer comes with flower and bee— "The butterfly is glancing bright Across the sunbeam's track; I care not now to chase its flight— "The flowers run wild-the flowers we sow'd Our vine is drooping with its load Oh! call him back to me !" "He could not hear thy voice, fair child, He may not come to thee; The face that once like spring-time smiled "A rose's brief bright life of joy, Thy Brother is in heaven!" "And has he left his birds and flowers, And must I call in vain? And, through the long, long summer hours, "And by the brook, and in the glade, Oh! while my Brother with me play'd, TO A FAMILY BIBLE. What household thoughts around thee, as their shrine, Cling reverently ?—of anxious looks beguiled, My mother's eyes, upon thy page divine, To some lone tuft of gleaming spring-flowers wild, JOHN KEATS. IF this young poet had lived, he might have rivalled the finest genius of his time. He was the son of a livery stable keeper in London, and was at first apprenticed to a surgeon. An ardent student from his youth, he displayed more than most men of his period capacities for poetry, and he displayed them in all the luxuriance of enthusiasm that renders even the literary errors of youth beautiful. The rough reception by the Quarterly Reviewers of his first publication," Endymion," has been said to have led to the state of his health that terminated in his death. He had gone to Italy to avert the progress of consumption, but died at Rome in the arms of his faithful friend, "a young painter," Mr Severn, "who had almost risked his own life by unwearied attendance on his friend." Besides "Endymion," he has left a fragment, "Hyperion," "Lamia," &c. His writings are fervid but untrained, full of luxuriant descriptions of nature, and bright with noble pictures of classical mythology. Of his "Hyperion," Byron said, that it "seems actually inspired by the Titans." But his poetry teaches nothing; it is in general the mere expression of intense "sensuous" enjoyment of natural beauty.2 66 Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 1 See note 1, p. 159. 2 It must have been this quality of his poetry that excited the admiration of Shelley, much of whose writing is cast in a similar mould; he lamented the fate of his friend in the elegy, "Adonais." When Shelley's body was recovered in the gulf of Spezzia, a volume of the poetry of Keats was found open in his pocket. And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Or sinking, as the light wind lives or dies; FROM "ENDYMION." BOOK I. HYMN TO PAN. O Thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang Who lov'st to see the hamadryads' dress Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken ; The dreary melody of bedded reeds In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth; Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx2-do thou now, By all the trembling mazes that she ran, Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw ; Bewildered shepherds to their path again; Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, 1 Wood-nymphs, supposed to be produced with and to die with the trees to which they were tutelary: from Gr. hama, along with, drys, an oak. 2 The nymph Syrinx, flying from the pursuit of Pan, was changed at her prayer into a reed, from which the god formed his pipe. And gather up all fancifullest shells, And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping; O hearkener to the loud clapping shears, The many that are come to pay their vows, Be still the unimaginable lodge Be still a symbol of immensity; A firmament reflected in a sea; An element filling the space between ; An unknown-but no more: We humbly screen 1 See note 1, p. 376. The Naiads are associated with the wood-gods in the poetry of Theocritus and Virgil, Eclog. vi. 20. 2 Comp. Virg., Eclog. iii. 64. 3 See note 2, p. 376, and note 5, p. 179. See also Keightley, p. 201. "The later Platonists considered Pan (like many other deities) as a cosmogonic power, having many of the attributes of Hermes, with whom indeed he is sometimes identified (as the sons of some other deities were with their fathers); and his name, which they chose to interpret by Universe,' was used as an argument for this theory." 'Dryope (Oak-voice), a wood-nymph. One of the myths of Pan's birth is that he was her son by Hermes; Orph. Hymn xix. 34. The Wolf-mountain, in Arcadia, sacred to the god. This hymn, abounding as it does in faults of language and versification, and though stilted in expression, and crowded with imagery in violation of the simplicity of classical models, forms, in its aspiring fervour of ambition, a fair specimen of the style of Keats. Rr |