But there are ears may hear sweet melodies, And there are eyes to brighten festivals, And there are feet for nimble minstrelsies, And many a lip that for the red wine calls-- Follow, then follow to the illumined halls, Follow me youth--and leave the eremite-- Give him a tear--then trophied bannerals And many a brilliant tasseling of light Shall droop from arched ways this high baronial night. Stanza V.; line 1, for "revelry" stood "revellers": lines 3-5, for-- "Numerous as shadows haunting fairily The brain new-stuff'd in youth with triumphs gay Of old romance. These let us wish away,"-- stood the following:-- "Ah what are they? the idle pulse scarce stirs, The muse should never make the spirit gay; Away, bright dulness, laughing fools away." p. 166, note 1. At what precise date _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_ was written is uncertain. As of the _Ode to Melancholy_, Keats makes no mention of this poem in his correspondence. In Woodhouse MSS. A. it is dated 1819. That Woodhouse made his transcripts before or while Keats was on his Shanklin-Winchester expedition in that year, is I think certain both from the readings of the transcripts themselves, and from the absence among them of _Lamia_ and the _Ode to Autumn_. Hence it is to the first half of 1819 that _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_ must belong, like so much of the poet's best work besides. The line quoted in my text shows that the theme was already in his mind when he composed the _Eve of St Agnes_ in January. Mr Buxton Forman is certainly mistaken in supposing it to have been written a year later, after his critical attack of illness (_Works_, vol. II. p. 357, note).