Poems [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The poems by which he lives for us bulk small in his collefted verse, but those few are beyond price: a lyric here and a ballad there, two or three sonnets, five matchless odes, a narrative in forty-two Spenserian Stanzas, and a noble epic fragment exhibiting a new and unexpefted virtuosity. Dazzling as his adlual achievement is, Keats did not live to enjoy the full Stretch and maturity of his powers. His excuse for not having written a Chapman's Homer sonnet every day, or an Eve of Saint Agnes every week, might well be that even a poet of genius mu§t learn his craft and be allowed his errors of ta§le and judgment, especially a poet who becomes aware of his vocation at eighteen and dies after a long and painful illness at twenty-five. John Keats was the firSl of four children born to the wife of Thomas Keats, who by marrying his master's daughter had himself become maSter of a livery Stable in Finsbury, at the sign of the Swan and Hoop. He was born on the 31SI of Oftober 1795, his brother George sixteen months later, and Tom in November 1799. There was a Strong, quarrelsome affedion between the three boys, and they were all fond of their siSter Fanny, who was nearly eight years John's junior. The parents were ambitious for their sons, and at one time considered sending John to Harrow. The plan failed for lack of means, and this was no disaster, for it is unlikely that Harrow, in spite of its ampler resources, would have provided so free a scope for his bent as did the Enfield school to which he was sent at the age of eight, or a more congenial tutor and companion than Charles Cowden Clarke, son of the headmaster there. It was Clarke who, after Keats had loSt his parents and left school to become a surgeon's apprentice, introduced him to Spenser's poetry, and a little later to Chapman's translation of Homer. It was through Clarke, too, that he made the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt. From these three encounters important results were to follow. His delight in Spenser fired him with the ambition to write poetry: his firSt attempt was a confessed imitation of Spenser, And Chapman led him into the company of boisterous and fantastical Elizabethans, one of whom, Michacl Drayton, provided him with the main plot-source of Endymion. The friendship with Leigh Hunt had more complex consequences. Hunt was a good fellow and a generous-hearted friend, quick to recognize the quality of a younger man's firSt attempts at poetry, and very willing, vii