Still, still to hear her tender taken breath, And so live ever--or else swoon to death.The friends reached Rome, and there Keats, after a brief rally, rapidly became worse. Severn nursed him with desperate devotion, and of Keats's sweet considerateness and patience he could never say enough. Indeed such was the force and lovableness of Keats's personality that though Severn lived fifty-eight years longer it was for the rest of his life a chief occupation to write and draw his memories of his friend.
On February 23rd, 1821, came the end for which Keats had begun to long. He died peacefully in Severn's arms. On the 26th he was buried in the beautiful little Protestant cemetery of which Shelley said that it 'made one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place'.
Great indignation was felt at the time by those who attributed his death, in part at least, to the cruel treatment which he had received from the critics. Shelley, in Adonais, withered them with his scorn, and Byron, in Don Juan, had his gibe both at [xxiii]the poet and
at his enemies. But we know now how mistaken they were. Keats, in a normal state of mind and body, was never unduly depressed
by harsh or unfair criticism. 'Praise or blame,' he wrote, 'has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works,' and this attitude he consistently maintained throughout his poetic career. No doubt the sense that his genius was unappreciated added something to the torment of mind which he suffered in Rome, and on his deathbed he asked that on his tombstone should be inscribed the words 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'. But it was apparently
not said in bitterness, and the rest of the inscription[xxiii:1] expresses rather the natural anger of his friends at the treatment he had
received than the mental attitude of the poet himself.
Fully to understand him we must read his poetry with the commentary of his letters which reveal in his character elements of humour, clear-sighted [xxiv]wisdom, frankness, strength, sympathy and tolerance. So doing we shall enter into the mind and heart
of the friend who, speaking for many, described Keats as one 'whose genius I did not, and do not, more fully admire than I entirely loved the man'.
FOOTNOTES:
[xiii:1] Many of the words which the reviewers thought to be coined were good Elizabethan.
[xxiii:1] This Grave contains all that was Mortal of a Young English Poet, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone 'Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water' Feb. 24th 1821.
[1]
LAMIA,
6
ISABELLA,
THE EVE OF ST. AGNES, AND
OTHER POEMS.
BY JOHN KEATS, AUTHOR OF ENDYMION.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSEY, FLEET-STREET.
1820. [2] ADVERTISEMENT.
If any apology be thought necessary for the appearance of the unfinished poem of Hyperion, the publishers beg to state that they
alone are responsible, as it was printed at their particular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was intended to have been of equal length with Endymion, but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding.
Fleet-Street, June 26, 1820. [3]
LAMIA. PART I.
Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, Before King Oberon's bright diadem,
Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem, Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns
From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns, The ever-smitten Hermes empty left
His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft:[4]
From high Olympus had he stolen light,
On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight10
Of his great summoner, and made retreat
Into a forest on the shores of Crete.
For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt
A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt;
At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored. Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont,
And in those meads where sometime she might haunt, Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse,
Though Fancy's casket were unlock'd to choose.20
Ah, what a world of love was at her feet! So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat
7
Burnt from his winged heels to either ear, That from a whiteness, as the lily clear, Blush'd into roses 'mid his golden hair,
Fallen in jealous curls about his shoulders bare.[5] From vale to vale, from wood to wood, he flew, Breathing upon the flowers his passion new,
And wound with many a river to its head,
To find where this sweet nymph prepar'd her secret bed:30
In vain; the sweet nymph might nowhere be found, And so he rested, on the lonely ground,
Pensive, and full of painful jealousies
Of the Wood-Gods, and even the very trees. There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice, Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake:
"When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake!
When move in a sweet body fit for life,
And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife40
Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!" The God, dove-footed, glided silently
Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed, The taller grasses and full-flowering weed,[6] Until he found a palpitating snake,
Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake. She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd;50
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries--
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf, Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self. Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
