Page:Keats, poems published in 1820 (Robertson, 1909).djvu/264

236 brede, embroidery. Cf. Lamia, i. 159. Here used of carving.

l. 44. tease us out of thought. Make us think till thought is lost in mystery.

In one of his long journal-letters to his brother George, Keats writes, at the beginning of May, 1819: 'The following poem—the last I have written—is the first and the only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have for the most part dashed off my lines in a hurry. This I have done leisurely—I think it reads the more richly for it, and will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time of Apuleius the Platonist, who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour, and perhaps never thought of in the old religion—I am more orthodox than to let a heathen goddess be so neglected.' The Ode to Psyche follows.

The story of Psyche may be best told in the words of William Morris in the 'argument' to 'the story of Cupid and Psyche' in his Earthly Paradise:

'Psyche, a king's daughter, by her exceeding beauty caused the people to forget. Venus; therefore the goddess would fain have destroyed her: nevertheless she became the bride of Love, yet in an unhappy moment lost him by her own fault, and wandering through the world suffered many evils at the hands of Venus, for whom she must