4.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

5.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

(4) The manuscript, in line 4, reads sides in place of flanks; and in line 10 ne'er for e'er.

(5) In the manuscript there is a comma after maidens in line 2, and none after overwrought; but the preferable punctuation of the text is in both of the printed versions. In line 7 the manuscript and the Annals agree in reading wilt for shalt. In regard to the two final lines the version of the Lamia volume is adopted above. In the manuscript there are no turned commas; and in the Annals the two lines are thus:

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty. That is all

Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.

This seems to confirm the limitation of the Urn's moral to the five words indicated in the text; and, although I have not thought it worth while to note all the variations of pointing and capitalling of the Annals version, I find them very characteristic of Keats, and

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

suggestive of accurate printing from a fair manuscript of his. But for this I should have been disposed to regard the words

that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

as a part of the Urn's lesson, and not as the poet's personal

comment.

ODE TO PSYCHE.

O GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see

The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?

I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,

And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side

5

Under date the 15th of April [1819] Keats writes to George and his wife, of this Ode, "The following poem, the last I have written, is the first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains; I have, for the most part, dashed off my lines in a hurry; this one I have done leisurely; I think it reads the more richly for it, and it will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time of Apuleius the Platonist, who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour, and perhaps never thought of in the old religion: I am more orthodox than to let a heathen goddess be so neglected." This is an instance in which Keats seems to have gone beyond Lemprière's Classical Dictionary for his information; but I presume we may not unsafely take the portraiture of Cupid and Psyche in the first stanza as an adapted reminiscence of his other favourite text book, Spence's Polymetis, in Plate VI of which the well known kissing Cupid and Psyche are admirably engraved from the statue at Florence.

In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:

'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass ;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,

And ready still past kisses to outnumber

At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!

O latest born and loveliest vision far

ΙΟ

15

20

Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy !
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,

25

Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan

Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;

Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,

Nor altar heap'd with flowers;

Upon the midnight hours;

30

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming ;

No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

35

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,

Holy the air, the water, and the fire;

Yet even in these days so far retir'd

40

From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd.

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;

45

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet

From swinged censer teeming ;

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat

Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

In some untrodden region of my mind,

50

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant

pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; 55 And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,

The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight

That shadowy thought can win,

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,

To let the warm Love in!

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