And Junius Brutus, pretty well so so, Making the best of's way towards Soho. Few are there who escape these visitings,— A white sail shows above the green-head cliff, You know the Enchanted Castle,-it doth stand You know it well enough, where it doth seem A mossy place, a Merlin's Hall, a dream; 15 20 25 30 35 The mountains blue, and cold near neighbour rills, (11) The term pretty well so so was used by Keats's set to signify pretty well tipsy; and this sense is destroyed by the comma which has hitherto stood between pretty well and so so. (14) The metre here probably implies the colloquial pronunciation praps for perhaps. All which elsewhere are but half animate; There do they look alive to love and hate, To smiles and frowns; they seem a lifted mound Part of the Building was a chosen See, 40 45 Built by a Lapland Witch turn'd maudlin Nun ; Founded with many a mason-devil's groan. The doors all look as if they op'd themselves, 50 See! what is coming from the distance dim! A golden Galley all in silken trim ! 55 Three rows of oars are lightening, moment whiles, 60 (54) The late Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote to me that he thought this line was a repetition of something elsewhere in Keats. Perhaps he had in his mind the lines from the poem on seeing Milton's hair and Will I, grey gone in passion, And mad with glimpses of futurity ! An echo of sweet music doth create A fear in the poor Herdsman, who doth bring O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, Cannot refer to any standard law 65 70 75 80 Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw In happiness, to see beyond our bourn,— It forces us in summer skies to mourn, 85 Dear Reynolds! I have a mysterious tale, (73) In the Aldine edition we read to for so. (77) Rossetti also notes that this line "is anticipative of the Grecian Urn ode”,— Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought... The same may be said of "the milk-white heifer lows," in line 21. Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave 90 An untumultuous fringe of silver foam And should have been most happy,-but I saw Too far into the sea, where every maw The greater on the less feeds evermore.— Of an eternal fierce destruction, And so from happiness I far was gone. Still am I sick of it, and tho', to-day, I've gather'd young spring-leaves, and flowers gay Still do I that most fierce destruction see,— The Shark at savage prey,-the Hawk at pounce,— Ravening a worm,-Away, ye horrid moods! Moods of one's mind! You know I hate them well. You know I'd sooner be a clapping Bell To some Kamtschatcan Missionary Church, Than with these horrid moods be left i' the lurch. 95 100 105 (90) The Aldine edition reads weave; but the 1848 version has wave. (105) I do not know whether a line has been lost, or whether Keats is himself responsible for the want of a rhyme to this line. DAWLISH FAIR. OVER the Hill and over the Dale, And over the Bourne to Dawlish, Where ginger-bread wives have a scanty sale, This scrap occurs in a letter to James Rice, written from Teignmouth on the 25th of March 1818, and published by Lord Houghton in the first volume of the Life, Letters &c. (1848). Keats closes his letter with "I went yesterday to Dawlish fair", and this quatrain. The hilly walk to Dawlish is recorded with topographical accuracy. Whether the rest is observation or (as is more probable) mere rhyme, I cannot say. |