1.
One morn before me were three figures seen, I With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp'd serene, In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
They pass'd, like figures on a marble urn, When shifted round to see the other side; They came again; as when the urn once
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return; And they were strange to me, as may betide With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.2.
How is it,
Shadows! that I knew ye not? How came ye muffled in so hush a masque?
Was it a silent deep-disguised plot To steal away, and leave without a
My idle days?
Ripe was the drowsy hour; The blissful cloud of summer-indolence Benumb'd my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain had no sting, and pleasure's wreath no flower: O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense Unhaunted quite of all but—-nothingness?3.
A third time came they by;—-alas! wherefore? My sleep had been embroider'd with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o'er With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:
The morn was clouded, but no shower fell, Tho' in her lids hung the sweet tears of May; The open casement press'd a new-leav'd vine,
Let in the budding warmth and throstle's lay; O Shadows! 'twas a time to bid farewell! Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.4.
A third time pass'd they by, and, passing, turn'd Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn'd And ached for wings, because I knew the three;
The first was a fair maid, and Love her name; The second was Ambition, pale of cheek, And ever watchful with fatigued eye;
The last, whom I love more, the more of blame Is heap'd upon her, maiden most unmeek,—- I knew to be my demon Poesy.5.
They faded, and, forsooth!
I wanted wings: O folly!
What is Love! and where is it?
And for that poor Ambition—-it springs From a man's little heart's short fever-fit;
For Poesy!—-no,—-she has not a joy,—- At least for me,—-so sweet as drowsy noons, And evenings steep'd in honied indolence;
O, for an age so shelter'd from annoy, That I may never know how change the moons, Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!6.
So, ye three Ghosts, adieu!
Ye cannot raise My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
For I would not be dieted with praise, A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
Fade sofdy from my eyes, and be once more In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn; Farewell!
I yet have visions for the night,
And for the day faint visions there is store; Vanish, ye Phantoms! from my idle spright, Into the clouds, and never more return!'First given by Lord Houghton among the Literary Remains in 1848, with the date 1819.
Among the many debts of these notes to the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
I must not fail to record the indication of the following passage from Keats's letter begun on the 14th of February 1819 as anticipating the Ode on Indolence:--"This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless;
I long after a stanza or two of Thomson's 'Castle of Indolence;' my passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre all over me, to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness.
If I had teeth or pearl, and the breath of lilies,
I should call it languor; but, as I am,
I must call it laziness.
In this state of effeminacy, the fibres of the brain are relaxed, in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree, that pleasure has no show of enticement, and pain no unbearable frown; neither Poetry, nor Ambition, nor Love, have any alterness of countenance; as they pass by me, they seem rather like three figures on a Greek vase, two men and a woman, whom no one but myself could distinguish in their disguisement.
This is the only happiness, and is a rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the mind."The date under which this passage occurs in the journal letter is the 19th of March.
It seems almost certain therefore that the Ode must have been composed after the fragment of The Eve Of St.
Mark, -- not before it as usually given.(stanza 6.):
It is no doubt owing to the want of opportunity to revise the poem finally that this beautiful stanza comes down to us disfigured by the bad rhyme 'grass' and 'farce.'~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed.
H.
Buxton Forman,
Crowell publ. 1895.
