The spring of 1819 saw John Keats at his most fevered and productive. After deciding to abandon his job at Guy’s Hospital in London, the 23-year-old poet lived briefly at Wentworth Place, the newly built home of his friend Charles Brown. These works, and Wentworth Place itself, have since taken on a mythic quality. In this letter, written to his brother and sister during this period, Keats shows off a few of his recent works, including a near-finished draft of his famous ‘Ode to Psyche’.
To George and Georgiana Keats
[April 1819]
Brown has been here rummaging up some of my old sins—that is to say sonnets. I do not think you remember them, so I will copy them out, as well as two or three lately written. I have just written one on Fame—which Brown is transcribing and he has his book and mine. I must employ myself perhaps in a sonnet on the same subject—
ON FAME
You cannot eat your cake and have it too.—Proverb.
How fever’d is that Man who cannot look
Upon his mortal days with temperate blood
Who vexes all the leaves of his Life’s book
And robs his fair name of its maidenhood.
It is as if the rose should pluck herself
Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom,
As if a clear Lake meddling with itself
Should cloud its clearness with a muddy gloom.
But the rose leaves herself upon the Briar
For winds to kiss and grateful Bees to feed,
And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire,
The undisturbed Lake has crystal space—
Why then should man, teasing the world for grace
Spoil his salvation by a fierce miscreed?
ANOTHER ON FAME
Fame like a wayward girl will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease—
She is a Gipsy will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her,
A Jilt whose ear was never whisper’d close,
Who think they scandal her who talk about her—
A very Gipsy is she Nilus born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar—
Ye lovesick Bards, repay her scorn for scorn,
Ye lovelorn Artists, madmen that ye are,
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then if she likes it she will follow you.
TO SLEEP
O soft embalmer of the still midnight
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes embowered from the light
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine—
O soothest sleep, if so it please thee close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its dewy Charities.
Then save me or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow breeding many woes.
Save me from curious conscience that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a Mole—
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my soul.
The following Poem—the last I have written—is the first and the only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have for the most part dash’d off my lines in a hurry. This I have done leisurely—I think it reads the more richly for it, and will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time of Apuleius the Platonist who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the Goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour—and perhaps never thought of in the old religion—I am more orthodox than to let a heathen Goddess be so neglected—
ODE TO PSYCHE
O Goddess hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear!
Surely I dreamt to-day; or did I see
The winged Psyche, with awaked eyes?
I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,
And on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair Creatures couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring fan
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A Brooklet scarce espied
’Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, freckle pink, and budded Syrian
They lay, calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced and their pinions too;
Their lips touch’d not, but had not bid adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender dawn of aurorian love.
The winged boy I knew:
But who wast thou O happy happy dove?
His Psyche true?
O latest born, and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus’ faded Hierarchy!
Fairer than Phœbe’s sapphire-region’d star,
Or Vesper amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these though Temple thou hadst none,
Nor Altar heap’d with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe no incense sweet
From chain-swung Censer teeming—
No shrine, no grove, no Oracle, no heat
Of pale mouth’d Prophet dreaming!
O Bloomiest! though too late for antique vows;
Too, too late for the fond believing Lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the Air, the water and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir’d
From happy Pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing by my own eyes inspired.
O let me be thy Choir and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged Censer teeming;
Thy Shrine, thy Grove, thy Oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth’d Prophet dreaming!
Yes, I will be thy Priest and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my Mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind.
Far, far around shall those dark cluster’d trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
And there by Zephyrs streams and birds and bees
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep.
And in the midst of this wide-quietness
A rosy Sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain;
With buds and bells and stars without a name;
With all the gardener-fancy e’er could feign,
Who breeding flowers will never breed the same—
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win;
A bright torch and a casement ope at night
To let the warm Love in.
Here endethe ye Ode to Psyche.
———
Incipit altera Sonneta
———
I have been endeavouring to discover a better Sonnet Stanza than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language over well from the pouncing rhymes—the other kind appears too elegiac—and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a pleasing effect—I do not pretend to have succeeded—it will explain itself.
If by dull rhymes our English must be chained,
And, like Andromeda, the sonnet sweet
Fetter’d, in spite of pained Loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain’d,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of poesy;
Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain’d
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown,
So, if we may not let the muse be free,
She will be bound with Garlands of her own.
JOHN KEATS
FURTHER READING
For more letters between Keats and his siblings during this period, click here.