A STUDY BY F. M. OWEN 'His clenched hand shall unclose at last, ROBERT BROWNING LONDON C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE PREFACE. I HAVE not tried to write a Life of John Keats: anyone who has read Lord Houghton's comprehensive and appreciative Memoir would feel that to do so would be an impertinence. True lovers of Keats will have to forgive me. My work, except perhaps as an attempt to make others love him, will have small value for them. All, and far more than I have said, they will have known before, and they will possibly feel it weakened in the saying, for Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard But because I have felt most praise has missed that which to me is his highest beauty, and because he is so often quoted in a fragmentary 183 way, which robs him of his human interest, I have tried to express what Keats has taught me, knowing well that if I have mistaken or misinterpreted him, or if any words of mine have dimmed his beauty, his large heart would have been the first to forgive me. FRANCES M. OWEN. February, 1880. JOHN KEATS. I. Oh, what a wild and harmonised tune My spirit struck from all the beautiful.-ENDYMION, IN all true poetry there is an element of prophecy, an inner vision, the scope of which is not, and ought not to be, comprehended at once. The real harmony which will make the poetry of John Keats lasting is to be found in this prophetic element. For a work of genius is the expression of a mind at its greatest, a mind no longer limited and fettered with its own individuality, but free and great by reason of its union with general life. It is the voice of the many in one, of the one in many, and such a voice must by its very nature be prophetic. The true harmony of it will lie not only in B |