Byron May Clarissa Gillington
A Day with Keats
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O, sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming:
Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;
When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon…
Fancy, high-commission'd: – send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heapèd Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up,
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shalt quaff it…
Fancy.
Breakfast over, the business of the day begins: and that, with Keats, is poetry, and all that can foster poetic stimulus. He takes no real heed of anything else. A devoted son and brother, one ready to sacrifice himself and his slender resources to the uttermost farthing for his mother, brothers, sister and friends – yet he has no vital interest in other folks' affairs, nor in current events, nor in ordinary social topics. Other people's poetry does not appeal to him, except that of Shakespeare, and of Homer – whom he does not know in the original, but who, through the poor medium of translation, has filled his soul with Grecian fantasies.
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific – and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent upon a peak in Darien.
Sonnet.
This is what he wrote after sitting up one night till daybreak with his friend Cowden Clarke, shouting with delight over the vistas newly revealed to him. And from that time on, he has luxuriated in dreams of classic beauty, warmed to new life by the sorcery of Romance. Immortal shapes arise upon him from the "infinite azure of the past: " and he sees how
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.
Hyperion.
He is studying French, Latin, and especially Italian – all with a view of furthering his poetic ability: though no great reader, he has soaked himself in the atmosphere of old Italian tales, and the very spirit of mediæval Florence breathes from the story, borrowed from Boccaccio, "an echo in the north-wind sung," which narrates how the hapless Isabelle hid away the head of her murdered lover.
Then in a silken scarf, – sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully, —
She wrapp'd it up; and for its tomb did choose
A garden pot, wherein she laid it by,
And covered it with mould, and o'er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.
And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new moon she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten'd it with tears unto the core.
Isabella.
Keats has brought himself with difficulty, however, to the perusal of modern poets. His boyish enthusiasm for Leigh Hunt's work has long since evaporated: and after reading Shelley's Revolt of Islam, all he has found to say is, "Poor Shelley, I think he has his quota of good qualities!" But, for the rest, he is not attracted to any kind of knowledge which cannot be "made applicable and subservient to the purposes of poetry," – his own poetry. For his one desire is to win an immortal name – and he has begun life "full of hopes, fiery, impetuous, and ungovernable, expecting the world to fall at once beneath his pen. Poor fellow!" (Haydon's diary).
But "men of genius," Keats himself has said, "are as great as certain ethereal chemicals, operating in a mass of created matter: but they have not any determined character." That indefiniteness of literary aim – that want of willpower, without which genius is a curse, which have hampered the young man all along – are now still further emphasised by the restlessness of a passionate lover. John Keats cannot stay indoors this fine May morning, "fitting himself for verses fit to live," when the girl who is to him the incarnation of all poetry is visible in the next-door garden. He throws down his pen and hurries out to join her.
Contemporary portraits of Fanny Brawne have not succeeded in representing her as beautiful: and at first sight Keats has complained, that, although she "manages to make her hair look well," she "wants sentiment in every feature." Propinquity, however, has achieved the usual result; and now the young poet believes his inamorata to be the very apotheosis of loveliness: he is never weary of adoring her
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone,
Bright eyes, accomplished shape!
If the truth be told, Fanny Brawne is a fairly good-looking young woman, blue-eyed and long-nosed, her hair arranged with curls and ribbons over her brow: she has a curious but striking resemblance to the draped figure in Titian's "Sacred and Profane Love": and for the rest, she is by no means poetic or sentimental, but a voluminous reader, whose strong point is an extraordinary knowledge of the history of costume. She accepts the homage of Keats, much as she accepts the fact of their tacit betrothal, and the fact that her mother disapproves of it – without taking it too seriously in any sense. And now, though not particularly keen on open-air enjoyment, she accepts his daily suggestion of a walk with her; and they go out into the beautiful meadows which were part of Hampstead a hundred years ago.