Life of John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics and After-FameColvin, Sidney
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Life of John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics and After-Fame
Colvin, Sidney
Keats, John, 1795-1821; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
uttered by Portia at the close of the most enchanting moonlight scene in
all literature. Scarcely less familiar to Keats will have been the
invocation near the end of Spenser's _Epithalamion_, or the reference to
'pale-changeful Cynthia' and her Endymion in Browne's _Britannia's
Pastorals_;[2] or those that recur once and again in the sonnets of
Drummond of Hawthornden, or those he would have remembered from the
masque in the _Maid's Tragedy_ of Beaumont and Fletcher, or in
translations of the love-elegies and heroical epistles of Ovid. But the
two Elizabethans, I think, who were chiefly in his conscious or
unconscious recollection when he meditated his theme are Fletcher and
Michael Drayton. Here is the fine Endymion passage, delightfully
paraphrased from Theocritus, and put into the mouth of the wanton Cloe,
by Fletcher in the _Faithful Shepherdess_, that tedious, absurd,
exquisitely written pastoral of which the measures caught and charmed
Keats's ear in youth as they had caught and charmed the ear of Milton
before him.
Shepherd, I pray thee stay, where hast thou been?
Or whither go'st thou? Here be Woods as green
As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet,
As where smooth _Zephyrus_ plays on the fleet
Face of the curled Streams, with Flowers as many
As the young Spring gives, and as choise as any;
Here be all new Delights, cool Streams and Wells,
Arbors o'rgrown with Woodbinds, Caves, and Dells,
Chuse where thou wilt, whilst I sit by, and sing,
Or gather Rushes to make many a Ring
For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of Love,
How the pale _Phoebe_ hunting in a Grove,
First saw the Boy _Endymion_, from whose Eyes
She took eternal fire that never dyes:
How she convey'd him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the Mountain with her Brothers light,
To kiss her sweetest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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