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JOHN KEATS, one of the most poetical of Poets, and therefore by nature one of the most refined of men, was of the humblest origin, having been born, October the 29th, 1796, at a livery stable in Moorfields, which belonged to his family. He received the rudiments of a classical education at the school of Mr. Clarke, at Enfield, where, in the person of the master's son, Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke, the editor of the "Riches of Chaucer," he had the luck of finding a friend possessed of discernment enough to see his genius, and warm-heartedness to encourage it. He was afterwards apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary; but inheriting a small independence (which, however, he used in the most generous manner), he did not stop long with him, but devoted himself entirely to poetry. Mr. Clarke introduced him to Mr. Leigh Hunt, and Mr. Leigh Hunt, through the medium of the " Examiner," to the public,-which introduction, while it procured instant recognition of his genius, attracted towards him, in consequence of the party-politics then raging, the hostility of the critics on the opposite side, who paid him the unhappy compliment of being unusually bitter and ungenerous. The result was, not his death, as some have supposed,-but undoubtedly an embitterment of the causes which were then leading to it, and which originated in a consumptive tendency. Mr. Keats left England in the year 1820, to try the warmer climate of Italy, and, on the 24th of February, in the year following, died at Rome in the arms of his friend, Mr. Severn, the artist, who had accompanied him on the voyage, and attended his bedside like a brother. Mr. Shelley, who loved him, and who enthusiastically admired his genius (as he has evinced in the beautiful elegy, entitled "Adonis"), invited him to come and take up his abode with himself; and he would have done so, had life been spared him. But fate had disposed otherwise; and the ashes of his inviter, no great while afterwards, went to take up their own abode in the same burial-ground. His death was embittered by a passion he had for a young lady, who returned his affection; but, amidst all his sufferings, his love of poetical beauty did not forsake him. He said, in anticipation of his grave, that he already "felt the daisies growing over him." He requested, however, in the anguish of disappointed hope, that his friends would inscribe upon his tomb, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water;" and they did so.

Mr. Keats was under the middle size, and somewhat large above, in proportion to his lower limbs,-which, however, were neatly formed; and he had any thing in his dress and general demeanour but that appearance of "laxity," which has been strangely attributed to him in a late publication. In fact, he had so much of the reverse, though in no unbecoming degree, that he might be supposed to maintain a certain jealous care of the appearance and bearing of a gentleman, in the consciousness of his genius, and perhaps not without some sense of his origin. His face was handsome and sensitive, with a look in the eyes at once earnest and tender; and his hair grew in delicate brown ringlets, of remarkable beauty.

Mr. Keats may truly be pronounced a Poet of the most poetical order, for he gave himself up entirely to the beautiful, and had powers of expression equal to an excess of sensibility. His earlier poems, especially the " Endymion," are like a luxuriant wilderness of flowers and weeds (" weeds of glorious feature"); his latest, the " Hyperion," was a growing wood of oaks, from which the deepest oracles of the art might have been looked for. Indeed, there they were, as far as he gave his thoughts utterance. It has been justly said, that he is "the greatest YOUNG Poet that ever appeared in the language;" that is to say, the greatest who did not live to be old, and whose whole memory will be identified with something both young and great. His lyrics (the Odes to the Nightingale and the Grecian Vase) are equal to the very finest we possess, both for subtle feeling and music. His "Eve of St. Agnes," is as full of beauty as the famous painted window he describes in it; and there was such a profusion in him of fancies and imaginations, analogous to the beautiful forms of the genius of the ancient Poets, that a university-man expressed his astonishment at hearing he was not a Greek scholar. Of our lately deceased Poets, if you want imaginative satire, or bitter wailing, you must go to the writings of Lord Byron; if a thoughtful, dulcet, and wild dreaminess, you must go to Coleridge; if a startling appeal to the first elements of your nature and sympathies (most musical also), to Shelley; if a thorough enjoyment of the beautifulfor beauty's sake-like a walk on a summer's noon in a land of woods and meadows, you must embower yourself in the luxuries of Keats.

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A CASEMENT high and triple-arch'd there was,
All garlanded with carven imageries

Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains, and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth's deep damask wings;
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,

A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon.

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ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk :
"Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—
That thou, light-winged dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time,

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstacy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-
To thy high requiem become a god.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown :
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music :-Do I wake or sleep?

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape? Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone :
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal-yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new ;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

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