Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends Part 27

I met a Lady in the Meads Full beautiful, a faery's child-- Her hair was long, her foot was light And her eyes were wild--

I made a Garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone She look'd at me as she did love And made sweet moan--

I set her on my pacing steed And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend and sing A faery's song--

She found me roots of relish sweet And honey wild and manna dew And sure in language strange she said I love thee true--

She took me to her elfin grot And there she wept and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four--

And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream'd Ah Woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill side.

I saw pale Kings and Princes too Pale warriors death-pale were they all They cried--La belle dame sans merci Thee hath in thrall.

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke, and found me here On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here Alone and palely loitering; Though the sedge is withered from the Lake And no birds sing.[100]...

Why four kisses--you will say--why four, because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse--she would have fain said "score" without hurting the rhyme--but we must temper the Imagination, as the Critics say, with Judgment. I was obliged to choose an even number, that both eyes might have fair play, and to speak truly I think two a piece quite sufficient. Suppose I had said seven there would have been three and a half a piece--a very awkward affair, and well got out of on my side--

[Later.]

CHORUS OF FAIRIES. 4--FIRE, AIR, EARTH, AND WATER--SALAMANDER, ZEPHYR, DUSKETHA, BREAMA.

_Sal._ Happy happy glowing fire!

_Zep._ Fragrant air, delicious light!

_Dusk._ Let me to my glooms retire.

_Bream._ I to greenweed rivers bright.

_Salam._

Happy, happy glowing fire!

Dazzling bowers of soft retire, Ever let my nourish'd wing, Like a bat's still wandering, Faintly fan your fiery s.p.a.ces Spirit sole in deadly places, In unhaunted roar and blaze Open eyes that never daze Let me see the myriad shapes Of Men and Beasts and Fish and apes, Portray'd in many a fiery den, And wrought by spumy bitumen On the deep intenser roof, Arched every way aloof.

Let me breathe upon my skies, And anger their live tapestries; Free from cold and every care, Of chilly rain and s.h.i.+vering air.

_Zephyr._

Spright of fire--away away!

Or your very roundelay Will sear my plumage newly budded From its quilled sheath and studded With the self-same dews that fell On the May-grown Asphodel.

Spright of fire away away!

_Breama._

Spright of fire away away!

Zephyr blue-eyed faery turn, And see my cool sedge-shaded urn, Where it rests its mossy brim Mid water-mint and cresses dim; And the flowers, in sweet troubles, Lift their eyes above the bubbles, Like our Queen when she would please To sleep, and Oberon will tease-- Love me blue-eyed Faery true Soothly I am sick for you.

_Zephyr._

Gentle Breama! by the first Violet young nature nurst, I will bathe myself with thee, So you sometime follow me To my home far far in west, Far beyond the search and quest Of the golden-browed sun.

Come with me, o'er tops of trees, To my fragrant Palaces, Where they ever-floating are Beneath the cherish of a star Call'd Vesper--who with silver veil Ever Hides his brilliance pale, Ever gently drows'd doth keep Twilight of the Fays to sleep.

Fear not that your watery hair Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there-- Clouds of stored summer rains Thou shalt taste before the stains Of the mountain soil they take, And too unlucent for thee make.

I love thee, Crystal faery true Sooth I am as sick for you--

_Salam._

Out ye agueish Faeries out!

Chilly Lovers, what a rout Keep ye with your frozen breath Colder than the mortal death-- Adder-eyed Dusketha speak, Shall we leave them and go seek In the Earth's wide Entrails old Couches warm as their's is cold?

O for a fiery gloom and thee, Dusketha, so enchantingly Freckle-wing'd and lizard-sided!

_Dusketha._

By thee Spright will I be guided I care not for cold or heat Frost and Flame or sparks or sleet To my essence are the same-- But I honour more the flame-- Spright of fire I follow thee Wheresoever it may be; To the torrid spouts and fountains, Underneath earth-quaked mountains Or at thy supreme desire, Touch the very pulse of fire With my bare unlidded eyes.

_Salam._

Sweet Dusketha! Paradise!

Off ye icy Spirits fly!

Frosty creatures of the Sky!

_Dusketha._

Breathe upon them fiery Spright!

_Zephyr, Breama (to each other)._

Away Away to our delight!

_Salam._

Go feed on icicles while we Bedded in tongued-flames will be.

_Dusketha._

Lead me to those fev'rous glooms, Spright of fire--

_Breama._

Me to the blooms Blue-eyed Zephyr of those flowers Far in the west where the May cloud lours; And the beams of still Vesper, where winds are all whist Are shed through the rain and the milder mist, And twilight your floating bowers--

I have been reading lately two very different books, Robertson's America and Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV. It is like walking arm and arm between Pizarro and the great-little Monarch. In how lamentable a case do we see the great body of the people in both instances; in the first, where Men might seem to inherit quiet of Mind from unsophisticated senses; from uncontamination of civilisation, and especially from their being, as it were, estranged from the mutual helps of Society and its mutual injuries--and thereby more immediately under the Protection of Providence--even there they had mortal pains to bear as bad, or even worse than Bailiffs, Debts, and Poverties of civilised Life. The whole appears to resolve into this--that Man is originally a poor forked creature subject to the same mischances as the beasts of the forest, destined to hards.h.i.+ps and disquietude of some kind or other. If he improves by degrees his bodily accommodations and comforts--at each stage, at each ascent there are waiting for him a fresh set of annoyances--he is mortal, and there is still a heaven with its Stars above his head. The most interesting question that can come before us is, How far by the persevering endeavours of a seldom appearing Socrates Mankind may be made happy--I can imagine such happiness carried to an extreme, but what must it end in?--Death--and who could in such a case bear with death? The whole troubles of life, which are now frittered away in a series of years, would then be acc.u.mulated for the last days of a being who instead of hailing its approach would leave this world as Eve left Paradise. But in truth I do not at all believe in this sort of perfectibility--the nature of the world will not admit of it--the inhabitants of the world will correspond to itself. Let the fish Philosophise the ice away from the Rivers in winter time, and they shall be at continual play in the tepid delight of summer. Look at the Poles and at the Sands of Africa, whirlpools and volcanoes--Let men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive at earthly Happiness. The point at which Man may arrive is as far as the parallel state in inanimate nature, and no further. For instance suppose a rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morning, it enjoys itself, but then comes a cold wind, a hot sun--it cannot escape it, it cannot destroy its annoyances--they are as native to the world as itself: no more can man be happy in spite, the worldly elements will prey upon his nature. The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superst.i.tious is "a vale of tears," from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of G.o.d and taken to Heaven--What a little circ.u.mscribed straightened notion! Call the world if you please "The vale of Soul-making." Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say '_Soul-making_'--Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence. There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions--but they are not Souls till they acquire ident.i.ties, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perception--they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are G.o.d--how then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are G.o.d to have ident.i.ty given them--so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence? How, but by the medium of a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider because I think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion--or rather it is a system of Spirit-creation--This is effected by three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series of years--These three Materials are the _Intelligence_--the _human heart_ (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind), and the _World_ or _Elemental s.p.a.ce_ suited for the proper action of _Mind and Heart_ on each other for the purpose of forming the _Soul_ or _Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Ident.i.ty_. I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive--and yet I think I perceive it--that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible.

I will call the _world_ a School inst.i.tuted for the purpose of teaching little children to read--I will call the _human heart_ the _horn Book_ used in that School--and I will call the _Child able to read, the Soul_ made from that _School_ and its _horn book_. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways. Not merely is the Heart a Hornbook, It is the Mind's Bible, it is the Mind's experience, it is the text from which the Mind or Intelligence sucks its ident.i.ty. As various as the Lives of Men are--so various become their souls, and thus does G.o.d make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the sparks of his own essence. This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of Salvation which does not offend our reason and humanity--I am convinced that many difficulties which Christians labour under would vanish before it--there is one which even now strikes me--the salvation of Children. In them the spark or intelligence returns to G.o.d without any ident.i.ty--it having had no time to learn of and be altered by the heart--or seat of the human Pa.s.sions. It is pretty generally suspected that the Christian scheme has been copied from the ancient Persian and Greek Philosophers. Why may they not have made this simple thing even more simple for common apprehension by introducing Mediators and Personages, in the same manner as in the heathen mythology abstractions are personified?

Seriously I think it probable that this system of Soul-making may have been the Parent of all the more palpable and personal schemes of Redemption among the Zoroastrians the Christians and the Hindoos. For as one part of the human species must have their carved Jupiter; so another part must have the palpable and named Mediator and Saviour, their Christ, their Oromanes, and their Vishnu. If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will put you in the place where I began in this series of thoughts--I mean I began by seeing how man was formed by circ.u.mstances--and what are circ.u.mstances but touchstones of his heart?

and what are touchstones but provings of his heart, but fortifiers or alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but his Soul?--and what was his Soul before it came into the world and had these provings and alterations and perfectionings?--An intelligence without Ident.i.ty--and how is this Ident.i.ty to be made? Through the medium of the Heart? and how is the heart to become this Medium but in a world of Circ.u.mstances?

There now I think what with Poetry and Theology, you may thank your stars that my pen is not very long-winded. Yesterday I received two Letters from your Mother and Henry, which I shall send by young Birkbeck with this.