Come home. We've nursed for thee the sunny buds of spring, Watch'd every germ flow'ret rear, Its icy garlands, and thou art not here. Brother, come home. Come home. Would I could send my spirit o'er the deep, Would I could wing it like a bird to thee, To commune with thy thoughts, to fill thy sleep With these unwearying words of mel THE GRAVES OF A HOUSEHOLD, THEY grew in beauty side by side, They filled one home with glee, By a dark stream, is laid; The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one, One sleeps where southern vines are drest Above the noble slain; He wrapt his colors round his breast On a blood-red field of Spain. And one-o'er her the myrtle showers Its leaves, by soft winds fanned; She faded midst Italian flowers, The last of that bright band. And, parted thus, they rest who played Beneath the same green tree, Whose voices mingled as they prayed Around one parent knee! a full-blown They that with smiles lit up the hall, Saw o'er their bloom the chilly winter bring And cheered with song the hearth, Alas for love if thou wert all, And nought beyond, oh earth. JOHN KEATS. 1795-1821. [JOHN KEATS was born in London on the 29th of October, 1795. His father was in the employment of a livery-stable keeper in Moorfields, whose daughter he married. Our poet was born prematurely. He lost his father when he was nine years old, and his mother when he was fifteen. He and his brothers were sent to a good school at Enfield kept by Mr. Clarke, whose son, Charles Cowden Clarke, well known afterwards from his_connection with letters and literary men, was a valuable friend to John Keats. As a schoolboy, Keats seems to have been at first remarked chiefly for his pugnacity and high spirit, but he soon showed a love of reading. On leaving school in 1810 he was apprenticed for five years to a surgeon at Edmonton; he was thus still in the neighborhood of the Clarkes, who continued to see him, took interest in his awakening powers, and lent him books, amongst them the Fairy Queen of Spenser the poet,-whose influence has left on the poetry of Keats so deep an impression. The young surgeon's apprentice took to verse-making; when he went to London to walk the hospitals, he was introduced by the Clarkes to their literary friends there, and knew Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Basil Montagu, Haydon, Shelley, and Godwin. In 1817 he brought out his first volume of verse, and abandoned the profession of surgery, for which, however, disagreeable though it was to him, he had shown aptitude and dexterity. His first volume contained the Epistles, which we now read amongst his collected poems; it had no success. But his friends saluted his genius with warm admiration and confidence, and in 1818 he published his Endymion. It was mercilessly treated by Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and by the Quarterly Review. Meanwhile Keats's small fortune was melting away, and signs of disease began to show themselves in him. Nevertheless, in the next year or two he produced his best poems; but his health and circumstances did not mend, while a passionate attachment, with which he was at this time seized, added another cause of agitation. The seeds of consumption were in him, he had the temperament of the consumptive; his poetry fevered him, his embarrassments fretted him, his love-passion shook him to pieces. He had an attack of bleeding from the lungs; he got better, but it returned; change of climate was recommended, and after publishing his third volume, Lamia, Isabella, and other Poems, he sailed for Italy in September, 1820, accompanied by his friend Severn. Italy could not restore him. He established himself at Rome with Severn, but, in spite of the devoted care and kindness of this admirable friend, he rapidly grew worse, and on the 23rd of February, 1821, he died. He was twenty-five years old. John Keats was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, and on his gravestone is the inscription which he himself told his friend to place there: Here lies one whose name was writ in water.] ENDYMION. [From Miscellaneous Poems.] He was a Poet, sure a lover too, Who stood on Latmus' top, what time there blew Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below, And brought, in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow, A hymn from Dian's temple; while upswelling, The incense went to her own starry dwelling. But though her face was clear as infants' eyes, Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice, The poet wept at her so piteous fate, Wept that such beauty should be desolate. So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won, And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion. was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more By reason of his fallen divinity Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips. Along the margin-sand large footmarks went, No further than to where his feet had strayed, And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; While his bowed head seem'd listening to the Earth, His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. It seem'd no force could wake him from his place; But there came one, who with a kindred hand Touched his wide shoulders, after bending low With reverence, though to one who knew it not. She was a Goddess of the infant world; Achilles by the hair and bent his neck; Pedestal'd haply in a palace-court, When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore. And canst oppose to each malignant hour Ethereal presence. - I am but a voice; "O BRIGHTEST of my children dear, My life is but the life of winds and earth-born And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries! All unrevealed even to the powers Which met at thy creating! at whose joys, And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft, I, Coelus, wonder how they came and whence; And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be, Distinct, and visible; symbols divine, Manifestations of that beauteous life Diffused unseen throughout eternal space; Of these new-formed art thou, O brightest child! Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses! There is sad feud among ye, and rebellion Of son against his sire. I saw him fall, I saw my firstborn tumbled from his throne! To me his arms were spread, to me his voice Found way from forth the thunders round his head! Pale wox I, and in vapors hid my face. Art thou, too, near such doom? vague tides; Ere half this region-whisper had come down Hyperion arose, and on the stars Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide Until it ceased; and still he kept them wide: And still they were the same bright, patient stars. Then with a slow incline of his broad breast, Like to a diver in the pearly seas, Forward he stooped over the airy shore, And plunged all noiseless into the deep night. OCEANUS. [From Hyperion, Book II.] So ended Saturn; and the God of the Sea, Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove, But cogitation in his watery shades, Arose, with locks not oozy, and began, In murmurs, which his first endeavoring tongue |