Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! A light is past from the revolving year, And man, and woman; and what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. The soft sky smiles,--the low wind whispers near; 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither, No more let Life divide what Death can join together. That Light whose sinile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly go; New shapes they still may weave, New gods, new laws receive, Bright or dim are they as the robes they last On Death's bare ribs had cast. A power from the unknown God, The thorns of death and shame. Which the orient planet, animates with light; Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, Like bloodhounds mild and tame, Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight; The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set: While blazoned as on heaven's immortal Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen! 1821. 1822. THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE BEGINS THE world's great age begins anew, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains A new Peneus rolls his fountains Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep A loftier Argo cleaves the main, And loves, and weeps, and dies. Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, And leave, if nought so bright may live, Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose, Than many unsubdued: 1 1 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 ob jects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarc tic islands, and the native tribes of America. certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the arts, perpetually increasing activity. (From Shelley's Note.) From life to life, must still pursue Now, in humbler, happier lot, The artist who this idol wrought, star, The artist wrought this loved Guitar, In language gentle as thine own; The softest notes of falling rills, 1822. 1832-1833. LINES: "WHEN THE LAMP IS SHATTERED" WHEN the lamp is shattered As music and splendor No song when the spirit is mute :- Like the wind through a ruined cell, *24 When hearts have once mingled Love first leaves the well-built nest, The weak one is singled To endure what it once possessed. Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high: Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold winds come. 1822. 1824. SONG FROM CHARLES THE FIRST A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her love Upon a wintry bough; The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below. LIST OF REFERENCES EDITIONS **COMPLETE WORKS, 4 volumes, edited by H. Buxton Forman, 1883, new edition 1889. COMPLETE WORKS, 5 volumes, edited by H. Buxton Forman, Glasgow and New York, 1900-1901. - COMPLETE WORKS, 4 volumes, edited by N. H. Dole, London and Boston, 1904 (Laurel Edition). -COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS, together with the LETTERS, 1 volume, edited by H. E. Scudder, 1899 (Cambridge Edition). POETICAL WORKS, 1 volume, edited by F. T. Palgrave, 1884 (Golden Treasury Series).— POETICAL WORKS, 1 volume, 1902 (Globe Edition). *POETICAL WORKS, 1 volume, edited by E. de Sélincourt, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1905. POETICAL WORKS, 1 volume, edited by H. Buxton Forman, 1906 (Oxford Edition). BIOGRAPHY * * * MILNES (R. M.) (Lord Houghton), Life, Letters and Literary Remains, 1st edition, 1848; 2nd, revised, edition, 1867. COLVIN (Sidney), Keats (English Men of Letters Series), 1887. ROSSETTI (W. M.), Keats (Great Writers Series), 1887. SHARP (J.), John Keats, his Life and Letters, 1892. GOTHEIN (M.), John Keats' Leben und Werke, 1897. *HANCOCK (A. E.), John Keats; a literary Biography, 1908.- WOLFF (Lucien), John Keats, sa vie et son œuvre, 1910. REMINISCENCES AND EARLY CRITICISM HUNT (Leigh), Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries. — HUNT (Leigh), Autobiography. HUNT (Leigh), Review of La Belle Dame sans Merci, in The Indicator, May 10, 1890; Review of the Poems of 1820, in The Indicator of August 2 and 9, 1820. (Given in Forman's edition of Keats, Vol. II). - HUNT (Leigh), Imagination and Fancy, 1844. ?GIFFORD (William), Review of Endymion, in the Quarterly Review, No. 37, 1818. JEFFREY (Lord Francis), Edinburgh Review, No. 67, Art. 10, August, 1820: Keats' Poetry. MITFORD (M. L.), Recollections of a Literary Life.-CLARKE (Charles and Mary Cowden), Recollections of Writers. DE QUINCEY, Works, Masson's edition, Vol. XI. - HAYDON (B. R.), Correspondence and Table-Talk. See also Medwin's Life of Shelley, Shelley Memorials by Lady Shelley, Taylor's Life of B. R. Haydon, Medwin's Conversations of Lord Byron, George Paston's B. R. Haydon and his Friends, 1905, and A. B. Miller's Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley, and Keats, 1909. LATER CRITICISM *ARNOLD (M.), Essays in Criticism, Second Series, 1888. - BRADLEY (A. C.), Oxford Lectures on Poetry: The Letters of Keats, 1909. BRIDGES (Robert S.), Keats, a critical essay, 1895. — BROOKE (S. A.). Studies in Poetry, 1907. DOWDEN (Edward), Studies in Literature |