Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah! goddess, see Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee! For pity do not this sad heart belie-- Even as thou vanishest so I shall die. Stay! though a Naiad of the rivers, stay! To thy far wishes will thy streams obey: Stay! though the greenest woods be thy domain, Alone they can drink up the morning rain: Though a descended Pleiad, will not one Of thine harmonious sisters keep in tune Thy spheres, and as thy silver proxy shine? And here a beautiful instance of power and justness in scenic imagination:-- As men talk in a dream, so Corinth all, Throughout her palaces imperial, And all her populous streets and temples lewd, Mutter'd, like tempest in the distance brew'd, To the wide-spreaded night above her towers. Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours, Shuffled their sandals o'er the pavement white, Companion'd or alone; while many a light Flar'd here and there, from wealthy festivals, And threw their moving shadows on the walls, Or found them cluster'd in the cornic'd shade Of some arch'd temple door, or dusty colonnade. Turning now to the other side of the account: for one thing, we find jarring and disappointing notes, such as had disappeared from Keats's works since _Endymion_, of the old tasteless manner of the Hunt-taught days: for instance the unpalatable passage in the first book beginning 'Let the mad poets say whate'er they please,' and worse still, with a new note of idle cynicism added, the lines about love which open the second book. Misplaced archaisms also reappear, such as 'unshent' and the participle 'daft,' from the obsolete verb 'daff,' used as though it meant to puzzle or daze; with bad verbal coinages like 'piazzian,' 'psalterian.' Moreover, though many things in the poem are potently conceived, others are not so. The description of the magical palace-hall is surely a failure, except for the one fine note in the lines,-- A haunting music, sole perhaps and lone Supporters of the faery-roof, made moan Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might fade. The details of the structure, with its pairs of palms and plantains carved in cedar-wood, its walls lined with mirrors, its panels which change magically from plain marble to jasper, its fifty censers and 'Twelve sphered tables, by twelve seats insphered,'--all this seems feebly and even tastelessly invented in comparison with the impressive dream-architecture in some of Keats's other poems: I will even go farther, and say that it scarce holds its own against the not much dissimilar magic hall in the sixth canto of _Rhododaphne_.