Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends

Name: Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
Author: Keats, John

Keats, John

Keats, John, 1795-1821 -- Correspondence; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence

With a waist and with a side
  White as Hebe's when her Zone
  Slipp'd its golden clasp, and down
  Fell her Kirtle to her feet
  While she held the goblet sweet,
  And Jove grew languid--Mistress fair!
  Thou shalt have that tressed hair
  Adonis tangled all for spite;
  And the mouth he would not kiss,
  And the treasure he would miss;
  And the hand he would not press
  And the warmth he would distress.
    O the Ravishment--the Bliss!
  Fancy has her there she is--
  Never fulsome, ever new,
  There she steps! and tell me who
  Has a Mistress so divine?
  Be the palate ne'er so fine
  She cannot sicken. Break the Mesh
  Of the Fancy's silken leash;
  Where she's tether'd to the heart.
  Quickly break her prison string
  And such joys as these she'll bring,
  Let the winged fancy roam,
  Pleasure never is at home.

I did not think this had been so long a Poem. I have another not so
long--but as it will more conveniently be copied on the other side I will
just put down here some observations on Caleb Williams by Hazlitt--I meant
to say St. Leon, for although he has mentioned all the Novels of Godwin
very freely I do not quote them, but this only on account of its being a
specimen of his usual abrupt manner, and fiery laconicism. He says of St.
Leon--

     "He is a limb torn off society. In possession of eternal youth and
     beauty he can feel no love; surrounded, tantalised, and tormented
     with riches, he can do no good. The faces of Men pass before him as
     in a speculum; but he is attached to them by no common tie of
     sympathy or suffering. He is thrown back into himself and his own
     thoughts. He lives in the solitude of his own breast--without wife
     or child or friend or Enemy in the world. _This is the solitude of
     the soul, not of woods or trees or mountains_--but the desert of
     society--the waste and oblivion of the heart. He is himself alone.
     His existence is purely intellectual, and is therefore intolerable to
     one who has felt the rapture of affection, or the anguish of woe."

As I am about it I might as well give you his character of Godwin as a
Romancer:--

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Letters of John Keats to His Family and FriendsKeats, John

General

Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends

Keats, John

Keats, John, 1795-1821 -- Correspondence; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence

With a waist and with a side
  White as Hebe's when her Zone
  Slipp'd its golden clasp, and down
  Fell her Kirtle to her feet
  While she held the goblet sweet,
  And Jove grew languid--Mistress fair!
  Thou shalt have that tressed hair
  Adonis tangled all for spite;
  And the mouth he would not kiss,
  And the treasure he would miss;
  And the hand he would not press
  And the warmth he would distress.
    O the Ravishment--the Bliss!
  Fancy has her there she is--
  Never fulsome, ever new,
  There she steps! and tell me who
  Has a Mistress so divine?
  Be the palate ne'er so fine
  She cannot sicken. Break the Mesh
  Of the Fancy's silken leash;
  Where she's tether'd to the heart.
  Quickly break her prison string
  And such joys as these she'll bring,
  Let the winged fancy roam,
  Pleasure never is at home.

I did not think this had been so long a Poem. I have another not so
long--but as it will more conveniently be copied on the other side I will
just put down here some observations on Caleb Williams by Hazlitt--I meant
to say St. Leon, for although he has mentioned all the Novels of Godwin
very freely I do not quote them, but this only on account of its being a
specimen of his usual abrupt manner, and fiery laconicism. He says of St.
Leon--

     "He is a limb torn off society. In possession of eternal youth and
     beauty he can feel no love; surrounded, tantalised, and tormented
     with riches, he can do no good. The faces of Men pass before him as
     in a speculum; but he is attached to them by no common tie of
     sympathy or suffering. He is thrown back into himself and his own
     thoughts. He lives in the solitude of his own breast--without wife
     or child or friend or Enemy in the world. _This is the solitude of
     the soul, not of woods or trees or mountains_--but the desert of
     society--the waste and oblivion of the heart. He is himself alone.
     His existence is purely intellectual, and is therefore intolerable to
     one who has felt the rapture of affection, or the anguish of woe."

As I am about it I might as well give you his character of Godwin as a
Romancer:--

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends

Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends

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