Chapter 9

They rise and proceed over the ocean floor together. Glaucus tells Endymion his history: how he led a quiet and kind existence as a fisherman long ago,familiar with and befriended by all sea-creatures, even the fiercest, until he was seized with the ambition to be free of Neptune’s kingdom and able to live and breathe beneath the sea; how this desire being granted he loved and pursued the sea-nymph Scylla, and she feared and fled him; how then he asked the aid of the enchantress Circe, who made him her thrall and lapped him in sensual delights while Scylla was forgotten. How the witch, the ‘arbitrary queen of sense,’ one day revealed her true character, and ‘specious heaven was changed to real hell.’ (Is Keats here remembering the closing couplet of Shakespeare’s great sonnet against lust—

This all the world well knows; but none know wellTo shun the heaven that leads men to this hell?)

This all the world well knows; but none know well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell?)

He came upon her torturing her crowd of spell-bound animals, once human beings, fled in terror at the sight, was overtaken, and with savage taunts driven back into his ocean-home. Here he found Scylla cold and dead, killed by Circe’s arts. (In the original myth as told by Ovid and others Glaucus refuses the temptations of Circe, who in revenge inflicts on Scylla a worse punishment than death, transforming her into a sea-monster engirdled with a pack of ravening dogs and stationed as a terror to mariners at the Straits over against Charybdis). Glaucus then tells how he conveyed the body of his dead love to a niche in a vacant under-sea temple, where she still remains. Then began the doom of paralysed and helpless senility which the enchantress had condemned him to endure for a thousand years and which still binds him fast,—a doom which inevitably reminds us of such stories as that of the Fisherman in theArabian Nights, and of the spell laid by Suleiman upon the rebellious Djinn, whom he imprisoned for a thousand and eight hundred years in a bottle until the Fisherman released him.

Glaucus goes on to relate how once, in the course of his miserable spell-bound existence, he witnessed the drowning of a shipwrecked crew with agony at his ownhelplessness, and in trying vainly to rescue a sinking old man by the hand found himself left with a wand and scroll which the old man had held. Reading the scroll, he found in it comfortable words of hope and wisdom. (Note that it was through an attempted act of human succour that this wisdom came to him). If he would have patience, so ran the promise of the scroll, to probe all the depths of magic and the hidden secrets of nature—if moreover he would piously through the centuries make it his business to lay side by side in sanctuary all bodies of lovers drowned at sea—there would one day come to him a heaven-favoured youth to whom he would be able to teach the rites necessary for his deliverance. He recognizes the predestined youth in Endymion, who on learning the nature of the promise accepts joyfully his share in the prescribed duty, with the attendant risk of destruction to both if they fail. The young man and the old—or rather ‘the young soul in age’s mask’—go together to the submarine hall of burial where Scylla and the multitude of drowned lovers lie enshrined. As to the rites that follow and their effect, let us have them in the poet’s own words:—

‘Let us commence,’Whisper’d the guide, stuttering with joy, ‘even now.’He spake, and, trembling like an aspen-bough,Began to tear his scroll in pieces small,Uttering the while some mumblings funeral.He tore it into pieces small as snowThat drifts unfeather’d when bleak northerns blow;And having done it, took his dark blue cloakAnd bound it round Endymion: then struckHis wand against the empty air times nine.—‘What more there is to do, young man, is thine:But first a little patience; first undoThis tangled thread, and wind it to a clue.Ah, gentle! ’tis as weak as spider’s skein;And shouldst thou break it—What, is it done so cleanA power overshadows thee! O, brave!The spite of hell is tumbling to its grave.Here is a shell; ’tis pearly blank to me,Nor mark’d with any sign or charactery—Canst thou read aught? O read for pity’s sake!Olympus! we are safe! Now, Carian, breakThis wand against yon lyre on the pedestal.’’Twas done: and straight with sudden swell and fallSweet music breath’d her soul away, and sigh’dA lullaby to silence.—‘Youth! now strewThese minced leaves on me, and passing throughThose files of dead, scatter the same around,And thou wilt see the issue.’—‘Mid the soundOf flutes and viols, ravishing his heart,Endymion from Glaucus stood apart,And scatter’d in his face some fragments light.How lightning-swift the change! a youthful wightSmiling beneath a coral diademOut-sparkling sudden like an upturn’d gem,Appear’d, and, stepping to a beauteous corse,Kneel’d down beside it, and with tenderest forcePress’d its cold hand, and wept,—and Scylla sigh’d!Endymion, with quick hand, the charm apply’d—The nymph arose: he left them to their joy,And onward went upon his high employ,Showering those powerful fragments on the dead.And as he passed, each lifted up his head,As doth a flower at Apollo’s touch.Death felt it to his inwards: ’twas too much:Death fell a weeping in his charnel-house.The Latmian persever’d along, and thusAll were re-animated. There aroseA noise of harmony, pulses and throesOf gladness in the air—while many, whoHad died in mutual arms devout and true,Sprang to each other madly; and the restFelt a high certainty of being blest.They gaz’d upon Endymion. EnchantmentGrew drunken, and would have its head and bent.Delicious symphonies, like airy flowers,Budded, and swell’d, and, full-blown, shed full showersOf light, soft, unseen leaves of sounds divine.The two deliverers tasted a pure wineOf happiness, from fairy-press ooz’d out.Speechless they ey’d each other, and aboutThe fair assembly wander’d to and fro,Distracted with the richest overflowOf joy that ever pour’d from heaven.

‘Let us commence,’

Whisper’d the guide, stuttering with joy, ‘even now.’

He spake, and, trembling like an aspen-bough,

Began to tear his scroll in pieces small,

Uttering the while some mumblings funeral.

He tore it into pieces small as snow

That drifts unfeather’d when bleak northerns blow;

And having done it, took his dark blue cloak

And bound it round Endymion: then struck

His wand against the empty air times nine.—

‘What more there is to do, young man, is thine:

But first a little patience; first undo

This tangled thread, and wind it to a clue.

Ah, gentle! ’tis as weak as spider’s skein;

And shouldst thou break it—What, is it done so clean

A power overshadows thee! O, brave!

The spite of hell is tumbling to its grave.

Here is a shell; ’tis pearly blank to me,

Nor mark’d with any sign or charactery—

Canst thou read aught? O read for pity’s sake!

Olympus! we are safe! Now, Carian, break

This wand against yon lyre on the pedestal.’

’Twas done: and straight with sudden swell and fall

Sweet music breath’d her soul away, and sigh’d

A lullaby to silence.—‘Youth! now strew

These minced leaves on me, and passing through

Those files of dead, scatter the same around,

And thou wilt see the issue.’—‘Mid the sound

Of flutes and viols, ravishing his heart,

Endymion from Glaucus stood apart,

And scatter’d in his face some fragments light.

How lightning-swift the change! a youthful wight

Smiling beneath a coral diadem

Out-sparkling sudden like an upturn’d gem,

Appear’d, and, stepping to a beauteous corse,

Kneel’d down beside it, and with tenderest force

Press’d its cold hand, and wept,—and Scylla sigh’d!

Endymion, with quick hand, the charm apply’d—

The nymph arose: he left them to their joy,

And onward went upon his high employ,

Showering those powerful fragments on the dead.

And as he passed, each lifted up his head,

As doth a flower at Apollo’s touch.

Death felt it to his inwards: ’twas too much:

Death fell a weeping in his charnel-house.

The Latmian persever’d along, and thus

All were re-animated. There arose

A noise of harmony, pulses and throes

Of gladness in the air—while many, who

Had died in mutual arms devout and true,

Sprang to each other madly; and the rest

Felt a high certainty of being blest.

They gaz’d upon Endymion. Enchantment

Grew drunken, and would have its head and bent.

Delicious symphonies, like airy flowers,

Budded, and swell’d, and, full-blown, shed full showers

Of light, soft, unseen leaves of sounds divine.

The two deliverers tasted a pure wine

Of happiness, from fairy-press ooz’d out.

Speechless they ey’d each other, and about

The fair assembly wander’d to and fro,

Distracted with the richest overflow

Of joy that ever pour’d from heaven.

The whole long Glaucus and Scylla episode filling the third book, and especially this its climax, has to many lovers and students of Keats proved a riddle hard of solution. And indeed at first reading the meaning of its strange incidents and imagery, beautiful as is much of the poetry in which they are told, looks obscure enough. Every definite clue to their interpretation seems to elude us as we lay hold of it, like the drowned man who sinks through the palsied grasp of Glaucus. But bearing in mind what we have recognized as the general scope and symbolic meaning of the poem, does not the main purport of the Glaucus book, on closer study, emerge clearly as something like this? The spirit touched with the divine beam of Cynthia—that is aspiring to and chosen for communion with essential Beauty—in other words the spirit of the Poet—must prepare itself for its high calling, first by purging away the selfishness of its private passion in sympathy with human loves and sorrows, and next by acquiring a full store alike of human experience and of philosophic thought and wisdom. Endymion, endowed by favour of the gods with the poetic gift and passion, has only begun to awaken to sympathy and acquire knowledge when he meets Glaucus, whose history has made him rich in all that Endymion yet lacks, including as it does the forfeiting of simple everyday life and usefulness for the exercise of a perilous superhuman gift; the desertion, under a spell of evil magic, of a pure for an impure love; the tremendous penalty which has to be paid for this plunge into sensual debasement; the painful acquisition of the gift of righteous magic, or knowledge of the secrets of nature and mysteries of life and death, by prolonged intensity of study, and the patient exercise of the duties of pious tenderness towards the bodies of the drowned. At the approach of Endymion the sage recognizes in him the predestined poet, and hastens to make over to him, as to one more divinely favoured than himself, all the dower of his dearly bought wisdom; in possession of which the poet isenabled to work miracles of joy and healing and to confer immortality on dead lovers.

As to the significance in detail of the rites by which the transfer of power is effected, we are again helped by remembering that Keats was mixing up with his classic myth ideas taken from theThousand and One Nights. Let the student turn to the Glaucus and Circe episodes of Ovid’sMetamorphoses, and then refresh his memory of certain Arabian tales, particularly that of Bebr Salim, with its kings and queens of the sea living and moving under water as easily as on land, its repeated magical transformations and layings on and taking off of enchantments, and the adventures of the hero with queen Lab, the Oriental counterpart of Circe,—let the student refresh his memory from these sources, and the proceedings of this episode will no longer seem so strange. In the Arabian tales, and for that matter in western tales of magic also, the commonest method of annulling enchantments is by sprinkling with water over which words of power have been spoken. Under sea you cannot sprinkle with water, so Keats makes Endymion use for sprinkling the shredded fragments of the scroll taken by Glaucus from the drowned man. First Glaucus tears the scroll, uttering ‘some mumblings funeral’ as he does so (compare the ‘backward mutters of dissevering power’ in Milton’sComus). Then follows a series of actions showing that the hour has come for him to surrender and make over his powers and virtues to the new comer. First he invests Endymion with his own magic robe. Then he waves his magic wand nine times in the air,—as a preliminary to the last exercise of its power? or as a sign that its power is exhausted? Nine is of course a magic number, and the immediate suggestion comes from the couplet in Sandys’s Ovid where Glaucus tells how the sea-gods admitted him to their fellowship,—

Whom now they hallow, and with charms nine timesRepeated, purge me from my human crimes.

Whom now they hallow, and with charms nine times

Repeated, purge me from my human crimes.

The disentangling of the skein and the perceiving and deciphering of runes on the shell10which to Glaucus is a blank are evidently tests Endymion has to undergo before it is proved and confirmed that he is really the predestined poet, gifted to unravel and interpret mysteries beyond the ken of mere philosophy. The breaking of the philosopher’s wand against the lyre suspended from its pedestal, followed by an outburst of ravishing music, is a farther and not too obscure piece of symbolism shadowing forth the surrender and absorption of the powers of study and research into the higher powers of poetic intuition and inspiration. And then comes the general disenchantment and awakening of the drowned multitude to life and happiness.

The parable breaks off at this point, and the book closes with a submarine pageant imagined, it would seem, almost singly for the pageant’s sake; perhaps also partly in remembrance of Spenser’s festival of the sea-gods at the marriage of Thames and Medway in the fourth book of theFaerie Queene. The rejuvenated Glaucus bids the whole beautiful multitude follow him to pay their homage to Neptune: they obey: the first crowd of lovers restored to life meets a second crowd on the sand, and some in either crowd recognize and happily pair off with their lost ones in the other. All approach in procession the palace of Neptune—another marvel of vast and vague jewelled and translucent architectural splendours—and find the god presiding on an emerald throne between Venus and Cupid. Glaucus and Scylla receive the blessing of Neptune and Venus respectively, and Venus addresses Endymion in a speech of arch encouragement, where the poet’s style (as almost always in moments of hishero’s prosperous love) turns common and tasteless. Dance and revelry follow, and then a hymn to Neptune, Venus, and Cupid. This is interrupted by the entrance of Oceanus and a train of Nereids. The presence of all these immortals is too much for Endymion’s human senses: he swoons; a ring of Nereids lift and carry him tenderly away; he is aware of a message of hope and cheer from his goddess, written in starlight on the dark; and when he comes to himself, finds that he is restored to earth, lying on the grass beside a forest pool in his native Caria.

Book IV.In this book Endymion has to make his last discovery. He has to learn that all transient and secondary loves, which may seem to come between him and his great ideal pursuit and lure him away from it, are really, when the truth is known, but encouragements to that pursuit, visitations and condescensions to him of his celestial love in disguise. The narrative setting forth this discovery is pitched in a key which, following the triumphant close of the last book, seems curiously subdued and melancholy. An opening apostrophe by the poet to the Muse of his native land, long silent while Greece and Italy sang, but aroused in the fulness of time to happy utterance, begins joyously enough, but ends on no more confident note than this:—

Great Muse, thou know’st what prisonOf flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and fretsOur spirit’s wings: despondency besetsOur pillows; and the fresh to-morrow mornSeems to give forth its light in very scornOf our dull, uninspir’d, snail-paced lives.Long have I said, how happy he who shrivesTo thee! But then I thought on poets gone,And could not pray:—nor could I now—so onI move to the end in lowliness of heart.—

Great Muse, thou know’st what prison

Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets

Our spirit’s wings: despondency besets

Our pillows; and the fresh to-morrow morn

Seems to give forth its light in very scorn

Of our dull, uninspir’d, snail-paced lives.

Long have I said, how happy he who shrives

To thee! But then I thought on poets gone,

And could not pray:—nor could I now—so on

I move to the end in lowliness of heart.—

Keats then tells how his hero, paying his vows to the gods, is interrupted by the plaint of a forsaken Indian damsel which reaches him through the forest undergrowth. (Such a damsel lying back on the grass with herarms among her hair had dwelt, I think, in the poet’s mind’s eye from pictures by or prints after Poussin ever since hospital and early Hunt days, and had been haunting him when he scribbled his attempted scrap of an Alexander romance in a fellow student’s notebook). Endymion listens and approaches: the poet foresees and deplores the coming struggle between his hero’s celestial love and this earthly beauty disconsolate at his feet. The damsel, speaking to herself, laments her loneliness, and tells how she could find it in her heart to love this shepherd youth, and how love is lord of all. Endymion falls to pitying and from pitying into loving her. Though without sense of treachery to his divine mistress, he is torn by the contention within him between this new earthly and his former heavenly flame. He goes on to declare the struggle is killing him, and entreats the damsel to sing him a song of India to ease his passing. Her song, telling of her desolation before and after she was swept from home in the train of Bacchus and his rout and again since she fell out of the march, is, in spite of one or two unfortunate blemishes, among the most moving and original achievements of English lyric poetry. Endymion is wholly overcome, and in a speech of somewhat mawkish surrender gives himself to the new earthly love, not blindly, but realizing fully what he forfeits. He bids the damsel—

Do gently murder half my soul, and IShall feel the other half so utterly.

Do gently murder half my soul, and I

Shall feel the other half so utterly.

A cry of ‘Woe to Endymion!’ echoing through the forest has no sooner alarmed the lovers than there is a sudden apparition of Mercury descending. The gods intend for Endymion an unexpected issue from his perplexities. Their messenger touches the ground with his wand and vanishes: two raven-black winged horses rise through the ground where he has touched,—the horses, no doubt, of the imagination, the same or of the same breed as those ‘steeds with streamy manes’ that paw up against the light and tramplealong the ridges of the clouds inSleep and Poetry. Endymion mounts the damsel on one and himself mounts the other: they are borne aloft together,

—unseen, alone,Among cool clouds and winds, but that the free,The buoyant life of song, can floating beAbove their heads, and follow them untired.

—unseen, alone,

Among cool clouds and winds, but that the free,

The buoyant life of song, can floating be

Above their heads, and follow them untired.

The poet, seeming to realize that the most difficult part of his tale is now to tell, again invokes the native Muse, and relates how the lovers, couched on the wings of the raven steeds, enter on their flight a zone of mists enfolding the couch of Sleep, who has been drawn from his cave by the rumour of the coming nuptials of a goddess with a mortal. The narrative is here very obscure, but seems to run thus. Alike the magic steed and the lovers reclining on their wings yield to the influence of sleep, but still drift on their aerial course. As they drift, Endymion dreams that he has been admitted to Olympus. In his dream he drinks of Hebe’s cup, tries the bow of Apollo and the shield of Pallas; blows a bugle which summons the Seasons and the Hours to a dance; asks whose bugle it is and learns that it is Diana’s; the next moment she is there in presence; he springs to his now recognized goddess, and in the act he awakes, and it is a case of Adam’s dream having come true; he is aware of Diana and the other celestials present bending over him. On the horse-plume couch beside him lies the Indian maiden: the conflict between his two loves is distractingly renewed within him, though some instinct again tells him that he is not really untrue to either. He embraces the Indian damsel as she sleeps; the goddess disappears; the damsel awakes; he pleads with her, says that his other love is free from all malice or revenge and that in his soul he feels true to both.

What is this soul then? WhenceCame it? It does not seem my own, and IHave no self-passion nor identity.

What is this soul then? Whence

Came it? It does not seem my own, and I

Have no self-passion nor identity.

This charge, be it noted, is one which Keats in his private thoughts was constantly apt to bring against himself. Foreseeing disaster and the danger of losing both his loves and being left solitary, Endymion nevertheless rouses the steeds to a renewed ascent. He and the damsel are borne towards the milky way, in a mystery of loving converse: the crescent moon appears from a cloud, facing them: Endymion turns to the damsel at his side and finds her gone gaunt and cold and ghostly: a moment more and she is not there at all but vanished: her horse parts company from his, towers, and falls to earth. He is left alone on his further ascent, abandoned for the moment by both the objects of his passion, the celestial and the human. His spirit enters into a region, or phase, of involved and brooding misery and thence into one of contented apathy: he is scarcely even startled, though his steed is, by a flight of celestial beings blowing trumpets and proclaiming a coming festival of Diana. In a choral song they invite the signs and constellations to the festival: (the picture of the Borghese Zodiac in Spence’sPolymetishas evidently given Keats his suggestion here). Then suddenly Endymion hears no more and is aware that his courser has in a moment swept him down to earth again.

He finds himself on a green hillside with the Indian maiden beside him, and in a long impassioned protestation renounces his past dreams, condemns his presumptuous neglect of human and earthly joys, and declares his intention to live alone with her for ever and (not forgetting to propitiate the Olympians) to shower upon her all the treasures of the pastoral earth:—

O I have beenPresumptuous against love, against the sky,Against all elements, against the tieOf mortals each to each, against the bloomsOf flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombsOf heroes gone! Against his proper gloryHas my own soul conspired: so my storyWill I to children utter, and repent.There never liv’d a mortal man, who bentHis appetite beyond his natural sphere,But starv’d and died. My sweetest Indian, here,Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hastMy life from too thin breathing: gone and pastAre cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewell!And air of visions, and the monstrous swellOf visionary seas! No, never moreShall airy voices cheat me to the shoreOf tangled wonder, breathless and aghast.

O I have been

Presumptuous against love, against the sky,

Against all elements, against the tie

Of mortals each to each, against the blooms

Of flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombs

Of heroes gone! Against his proper glory

Has my own soul conspired: so my story

Will I to children utter, and repent.

There never liv’d a mortal man, who bent

His appetite beyond his natural sphere,

But starv’d and died. My sweetest Indian, here,

Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast

My life from too thin breathing: gone and past

Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewell!

And air of visions, and the monstrous swell

Of visionary seas! No, never more

Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore

Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast.

Here Keats spins and puts into the mouth of Endymion wooing the Indian maiden a long, and in some at least of its verses exquisite, pastoral fantasia recalling, and no doubt partly founded on, the famous passage in Ovid, itself founded on one equally famous in Theocritus, where Polyphemus woos the nymph Galatea.11Apparently, though it was through sympathy with the human sorrow of the Indian damsel that Endymion has first been caught, he proposes to enjoy her society now in detachment from all other human ties as well as from all transcendental dreams and ambitions.

But the damsel is aware of matters which prevent her from falling in with her lover’s desires. She puts him off, saying that she has always loved him and longed and languished to be his, but that this joy is forbidden her, or can only be compassed by the present death of both (that is, to the mortal in love with the spirit of poetry and poetic beauty no life of mere human and earthly contentment is possible); and so she proposes to renounce him. Despondingly they wander off together into the forest.

The poet pauses for an apostrophe to Endymion, confusedly expressed, but vital to his whole meaning. His suffering hero, he says, had the tale allowed, should have been enthroned in felicity before now (the word is ‘ensky’d,’ fromMeasure for Measure). In truth he has been so enthroned for many thousand years (that is to say, the poetic spirit in man has been wedded infull communion to the essential soul of Beauty in the world): the poet, Keats himself, has had some help from him already, and with his farther help hopes ere long to sing of his ‘lute-voiced brother’: that is Apollo, to whom Endymion is called brother as being espoused to his sister Diana. This is the first intimation of Keats’s intention to write on the story of Hyperion’s fall and the advent of Apollo. But the present tale, signifies Keats, has not yet got to that point, and must now be resumed.

Endymion rests beside the damsel in a part of the forest where every tree and stream and slope might have reminded him of his boyish sports, but his downcast eyes fail to recognize them. Peona appears; he dreads their meeting, but without cause; interpreting things by their obvious appearance she sweetly welcomes the stranger as the bride her brother has brought home after his mysterious absence, and bids them both to a festival the shepherds are to hold tonight in honour of Cynthia, in whose aspect the soothsayers have read good omens. Still Endymion does not brighten; Peona asks the stranger why, and craves her help with him; Endymion with a great effort, ‘twanging his soul like a spiritual bow’, says that after all he has gone through he must not partake in the common and selfish pleasures of men, lest he should forfeit higher pleasures and render himself incapable of the services for which he has disciplined himself; that henceforth he must live as a hermit, visited by none but his sister Peona. To her care he at the same time commends the Indian lady: who consents to go with her, and remembering the approaching festival of Diana says she will take part in it and consecrate herself to that sisterhood and to chastity.

For a while they all three feel like people in sleep struggling with oppressive dreams and making believe to think them every-day experiences. Endymion tries to ease the strain by bidding them farewell. They go off dizzily, he stares distressfully after them andat last cries to them to meet him for a last time the same evening in the grove behind Diana’s temple. They disappear; he is left in sluggish desolation till sunset, when he goes to keep his tryst at the temple, musing first with bitterness, then with a resigned prescience of coming death (the mood of theNightingale Odeappearing here in Keats’s work for the first time): then bitterly again:—

I did wedMyself to things of light from infancy;And thus to be cast out, thus lorn to dieIs sure enough to make a mortal manGrow impious. So he inwardly beganOn things for which no wording can be found;Deeper and deeper sulking, until drown’dBeyond the reach of music: for the choirOf Cynthia he heard not, though rough briarNor muffling thicket interpos’d to dullThe vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full,Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles.He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles,Wan as primroses gather’d at midnightBy chilly finger’d spring. ‘Unhappy wight!Endymion!’ said Peona, ‘we are here!What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier?’Then he embrac’d her, and his lady’s handPress’d saying: ‘Sister, I would have command,If it were heaven’s will, on our sad fate.’At which that dark-eyed stranger stood elateAnd said, in a new voice, but sweet as love,To Endymion’s amaze: ‘By Cupid’s dove,And so thou shalt! and by the lily truthOf my own breast thou shalt, beloved youth!’And as she spake, into her face there cameLight, as reflected from a silver flame:Her long black hair swell’d ampler, in displayFull golden; in her eyes a brighter dayDawn’d blue and full of love. Aye, he beheldPhoebe, his passion!

I did wed

Myself to things of light from infancy;

And thus to be cast out, thus lorn to die

Is sure enough to make a mortal man

Grow impious. So he inwardly began

On things for which no wording can be found;

Deeper and deeper sulking, until drown’d

Beyond the reach of music: for the choir

Of Cynthia he heard not, though rough briar

Nor muffling thicket interpos’d to dull

The vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full,

Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles.

He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles,

Wan as primroses gather’d at midnight

By chilly finger’d spring. ‘Unhappy wight!

Endymion!’ said Peona, ‘we are here!

What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier?’

Then he embrac’d her, and his lady’s hand

Press’d saying: ‘Sister, I would have command,

If it were heaven’s will, on our sad fate.’

At which that dark-eyed stranger stood elate

And said, in a new voice, but sweet as love,

To Endymion’s amaze: ‘By Cupid’s dove,

And so thou shalt! and by the lily truth

Of my own breast thou shalt, beloved youth!’

And as she spake, into her face there came

Light, as reflected from a silver flame:

Her long black hair swell’d ampler, in display

Full golden; in her eyes a brighter day

Dawn’d blue and full of love. Aye, he beheld

Phoebe, his passion!

And so the quest is ended, and the mystery solved.Vera incessu patuit dea: the forsaken Indian maiden had been but a disguised incarnation of Cynthia herself. Endymion’s earthly passion, born of human pity anddesire, was one all the while, had he but known it, with his heavenly passion born of poetic aspiration and the soul’s thirst for Beauty. The two passions at their height and perfection are inseparable, and the crowned poet and the crowned lover are one. But these things are still a mystery to those who know not poetry, and when the happy lovers disappear the kind ministering sister Peona can only marvel:—

Peona wentHome through the gloomy wood in wonderment.

Peona went

Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.

The poem ends on no such note of joy and triumph over the attained consummation as we might have expected and such as we found at the close of the third book, at the point where the faculty and vision of the poet had been happily enriched and completed by the gift of the learning and beneficence of the sage. The fourth book closes, as it began, in a minor key, leaving the reader, like Peona, in a mood rather musing than rejoicing. Is this because Keats had tired of his task before he came to the end, or because the low critical opinion of his own work which he had been gradually forming took the heart out of him, so that as he drew near the goal he involuntarily let his mind run on the hindrances and misgivings which beset the poetic aspirant on his way to victory more than on the victory itself? Or was it partly because of the numbing influence of early winter as recorded in the last chapter? We cannot tell.

But why take all this trouble, the reader may well have asked before now, to follow the argument and track the wanderings of Endymion book by book, when everyone knows that the poem is only admirable for its incidental beauties and is neither read nor well readable for its story? The answer is that the intricacy and obscurity of the narrative, taken merely as a narrative, are such as to tire the patience of many readers in their search for beautiful passages and to dull their enjoyment of them when found; but once the inner and symbolic meanings of the poem arerecognized, even in gleams, their recognition gives it a quite new hold upon the attention. And in order to trace these meanings and disengage them with any clearness a fairly close examination and detailed argument are necessary. It is not with simple matters of personification, of the putting of initial capitals to abstract qualities, that we have to deal, nor yet with any obvious and deliberately thought-out allegory; still less is it with one purposely made riddling and obscure; it is with a vital, subtly involved and passionately tentative spiritual parable, the parable of the experiences of the poetic soul in man seeking communion with the spirit of essential Beauty in the world, invented and related, in the still uncertain dawn of his powers, by one of the finest natural-born and intuitively gifted poets who ever lived. This is a thing which stands almost alone in literature, and however imperfectly executed is worth any closeness and continuity of attention we can give it. Having now studied, to the best of our power, the sources and scheme of the poem, with its symbolism and inner meanings so far as they can with any confidence be traced, let us pass to the consideration of its technical and poetical qualities and its relation to the works of certain other poets and poems of Keats’s time.

1In the old Grecian world, the Endymion myth, or rather an Endymion myth, for like other myths it had divers forms, was rooted deeply in the popular traditions both of Elis in the Peloponnese, and of the Ionian cities about the Latmian gulf in Caria. The central feature of the Carian legend was the nightly descent of the moon-goddess Seléné to kiss her lover, the shepherd prince Endymion, where he lay spell-bound, by the grace of Zeus, in everlasting sleep and everlasting youth on Mount Latmos. This legend was early crystallized in a lyric poem of Sappho now lost, and thereafter became part of the common heritage of Greek and Roman popular mythology. The separate moon-goddess, Seléné for the Greeks and Luna for the Romans, got merged in course of time in the multiform divinities of the Greek Artemis and the Roman Diana respectively; so that in modern literatures derived from the Latin it is always of Diana (or what is the same thing, of Cynthia or Phoebe) that the tale is told. It is not given at length in any of our extant classical writings, but only by way of allusion in some of the poets, as Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius, and Ovid, and in Cicero and some of the late Greek prose-writers, as Lucian, Apollodorus, and Pausanias. From these it passed at the Renaissance into the current European stock of classical imagery and reference.2In another place, Browne makes Endymion shut out from the favour of Cynthia stand figuratively for Raleigh in disgrace with Elizabeth: just as in Lyly’s comedy the myth had been turned into an allegory of contemporary court intrigue, with Elizabeth for Cynthia, Leicester for Endymion, Tellus for Mary Queen of Scots, Eumenides for Sidney, and so forth.3Endymion, iii. 196-209.4Endymion, ii. 569-572 and 908-916.5Metam.i. 26-31, Englished thus by Sandys:—Forthwith upsprung the quick and weightless Fire,Whose flames unto the highest Arch aspire:The next, in levity and peace, is Air:Gross elements to thicker Earth repairSelf-clogg’d with weight: the Waters flowing roundPossess the last, and solid Tellus bound.6Keats was more widely read in out-of-the-way French literature than could have been expected from his opportunities, and there are passages inEndymionwhich run closely parallel to Gombauld’s romance, notably the first apparition of Cynthia, with the description of her hair (End.i, 605-618), and the account of the sudden distaste which afterwards seizes him for former pleasures and companions. But these may be mere coincidences, and the whole series of the hero’s subsequent adventures according to Gombauld, his dream-flight to the Caspian under the spell of the Thessalian enchantress Ismene, and all the weird things that befall him there, are entirely unlike anything that happens in Keats’s poem.7The authority for this story is the late Sir B. W. Richardson, professing to quote verbatim as follows from Mr Stephens’ own statement to him in conversation.‘One evening in the twilight, the two students sitting together, Stephens at his medical studies, Keats at his dreaming, Keats breaks out to Stephens that he has composed a new line:—A thing of beauty is a constant joy.“What think you of that, Stephens?” “It has the true ring, but is wanting in some way,” replies the latter, as he dips once more into his medical studies. An interval of silence, and again the poet:—A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.“What think you of that, Stephens?” “That it will live for ever.”’The conversation as thus related at second hand reads certainly as though it had been more or less dressed up for effect, but we cannot suppose the circumstance to have been wholly invented. A careful reading of the first twenty-four lines ofEndymionwill show that they have close affinities with much both inSleep and Poetryand ‘I stood tip-toe’ in thought as well as style, and especially in their manner of bringing together, by reason of the common property of beauty, things otherwise so unlike as the cloak of weeds which rivulets are conceived as making to keep themselves cool in summertime (compare ‘I stood tip-toe’ II. 80-84) musk-roses in a woodland brake (compareSleep and PoetryI. 5), the life of great spirits after death, and beautiful stories in general. My own inference is that Keats, having written these two dozen lines some time in 1816, used them the next spring as a suitable exordium forEndymion, and added the following lines, 25-33, as a (somewhat clumsy) transition to the actual beginning of the poem ‘Therefore with full happiness,’ etc., as written at Carisbrooke.8There is a certain, though slight enough, resemblance between some of these underground incidents and those which happen in a romance of travel, which Keats may very well have read, theVoyage d’Anténor, then popular both in France and in an English translation. Anténor is permitted by the Egyptian priests to pass through the triple ordeal by fire, water, and air contrived by them in the vast subterranean vaults under the temple of Osiris. The points of most resemblance are the suspended guiding light seen from within the entrance, the rushing of the water streams, and the ascent by a path between balustrades. TheVoyage d’Anténorwas itself founded on an earlier and much rarer French romance,Sethos, and both were freely and avowedly imitated by Thomas Moore in his prose tale, theEpicurean(1827). Mr Robert Bridges has noticed a point in common betweenEndymionand theEpicureanin the sudden breaking off or crumbling away of the balustrade under the wayfarer’s feet. This does not occur inSethosorAnténor, and was probably borrowed by Moore from Keats.9How familiar, both with the text and the translator’s commentary, is proved by his adopting as his own, almost literally, a phrase which Sandys brings in by way of illustrative comment from theImagines(a description of an imaginary picture-gallery) of Philostratus. Philostratus, coming to a picture of Glaucus, tells how the painter had given him ‘thick and arched eyebrows which touched one another.’ Keats writes,—his snow-white browsWent arching up, and like two magic ploughsFurrowed deep wrinkles in his forehead large.It was the look and expression of Keats in reciting this same phrase, the reader will remember, which so struck Bailey that he found himself vividly recalling it thirty years later (see above, p. 144).10Mr Mackail sees in this shell and its secret characters a reminiscence of the mystic shell, which is also a book, carried in the right hand of the sheikh who is also Don Quixote in the dream narrated by Wordsworth in the third book ofThe Prelude. I owe so very much of the interpretation above attempted to Mr Mackail that I am bound to record his opinion: but as I shall show later (p. 251), it is scarcely possible that any passages fromThe Preludeshould have come to Keats’s knowledge until afterEndymionwas finished.11Ovid,Metam.xiii, 810-840; Theocr.Idyll. xi, 30sqq.

2In another place, Browne makes Endymion shut out from the favour of Cynthia stand figuratively for Raleigh in disgrace with Elizabeth: just as in Lyly’s comedy the myth had been turned into an allegory of contemporary court intrigue, with Elizabeth for Cynthia, Leicester for Endymion, Tellus for Mary Queen of Scots, Eumenides for Sidney, and so forth.

3Endymion, iii. 196-209.

4Endymion, ii. 569-572 and 908-916.

5Metam.i. 26-31, Englished thus by Sandys:—

Forthwith upsprung the quick and weightless Fire,Whose flames unto the highest Arch aspire:The next, in levity and peace, is Air:Gross elements to thicker Earth repairSelf-clogg’d with weight: the Waters flowing roundPossess the last, and solid Tellus bound.

Forthwith upsprung the quick and weightless Fire,

Whose flames unto the highest Arch aspire:

The next, in levity and peace, is Air:

Gross elements to thicker Earth repair

Self-clogg’d with weight: the Waters flowing round

Possess the last, and solid Tellus bound.

6Keats was more widely read in out-of-the-way French literature than could have been expected from his opportunities, and there are passages inEndymionwhich run closely parallel to Gombauld’s romance, notably the first apparition of Cynthia, with the description of her hair (End.i, 605-618), and the account of the sudden distaste which afterwards seizes him for former pleasures and companions. But these may be mere coincidences, and the whole series of the hero’s subsequent adventures according to Gombauld, his dream-flight to the Caspian under the spell of the Thessalian enchantress Ismene, and all the weird things that befall him there, are entirely unlike anything that happens in Keats’s poem.

7The authority for this story is the late Sir B. W. Richardson, professing to quote verbatim as follows from Mr Stephens’ own statement to him in conversation.

‘One evening in the twilight, the two students sitting together, Stephens at his medical studies, Keats at his dreaming, Keats breaks out to Stephens that he has composed a new line:—

A thing of beauty is a constant joy.

“What think you of that, Stephens?” “It has the true ring, but is wanting in some way,” replies the latter, as he dips once more into his medical studies. An interval of silence, and again the poet:—

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

“What think you of that, Stephens?” “That it will live for ever.”’

The conversation as thus related at second hand reads certainly as though it had been more or less dressed up for effect, but we cannot suppose the circumstance to have been wholly invented. A careful reading of the first twenty-four lines ofEndymionwill show that they have close affinities with much both inSleep and Poetryand ‘I stood tip-toe’ in thought as well as style, and especially in their manner of bringing together, by reason of the common property of beauty, things otherwise so unlike as the cloak of weeds which rivulets are conceived as making to keep themselves cool in summertime (compare ‘I stood tip-toe’ II. 80-84) musk-roses in a woodland brake (compareSleep and PoetryI. 5), the life of great spirits after death, and beautiful stories in general. My own inference is that Keats, having written these two dozen lines some time in 1816, used them the next spring as a suitable exordium forEndymion, and added the following lines, 25-33, as a (somewhat clumsy) transition to the actual beginning of the poem ‘Therefore with full happiness,’ etc., as written at Carisbrooke.

8There is a certain, though slight enough, resemblance between some of these underground incidents and those which happen in a romance of travel, which Keats may very well have read, theVoyage d’Anténor, then popular both in France and in an English translation. Anténor is permitted by the Egyptian priests to pass through the triple ordeal by fire, water, and air contrived by them in the vast subterranean vaults under the temple of Osiris. The points of most resemblance are the suspended guiding light seen from within the entrance, the rushing of the water streams, and the ascent by a path between balustrades. TheVoyage d’Anténorwas itself founded on an earlier and much rarer French romance,Sethos, and both were freely and avowedly imitated by Thomas Moore in his prose tale, theEpicurean(1827). Mr Robert Bridges has noticed a point in common betweenEndymionand theEpicureanin the sudden breaking off or crumbling away of the balustrade under the wayfarer’s feet. This does not occur inSethosorAnténor, and was probably borrowed by Moore from Keats.

9How familiar, both with the text and the translator’s commentary, is proved by his adopting as his own, almost literally, a phrase which Sandys brings in by way of illustrative comment from theImagines(a description of an imaginary picture-gallery) of Philostratus. Philostratus, coming to a picture of Glaucus, tells how the painter had given him ‘thick and arched eyebrows which touched one another.’ Keats writes,—

his snow-white browsWent arching up, and like two magic ploughsFurrowed deep wrinkles in his forehead large.

his snow-white brows

Went arching up, and like two magic ploughs

Furrowed deep wrinkles in his forehead large.

It was the look and expression of Keats in reciting this same phrase, the reader will remember, which so struck Bailey that he found himself vividly recalling it thirty years later (see above, p. 144).

10Mr Mackail sees in this shell and its secret characters a reminiscence of the mystic shell, which is also a book, carried in the right hand of the sheikh who is also Don Quixote in the dream narrated by Wordsworth in the third book ofThe Prelude. I owe so very much of the interpretation above attempted to Mr Mackail that I am bound to record his opinion: but as I shall show later (p. 251), it is scarcely possible that any passages fromThe Preludeshould have come to Keats’s knowledge until afterEndymionwas finished.

11Ovid,Metam.xiii, 810-840; Theocr.Idyll. xi, 30sqq.

CHAPTER VII

ENDYMION.—II. THE POETRY: ITS QUALITIES AND AFFINITIES

Revival of Elizabethan usages—Avoidance of closed couplets—True metrical instincts—An example—Rime too much his master—Lax use of words—Flaws of taste and training—Faults and beauties inseparable—Homage to the moon—A parallel from Drayton—Examples of nature-poetry—Nature and the Greek spirit—Greek mythology revitalized—Its previous deadness—Poetry of love and war—Dramatic promise—Comparison with models—Sandys’sOvid—Hymn to Pan: Chapman—Ben Jonson—The hymn inEndymion—‘A pretty piece of paganism’—Song of the Indian maiden—The triumph of Bacchus—A composite: its sources—English scenery and detail—Influence of Wordsworth—Influence of Shelley—EndymionandAlastor—Correspondences and contrasts—Hymn to Intellectual Beauty—Shelley onEndymion—Keats and Clarence’s dream—Shelley a borrower—Shelley and the rimed couplet.

Throughoutthe four books ofEndymionwe find Keats still working, more even than in his epistles and meditations of the year before, under the spell of Elizabethan and early Jacobean poetry. Spenser and the Spenserians, foremost among them William Browne; Drayton in his pastorals and elegies; Shakespeare, especially in his early poems and comedies; Fletcher and Ben Jonson in pastoral and lyrical work likeThe Faithful ShepherdessorThe Sad Shepherd; Chapman’s version of Homer, especially theOdysseyand theHymns, and Sandys’s of theMetamorphosesof Ovid; these are the masters and the models of whom we feel his mind and ear to be full. In their day the English language had been to a large extent unfixed, and in their instinctive efforts to enrich and expand and supple it, poets had enjoyed a wide range of freedom both inmaintaining old and in experimenting with new usages. Many of the liberties they used were renounced by the differently minded age which followed them, and the period from the Restoration, roughly speaking, to the middle years of George III had in matters of literary form and style been one of steadily tightening restriction and convention. Then ensued the period of expansion, in which Wordsworth and Coleridge and Scott had been the most conspicuous leaders, each after his manner, in reconquering the freedom of poetry. Other innovators had followed suit, including Leigh Hunt in that slippered, sentimental, Italianate fashion of his own. And now came young Keats, not following closely along the paths opened by any of these, though closer to Leigh Hunt than to the others, but making a deliberate return to certain definite and long abandoned usages of the English poets during the illustrious half century from 1590-1640. He chose the heroic couplet, and in handling it reversed the settled practice of more than a century. He was even more sedulous than any of his Elizabethan or Jacobean masters to achieve variety of pause and movement by avoiding the regular beat of the closed couplet; while in framing his style he did not scruple to revive all or nearly all those licences of theirs which the intervening age had disallowed. There was a special rashness in his attempt considering the slightness of his own critical equipment, and considering also the strength of the long riveted fetters which he undertook to break and the charges of affectation and impertinence which such a revival of obsolete metrical and verbal usages—the marks of what Pope had denounced as ‘our rustic vein And splay-foot verse’—was bound to bring against him.

First of his revolutionary treatment of the metre. He no longer uses double or feminine endings, as in his epistles of the year before, with a profusion like that ofBritannia’s Pastorals. They occur, but in moderation, hardly more than a score of them in any one of the four books. At the beginning he tries often, but afterwardsgives up, an occasional trick of the Elizabethan and earlier poets in riming on the unstressed second syllables of words such as ‘dancing’ (rimed with ‘string’), ‘elbow’ (with ‘slow’), ‘velvet’ (with ‘set’), ‘purplish’ (with ‘fish’). On the other hand he regularly resolves the ‘tion’ or ‘shion’ termination into its full two syllables, the last carrying the rime, as—‘With speed of five-tailed exhalations:’ ‘Before the deep intoxication;’ ‘Vanish’d in elemental passion;’ and the like. He admits closed couplets, but very grudgingly, as a general rule in the proportion of not more than one to eight or ten of the unclosed. He seldom allows himself even so much of a continuous run of them as this:—

Moreover, through the dancing poppies stoleA breeze most softly lulling to my soul;And shaping visions all about my sightOf colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light;The which became more strange, and strange, and dim,And then were gulph’d in a tumultuous swim:

Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole

A breeze most softly lulling to my soul;

And shaping visions all about my sight

Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light;

The which became more strange, and strange, and dim,

And then were gulph’d in a tumultuous swim:

Or this:—

So in that crystal place, in silent rows,Poor lovers lay at rest from joys and woes.—The stranger from the mountains, breathless, trac’dSuch thousands of shut eyes in order plac’d;Such ranges of white feet, and patient lipsAll ruddy,—for here death no blossom nips.He mark’d their brows and foreheads; saw their hairPut sleekly on one side with nicest care.

So in that crystal place, in silent rows,

Poor lovers lay at rest from joys and woes.—

The stranger from the mountains, breathless, trac’d

Such thousands of shut eyes in order plac’d;

Such ranges of white feet, and patient lips

All ruddy,—for here death no blossom nips.

He mark’d their brows and foreheads; saw their hair

Put sleekly on one side with nicest care.

The essential principle of his versification is to let sentences, prolonged and articulated as freely and naturally as in prose, wind their way in and out among the rimes, the full pause often splitting a couplet by falling at the end of the first line, and oftener still (in the proportion of two or three times to one) breaking up a single line in the middle or at any point of its course. Sense and sound flow habitually over from one couplet to the next without logical or grammatical pause, but to keep the sense of metre present to the ear Keats commonly takes care that the second line of a coupletshall end with a fully stressed rime-word such as not only allows, but actually invites, at least a momentary breathing-pause to follow it. It is only in the rarest cases that he compels the breath to hurry on with no chance of stress or after-rest from a light preposition at the end of a line to its object at the beginning of the next (‘on | His left,’ ‘upon | A dreary morning’), or from an auxiliary to its verb (‘as might be | Remembered’) or from a comparative particle to the thing compared (‘sleeker than | Night-swollen mushrooms’); a practice in which Chapman, Ben Jonson, Fletcher, and their contemporaries indulged, as we have seen, freely, and which afterwards developed into a fatal disease of the metre. Keats’s musical and metrical instincts were too fine, and his ear too early trained in the ‘sweet-slipping’ movement of Spenser, to let him fall often into this fault. To the other besetting fault of some of these masters, that of a harsh and jolting ruggedness, he was still less prone. Although he chooses to forgo that special effect of combined vigour and smoothness proper to the closed couplet, he always knows how to make a rich and varied music with his vowel sounds; while the same fine natural instinct for sentence-structure as distinguishes the prose of his letters makes itself felt in his verse, so that wherever he has need to place a full stop he can make his sentence descend upon it smoothly and skimmingly, like a seabird on the sea.1The long passage quoted from Book III in the last chapter illustrates the narrative verse ofEndymionin nearly all its moods and variations. Here is a characteristic example of its spoken or dramatic verse. Endymion supplicates his goddess from underground:—

O Haunter chasteOf river sides, and woods, and heathy waste,Where with thy silver bow and arrows keenArt thou now forested? O Woodland Queen,What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos?Where dost thou listen to the wide halloosOf thy disparted nymphs? Through what dark treeGlimmers thy crescent? Wheresoe’er it be,’Tis in the breath of heaven: thou dost tasteFreedom as none can taste it, nor dost wasteThy loveliness in dismal elements;But, finding in our green earth sweet contents,There livest blissfully. Ah, if to theeIt feels Elysian, how rich to me,An exil’d mortal, sounds its pleasant name!Within my breast there lives a choking flame—O let me cool’t the zephyr-boughs among!A homeward fever parches up my tongue—O let me slake it at the running springs!Upon my ear a noisy nothing rings—O let me once more hear the linnet’s note!Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float—O let me ‘noint them with the heaven’s light!Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white?O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice!Dost thou now please thy thirst with berry-juice?O think how this dry palate would rejoice!If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice,O think how I should love a bed of flowers!—

O Haunter chaste

Of river sides, and woods, and heathy waste,

Where with thy silver bow and arrows keen

Art thou now forested? O Woodland Queen,

What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos?

Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos

Of thy disparted nymphs? Through what dark tree

Glimmers thy crescent? Wheresoe’er it be,

’Tis in the breath of heaven: thou dost taste

Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste

Thy loveliness in dismal elements;

But, finding in our green earth sweet contents,

There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee

It feels Elysian, how rich to me,

An exil’d mortal, sounds its pleasant name!

Within my breast there lives a choking flame—

O let me cool’t the zephyr-boughs among!

A homeward fever parches up my tongue—

O let me slake it at the running springs!

Upon my ear a noisy nothing rings—

O let me once more hear the linnet’s note!

Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float—

O let me ‘noint them with the heaven’s light!

Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white?

O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice!

Dost thou now please thy thirst with berry-juice?

O think how this dry palate would rejoice!

If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice,

O think how I should love a bed of flowers!—

The first fifteen lines of the above are broken and varied much in Keats’s usual way: in the following fourteenit is to be noted how he throws the speaker’s alternate complaints of his predicament and prayers for release from it not into twinned but into split or parted couplets, making each prayer rime not with the complaint which calls it forth but with the new complaint which is to follow it: a bold and to my ear a happy sacrifice of obvious rhetorical effect to his predilection for the suspended or delayed rime-echo.

Rime is to some poets a stiff and grudging but to others an officious servant, over-active in offering suggestions to the mind; and no poet is rightly a master until he has learnt how to sift those suggestions, rejecting many and accepting only the fittest. Keats inEndymionhas not reached nor come near reaching this mastery: in the flush and eagerness of composition he is content to catch at almost any and every suggestion of the rime, no matter how far-fetched and irrelevant. He had a great fore-runner in this fault in Chapman, who constantly, especially in theIliad, wrenches into his text for the rime’s sake ideas that have no kind of business there. Take the passage justly criticized by Bailey at the beginning of the third Book:—

There are who lord it o’er their fellow-menWith most prevailing tinsel: who unpenTheir baaing vanities, to browse awayThe comfortable green and juicy hayFrom human pastures; or, O torturing fact!Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack’dFire-branded foxes to sear up and singeOur gold and ripe-ear’d hopes. With not one tingeOf sanctuary splendour, not a sightAble to face an owl’s, they still are dightBy the blear-ey’d nations in empurpled vests,And crowns, and turbans.

There are who lord it o’er their fellow-men

With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen

Their baaing vanities, to browse away

The comfortable green and juicy hay

From human pastures; or, O torturing fact!

Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack’d

Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe

Our gold and ripe-ear’d hopes. With not one tinge

Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight

Able to face an owl’s, they still are dight

By the blear-ey’d nations in empurpled vests,

And crowns, and turbans.

Here it is obviously the need of a rime to ‘men’ that has suggested the word ‘unpen’ and the clumsy imagery of the ‘baaing sheep’ which follows, while the inappropriate and almost meaningless ‘tinge of sanctuary splendour’ lower down has been imported for the sake of the foxes with fire-brands tied to their tails which‘singe’ the metaphorical corn-sheaves (they come from the story of Samson in the Book of Judges). Milder cases abound, as this of Circe tormenting her victims:—

appealing groansFrom their poor breasts went sueing to her earIn vain;remorseless as an infant’s bierShe whisk’d against their eyes the sooty oil.Does yonder thrush,Schooling its half-fledg’d little ones to brushAbout the dewy forest, whisper tales.Speak not of grief, young stranger, orcold snailsWill slime the rose to-night.He rose: he grasp’d his stole,With convuls’d clenches waving it abroad,And in a voice of solemn joy,that aw’dEcho into oblivion, he said:—Yet hourly had he strivenTo hide the cankering venom, that hadrivenHis fainting recollections.The wandererHolding his forehead to keep off theburrOf smothering fancies.Endymion! the cave is secreterThan the isle of Delos. Echo hence shallstirNo sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noiseOf thy combing hand, the while it travellingcloysAnd trembles through my labyrinthine hair.

appealing groans

From their poor breasts went sueing to her ear

In vain;remorseless as an infant’s bier

She whisk’d against their eyes the sooty oil.

Does yonder thrush,

Schooling its half-fledg’d little ones to brush

About the dewy forest, whisper tales.

Speak not of grief, young stranger, orcold snails

Will slime the rose to-night.

He rose: he grasp’d his stole,

With convuls’d clenches waving it abroad,

And in a voice of solemn joy,that aw’d

Echo into oblivion, he said:—

Yet hourly had he striven

To hide the cankering venom, that hadriven

His fainting recollections.

The wanderer

Holding his forehead to keep off theburr

Of smothering fancies.

Endymion! the cave is secreter

Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shallstir

No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise

Of thy combing hand, the while it travellingcloys

And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.

In some of these cases the trouble is, not that the rime drags in a train of far-fetched or intrusive ideas, but only that words are used for the rime’s sake in inexact and inappropriate senses. Such laxity in the employment of words is one of the great weaknesses of Keats’s style inEndymion, and is no doubt partly connected with his general disposition to treat language as though it were as free and fluid in his own day as it had been two hundred years earlier. The same disposition makes him reckless in turning verbs into nouns (a ‘complain,’ an ‘exclaim,’ a ‘shine,’ a ‘pierce,’a ‘quell’) and nouns into verbs (to ‘throe,’ to ‘passion,’ to ‘monitor,’ to ‘fragment up’); in using at his convenience active verbs as passive and passive verbs as active; and in not only reviving archaic participial forms (‘dight,’ ‘fight,’ ‘raft,’ etc.) but in giving currency to participles of the class Coleridge denounced as demoralizing to the ear, and as hybrids equivocally generated of noun-substantives (‘emblem’d,’ ‘gordian’d,’ ‘mountain’d,’ ‘phantasy’d’), as well as to adjectives borrowed from Elizabethan use or new-minted more or less in accordance with it (‘pipy,’ ‘paly,’ ‘ripply,’ ‘sluicy,’ ‘slumbery,’ ‘towery,’ ‘bowery,’ ‘orby,’ ‘nervy,’ ‘surgy,’ ‘sparry,’ ‘spangly).’ It was these and such like technical liberties with language which scandalized conservative critics, and caused even De Quincey, becoming tardily acquainted with Keats’s work, to dislike and utterly under-rate it. He himself came before long to condemn the style of ‘the slipshod Endymion.’ Nevertheless the consequence of his experiments in reviving or imitating the usages of the great Renaissance age of English poetry is only in part to be regretted. His rashness led him into almost as many felicities as faults, and the examples of the happier liberties inEndymionhas done much towards enriching the vocabulary and diction of English poetry in the nineteenth century.

Other faults that more gravely mar the poem are not technical but spiritual: intimate failures of taste and feeling due partly to mere rawness and inexperience, partly to excessive intensity and susceptibility of temperament, partly to second-rateness of social training and association. A habit of cloying over-luxuriance in description, the giving way to a sort of swooning abandonment of the senses in contact with the ‘deliciousness’ of things, is the most besetting of such faults. Allied with it is Keats’s treatment of love as an actuality, which in this poem is in unfortunate and distasteful contrast with his high conception of love in the abstract as the inspiring and ennobling power of the world and all things in it. Add the propensity tomake Glaucus address Scylla as ‘timid thing!’ and Endymion beg for ‘one gentle squeeze’ from his Indian maiden, with many a like turn in the simpering, familiar mood which Keats at this time had caught from or naturally shared with Leigh Hunt. It should, however, be noted as a mark of progress in self-criticism that, comparing the drafts of the poem with the printed text, we find that in revising it for press he had turned out more and worse passages in this vein than he left in.

From flaws or disfigurements of one or other of these kinds the poem is never free for more than a page or two, and rarely for so much, at a time. But granting all weaknesses and immaturities whether of form or spirit, what a power of poetry is inEndymion: what evidence, unmistakeable, one would have said, to the blindest, of genius. Did any poet in his twenty-second year ever write with so prodigal an activity of invention, however undisciplined and unbraced, or with an imagination so penetrating to divine and so swift to evoke beauty? Were so many faults and failures ever interspersed with felicities of married sound and sense so frequent and absolute, and only to be matched in the work of the ripest masters? Lost as the reader may often feel himself among the phantasmagoric intricacies of the tale, cloyed by its amatory insipidities, bewildered by the redundancies of an invention stimulated into over-activity by any and every chance feather-touch of association or rime-suggestion, he can afford to be patient in the certainty of coming, from one page to another, upon touches of true and fresh inspiration in almost every strain and mode of poetry. Often the inspired poet and the raw cockney rimester come inseparably coupled in the limit of half a dozen lines, as thus in the narrative of Glaucus:—

Upon a dead thing’s face my hand I laid;I look’d—’twas Scylla! Cursed, cursed Circe!O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy?Could not thy harshest vengeance be content,But thou must nip this tender innocentBecause I loved her?—Cold, O cold indeedWere her fair limbs, and like a common weedThe sea-swell took her hair.

Upon a dead thing’s face my hand I laid;

I look’d—’twas Scylla! Cursed, cursed Circe!

O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy?

Could not thy harshest vengeance be content,

But thou must nip this tender innocent

Because I loved her?—Cold, O cold indeed

Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed

The sea-swell took her hair.

or thus from the love-making of Cynthia:—

Now I swear at onceThat I am wise, that Pallas is a dunce—Perhaps her love like mine is but unknown—O I do think that I have been aloneIn chastity: yes, Pallas has been sighing,While every eve saw me my hair uptying,With fingers cool as aspen leaves.

Now I swear at once

That I am wise, that Pallas is a dunce—

Perhaps her love like mine is but unknown—

O I do think that I have been alone

In chastity: yes, Pallas has been sighing,

While every eve saw me my hair uptying,

With fingers cool as aspen leaves.

In like manner the unfortunate opening of Book III above cited leads on, as Mr de Sélincourt has justly observed, to a passage in praise of the moon which is among the very finest and best sustained examples of Keats’s power in nature-poetry. For quotation I will take not this but a second invocation to the moon which follows a little later, for the reason that in it the raptures and longings which the poet puts into the mouth of his hero are really in a large measure his own:—

What is there in thee, Moon! that thou shouldst moveMy heart so potently? When yet a childI oft have dry’d my tears when thou hast smil’d.Thou seem’dst my sister: hand in hand we wentFrom eve to morn across the firmament.No apples would I gather from the tree,Till thou hadst cool’d their cheeks deliciously:No tumbling water ever spake romance,But when my eyes with thine thereon could dance:No woods were green enough, no bower divine,Until thou liftedst up thine eyelids fine:In sowing time ne’er would I dibble take,Or drop a seed, till thou wast wide awake;And, in the summer tide of blossoming,No one but thee hath heard me blythly singAnd mesh my dewy flowers all the night.No melody was like a passing sprightIf it went not to solemnize thy reign.Yes, in my boyhood every joy and painBy thee were fashioned in the self-same end;And as I grew in years, still didst thou blendWith all my ardours: thou wast the deep glen;Thou wast the mountain-top—the sage’s pen—The poet’s harp—the voice of friends—the sun;Thou wast the river—thou wast glory won;Thou wast my clarion’s blast—thou wast my steed—My goblet full of wine—my topmost deed:—Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon!O what a wild and harmonized tuneMy spirit struck from all the beautiful!

What is there in thee, Moon! that thou shouldst move

My heart so potently? When yet a child

I oft have dry’d my tears when thou hast smil’d.

Thou seem’dst my sister: hand in hand we went

From eve to morn across the firmament.

No apples would I gather from the tree,

Till thou hadst cool’d their cheeks deliciously:

No tumbling water ever spake romance,

But when my eyes with thine thereon could dance:

No woods were green enough, no bower divine,

Until thou liftedst up thine eyelids fine:

In sowing time ne’er would I dibble take,

Or drop a seed, till thou wast wide awake;

And, in the summer tide of blossoming,

No one but thee hath heard me blythly sing

And mesh my dewy flowers all the night.

No melody was like a passing spright

If it went not to solemnize thy reign.

Yes, in my boyhood every joy and pain

By thee were fashioned in the self-same end;

And as I grew in years, still didst thou blend

With all my ardours: thou wast the deep glen;

Thou wast the mountain-top—the sage’s pen—

The poet’s harp—the voice of friends—the sun;

Thou wast the river—thou wast glory won;

Thou wast my clarion’s blast—thou wast my steed—

My goblet full of wine—my topmost deed:—

Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon!

O what a wild and harmonized tune

My spirit struck from all the beautiful!

In the last two lines of the above Keats gives us the essential master key to his own poetic nature and being. The eight preceding, from ‘As I grew in years’ offer in their rhetorical form a curious parallel with a passage of similar purport in Drayton’sEndimion and Phoebe:—

Be kind (quoth he) sweet Nymph unto thy lover,My soul’s sole essence and my senses’ mover,Life of my life, pure Image of my heart,Impression of Conceit, Invention, Art.My vital spirit receives his spirit from thee,Thou art that all which ruleth all in me,Thou art the sap and life whereby I live,Which powerful vigour doth receive and give.Thou nourishest the flame wherein I burn,The North whereto my heart’s true touch doth turn.

Be kind (quoth he) sweet Nymph unto thy lover,

My soul’s sole essence and my senses’ mover,

Life of my life, pure Image of my heart,

Impression of Conceit, Invention, Art.

My vital spirit receives his spirit from thee,

Thou art that all which ruleth all in me,

Thou art the sap and life whereby I live,

Which powerful vigour doth receive and give.

Thou nourishest the flame wherein I burn,

The North whereto my heart’s true touch doth turn.

Was Keats, then, after all familiar with the rare volume in which alone Drayton’s early poem had been printed, or does the similar turn of the two passages spring from some innate affinity between the two poets,—or perhaps merely from the natural suggestion of the theme?

In nature-poetry, and especially in that mode of it in which the poet goes out with his whole being into nature and loses his identity in delighted sympathy with her doings, Keats already shows himself a master scarcely excelled. Take the lines near the beginning which tell of the ‘silent workings of the dawn’ on the morning of Pan’s festival:—

Rain-scented eglantineGave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;The lark was lost in him; cold springs had runTo warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the massOf nature’s lives and wonders puls’d tenfold,To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.

Rain-scented eglantine

Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;

The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run

To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;

Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass

Of nature’s lives and wonders puls’d tenfold,

To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.

The freshness and music and felicity of the first two lines are nothing less than Shakespearean: in the rest note with how true an instinct the poet evokes the operant magic and living activities of the dawn, single instances first and then in a sudden outburst the sum and volume of them all: how he avoids word-painting and palette-work, leaving all merely visible beauties, the stationary world of colours and forms, as they should be left, to the painter, and dealing, as poetry alone is able to deal, with those delights which are felt and divined rather than seen, delights which the poet instinctively attributes to nature as though she were as sentient as himself. It is like Keats here so to place and lead up to the word ‘old’ as to make it pregnant with all the meanings which it bore to him: that is with all the wonder and romance of ancient Greece, and at the same time with a sense of awe, like that expressed in the opening chorus of Goethe’sFaust, at nature’s eternal miracle of the sun still rising ‘glorious as on creation’s day.’

It is interesting to note how above all other nature-images Keats, whose blood, when his faculties were at their highest tension, was always apt to be heated even to fever-point, prefers those of nature’s coolness and refreshment. Here are two or three out of a score of instances. Endymion tells how he had been gazing at the face of his unknown love smiling at him from the well:—

I started up, when lo! refreshfully,There came upon my face in plenteous showersDew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,Bathing my spirit in a new delight.

I started up, when lo! refreshfully,

There came upon my face in plenteous showers

Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,

Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,

Bathing my spirit in a new delight.

Coming to a place where a brook issues from a cave, he says to himself—

’Tis the grotOf Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot,Doth her resign; and where her tender handsShe dabbles on the cool and sluicy sands:

’Tis the grot

Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot,

Doth her resign; and where her tender hands

She dabbles on the cool and sluicy sands:

A little later, and

Now he is sitting by a shady spring,And elbow-deep with feverous fingering,Stems the upbursting cold.

Now he is sitting by a shady spring,

And elbow-deep with feverous fingering,

Stems the upbursting cold.

For many passages where the magic of nature is mingled instinctively and inseparably with the magic of Greek mythology, the prayer of Endymion to Cynthia above quoted (p. 210) may serve as a sample: and all readers of poetry know the famous lines where the beautiful evocation of a natural scene melts into one, more beautiful still, of a scene of ancient life and worship which comes floated upon the poet’s inner vision by an imagined strain of music from across the sea:—

It seem’d he flew, the way so easy was;And like a new-born spirit did he passThrough the green evening quiet in the sun,O’er many a heath, through many a woodland dun,Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreamsThe summer time away. One track unseamsA wooded cleft, and, far away, the blueOf ocean fades upon him; then, anew,He sinks adown a solitary glen,Where there was never sound of mortal men,Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadencesMelting to silence, when upon the breezeSome holy bark let forth an anthem sweet,To cheer itself to Delphi.2

It seem’d he flew, the way so easy was;

And like a new-born spirit did he pass

Through the green evening quiet in the sun,

O’er many a heath, through many a woodland dun,

Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams

The summer time away. One track unseams

A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue

Of ocean fades upon him; then, anew,

He sinks adown a solitary glen,

Where there was never sound of mortal men,

Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences

Melting to silence, when upon the breeze

Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet,

To cheer itself to Delphi.2

Often in thus conjuring up visions of the classic past, Keats effects true master strokes of imaginative concentration. Do we not feel half the romance of theOdyssey, with the spell that is in the sound of thevowelled place-names of Grecian story, and the breathing mystery of moonlight falling on magic islands of the sea, distilled into the one line—

Aeaea’s isle was wondering at the moon?

And again in the pair of lines—

Like old Deucalion mountain’d o’er the floodOr blind Orion hungry for the morn,

Like old Deucalion mountain’d o’er the flood

Or blind Orion hungry for the morn,

do not the two figures evoked rise before us full-charged each with the vital significance of his story? Mr de Sélincourt is no doubt right in suggesting that in the Orion line Keats’s vision has been stimulated by the print from that picture of Poussin’s which Hazlitt has described in so rich a strain of eulogy.

One of the great symptoms of returning vitality in the imagination of Europe, as the eighteenth century passed into the nineteenth, was its re-awakening to the significance and beauty of the Greek mythology. For a hundred years and more the value of that mythology for the human spirit had been forgotten. There never had been a time when the names of the ancient, especially the Roman, gods and goddesses were used so often in poetry, but simply in cold obedience to tradition and convention; merely as part of the accepted mode of speech of persons classically educated, and with no more living significance than belonged to the trick of personifying abstract forces and ideas by putting capital initials to their names. So far as concerned any real effect upon men’s minds, it was tacitly understood and accepted that the Greek mythology was ‘dead.’ As if it could ever die; as if the ‘fair humanities of old religion,’ in passing out of the transitory state of things believed into the state of things remembered and cherished in imagination, had not put on a second life more enduring and more fruitful than the first. Faiths, as faiths, perish one after another; but each in passing away bequeaths for the enrichment of the after-world whatever elements it has contained of imaginative or moral truth or beauty. The polytheism of ancient Greece, embodyingthe instinctive effort of the brightliest gifted human race to explain its earliest experiences of nature and civilization, of the thousand moral and material forces, cruel or kindly, which environ and control the life of man on earth, is rich beyond measure in such elements; and if the modern world at any time fails to value them, it is the modern mind which is in so far dead and not they. Some words of Johnson’s written forty years before Keats’s time may help us to realize the full depth of the deadness from which in this respect it had to be awakened:—

Back to Index Next