DEDICATION.

TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.

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.
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.

Readers of Charles Cowden Clarke's Recollections of Keats, printed in the present edition, will remember the statement, still appropriate here, that, "on the evening when the last proof sheet [of the 1817 volume] 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." The first of the three Sonnets to Keats in Hunt's Foliage forms a fitting reply to this; and the three will be found in the Appendix.

[THE Short Pieces in the middle of the Book, as well as some of the Sonnets, were written at an earlier period than the rest of the Poems.]

POEMS.

"Places of nestling green for Poets made."

STORY OF RIMINI.

I STOOD tip-toe upon a little hill,

The air was cooling, and so very still,

That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scantly leav'd, and finely tapering stems,
Had not yet lost those starry diadems
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.^
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,
And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept
On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept
'A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves:
For not the faintest motion could be seen
Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green.

5

10

(1) Leigh Hunt tells us in Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries that "this poem was suggested to Keats by a delightful summer's-day, as he stood beside the gate that leads from the Battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood."

(12) Hunt calls this (see Appendix) "a fancy, founded, as all beautiful fancies are, on a strong sense of what really exists or occurs."

There was wide wand'ring for the greediest eye,

To peer about upon variety;

Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim,
And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim;
To picture out the quaint, and curious bending
Of a fresh woodland alley, never ending;
Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves,
Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves.
I gazed awhile, and felt as light, and free
As though the fanning wings of Mercury
Had play'd upon my heels: I was light-hearted,
And many pleasures to my vision started;
So I straightway began to pluck a posey
Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy.

15

20

25

A bush of May flowers with the bees about them;

Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them;
And let a lush laburnum oversweep them,

30

And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them

Moist, cool and green; and shade the violets,

That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

A filbert hedge with wild briar overtwin'd,
And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind
Upon their summer thrones; there too should be
The frequent chequer of a youngling tree,
That with a score of light green brethren shoots
From the quaint mossiness of aged roots:

35

40

(37-41) Of this passage Hunt says, "Any body who has seen a throng of young beeches, furnishing those natural clumpy seats at the root, must recognize the truth and grace of this description." He adds that the remainder of the poem, especially verses 47 to 86, "affords an exquisite proof of close observation of nature as well as the most luxuriant fancy."