time and health will fus you some more. This is morning set дить I have been able to the paper and how ma. my Letter to write if I can manage them. You bless you my dear Sister. Your affectionate Buck Fac-simile of part of a letter to Fanny Keats, only sister of the poet, written during his last illness, August 14, 1820. SELECTIONS FROM KEATS TO G. A. W.1 Nymph of the downward smile and sidelong glance, And so remain, because thou listenest: But thou to please wert nurtured so completely I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly December, 1816.] TO SOLITUDE. O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Of murky buildings; climb with me to the stcep,Nature's observatory-whence the dell, 1 Georgiana Augusta Wylie, afterward the wife of George Keats. Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd,1 where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee, ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER. 1816.] Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; When a new planet swims into his ken; 1 For verb forms in ed, the custom of Keats was to write 'd when the e was silent, ed where Shelley wrote èd, when the e was sounded. He did not, however, consistently follow his own rule. ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among the grassy hills. December 30, 1816.] DEDICATION. TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.1 1 Glory and loveliness have pass'd away; No crowd of nymphs soft-voic'd and young, and gay, Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn The shrine of Flora in her early May. 1 Dedication to the first volume of poems, printed in 1817. |