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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

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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,
A Promethean conqueror came;
Like a triumphal path he trod

The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapor dim

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

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Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen! 1821. 1822.

THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE BEGINS
ANEW

THE world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,

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
From waves serener far;

A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.

Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,

And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death's scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free:
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendor of its prime;

And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.

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.)

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From life to life, must still pursue
Your happiness-for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own.
From Prospero's enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples, he
Lit you o'er the trackless sea,
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die. the silent Moon,
In her interlunar swoon,
Is not sadder in her cell
Than deserted Ariel.
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen star of birth,
Ariel guides you o'er the sea
Of life from your nativity.
Many changes have been run,
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps, and served
your will;

Now, in humbler, happier lot,
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned, for some fault of his,
In a body like a grave ;-
From you he only dares to crave,
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.

The artist who this idol wrought,
To echo all harmonious thought,
Felled a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
And some of Spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree,-
Oh that such our death may be !-
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again :
From which, beneath Heaven's fairest

star,

The artist wrought this loved Guitar,
And taught it justly to reply,
To all who question skilfully,

In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamored tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
For it had learnt all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voiced fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,

The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound,
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way-
All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it;
't talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
s heard than has been felt before,
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day:
But sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest, holiest tone
For our belovéd Jane alone.

1822. 1832-1833.

LINES: "WHEN THE LAMP IS SHATTERED"

WHEN the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead—
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendor
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render

No song when the spirit is mute :-
No song but sad dirges,

Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

*24

When hearts have once mingled Love first leaves the well-built nest, The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your
bier ?

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high:
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home

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.

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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

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