LXXXVIII
'Jostling my way I gain'd the stairs, and ran
To the first landing, where, incredible!
I met, far gone in liquor, that old man,
That vile impostor Hum,'
So far so well,—
For we have proved the Mago never fell
Down stairs on Crafticanto's evidence;
And therefore duly shall proceed to tell,
Plain in our own original mood and tense,
The sequel of this day, though labour 't is immense!
.........
THE LAST SONNET
On his way to Italy as his last chance of life, the vessel which bore Keats had been beating about the English Channel for a fortnight, when an opportunity was given for landing for a brief respite on the Dorsetshire coast. 'The bright beauty of the day,' says Lord Houghton, Keats's biographer, 'and the scene revived the poet's drooping heart, and the inspiration remained with him for some time even after his return to the ship. It was then that he composed that sonnet of solemn tenderness.' The date of the poem would thus be September or October, 1820.
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art!
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
