Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends. John Keats
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happiness on Earth repeated in a finer tone—And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in Sensation, rather than hunger as you do after Truth. Adam’s dream will do here, and seems to be a Conviction that Imagination and its empyreal reflection, is the same as human life and its spiritual repetition. But, as I was saying, the Simple imaginative Mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent Working coming continually on the Spirit with a fine Suddenness—to compare great things with small, have you never by being surprised with an old Melody, in a delicious place by a delicious voice, felt over again your very speculations and surmises at the time it first operated on your soul?—do you not remember forming to yourself the Singer’s face—more beautiful than it was possible, and yet with the elevation of the Moment you did not think so? Even then you were mounted on the Wings of Imagination, so high that the prototype must be hereafter—that delicious face you will see. What a time! I am continually running away from the subject. Sure this cannot be exactly the Case with a complex mind—one that is imaginative, and at the same time careful of its fruits—who would exist partly on Sensation, partly on thought—to whom it is necessary that years should bring the philosophic Mind? Such a one I consider yours, and therefore it is necessary to your eternal happiness that you not only drink this old Wine of Heaven, which I shall call the redigestion of our most ethereal Musings upon Earth, but also increase in knowledge and know all things. I am glad to hear that you are in a fair way for Easter. You will soon get through your unpleasant reading, and then!—but the world is full of troubles, and I have not much reason to think myself pestered with many.
I think Jane or Marianne has a better opinion of me than I deserve: for, really and truly, I do not think my Brother’s illness connected with mine—you know more of the real Cause than they do; nor have I any chance of being rack’d as you have been. You perhaps at one time thought there was such a thing as worldly happiness to be arrived at, at certain periods of time marked out—you have of necessity from your disposition been thus led away—I scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness—I look not for it if it be not in the present hour—nothing startles me beyond the moment. The Setting Sun will always set me to rights, or if a Sparrow come before my Window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel. The first thing that strikes me on hearing a Misfortune having befallen another is this—“Well, it cannot be helped: he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his Spirit”—and I beg now, my dear Bailey, that hereafter should you observe anything cold in me not to put it to the account of heartlessness, but abstraction—for I assure you I sometimes feel not the influence of a passion or affection during a whole Week—and so long this sometimes continues, I begin to suspect myself, and the genuineness of my feelings at other times—thinking them a few barren Tragedy Tears.
My brother Tom is much improved—he is going to Devonshire—whither I shall follow him. At present, I am just arrived at Dorking—to change the Scene—change the Air, and give me a spur to wind up my Poem, of which there are wanting 500 lines. I should have been here a day sooner, but the Reynoldses persuaded me to stop in Town to meet your friend Christie. There were Rice and Martin—we talked about Ghosts. I will have some Talk with Taylor and let you know—when please God I come down at Christmas. I will find that Examiner if possible. My best regards to Gleig, my Brothers’ to you and Mrs. Bentley.
Your affectionate Friend
John Keats.
I want to say much more to you—a few hints will set me going. Direct Burford Bridge near Dorking.
XXIII.—TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
[Burford Bridge,] November 22, 1817.
My dear Reynolds—There are two things which tease me here—one of them Cripps, and the other that I cannot go with Tom into Devonshire. However, I hope to do my duty to myself in a week or so; and then I’ll try what I can do for my neighbour—now, is not this virtuous? On returning to Town I’ll damm all Idleness—indeed, in superabundance of employment, I must not be content to run here and there on little two-penny errands, but turn Rakehell, i.e. go a masking, or Bailey will think me just as great a Promise Keeper as he thinks you; for myself I do not, and do not remember above one complaint against you for matter o’ that. Bailey writes so abominable a hand, to give his Letter a fair reading requires a little time: so I had not seen, when I saw you last, his invitation to Oxford at Christmas. I’ll go with you. You know how poorly Rice was. I do not think it was all corporeal—bodily pain was not used to keep him silent. I’ll tell you what; he was hurt at what your Sisters said about his joking with your Mother, he was, soothly to sain. It will all blow over. God knows, my dear Reynolds, I should not talk any sorrow to you—you must have enough vexations—so I won’t any more. If I ever start a rueful subject in a letter to you—blow me! Why don’t you?—now I am going to ask you a very silly Question neither you nor anybody else could answer, under a folio, or at least a Pamphlet—you shall judge—why don’t you, as I do, look unconcerned at what may be called more particularly Heart-vexations? They never surprise me—lord! a man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.
I like this place very much. There is Hill and Dale and a little River. I went up Box hill this Evening after the Moon—“you a’ seen the Moon”—came down, and wrote some lines. Whenever I am separated from you, and not engaged in a continued Poem, every letter shall bring you a lyric—but I am too anxious for you to enjoy the whole to send you a particle. One of the three books I have with me is Shakspeare’s Poems: I never found so many beauties in the sonnets—they seem to be full of fine things said unintentionally—in the intensity of working out conceits. Is this to be borne? Hark ye!
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the head,
And Summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly head.
He has left nothing to say about nothing or anything: for look at snails—you know what he says about Snails—you know when he talks about “cockled Snails”—well, in one of these sonnets, he says—the chap slips into—no! I lie! this is in the Venus and Adonis: the simile brought it to my Mind.
As the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
Shrinks back into his shelly cave with pain,
And there all smothered up in shade doth sit,
Long after fearing to put forth again;
So at his bloody view her eyes are fled,
Into the deep dark Cabins of her head.
He overwhelms a genuine Lover of poesy with all manner of abuse, talking about—
“a poet’s rage
And stretched metre of an antique song.”
Which, by the bye, will be a capital motto for my poem, won’t it? He speaks too of “Time’s antique pen”—and “April’s first-born flowers”—and “Death’s eternal cold.”—By the Whim-King! I’ll give you a stanza, because it is not material in connection, and when I wrote it I wanted you—to give your vote, pro or con.—
Crystalline Brother of the belt of Heaven,
Aquarius! to whom King Jove hath given
Two liquid pulse-streams, ’stead of feather’d wings—
Two fan-like fountains—thine illuminings
For Dian play:
Dissolve the frozen purity of air;
Let thy white shoulders, silvery and bare,
Show cold through wat’ry pinions: make more bright
The Star-Queen’s Crescent on her marriage night:
Haste, haste away!
… I see there is an advertisement in the Chronicle