But there were some who feelingly could scan

A lurking trouble in his nether lip,

And see that oftentimes the reins would slip

Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,
And think of yellow leaves, of owlets' cry,

Of logs pil'd solemnly.-Ah, well-a-day,

Why should our young Endymion pine away!

Soon the assembly, in a circle rang'd,

180

185

Stood silent round the shrine: each look was chang'd

To sudden veneration: women meek

Beckon'd their sons to silence; while each cheek

Of virgin bloom pal'd gently for slight fear.
Endymion too, without a forest peer,

Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face,
Among his brothers of the mountain chace.

190

In midst of all, the venerable priest

Ey'd them with joy from greatest to the least,

And, after lifting up his aged hands,

195

Thus spake he: "Men of Latmos! shepherd bands!

Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks:

Whether descended from beneath the rocks
That overtop your mountains; whether come
From vallies where the pipe is never dumb;
Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs
Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze
Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge
Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge,

200

Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn 205

(191) Cancelled manuscript reading, a bowed face for an awed face. (192) In the first edition chase here, though chace in line 532 of the same Book. The manuscript gives chace in both instances, as at page 34 of the present volume.

By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn:

Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare

The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air;
And all ye gentle girls who foster up
Udderless lambs, and in a little cup

Will put choice honey for a favoured youth:
Yea, every one attend! for in good truth

Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan.

Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than

210

Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains 215 Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains

Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad

Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had

Great bounty from Endymion our lord.

The earth is glad the merry lark has pour'd

220

His early song against yon breezy sky,
That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity."

(208) The writer in the Quarterly Review whom Shelley apostrophized as

Thou noteless blot on a remembered name! accused Keats of inventing (or as he put it "spawning") certain words, among which was needments. Had the "noteless blot's " reading extended far enough, he might have found this word in almost the same context in Spenser's Faerie Queene (Book I, Canto VI, stanza 35):

and eke behind,

His scrip did hang, in which his needments he did bind.

In Canto I of the same Book, stanza 6, the same word occurs in connexion with bag instead of scrip:

Behind her farre away a Dwarfe did lag,

That lazie seem'd in beeing euer last,

Or wearied with bearing of her bag

Of needments at his back.

Oddments and needments are not wholly obsolete even yet in some parts of England.

Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire
Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;
Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod
With wine, in honor of the shepherd-god.
Now while the earth was drinking it, and while
Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,
And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright
'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light
Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang:

225

230

“O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth

Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;

235

Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress

Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;
And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken
The dreary melody of bedded reeds-

In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;

240

(232) It was the Hymn to Pan beginning here that the young poet when engaged in the composition of Endymion was induced to recite in the presence of Wordsworth, on the 28th of December 1817, at Haydon's house. Leigh Hunt records that the elder poet pronounced it "a very pretty piece of paganism," though his own magnificent sonnet,

The world is too much with us,

66

shows that he was not always in a mood to contemn the poeticimaginative aspects of nature open to a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn." It is worth while to note in this connexion the coincidence between the couplet in the text, lines 205-6, and the end of that sonnet :

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth

Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx-do thou now,

By thy love's milky brow!

By all the trembling mazes that she ran,

Hear us, great Pan!

"O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles,

(246) Cancelled manuscript reading

Listen great Pan !

245

The beautiful tale of Syrinx seems to have entered into Keats's soul, and not unnaturally. Compare this with the tender passage, Telling us how fair, trembling Syrinx fled

Arcadian Pan,

and so on (page 13 of the present volume), and above all with the exquisite couplet

Like the low voice of Syrinx, when she ran

Into the forests from Arcadian Pan

in the rejected passage of Book II, which was published in The Indicator. See note after line 853, Book II.

(248) The verb to passion is another of the words which the "noteless blot" in the Quarterly Review accused Keats of inventing. Spenser, as we have seen, was a sealed book to him; so that it is not strange he ignored the passage in The Faerie Queene (Book II, Canto IX, stanza 41),

Great wonder had the knight to see the maid

So strangely passioned.

But Shakespeare seems to have been a sealed book too, at all events during those seasons in which he took the liberty accorded by Shelley of spilling the overflowing venom from his fangs otherwise he might have discovered such passages as

Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning
For Theseus' perjury and unjust flight;
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV, Scene IV,
And shall not myself. . . passion as they

lines 172-3.

Tempest, Act V, Scene 1, lines 22-4.

Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth

Venus and Adonis, line 1059.

What time thou wanderest at eventide
Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side
Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom
Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom
Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees
Their golden honeycombs; our village leas

250

Their fairest blossom'd beans and poppied corn ;
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,
To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries
Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies

255

Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year
All its completions-be quickly near,
By every wind that nods the mountain pine,
O forester divine!

260

"Thou, to whom every faun and satyr flies
For willing service; whether to surprise
The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;
Or upward ragged precipices flit

265

To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;
Or by mysterious enticement draw

Bewildered shepherds to their path again;

Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,

270

And gather up all fancifullest shells

For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells,

And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;

Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,

The while they pelt each other on the crown

275

With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown—

(263) In the manuscript and in the first edition we read fawn for faun.

(272) Cancelled manuscript reading

To tumble them into fair Naiads Cells.