Part 2 — KEATS.

Full late in life I found thee, glorious Keats! Some chance blown verse had visited my ear And careless eye, once in some sliding year, Like some fair-plumaged bird one rarely meets. And when it came that o’er thy page I bent, A sudden gladness smote upon my blood;— Wonder and joy, an aromatic flood, Distilled from an enchanted firmament. And on this flood I floated, hours and hours, Unconscious of the world’s perplexing din, Its blackened crust of misery and sin, Rocked in a shallop of elysian flowers. All melodies of earth and heaven are thine. That one so young such music could rehearse As swells the undulations of thy verse Is what Hyperion only might define. The voices of old pines, the lulling song Of silver-crested waterfalls, the sweep Of symphonies that swell the booming deep To thy immortal minstrelsy belong. Nor less the whispered harmony that falls, Like twilight dews, from heaven’s starry arch, For gentle souls that listen to the march Of airy footfalls in ethereal halls. Unhappy, happy Keats! A bitter sweet Was thy life’s dream; death grinning at thy heels, While Fame, before thee, smiled her grand appeals, Tempting to dizzy heights thy winged feet. Methinks thou didst resemble (over-bold May be the fancy) thy Endymion,— Now charmed with earth-born beauty and anon Finding some imperfection in the mould. He sued a heaven-born splendor to allay The hunger and the fever of his heart; And thus to Cynthia he did impart The fearful secret of his misery. Oh, had I missed this Hippocrene, and slept Without full measure of the choicest draught That ever mortal man divinely quaffed, What depth of bliss the Gods from me had kept!