LINES TO FANNY.

5

WHAT can I do to drive away

Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen,
Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free
In my old liberty?

When every fair one that I saw was fair,
Enough to catch me in but half a snare,
Not keep me there :

When, howe'er poor or particolour'd things,
My muse had wings,

And ever ready was to take her course

Whither I bent her force,

Unintellectual, yet divine to me ;—

Divine, I say!-What sea-bird o'er the sea

15

Is a philosopher the while he goes

Winging along where the great water throes?

How shall I do

To get anew

Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more
Above, above

The reach of fluttering Love,

And make him cower lowly while I soar?

These lines, first given in the Life, Letters &c., were there dated October 1819; and I should be disposed to assign them to the 12th of that month, the day before that on which Keats posted a letter at

Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism,
A heresy and schism,

Foisted into the canon law of love ;-
No,-wine is only sweet to happy men ;
More dismal cares

Seize on me unawares,—

Where shall I learn to get my peace again?

To banish thoughts of that most hateful land,
Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand

25

30

Where they were wreck'd and live a wrecked life;
That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour,
Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore,
Unown'd of any weedy-haired gods;

35

Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods,
Ic'd in the great lakes, to afflict mankind;

Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind,
Would fright a Dryad; whose harsh herbag'd meads 40
Make lean and lank the starv'd ox while he feeds;
There bad flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song,
And great unerring Nature once seems wrong.

O, for some sunny spell

To dissipate the shadows of this hell!

45

Westminster to Miss Brawne, saying inter alia that he has set himself to copy some verses out fair, and adding "I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time". The text appears to me to need revision in certain points; but I know of no authority for change. Thus, in line 3, the word and or but has probably dropped out after Aye.

(33) Probably wrecked should be wretched. There seems a want of aptness in making use of wreck'd (monosyllable) and wrecked (dissyllable) in such sharp counterpoint; and Keats would be quite likely to write wreched without the t and thus leave the word easy to mistake for wrecked.

(35) I should think Even a likelier initial word here than Ever.

Say they are gone,-with the new dawning light
Steps forth my lady bright!

O, let me once more rest

My soul upon that dazzling breast!

Let once again these aching arms be plac'd,

The tender gaolers of thy waist!

And let me feel that warm breath here and there

To spread a rapture in my very hair,—

O, the sweetness of the pain!
Give me those lips again!

Enough! Enough! it is enough for me
To dream of thee!

50

55

SONNET.

TO FANNY.

I

CRY your mercy-pity-love!—aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,

One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask'd, and being seen-without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole,-all-all-be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,—
Yourself your soul-in pity give me all,

Withhold no atom's atom or I die,

Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes, the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

First given among the Literary Remains in 1848, dated 1819. I have no data upon which to suggest the period more exactly; but the desperation of tone may perhaps indicate that the sonnet was composed late in the year.

SONNET.

TO GEORGE KEATS:

WRITTEN IN SICKNESS.

BROTHER belov'd if health shall smile again,
Upon this wasted form and fever'd cheek:
If e'er returning vigour bid these weak
And languid limbs their gladsome strength regain,
Well may thy brow the placid glow retain

Of sweet content and thy pleas'd eye may speak
The conscious self applause, but should I seek
To utter what this heart can feel, Ah! vain
Were the attempt! Yet kindest friends while o'er

My couch ye bend, and watch with tenderness
The being whom your cares could e'en restore,

From the cold grasp of Death, say can you guess The feelings which these lips can ne'er express; Feelings, deep fix'd in grateful memory's store.

This sonnet is from a transcript in the handwriting of George Keats, which bears the date 1819; but I am disposed to think this date must have been wrongly affixed from memory. The entire absence of high poetic feeling indicates a time of utter physical prostration; and I should imagine that the sonnet might possibly have been written in February 1820, when Keats was still so ill as to be forbidden to write, and that it might have been sent to George with the announcement of the illness; but it seems likelier that it was composed later on in the year, in reply to some letter written by George on receiving that news-a letter in which the younger brother might have reproached himself for leaving the elder, low in health and funds, and for rushing back to America to mend his own fortunes.