Keats: Poems Published in 1820

Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is--Love, forgive us!--cinders, ashes, dust; Love in a palace is perhaps at last More grievous torment than a hermit's fast:-- That is a d...

PAGE 27. ll. 1-9. Again a passage unworthy of Keats's genius. Perhaps the attempt to be light, like his seventeenth-century model, Dryden, led him for the moment to adopt someth...

Upon a time, before the faery broods Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, Before King Oberon's bright diadem, Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem, Frighted aw...

Just at the self-same beat of Time's wide wings Hyperion slid into the rustled air, And Saturn gain'd with Thea that sad place Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn'd. It wa...

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as t...

Thus in alternate uproar and sad peace, Amazed were those Titans utterly. O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes; For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire: A solitary...

l. 47. _gordian_, knotted, from the famous knot in the harness of Gordius, King of Phrygia, which only the conqueror of the world was to be able to untie. Alexander cut it with...

PAGE 145. ll. 2-3. By thus giving us a vivid picture of the changing day--at morning, noon, and night--Keats makes us realize the terrible loneliness and gloom of a place too de...

PAGE 174. ll. 133-5. _that old . . . darkness._ Uranus was the same as Coelus, the god of the sky. The 'book' is the sky, from which ancient sages drew their lore. Cf. i. 277-80.

PAGE 192. l. 12. _Dorian._ There were several 'modes' in Greek music, of which the chief were Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian. Each was supposed to possess certain definite ethical...