but though the son of a devil, and conversant with the race, I am aware of no debt that he owed them. Did Keats suppose that he had sold himself, like "Faustus?".

9 Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died.

This is a verse in the taste of Chaucer, full of minute grace and truth. The smoke of the waxtaper seems almost as etherial and fair as the moonlight, and both suit each other and the heroine. But what a lovely line is the seventh about the heart,

Paining with eloquence her balmy side!

And the nightingale! how touching the simile! the heart a "tongueless nightingale," dying in the bed of the bosom. What thorough sweetness, and perfection of lovely imagery! How one delicacy is heaped upon another! But for a burst of richness, noiseless, coloured, suddenly enriching the moonlight, as if a door of heaven were opened, read the stanza that follows.

10 A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings. Could all the pomp and graces of aristocracy, with Titian's and Raphael's aid to boot, go beyond the rich religion of this picture, with its "twilight saints," and its scutcheons, "blushing with the blood of queens?"

11 “Save wings for heaven."-The lovely and innocent

creature, thus praying under the gorgeous painted window, completes the exceeding and unique beauty of this picture, one that will for ever stand by itself in poetry, as an addition to the stock. It would have struck a glow on the face of Shakspeare himself. He might have put Imogen or Ophelia under such a shrine. How proper as well as pretty the heraldic term gules, considering the occasion. "Red" would not have been a fiftieth part as good. And with what elegant luxury he touches the "silver cross" with "amethyst," and the fair human hand with " rose-colour," the kin of their carnation! The lover's growing "faint" is one of the few inequalities which are to be found in the latter productions of this great but young and over-sensitive poet. He had, at the time of his writing this poem, the seeds of a mortal illness in him, and he, doubtless, wrote as he had felt, for he was also deeply in love; and extreme sensibility struggled in him with a great understanding.

12" Unclasps her warmèd jewels.”—How true and cordial the warmed jewels, and what matter of fact also, made elegant, in the rustling downward of the attire; and the mixture of dress and undress, and of the dishevelled hair, likened to a "mermaid in seaweed!" But the next stanza is perhaps the most exquisite in the poem.

13" As though a rose should shut.”— Can the beautiful go beyond this? saw it. And how the

I never

imagery rises! flown like a thought blissfully haven'd-clasp'd like a missal in a land of Pagans : that is to say, where Christian prayer-books must not be seen, and are, therefore, doubly cherished for the danger. And then, although nothing can surpass the preciousness of this idea, is the idea of the beautiful, crowning all

Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

Thus it is that poetry, in its intense sympathy with creation, may be said to create anew, rendering its words more impressive than the objects they speak of, and individually more lasting; the spiritual perpetuity putting them on a level (not to speak it profanely) with the fugitive compound.

14" Lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon."— Here is delicate modulation, and super-refined epicurean nicety !

Lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon;

make us read the line delicately, and at the tip-end, as it were, of one's tongue.

15“ Beyond a mortal man."-Madeline is half awake, and Porphyro reassures her, with loving, kind looks, and an affectionate embrace.

16 “ Heart-shap'd and vermeil-dyed.”—With what a pretty wilful conceit the costume of the poem is kept up in this line about the shield! The poet knew when to introduce apparent trifles forbidden to those

who are void of real passion, and who, feeling nothing intensely, can intensify nothing.

17“ Carpets rose.”—This is a slip of the memory, for there were hardly carpets in those days. But the truth of the painting makes amends, as in the unchronological pictures of old masters.

LONELY SOUNDS.

Undescribed sounds,

That come a-swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors.

ORION.

At this, with madden'd stare,

And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood,
Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood,
Or blind Orion hungry for the morn.

CIRCE AND HER VICTIMS.

Fierce, wan,

And tyrannizing was the lady's look,

As over them a gnarlèd staff she shook.

Ofttimes upon the sudden she laugh'd out,
And from a basket emptied to the rout

Clusters of grapes, the which they raven'd quick

And roar'd for more, with

many a hungry lick
About their shaggy jaws. Avenging, slow,
Anon she took a branch of misletoe,

And emptied on't a black dull-gurgling phial :
Groan'd one and all, as if some piercing trial
Were sharpening for their pitiable bones.
She lifted up the charm: appealing groans
From their poor breasts went suing to her ear
In vain remorseless as an infant's bier,

:

She whisk'd against their eyes the sooty oil;
Whereat was heard a noise of painful toil,
Increasing gradual to a tempest rage,

Shrieks, yells, and groans, of torture-pilgrimage.

A BETTER ENCHANTRESS IMPRISONED IN THE SHAPE
OF A SERPENT.

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue,
Striped like a zebra, speckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson-barr'd,
And full of silver moons, that as she breath'd
Dissolv'd or brighter shone, or interwreath'd
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries.
So rainbow-sided, full of miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanc'd lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar;

Her head was serpent, but, ah, bitter sweet !

She had a woman's mouth, with all its pearls complete.