Blue! ’Tis the life of heaven,—the domain Of Cynthia,—the wide palace of the sun,— The tent of Hesperus and all his train,— The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun. Blue! ’Tis the life of waters—ocean And all its vassal streams: pools numberless May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can Subside if not to dark-blue nativeness. Blue! gentle cousin of the forest green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers, Forget-me-not,—the blue-bell,—and, that queen Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate! _Feb._ 1818. In the _Athenæum_ of the 3rd of June 1876 appeared a letter from Mr. A. J. Horwood, stating that he had in his possession a copy of _The Garden of Florence_ in which this sonnet was transcribed. Mr. Horwood, who was unaware that the sonnet had been already published by Lord Houghton, gives the transcript at length. His version reads _hue_ for _life_ in the first line, and _bright_ for _wide_ in the second, and gives the sixth line thus: With all his tributary streams, pools numberless, a foot too long: it also reads _to_ for _of_ in the ninth line. Mr. Buxton Forman is of opinion that these variations are decidedly genuine, but indicative of an earlier state of the poem than that adopted in Lord Houghton’s edition. However, now that we have before us Keats’s first draft of his sonnet, it is difficult to believe that the sixth line in Mr. Horwood’s version is really a genuine variation. Keats may have written, Ocean His tributary streams, pools numberless, and the transcript may have been carelessly made, but having got his line right in his first draft, Keats probably did not spoil it in his second. The _Athenæum_ version inserts a comma after _art_ in the last line, which seems to me a decided improvement, and eminently characteristic of Keats’s method. I am glad to see that Mr. Buxton Forman has adopted it. As for the corrections that Lord Houghton’s version shows Keats to have made in the eighth and ninth lines of this sonnet, it is evident that they sprang from Keats’s reluctance to repeat the same word in consecutive lines, except in cases where a word’s music or meaning was to be emphasized. The substitution of ‘its’ for ‘his’ in the sixth line is more difficult of explanation. It was due probably to a desire on Keats’s part not to mar by any echo the fine personification of Hesperus.