P. 470. 1. 238. The unpastured dragon is the critic of the Quarterly, hungry for victims; but, as l. 240 shows, Shelley had in mind the story of Perseus and the dragon which was to devour Andromeda.

1. 240. Wisdom, the mirrored shield, is suggested by the polished shield of Athene (Goddess of Wisdom), which Perseus used as a mirror when he slew Medusa.

Il. 244 ff. The wolves, ravens, and vultures are the detractors of poets in general.

1. 250. The Pythian of the age is Byron; and the one arrow, his famous English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

1. 261. Poets akin to the god-like mind of 1. 258 as the immortal stars of 1. 256 are to the sun of 1. 253.

1. 262. The shepherds come to lament Daphnis in Theocritus, and Lycoris in Vergil, as Keats's fellow poets (poetically called shepherds) come to lament him.

1. 264. The Pilgrim of Eternity is Byron. The phrase was doubtless suggested by Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III, 1. 629 (see p. 448).

1. 268. Ierne Ireland.

1. 269. Thomas Moore wrote many songs about the ancient glories and modern sorrows of Ireland. Her saddest wrong refers not to any particular event, but to her calamitous history in general.

11. 271-306. Shelley himself is the subject of these lines, which emphasize his love of beauty and his sense of ineffectiveness. Curiously enough, some of them, as well as the final lines of the poem, are strangely prophetic of the fate which actually overtook him.

1. 276. The fable of Acteon, who was changed into a stag and destroyed by his own hounds because he had gazed upon Artemis (Diana) bathing, may be found in Gayley's Classic Myths.

Il. 289-295. This picture seems strangely suggestive of the god Dionysus, whose mission as set forth in the Bacche of Euripides must have seemed to Shelley to resemble his own.

1. 298. What does partial mean here? P. 471. 1. 301. The accents of an unknown land most probably means "in imitation of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus"; for the gentle band (1. 299) is

composed of English poets, not of the classical personages earlier invoked.

11. 307-315. Leigh Hunt. Shelley explains in

his preface that he did not know of the services of Severn when the poem was written.

1. 316. Shelley returns to the attack on the critic of the Quarterly. Bion is also said by Moschus to have drunk poison, whether literally, or, like Keats, figuratively, is unknown.

1. 325. The critic, because he is anonymous, has not even the fame of infamy, as the burner of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus has (cf. p. 183).

ll. 338 ff. The remainder of the poem is largely indebted to Plato. The indebtedness is so general and pervasive that to appreciate it the reader must familiarize himself with the Platonic ideas of beauty, love, and the soul. Only a few special points will therefore be noted.

II. 343-357. Cf. the words of Socrates in the Phado, 106-110, 114-116.

Il. 345-348. The figure may have been suggested by the action of the raving Pentheus in the Bacche of Euripides. Dionysus says:

"On that he rushed, and there, As slaying me in vengeance, stood stabbing the thin air."

P. 472. 1. 381. plastic, moulding, shaping. The one Spirit is the absolute existence, the "One" of Plato's philosophy as opposed to the "Many," i.e., the phenomena of this world, all of which are manifestations of this "One." Cf. Spenser's Hymn in Honor of Beauty, 11. 29-49 (p. 120).

Il. 399 ff. Chatterton, Sidney, and Lucan are all appropriately mentioned as "inheritors of unfulfilled renown," because all of them were cut off by death in early manhood. Perhaps few will agree with Shelley in feeling that Lucan's suicide atoned for his willingness to betray his fellow conspirators, though Shelley may have felt that he was justified in the conspiracy. Shelley may have been influenced by Plato in ascribing conscious immortality to the souls of these and the many whose names on earth are dark (1. 406). 1. 412. blind dark.

II. 422-423. Apparently the meaning is "Keep thy heart light, lest thou be overwhelmed with a sense of the pettiness of earth and be tempted to follow Adonais."

Il. 438-449. This is a beautiful description of the place in which Keats lies buried, "the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of

Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." - Shelley's Preface to Adonais. P. 473. 1. 460. Cf. the note on 1. 381.

1. 461. The same idea in different words. That earthly phenomena are shadows cast by the Heavenly Light is set forth in the seventh book of Plato's Republic.

1. 463. The white radiance of eternity was doubtless suggested by the description of heaven in Plato's Phedrus. "Real existence, colorless, formless, and intangible, visible only to the intelligence which sits at the helm of the soul . . . has its abode in this region." The comparison of life to a dome of many colored glass may conceivably have been suggested by the fable which Socrates tells Simmias in the Phado to the effect that "this earth, if any one should survey it from above, is like one of those balls covered with twelve different pieces of leather, variegated and distinguished with colors," though that of course is really a different conception from this.

Il. 478-486. The ideas of this stanza are all Platonic.

FINAL CHORUS FROM HELLAS

Hellas is a lyrical drama inspired by the proclamation of Greek independence in 1821 and celebrating this event as preluding the return of the "Golden Age." Shelley tells us in a note that the Final Chorus was suggested by the prophetic visions of Isaiah and Vergil, that is, especially the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah and the fourth Eclogue of Vergil. The student may also compare Pope's Messiah, which was likewise suggested by Isaiah and Vergil.

ll. 1-18. A belief of the ancients was that at the end of many thousand years all the heavenly bodies would have returned to the positions they occupied at creation and the events of history would begin to repeat themselves. As the Golden Age of innocence and happiness was, in poetry and mythology, placed in the first age of the world, its return was also looked for. In this poem Shelley develops in detail this ideal of historic recapitulation. A new Greece (Hellas) shall arise with all the beauties and glories of ancient Greek history and poetry: the river Peneus, the vale of Tempe, the islands of the Cyclades shall again be scenes of pastoral sim

plicity and delight; the great adventures of the search for the Golden Fleece, the descent of Orpheus to Hades to release his lost Eurydice, the return of Ulysses, shall all be relived.

P. 474. ll. 19-24. Pursuing the same idea, the poet is shocked by the thought that the evil of the past will also be renewed the Trojan War, the dark tragedy of Edipus and he prays that this may be averted.

Il. 31-34. "Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who fell, or the gods of Greece, Asia and Egypt; the One who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World were amerced of their worship; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America, certainly have reigned over the understandings of men, in conjunction or in succession."- Shelley's Note.

JOHN KEATS

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

The poet, listening to the song of the nightingale, is affected to a passion of tearful delight in the happiness of the bird (l. 1-10), and longs for a magical draught of summer that will cause him to follow the bird (Il. 11-20), leaving behind the fever and fret of the world (ll. 21-30). Imagination fulfils his desire, and he finds himself in the forest of his fancy (ll. 31-40), a place lighted only by moon-beams, and so dim that he discerns the flowers about him only by their odors (ll. 41-50).

Resuming the theme of the first stanza, he declares that, as he listens in the dark, death seems richer and sweeter at the thought that the bird's song is immortal (ll. 51-70).

His thoughts are brought back to himself and his sorrows by the word "forlorn," and as the song of the bird fades away in the distance, he questions whether it may not have been "a vision or a waking dream."

In music and suggestiveness of diction, in beauty of imagery, in sensuous richness of conception, this poem has never been surpassed even by Keats himself. It must be read often and in many moods, for though its magical charm can be felt at a single reading, every rift, to borrow a phrase from Keats's advice to Shelley, is loaded with ore. P. 475. 1. 9. The shadows are those cast by the full moon (see 1. 36).

ll. 11-20. The draught that is to transport the poet away from the weariness and sorrow of life

is no draught of earthly wine (cf. 1. 32), for all its taste and color, but the wine of poetic inspiration (cf. ll. 16, 33).

1. 14. Provençal poetry, though he knew little about it, was always associated in Keats's imagination with romantic beauty (cf. The Eve of St. Agnes, 1. 292, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci). 1. 16. Hippocrene, like Lethe (1. 4), Dryad (1. 7), Flora (1. 13), Bacchus (1. 32), is fully explained in Gayley's Classic Myths.

1. 32. Bacchus is here only the vulgar god of wine, not the mystical god Dionysus. There is no better way of appreciating these two different phases of the same Greek god than by reading in succession the Cyclops and the Bacche of Euripides (Shelley translated the former).

11. 65-67. Cf. Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper for a picture much akin to this.

11. 69-70. Why these lines suggest to the imagination the whole world of romance, it would be difficult to say.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

Pp. 475 f. This urn, like the deep bowl of ivywood which the Goatherd gave to Thyrsis for singing the Affliction of Daphnis (Theocritus, Idyl I), was carved with a succession of beautiful scenes and figures. No urn exactly answering to that in the poem is known; some editors think Keats had in mind a finely carved marble urn that stood in the garden of Holland House, but if so, he has not described it closely. "Description" is, indeed, hardly the term for his method of setting these sculptured scenes before our eyes. For him they live, and we learn what they are like only from the emotions and reflections they produce in him. The carvings of the Goatherd's bowl are perhaps no less beautiful, but the descriptions of them are simple and uncolored by emotion or reflection.

The urn seems to present two main scenes: (1) the rout of fleeing maidens and pursuing men of 11. 8-10; and (2) the sacrificial procession of 11. 31-37. The youth piping beneath the trees (1. 15) and the bold lover (1. 17) who has almost caught the maiden, are apparently details of the first scene; and the little town of silent streets (ll. 38-39) is obviously not in the picture, but only inferred by the poet from the crowd that follows the priest and the sacrificial victim to the forest altar, which also is not visible except to the imagination of the poet.

The fundamental idea of the poem is, of course, the permanence of all these beautiful forms and the consequent permanence of their wild rapture

and quiet happiness, as contrasted with the transiency of human happiness and the cloying of human passion that wins to its goal.

1. 1. unravished, because preserving its purity and beauty.

1. 2. foster-child, because nursed by them. 1. 3. Sylvan historian, because telling tales of woods, as well as of men (cf. ll. 15, 21, 32, 43).

P. 476. 1. 7. Tempe and Arcady, delightful regions in Greece, famous in mythology and poetry; for particulars, see Gayley.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

The title of this poem (The Beautiful Lady without Mercy) is taken from one written in French by Alain Chartier about 1400. Keats seems to have thought it was written in Provençal (cf. The Eve of St. Agnes, 1. 292). The English translation of it by Richard Ros was accessible to him among the poems ascribed to Chaucer in Chalmers' English Poets, but its mediocre quality did not prevent him from being fascinated by the title and writing a poem to suit it.

It is not a poem that the student should try to analyze or reason about. It is the expression. of a romantic mood by means of a combination of romantic figures and imagery with wonderful verbal music. It should, however, be read vith

recognition of the art with which the withered sedge, the lonely lake, the fairy lady, the vision of the pale kings and princes who had been her victims, and, indeed, all the details, are combined to harmonize with the figure of the knight; and all to develop the suggestions of the title.

SONNETS

Pp. 478 f. Among the comparatively few masters of the sonnet, Keats ranks very high. The six chosen for this volume of selections illustrate various themes and moods. None of them requires any explanation. With that on The Grasshopper and the Cricket the student may compare Lovelace's The Grasshopper, p. 218. The pedant has long been shocked to note that in the one On First Looking into Chapman's Homer Keats has ascribed to Cortez a feat performed by Balboa, and has extended the bounds of Darien perhaps unwarrantably. But the poem as a poem is none the less admirable on those accounts.

Wordsworth has a fine sonnet To Sleep (p. 395), which it is interesting to compare with Keats's on the same subject. It is somewhat characteristic of the two poets that Wordsworth woos Sleep as the

"Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health,"

whereas Keats mingles with a sensuous pleasure in sleep itself a yearning for it as shutting out the cares and sorrows of life. Wordsworth's is a fine wholesome poem; Keats's is a subtle and rich work of sensuous art, almost every line of which is a masterpiece of thought and phrasing.

ENDYMION

Pp. 479 f. In this poem Keats follows that form of the Endymion myth which represents him as a shepherd lad. The scene is laid in ancient Greece, and the rivers, fountains, meadows, and forests are peopled by the beautiful creatures of Greek fancy nymphs, dryads, oreads, fauns, etc. That the beauty of the poem is too elaborate, too rich, too overcharged with ornament and sentiment, Keats himself recognized; but it was a youthful production and he knew that he could free himself from the faults it contained and develop into greater solidity and strength the beauties it undeniably possessed. The fact is that Keats regarded all his work, as he says in his letters, as mere experiments, exercises in composition to prepare him for the great and serious work

Pp. 481 f. The subject of Hyperion is the overthrow of the older gods by the younger, especially of the old sun deity Hyperion by the new sun-god Apollo. The chief older gods, or Titans, were Oceanus and Tethys, Hyperion and Thea, Chronos (or Saturn) and Rhea, Japetus, Themis, and Mnemosyne. In the new order Oceanus was replaced by Neptune, Hyperion by Apollo, and Saturn by Jupiter. The theme is really the eternal conflict between the old order of established power and peace and the new order of aggressiveness and progress. Although the poem shows a great improvement in power and restrained beauty over Endymion, Keats did not finish it perhaps because he felt that he was not yet mature enough for the great demands of such a theme. 1. 21. Gaea (or Earth) was the mother of the older gods; Uranus (or Heaven) their father. 1. 23. there came one, Thea.

1. 30. Ixion was bound to a revolving wheel in Tartarus (Hell) for boasting that Juno loved him. 1. 51. To compared to.

=

11. 83-4. A month had passed.

1. 129. What is implied by metropolitan?

THE EVE OF ST. AGNES

Pp. 482 ff. The poem is a simple story of two lovers separated, like Romeo and Juliet, by the enmity of their families, and of their elopement on St. Agnes' Eve. The scene is laid in feudal times, and the date chosen is the night on which, according to popular superstition, a girl may have a vision of her true lover if she performs certain ceremonies. The poem itself tells all that is necessary for its interpretation, but those who wish a prose account of the superstitions may consult Chambers' Book of Days or Brand's Popular Antiquities.

1. 1. St. Agnes' Eve, the night of January 20. 11. 5 ff. Beadsman, a beadsman was one paid or maintained to pray for his benefactor or others. This one is represented as praying in the chapel of the castle before the picture of the Virgin. About him, on their tombs enclosed with iron railings or in

oratories (alcoves along the walls), are the sculptured figures of the dead with their hands folded as if in prayer.

1. 71. On account of her name and her innocence the lamb (Latin agnus) is associated with St. Agnes. Eight days after her martyrdom, her parents, praying at her tomb, saw a vision of angels, among whom was their daughter, and beside her a lamb white as snow.

P. 484. 1. 116. The nuns who weave the sacred wool of St. Agnes' lambs; of the ceremonies on her day in Rome, Naogeorgus, as translated by Barnaby Googe, says:

"For in St. Agnes' church upon this day while masse they sing,

Two lambes as white as snowe the nonnes do yearely use to bring,

And when the Agnus chaunted is upon the aulter hie

(For in this thing there hidden is a solemne mysterie),

They offer them. The servants of the Pope, when this is done,

Do put them into pasture good till shearing time be come.

Then other wooll they mingle with these holy fleeces twaine,

Whereof, being sponne and drest, are made the pals [palls] of passing gaine."

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Pp. 487 ff. Landor's temperament was very erratic and volcanic. In singular contrast, his verse, as well as his prose, is distinguished by reserve and moderation of expression, sometimes, indeed, lapsing into the prosaic. He often has lines and short passages of an exquisite quiet beauty and suggestiveness, but never succeeds in maintaining a high poetic level throughout a long poem. It is not strange that only the finest of his poems, like Rose Aylmer and the others given here, have attained general currency. Each of these is written, as it were, in a single flash of inspiration, and each incorporates in a form of ultimate beauty thoughts and feelings that awaken an almost universal response.

ESOP AND RHODOPÈ

The suggestion for this dialogue Landor took from Herodotus, who says that Æsop and Rhodopè were both slaves in the same household. Æsop was the famous writer of fables, of whom

little is known except that he was a Phrygian who lived about 600 B.C. Traditionally he was hunchbacked and ugly. Rhodopè or Rhodopis (the rose-faced) was a Thracian, whom her master Xanthus took to Egypt. Sappho's brother fell in love with her and purchased her freedom, as appears from one of Sappho's poems. Strabo tells of her a story which is the oldest form of one episode in the tale of Cinderella. It is that while she was bathing, an eagle flew away with one of her shoes and dropped it in the lap of the King of Egypt. He was so attracted by the beauty of the foot suggested by it and by the strangeness of the circumstance that he sent out messengers to find the owner of the shoe and married her.

The story of the way in which Rhodopè came to be a slave was invented by Landor.

Fiesole (pr. Fee ay' so le) is an ancient town situated at the summit of a small mountain of the same name that rises with a steep slope on the outskirts of Florence. The idyl is a sweet, small poem, presenting, as in a picture, a single, simple incident. The poet hears a rustling among the orange trees on the slope of the mountain, and, finding a graceful young girl gathering flowers, helps her pull down the branches that are too high for her to reach. Then comes the delicate embarrassment of both, when she wishes, but hardly dares, to offer him a large sweet blossom, and he dares not assume that she means to offer or that he ought to take it. Incidentally the poet's love and tender care of flowers is exquisitely expressed (11. 16-33).

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY

P. 493. The only thing that has ever been unfavorably criticised in this poetic summary of