Six Centuries of English Poetry Part 13

Like phantoms to the iron porch they glide, Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl, With a huge empty flagon by his side: The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, But his sagacious eye an inmate owns: By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:-- The chains lie silent on the footworn stones; The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm.

That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form Of witch and demon and large coffin-worm, Were long be-nightmared. Angela, the old, Died palsy-twitch'd with meagre face deform; The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold.

NOTES.

"The Eve of St. Agnes" is one of the finest of Keats's shorter poems.

Leigh Hunt describes it as "the most complete specimen of his genius; exquisitely loving; young, but full-grown poetry of the rarest description; graceful as the beardless Apollo; glowing and gorgeous with the colors of romance." The stanzas here quoted, while comprising the main portion of the story, are not quite half of the entire poem.

Madeline, the beautiful daughter of a rude and rich old baron, is secretly betrothed to Porphyro, a young man whom her father has sworn to slay. On the eve of St. Agnes a great feast is in progress in the baron's castle. Porphyro, at the risk of his life, "comes across the moors, with heart on fire for Madeline." With the aid of the old nurse, Angela, he gains admission into the castle and is concealed in a closet, where he conceives the plan for their elopement. In the meanwhile, Madeline, having danced with her father's guests, retires to her room, her mind full of the thought of Porphyro, and intent upon testing the truth of the belief, then current, that on this evening, maidens might, if they performed certain ceremonies and forms, be vouchsafed a sight of their future husbands.

St. Agnes was a young virgin of Palermo, who is said to have suffered martyrdom at the age of thirteen, in the Diocletian persecution, about A.D. 304. Her feast was celebrated on the 21st of January.

With reference to the versification of this poem, see what is said of the Spenserian stanza, page 232. There are many imitations of Spenser in these verses.

The student is desired to discover for himself the peculiarities of thought, of feeling, of expression, which give interest and beauty to this production. The following are a few of the words and expressions whose meaning he should study: "Gules"; "taint"; "vespers"; "poppied"; "Swart Paynims"; "Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness"; "Morphean amulet"; "affray"; "azure-lidded sleep"; "argosy"; "missal"; "tinct"; "Fez"; "Samarcand"; "Lebanon"; "eremite"; "witless"; "alarum"; "entoiled in woofed phantasies"; "La belle dame sans mercy"; "heart-shaped and vermeil dyed"; "Of haggard seeming"; "arras."

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

JOHN KEATS was born October 29, 1795, in Moorfields, London. He was sent to school at Enfield, where he gained the rudiments of a cla.s.sical education; but, his father having died when John was a mere child, he was apprenticed at an early age to a surgeon in Edmonton. When seventeen years old a copy of Spenser's "Faerie Queene" fell into his hands, and the perusal of that great poem was the beginning, for him, of a new life. He felt the poetic instinct within him, and resolved that he too would be a poet. In 1817 he published a small volume of poems, which attracted but little attention; and in 1818 his more ambitious effort, "Endymion," was presented to the world. The latter poem was unkindly received by the great reviews. The author was advised to "go back to his gallipots," and told that "a starved apothecary was better than a starved poet." A story was long current that these severe criticisms induced Keats's early death, but this is entirely improbable. He continued writing, although consumption, a hereditary disease in his family, had already begun its work upon him. He published "The Eve of St. Agnes" in 1820, and had made some progress with a n.o.ble poem, ent.i.tled "Hyperion," which Lord Byron declared to be "actually inspired by the t.i.tans, and as sublime as aeschylus." In September of that year he sailed for Italy, but the hope of prolonging life by a change of climate proved to be vain. On the 27th of February, 1821, he died at Rome.

"We can hardly be wrong in believing," says Ma.s.son, "that had Keats lived to the ordinary age of man, he would have been one of the greatest of all our poets. As it is, I believe we shall all be disposed to place him very near indeed to our very best."

"That which was deepest in his mind," says Stopford Brooke, "was the love of loveliness for its own sake, the sense of its rightful and pre-eminent power; and, in the singleness of wors.h.i.+p which he gave to Beauty, Keats is especially the artist, and the true father of the latest modern school of poetry."

=Other Poems to be Read:= Endymion; Ode on a Grecian Urn; Lamia; Hyperion; To Autumn; Hymn to Apollo; Isabella.

REFERENCES: _Keats_ (English Men of Letters), by Sidney Colvin; _Keats_, by W. M. Rossetti; Matthew Arnold's Essay on Keats, in Ward's _English Poets_; Shairp's _Studies in Poetry_.

The Eighteenth Century.

"_The influence of the poetry of the past lasted; new elements were added to poetry, and new forms of it took shape. The study of the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics revived, and with it a more artistic poetry. Not only correct form, for which Pope sought, but beautiful form was sought after. Men like Thomas Gray and William Collins strove to pour into their work that simplicity of beauty which the Greek poets and Italians like Petrarca had reached as the last result of genius restrained by art. . . . Two things had been learned. First, that artistic rules were necessary, and, secondly, that natural feeling was necessary in order that poetry should have a style fitted to express n.o.bly the emotions and thoughts of man. The way was therefore now made ready for a style in which the Art should itself be Nature, and it sprang at once into being in the work of the poets of this time. The style of Gray is polished to the finest point, and yet it is instinct with natural feeling. Goldsmith is natural even to simplicity, and yet his verse is even more accurate than Pope's. Cowper's style, in such poems as the 'Lines to my Mother's Picture,' arises out of the simplest pathos, and yet it is as pure in expression as Greek poetry._"--STOPFORD BROOKE.

"_At last there started up an unfortunate Scotch peasant (Burns), rebelling against the world, and in love, with the yearnings, l.u.s.ts, greatness, and irrationality of modern genius. Now and then behind his plough, he lighted on genuine verses, verses such as Heine and Alfred de Musset have written in our own days. In those few words, combined after a new fas.h.i.+on, there was a revolution._"--TAINE.

Poets of the Eighteenth Century.

=Alexander Pope= (1688-1744). See biographical note, page 155.

=Thomas Parnell= (1679-1718). "The Hermit"; short poems.

=Edward Young= (1684-1765), "Night Thoughts"; "The Last Day"; "Resignation."

=Allan Ramsay= (1686-1758). "The Gentle Shepherd": "Scots Songs"; "Fables and Tales."

=John Gay= (1688-1732). "The Beggar's Opera"; "The Shepherd's Week"; "Trivia"; "Rural Sports"; fables, and other short poems.

=Matthew Green= (1696-1737). "The Grotto"; "The Spleen."

=John Dyer= (1698-1758). "Grongar Hill"; "The Fleece."

=Robert Blair= (1699-1746). "The Grave."

=James Thomson= (1700-1748). "The Seasons"; "The Castle of Indolence."

=Samuel Johnson= (1709-1784), "The Vanity of Human Wishes"; "London."

=Richard Glover= (1712-1785). "Leonidas"; "Admiral Hosier's Ghost"; "The Athenaid."

=William Shenstone= (1714-1763). "The Schoolmistress"; "Pastoral Ballads."

=Thomas Gray= (1716-1771). See biographical note, page 139.

=William Collins= (1721-1759). Odes and other short poems.

=Mark Akenside= (1721-1770). "The Pleasures of the Imagination."

=Oliver Goldsmith= (1728-1774). See biographical note, page 128.

=Thomas Warton= (1728-1790). "The Pleasures of Melancholy"; "The Triumph of Isis"; short poems.

=William Cowper= (1731-1800). See biographical note, page 122.

=Charles Churchill= (1731-1764). "The Prophecy of Famine"; "The Rosciad."

=James Beattie= (1735-1803). "The Minstrel."

=Robert Fergusson= (1750-1774). Short Scottish poems.

=Thomas Chatterton= (1752-1770). "Poems of Thomas Rowlie"; short poems.

=George Crabbe= (1754-1832). "Tales of the Hall"; "The Village"; "The Parish Register"; "Tales in Verse."

=William Blake= (1757-1827). "Songs of Innocence"; "Songs of Experience"; "Poetical Sketches."

=Robert Burns= (1759-1796). See biographical note, page 111.