JSi? a TKHooblanD Spring 



It is a "regular ode" in the critic's 

 nomenclature; each stanza of ten verses 

 stands complete, with an invisible da capo 

 at its end. After reading the first we know 

 them all, so far as real musical form 

 goes. But the thrush yonder knew this 

 trick before any poet was born; its song- 

 organ has repeated over and over, through 

 countless ages, the one thrush stanza. 

 Keats repeated his but eight times, and 

 left the most wonderful creation of art to 

 be found in English poetry. I lay stress 

 on the word *' art " ; for, to my understand- 

 ing, Keats's ode is not, like one of Burns's 

 songs, an improvisation without fore- 

 thought or smack of cunning. The wonder 

 of it really lies in the enormous amount of 

 book-knowledge which has been distilled 

 to get its essentials, and the craft with 

 which these have been sprayed, so to 

 speak, through the almost faultless stanzas. 



From such words as *' hemlock," 

 ** Lethe," "Dryad," "Flora," '* Proven- 

 9al," " Hippocrene," he at the outset 

 draws the drug for a philter, with which 

 he strangely stimulates, and at the same 

 i86 



