"twas a quiet eve, The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave An untumultuous fringe of silver foam Along the flat brown sand; I was at home And should have been most happy,--but I saw Too far into the sea, where every maw The greater or the less feeds evermore:-- But I saw too distinct into the core Of an eternal fierce destruction, And so from happiness I far was gone. Still am I sick of it, and tho' to-day, I've gathered young spring leaves, and flowers gay Of periwinkle and wild strawberry, Still do I that most fierce destruction see,-- The Shark at savage prey,--the Hawk at pounce,-- The gentle Robin, like a Pard or Ounce, Ravening a worm,--Away, ye horrid moods! Moods of one's mind!"-- In a like vein, recalling to Bailey a chance saying of his "Why should woman suffer?"--"Aye, why should she?" writes Keats: "'By heavens, I'd coin my very soul, and drop my blood for drachmas.' These things are, and he who feels how incompetent the most skyey knight-errantry is to heal this bruised fairness, is like a sensitive leaf on the hot hand of thought." And again, "were it in my choice, I would reject a Petrarchal coronation--on account of my dying day, and because women have cancers. I should not by rights speak in this tone to you, for it is an incendiary spirit that would do so." Not the general tribulations of the race only, but particular private anxieties, were pressing in these days on Keats's thoughts. The shadow of illness, though it had hitherto scarcely touched himself, hung menacingly not only over his brother but his best friends. He speaks of it in a tone of courage and gaiety which his real apprehensions, we can feel, belie. "Banish money"--he had written in Falstaff's vein, at starting for the Isle of Wight a year ago--"Banish sofas--Banish wine--Banish music; but right Jack Health, honest Jack Health, true Jack Health--Banish Health and banish all the world." Writing now from Teignmouth to Reynolds, who was down during these weeks with rheumatic fever, he complains laughingly, but with an undercurrent of sad foreboding, how he can go nowhere but Sickness is of the company, and says his friends will have to cut that fellow, or he must cut them.