Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/288

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 S.I.APBIL 8,191*

the rainbow is, in " thought," and not in " sensation " :

A midway station given For happy spirits to alight Betwixt the earth and heaven ?

Anyway, in 1818, the next year, he wrote : " There is but one way for me : the road lie 8 through application, study, and thought. I will pursue it ; and for that end purpose retiring for some years. I have been hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of the luxurious and a love for philosophy."

And amidst

Divine melodious truth come

Philosophic numbers smooth,

together with

Tales and golden histories Of heaven and its mysteries.

What then of his sensuous side ? If one must bring Keats's letter to his brother :

"How I like claret 'Tis [a] palate affair

that I am sensual in .... It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness then goes down cool and feverless " ;

or even Haydon's story that Keats first put pepper on his tongue, the better to taste the dear wine ; yet what may not one say or do for a pleasant fancy ? and how deep in us lies the basis of a freak or even an indulgence ? Othello boasted even fantastically, lago said ; was he not brave ? Hamlet, with fierce thoughts, had delight in trippingly spoken words. In ' Endymion,' indeed, there is word of

him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine ;

and, then, later if not latest, as we used

to think :

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever or else swoon to death.

But that is not all. There are notes other than those often heard ; even as a Milton's voice, he would say, is not all of the organ :

Miltonian storms, and more Miltonian tenderness, s Keats's own line. And, in prose, thinking of that delicious artist as sensuous, in the way he himself felt :

" Milton had an exquisite passion for what is properly, in the sense of ease and pleasure, poetical luxury ; and with that, it appears to me he would fain have been content, if he could, in so doing, preserve his self-respect and feeling of duty performed ; but there was working in him, as it were, that same sort of thing which operates in the great world to the end of a prophecy being accomplished. Therefore he devoted himself rather to the ardours than the pleasures of song, solacing himself at intervals with cups of old wine."

Here may be considered Keats's ' Nightin- gale ' passage,

O for a draught of vintage .... " Lines [says W. Kossettil which seem a little forced into their context, and of which the only tangible meaning is that the luxury and dreamy inspiration of wine-drinking would relieve the poet's mind from the dull and painful realities of life, and assist his imagination into the dim vocal haunts of the nightingale."

But is that the meaning ? It is " tasting of Flora," the goddess of flowers, " and the country green," " full of the true, ih& blushful Hippocrene " ; of the fountains real r not fabled, and inspiring, with " dance and Proven9al song " : it is all that state of mind, in all that surrounding of imagination,, when I shall see how beauty and truth are one :

Away ! away ! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy.

The author of ' Lamia ' Aa/xia, serpent,, vampire is all on the side of the siren, it has been said. Is he ? She keeps Lycius from duty, from action. To her the philosopher

The ghost of Folly haunting my sweet dreams.. Browbeating her fair form, and troubling her

sweet pride.

Shut, shut those juggling eyes, thou ruthless man I .. . .Corinthians, see I

My sweet bride withers at their potency. "Fool," said the sophist.... " Fool ! Fool ! " repeated he, while his eyes still Relented not, nor moved ; '* from every ill Of life have I preserved thee to this day, And shall I see thee made a serpent's prey ? "

The lordly palace house is gone, passion- withered, death judges pride and tramples on folly. It seems a tale told by a moralizer- However, one must not press the words of the poet too far, as being a poet's judgment on life. For Keats at least warns us- going beyond himself, and speaking half- unadvisedly that

" As to the poetical character itself.... it is not itself it has no self it is everything and nothing - it has no character it enjoys light and shade it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low,, rich or poor, mean or elevated it has as much delight in conceiving an lago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet. . . .A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no

identity It is a wretched thing to confess,

but it is a very fact, that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature."

Yet, doubtless, in ' Sleep and Poetry ' it is he himself will pass from his lotus land into a nobler life

Where I may find the agonies, the strife

Of human hearts.