ADONAIS

      AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS

      ᾽Αστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔ λαμπες ἐνὶ ξωο͡ισιν ῾Ε͡ῳος

      ν͡υν δὲ θανὼν λάμπεις ῎Εσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις.

      PLATO.

      PREFACE

      Φάρμακον ͡ἠλθε, Βίων, ποτὶ σὸν στόμα, φάρμακον εἰδες.

      π͡ως τευ το͡ις χείλεσσι ποτέδραμε, κοὐκ ἐγλυκάνθη;

      τίς δὲ βροτὸς τοσσο͡υτον ἀνάμερος, ἤ κεράσαι τοι,

      ἤ δο͡υναι λαλέοντι το φάρμακον; ἔκφυγεν ὠδάν.

      MOSCHUS, EPITAPH. BION.

      It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled prove at least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.

      John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the —— of —— 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

      The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the “Quarterly Review”, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgements from more candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.

      It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows or one like Keats’s composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to Endymion, was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated, with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, Paris, and Woman, and a Syrian Tale,