Page:The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats, 1899.djvu/288

252 ized to refer this poem to John Keats. It is not impossible that it was written by Tom Keats in 1818.

belov'd if health shall smile again,

Upon this wasted form and fever'd cheek:

If e'er returning vigour bid these weak

And languid limbs their gladsome strength regain,

Well may thy brow the placid glow retain

Of sweet content and thy pleas'd eye may speak

The conscious self applause, but should I seek

To utter what this heart can feel,—Ah! vain

Were the attempt! Yet kindest friends while o'er

My couch ye bend, and watch with tenderness

The being whom your cares could e'en restore,

From the cold grasp of Death, say can you guess

The feelings which these lips can ne'er express?

Feelings, deep fix'd in grateful memory's store.

Charles Armitage Brown, writing to Henry Snook from Hampstead 24 March, 1820, says: 'Tom shall have one of his [Keats's] bits of comic verses,—I met with them only yesterday, but they have been written long ago,—it is a song on the City of Oxford.'

The verses were also copied by Keats in a letter to Reynolds, given below on p. 269, as a satirical criticism of Wordsworth.

Gothic looks solemn,

The plain Doric column

Supports an old Bishop and Crozier;

The mouldering arch,

Shaded o'er by a larch,

Stands next door to Wilson the Hosier.

Vice,—that is, by turns,—

O'er pale faces mourns

The black tassell'd trencher and common hat;

The charity boy sings,

The Steeple-bell rings

And as for the Chancellor—dominat.

There are plenty of trees,

And plenty of ease,

And plenty of fat deer for Parsons;

And when it is venison,

Short is the benison,—

Then each on a leg or thigh fastens.

who has[t] pass'd thy grand clima[c]teric,

How many mice and rats hast in thy days

Destroy'd?—How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze

With those bright languid segments green, and prick

Those velvet ears—but pr'ythee do not stick

Thy latent talons in me—and upraise

Thy gentle mew—and tell me all thy frays

Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick:

Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists

For all the wheezy asthma,—and for all

Thy tail's tip is nick'd off—and though the fists

Of many a maid has given thee many a maul,

Still is that fur as soft as when the lists

In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall.