THE WANING MOON
In these few lines the Shelley spirit seems to be more intense than
in any other passage as brief.
ODE TO THE WEST WIND
This magnificent poem is surely the greatest of a great poses
writings, and one of the most splendid poems on nature and on
poetry in a literature resounding with odes on these enormous
themes.
THE INVITATION
No need to point to a poem that so shines as does this lucent
verse.
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
Keats is here the magical poet, as he is the intellectual poet in
the great sonnet following; and it is his possession or promise of
both imaginations that proves him greater than Coleridge. In his
day they seem to have found Coleridge to be a thinker in his
poetry. To me he seems to have had nothing but senses, magic, and
simplicity, and these he had to the utmost yet known to man. Keats
was to have been a great intellectual poet, besides all that in
fact he was.
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE
Of the five odes of Keats, the Nightingale is perhaps the most
perfect, and certainly the most imaginative. But the Grecian Urn
is the finest, even though it has fancy rather than imagination,
for never was fancy more exquisite. The most conspicuous idea--the
emptying of the town because its folk are away at play in the tale
of the antique urn--is merely a fancy, and a most antic fancy--a
prank; it is an irony of man, a rallying of art, a mockery of time,
a burlesque of poetry, divine with tenderness.
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