Life of John Keats Author:William M. Rossetti Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. TO " Endymion " we now have to turn. The early verses of Keats (as well as the later ones) contain numerous allusions to Grecian mythology—Muses, A... more »pollo, Pan, Narcissus, Endymion and Diana, andc. For the most part these early allusions are nothing more than tawdry conventionalisms; so indeed are some of the later ones, as for instance in the drama of " King Stephen," written in 1819, the schoolboy classicism of "2nd Captain"— " Royal Maud From the thronged towers of Lincoln hath looked down, Like Pallas from the walls of Ilion ; " and we cannot discover that any more credit is due to Keats for dribbling out his tritenesses about Apollo and the Muses than to any Akenside, Mason, or Hayley, of them all. At times, however, there is a genuine tone of enjoyment in these utterances sufficient to persuade us that the subject had really taken possession of his mind, and that he could feel Grecian mythology, not merely as a convenient vehicle for rhetorical personifications, but as an ever-vital embodiment of ideas of beauty in forms of beauty. In the early and partly boyish poem, " I stoodtip-toe upon a little hill," a good deal of space is devoted to showing that classical myths are an outcome of eager sensitiveness to the lovely things of Nature : the tales of Psyche, Pan and Sirynx, Narcissus, are cited in confirmation—and finally Diana and Endymion, in the following lines :— " Where had he been from whose warm head outflew That sweetest of all songs, that ever new, That aye-refreshing pure deliciousness Coming ever to bless The wanderer by moonlight ? to him bringing Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing From out the middle air, from flowery nests, And from the pillowy silkiness that rests Full in the speculation of the stars. Ah surely h...« less