And think that I would not be over meek,
In rolling out upfollow'd thunderings,
Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak—
Think too, that all those numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture's hem?
For when men star'd at what was most divine
With browless idiotism—o'erwise phlegm—
Thou hadst beheld the Hesperean shine
Of their star in the East, and gone to worship them.
TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.
This stood as dedication to the 1817 volume, which was published in the month of March. Charles Cowden Clarke makes the statement: 'On the evening when the last proof sheet was brought from the printer, it was accompanied by the information that if a "dedication to the book was intended, it must be sent forthwith." Whereupon he withdrew to a side table, and in the buzz of a mixed conversation (for there were several friends in the room) he composed and brought to Charles Ollier, the publisher, the dedication sonnet to Leigh Hunt.'
Glory and loveliness have pass'd away;
For if we wander out in early morn,
No wreathèd 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.
But there are left delights as high as these,
And I shall ever bless my destiny,
That in a time, when under pleasant trees
Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free,
A leafy luxury, seeing I could please
With these poor offerings, a man like thee.
ON THE SEA
Sent in a letter to Reynolds, dated April 17, 1817. 'From want of regular rest,' Keats says, 'I have been rather narvus, and the passage in Lear—"Do you not hear the sea?"—has haunted me intensely.' He then copies the sonnet, which was published in The Champion, August 17 of the same year. The letter was written from Carisbrooke. He had been sent away from London by his brothers a month before, shortly after the appearance of his first volume of Poems, and his letters show the nervous, restless condition into which he had been driven by that venture.
It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 't is in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be mov'd for days from where it sometime fell,
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
O ye! who have your eyeballs vex'd and tir'd,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
O ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody,—
Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!
LINES
