mood, such as comes to all men, at times, to
glorify a workaday world. Like all the work of Keats and Shelley, it has an
element of unreality; and when we read at the end,

And they are gone; aye, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm,

it is as if we were waking from a dream,--which is the only possible ending
to all of Keats's Greek and mediaeval fancies. We are to remember, however,
that no beautiful thing, though it be intangible as a dream, can enter a
man's life and leave him quite the same afterwards. Keats's own word is
here suggestive. "The imagination," he said, "may be likened to Adam's
dream; he awoke and found it true."

It is by his short poems that Keats is known to the majority of present-day
readers. Among these exquisite shorter poems we mention only the four odes,
"On a Grecian Urn," "To a Nightingale," "To Autumn," and "To Psyche." These
are like an invitation to a feast; one who reads them will hardly be
satisfied until he knows more of such delightful poetry. Those who study
only the "Ode to a Nightingale" may find four things,--a love of sensuous
beauty, a touch of pessimism, a purely pagan conception of nature, and a
strong individualism,--which are characteristic of this last of the
romantic poets.

As Wordsworth's work is too often marred by the moralizer, and Byron's by
the demagogue, and Shelley's by the reformer, so Keats's work suffers by
the opposite extreme of aloofness from every human interest; so much so,
that he is often accused of being indifferent to humanity. His work is also
criticised as being too effeminate for ordinary readers. Three things
should be remembered in this connection. First, that Keats sought to
express beauty for its own sake; that beauty is as essential to normal
humanity as is government or law; and that the higher man climbs in
civilization the more imperative becomes his need of beauty as a reward for
his labors. Second, that Keats's letters are as much an indication of the
man as is his poetry; and in his letters, with their human sympathy, their
eager interest in social problems, their humor, and their keen insight into
life, there is no trace of effeminacy, but rather every indication of a
strong and noble manhood. The third thing to remember is that all Keats's
work was done in three or four years, with small preparation, and that,
dying at twenty-five, he left us a body of poetry which will always be one
of our most cherished pos