Quickly break her prison-string
And such joys as these she'll bring. -
Let the winged Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.

ODE.

[Written on the blank page before Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-Comedy

BA

Fair Maid of the Inn."]

OARDS of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-liv'd in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wond'rous,
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Brows'd by none but Dian's fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;

"The

5

ΙΟ

15

From the fact that this poem is written in Keats's Beaumont and Fletcher, now in Sir Charles Dilke's possession, and from internal evidence, we may judge it to be addressed to the brother poets of passion and mirth who wrote the tragi-comedy of The Fair Maid of the Inn, and not to the poets at large, as indicated by the title given in the Golden Treasury, to wit Ode on the Poets.

(4) Cancelled line in the manuscript after line 4 —

With the earth ones I am taiking.

(5-6) Cancelled manuscript reading, —

that of heaven communes With the spheres of Suns and Moons...

(10) In the manuscript, another's.

(19-20) In the manuscript there is the following uncancelled reading of this coupiet

How charming is divine Philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,...

(21) Cancelled reading, Stories for Tales.
(29) Cancelled reading, loves for souls.

(30-1) In the manuscript we read —

To mortals of the little Week
They must sojourn ·

40

The rest of line 31 has had too much cut off to be legible; but I do not think it can have rhymed either with week or with delights; and probably its rhymelessness led to its rejection, and to the reading of the text.

(40) The idea of the double life of the poetic soul is not uncommon; but perhaps the most noteworthy parallel is to be found in the two following stanzas from the poem which Wordsworth wrote in 1803 on the banks of Nith, near the poet's [Burns's] residence" (the third poem of the Memorials of a Tour in Scotland):

Through busiest street and loneliest glen
Are felt the flashes of his pen;

He rules 'mid winter snows, and when
Bees fill their hives;

Deep in the general heart of men

His power survives.

*When Mr. Palgrave issued his beautiful Golden Treasury he felt it necessary to explain in connexion with this poem that "the Mermaid was the club-house of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other choice spirits of that age." Probably such an explanation is considerably less necessary now than then. In Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion is a fair manuscript of this poem, dated 1818, which shows the variations noted below.

(4) The manuscript reads Fairer for Choicer.

(9) The manuscript has Old in place of 0.

(18-19) In the manuscript, Says for Said, and new-old sign, not new old-sign as in the first edition.

(23-6) The poem ends thus in the manuscript:

Souls of Poets dead and gone,

Are the winds a sweeter home,
Richer is uncellar'd cavern

Than the merry Mermaid Tavern?

5

10

*Of these charming verses there are two extant manuscripts, one being apparently the first draft, corrected and altered in course of composition, and the other a very careful copy written at the end of the copy of Endymion in Sir Charles Dilke's possession, already referred to more than once. The draft was found by the late Mr. S. R. Townshend Mayer among the manuscripts of Leigh Hunt; and, as it was written on the same piece of paper with Shelley's Sonnet to the Nile, it is not very hazardous to refer the composition to about the same date- February 1818. Sir Charles Dilke's copy of the poem is dated simply " 1818," and headed thus:

To John Reynolds,

In answer to his Robin Hood Sonnets.

The Sonnets in question, published in The Garden of Florence &c. (1821), will be found in the Appendix. The finished manuscript corresponds almost exactly with the printed text: the draft shows considerable variations.

(6-7) Cancelled reading —

Many times old Winter's shears

(10) In the draft this line is

Frozen North and chilly east,...

Since Men paid no Rent and Leases.

And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill
Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight, amaz'd to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.

On the fairest time of June
You may go, with sun or moon,
Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may behold
Little John, or Robin bold;
Never one, of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair hostess Merriment,
Down beside the pasture Trent;
For he left the merry tale

Messenger for spicy ale.

(13) Cancelled reading, And the whistle shrill is...

(16) Cancelled reading, No old hermit with his... Probably it was meant to finish

the line with staff.

(18) The draft reads

Jests { deep in
}

within

a forest drear.

And there is then the following couplet, cancelled:

No more barbed arrows fly
Through one's own roof to the sky...

(21-2) Rejected readings, Planets seven, and polar beam.

(25-7) Cancelled reading

(29-30) In the draft,

finished copy pasture and (31-2) In the draft —

Never meet one of all the clan

Rattling on an empty can

An old hunting ditty...

Mistress is struck out in favour of Hostess; and in the
Trent are connected with a hyphen.