3Bs a MooManb Spring 



time sweetly stupefies, the reader's imagi- 

 nation. Perusing the first two stanzas 

 here in the thrush's grove, I see the trick 

 of allusion, which is also illusion, and 

 smile at myself for ever having trusted 

 so implicitly the poet's sentimental mood, 

 and for not having broken, in the very 

 earliest reading, the iridescent bubble of 

 his art. 



And yet Keats made his ode just to my 

 liking. Many a time I have tried hard to 

 find a place where I could better it, even 

 with the change of a word ; but the phras- 

 ing defies revision. The poet was very 

 young; he must have been inspired, for 

 how else could such a vocabulary have 

 come to a mere boy? I can find no poem 

 of equal length this side of the Greek 

 wonders to compare with the " Ode to a 

 Nightingale " on the score of the splendor, 

 variety, breadth, and comprehensiveness 

 of its verbal riches. On a simple stanzaic 

 pattern, eight times occurring, the diction 

 is wrought into luminous figures which 

 strike the mind with the effect of an im- 

 possible melodious tapestry. This is lit- 

 187 



