SONNETS.

SONNETS.

I.

TO MY BROTHER GEORGE.

MANY the wonders I this day have seen:

The sun, when first he kist away the tears
That fill'd the eyes of morn ;-the laurell'd peers
Who from the feathery gold of evening lean;-

Among the late Joseph Severn's Keats relics were a few leaves torn from a small oblong pocket note-book, bearing pencilled sketches by Keats of rude figures &c., and what seem to be the first drafts (in pencil also) of this sonnet and the two quatrains of the sonnet To my Brothers. The erasures are not such as to indicate any want of fluency. I have collated this draft with a careful transcript made by George Keats himself, and with another in Tom Keats's copy-book. This last does not vary from the printed text, and bears no date; but the other transcript, like that of the Epistle to George Keats, is subscribed " Margate, August, 1816". In the draft, line 3 at first stood unfinished—

and then

and finally

That trembled on the morning's eye

That trembled in the eye of Morn

That hung on Morning's cheek-the laurell'd Peers, which is the reading of George Keats's transcript. In line 4 we

The ocean with its vastness, its blue green,

Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,-
Its voice mysterious, which whoso hears

Must think on what will be, and what has been.
E'en now, dear George, while this for you I write,
Cynthia is from her silken curtains peeping
So scantly, that it seems her bridal night,

And she her half-discover'd revels keeping.
But what, without the social thought of thee,
Would be the wonders of the sky and sea?

have That for Who in the transcript; while the draft reads That in the Paleing (altered to feathery) gold. In line 6 of the draft, Dangers stands cancelled in favour of Rocks. Line 8 in both draft and transcript is

Must muse on what's to come and what has been.

In line 10 the draft reads silver for silken, and there is a cancelled line II:

Giving the world such snatches of delight,

for which the reading of the text is substituted. The final couplet was originally

The Sights have warmed me but without thy love,
What Joy in Earth or Sea or Heaven above?

This is cancelled in the draft in favour of the reading of the text. In line 13 the transcript has thoughts for thought. Even the small beginning of lunar impersonation that we see in lines 10 to 12 has its interest in the mental history of one who was born to luxuriate through such a harvest of luscious thought and imagery as Endymion.

ΤΟ

II.

HAD I a man's fair form, then might my sighs
Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell
Thine ear, and find thy gentle heart; so well
Would passion arm me for the enterprize :
But ah! I am no knight whose foeman dies;
No cuirass glistens on my bosom's swell;
I am no happy shepherd of the dell

Whose lips have trembled with a maiden's eyes.
Yet must I dote upon thee,-call thee sweet,
Sweeter by far than Hybla's honied roses

When steep'd in dew rich to intoxication.
Ah! I will taste that dew, for me 't is meet,
And when the moon her pallid face discloses,
I'll gather some by spells, and incantation.

Tom Keats's copy-book contains a transcript of this sonnet showing no variation in the text, except by a copyist's error at the end,-the last word being incantations. There is no heading beyond the word Sonnet, no date, and no clue to the identity of the person addressed.