Pvems of John Keats. 21 



** Within his car aloft, young Bacchus stood, 

 Trifling his ivy dart in dancing mood, 



With sidelong laughing : 



* * * * * 



And near him rode Silenus on his ass, 

 Pelted with flowers as he on did pass, 

 Tipsily quaffing." 



But let us continue the scene ; here follows a right joyous Baccha- 

 nalian song 1 , not without the poetry and the taste which, even in 

 their wildest creations, was never forgotten by the ancients : 



'* Whence came ye, merry damsels, whence came ye ? 

 So many, and so many, and such glee, 

 Why have ye left your bowers desolate, 



Your lutes and gentler fate ? 

 We follow Bacchus ! Bacchus on the wing . , 



A conquering ! 



Bacchus, young Bacchus ! good or ill betide, 

 We dance before him through kingdoms wide ; 

 Come hither, lady fair, and joined be 



To our wild minstrelsy ! 



*' Whence came ye, jolly satyrs ! whence came ye, 

 So many, and so many, and such glee ? 

 Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left 



Your nuts in oak-tree cleft? 

 For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree, 

 For wine we left our heath, and yellow blooms, 



And cold mushrooms!" 



With lyrical compositions like these ; with graphic illustrations show- 

 ing great force of imagination, though disfigured by the pedantries 

 of the Leigh Hunt school ; and with a most sensitive perception 

 throughout of the ideal, clothed in ever varying garbs of beauty, the 

 poem of Endymion abounds. As a whole composition it is a failure, 

 but one betraying no ordinary poetic genius. Could indeed a perfect 

 work have been expected from a young poet, when the subject, a 

 fabulous abstraction, required the utmost judgment and skill in its 

 execution! Of the same abstractive nature is another poem by 

 Keats, called "Hyperion," whicfrhas been compared to one of the vast 

 skeletons of antediluvian creation. It is certainly a splendid frag- 

 ment ; and if not as original, does not in different portions of it fall 

 far short of the loftiness of description which we find in " Paradise 

 Lost." The subject of "Hyperion" is laid in the primeval heathen 

 world, where Saturn has been cast from his throne, and the Titans 

 lay vanquished and chained : its opening is as follows: 



" Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, 

 Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 

 Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, 

 Sat grey-hair'd Saturn quiet as a stone, 

 Still as the silence round about his lair !" 



All these lines are poetic, and convey by their simplicity a better 

 idea of the sublime, than could any labour of thought or diction ; but 

 to continue them : r 





