MORE KEATS'S POEMS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 97, 30 May 1914, Page 4

MORE KEATS'S POEMS.

POET'S VOYAGE TO NAPLES.

SOME INTERESTING LETTERS. There is nothing in the new Keats's . poems and letters, which Sir Sidney Colvin published in "The Times" literary supplement, to compare in interest and unexpectedness-with the letters which some time ago revealed to us for the first time the full story of Charlotte Bronte's devotion to M. Hegar. The most important of the letters, however, which, with the poems, have been put in Sir Sidney's hands by the <Marquess of Crewe, do throw many interesting lights on the figure of Keats in the course of his stormy and fatal voyage to Italy in 1820 (comments the "Daily News.") These are the original letters written by Keats's friend, Severn, to William Haslam, .describing the incidents of' the Voyage. Severn wrote the story of the voyage again and again from memory in after years, but there is an actuality about these contemporary jottings which gives them value for the imagination, The Voyage Begun. Keats, doomed consumptive though lie was, appears to have begun the voyage—they put to sea on September 17 —in excellent spirits. Severn was duly elated. He wrote on the same 3ay: — "Keats seem'd happy—seem'd to have got at the thing he wanted, he , eraeked his jokes at tea, and was quite the 'special fellow' of olden times—the kind Mrs Pidgeon our. Lady passenger did the honours of the tea table with the most unaffected good nature—and we repaid her most gallantly by falling into a sound sleep—and serenading her with a snoring duet." -The Heroic Element. On- the next day a lady in consumption, Miss Cotterell, joined the ship at Gravesend, and Keats gave evidence of the heroic element in his nature by the way in which he set to work to keep up spirits. < "Keats was full of his waggery—looked well —ate well —and was well ... in a short time Keats backing me with his golden jokes in support of my tinsel —we made Miss Cotterell to laugh and be herself—my wit would have dropt in a minute but for Keats plying me —but I was done up for all ihat —leaving him sole master—but I itruck up again in my own language or Keats would have borne the Lady off in triumph. '' When the ship was off Brighton on the 9th a terrible storm arose, and Keats —who on the previous day had Been seasick, according*to Severn, "in the < most gentlemanly manner'' —preaprved a calmness which made a deep iripress-ion on his friend's xnind. A Friend's Trying Task. Severn's task during the voyage was one which called for supreme qualities of devotion; as we see from .a letter written at Naples in November, in ■which he looks back over the incidents of life on the ship:— "I have had a most severe task full of contrarieties—wnat I did 'one way was undone another. The lady passenger, though in the same state as ■Keats—yet differing in constitution, required almost everything the opposite to him —for instance, if the cabin win- ■'■' dews were not open she would faint and

remain -entirety insensible five or six hours together —if the windows' were open Keats would be taken with a cough (a violent one —caught from this cause), and sometimes spitting of blood, now I had this to manage continually for our other passenger is a most consummate brute —she would see Miss Cotterell stiffened like a corpse—l have sometimes thought her dead—nor ? ever lend the least aid."

At Naples. Keats's health was in too bad a condition by the time they reached Naples to enable him to enjoy the new scenes: — "The grand scenery here affects him a little —but he is too infirm to enjoy it—his gloom deadens his sight to everything—and but for intervals of something like ease he must soon end it." The other letters which Sir Sidney Colvin published from other sources are of less importance, as they throw light less upon Keats than upon his reputation as a poet during his life. Cockneyism in a Lyric. As for the new poems, they include one interesting lyric, which gives us a strange mixture of Elizabethanism and Cockneyism: — You say you love, but with a voice Chaster than a nun's, who Bhigeth The soft Vespers to herself While the chime-bell ringeth— O love mc truly t You say you love, but with a smile Cold as sunrise in September, Ab you were Saint Cupid's nun, And kept his weeks of Ember. O love me truly I ■You say you love—but then your lips Coral tinted teach no blisses, More than coral in the sea— They never pout for kisses— O love me truly! You say you love; but then your hand No soft squeeze for squeeze returneth, It is like a statue's dead— ""' While mine to passion burnetii—■ O love me truly 1 O breathe a word or two of fire! Smile, as if those words should burn me, Squeeze as lovers should —O kiss And in thy heart inurn me I O love me truly! "Squeeze" is disastrous. Sir Sidney Colvin complains of the closing verses that they have "a taint of that underbreeding which Keats shared with Leigh Hunt." Oovent Garden. There is also a negligible, lighthearted lyric,, "Apollo to the Graces," and a fragment of rhymed dialogue in which we see Covent Garden through Keats's eyes:— Sir, Covent Garden is a monstrous beast, From morning, four o'clock, to twelve at noon, It swallows cabbages with a spoon, And then, from 12 till two, this Eden made M A promenade for cooks and ancient ladies; And then for supper, 'stead of soup and poaches, It swallows chairmen, damns, and Hackney coaches. All of which will do Keats's reputation neither any harm nor any good.