Yet another singer of these days, in most earnest sympathy with the singing moods of Shelley--for whom I can have only a word now, was John Keats;[75] born within the limits of London smoke, and less than three-quarters of a mile from London Bridge--knowing in his boy days only the humblest, work-a-day ranges of life; getting some good Latinity and other schooling out of a Mr. Clarke (of the Cowden Clarke family)--reading Virgil with him, but no Greek. And yet the lad, who never read Homer save in Chapman, when he comes to write, as he does in extreme youth, crowds his wonderful lines with the delicate trills and warblings which might have broken out straight from Helicon--with a susurrus from the Bees of Hymettus. This makes a good argument--so far as it reaches--in disproof of the averments of those who believe that, for conquest of Attic felicities of expression, the Greek vocables must needs be torn forth root by root, and stretched to dry upon our skulls. He published _Endymion_ in the very year when Shelley set off on his final voyagings--a gushing, wavy, wandering poem, intermeshed with flowers and greenery (which he lavishes), and with fairy golden things in it and careering butterflies; with some bony under-structure of Greek fable--loose and vague--and serving only as the caulking pins to hold together the rich, sensuous sway, and the temper and roll of his language. I must snatch one little bit from that book of _Endymion_, were it only to show you what music was breaking out in unexpected quarters from that fact-ridden England, within sound of the murmurs of the Thames, when Shelley was sailing away:-- “On every morrow are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways Made for our searching; yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such--the sun, the moon, Trees--old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; and clear rills That for themselves a cooling covert make ’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms; And such, too, is the grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead; All lovely tales that we have heard or read.” I might cite page on page from Keats, and yet hold your attention; there is something so beguiling in his witching words; and his pictures are finished--with only one or two or three dashes of his pencil. Thus we come upon-- “Swelling downs, where sweet air stirs Blue harebells lightly, and where prickly furze Buds lavish gold.” And again our ear is caught with-- “Rustle of the reapéd corn, And sweet birds antheming the morn.”