time and health will fus you some more. This is

morning

set

дить

I have been able to the paper and how ma. my Letter to write if I can manage them. You bless you my dear Sister.

Your affectionate Buck

Fac-simile of part of a letter to Fanny Keats, only sister of the poet, written during his last illness, August 14, 1820.

SELECTIONS FROM KEATS

TO G. A. W.1

Nymph of the downward smile and sidelong glance,
In what diviner moments of the day
Art thou most lovely?-when gone far astray
Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance,
Or when serenely wand'ring in a trance
Of sober thought?—or when starting away
With careless robe to meet the morning ray
Thou spar'st the flowers in thy mazy dance?
Haply 'tis when thy ruby lips part sweetly,

And so remain, because thou listenest:

But thou to please wert nurtured so completely
That I can never tell what mood is best.

I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly
Trips it before Apollo than the rest.

December, 1816.]

TO SOLITUDE.

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap

Of murky buildings; climb with me to the stcep,Nature's observatory-whence the dell,

1 Georgiana Augusta Wylie, afterward the wife of George Keats.

Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,

May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep

'Mongst boughs pavilion'd,1 where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.

But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd,
Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.
1816.]

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

1816.]

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific-and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

1 For verb forms in ed, the custom of Keats was to write 'd when the e was silent, ed where Shelley wrote èd, when the e was sounded. He did not, however, consistently follow his own rule.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's―he takes the lead
In summer luxury,-he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper's among the grassy hills.

December 30, 1816.]

DEDICATION.

TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.1

1

Glory and loveliness have pass'd away;
For if we wander out in early morn,
No wreathed incense do we see upborne.
Into the east, to meet the smiling day:

No crowd of nymphs soft-voic'd and young, and gay,
In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,

Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn The shrine of Flora in her early May.

1 Dedication to the first volume of poems, printed in 1817.