recognize almost at once the
blemishes in his own work. He acknowledged that a certain critic--

"...is perfectly right in regard to the 'slipshod' _Endymion_...
it is as good as I had the power to make it by myself. I have
written independently, _without judgement_, I may write
independently and _with judgement_ hereafter."

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ORIGINAL MS. OF ENDYMION.]

The quickness of his development is one of the most amazing facts in
literary history. He was twenty-three when _Endymion_ was published,
but in the next eighteen months he had almost finished his life's
work. In that brief time, he perfected his art and wrote poems that
rank among the greatest of their kind, and that have influenced the
work of many succeeding poets, such as Tennyson, Lowell, and
Swinburne.

[Illustration: ENDYMION. _From mural painting by H.O. Walker,
Congressional Library, Washington, D.C._]

Nearly all his greatest poems were written in 1819 and published in
his 1820 volume. _The Eve of St. Agnes_ (January, 1819) and the _Ode
to a Nightingale_ (May, 1819) are perhaps his two most popular poems;
but his other masterpieces are sufficiently great to make choice among
them largely a matter of individual preference.

_The Eve of St. Agnes_ is an almost flawless narrative poem, romantic
in its conception and artistic in its execution. Porphyro, a young
lover, gains entrance to a hostile castle on the eve of St. Agnes to
see if he cannot win his heroine, Madeline, on that enchanted evening.
The interest in the story, the mastery of poetic language, the wealth
and variety of the imagery, the atmosphere of medieval days, combine
to make this poem unusually attractive. The following lines appeal to
the senses of sight, odor, sound, and temperature,[25] as well as to
romantic human feeling and love of the beautiful:--

"...like a throbbing star
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose;
Into her dream he melted, as the rose
Blendeth its odor with the violet,--
Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows
Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window panes; St. Agnes' moon hath set."

The fact that Keats could write the _Ode to a Nightingale_ in three
hours is proof of genius. This poem pleases lovers of music, of
artistic expression, of nature, of romance, and of human pathos. Such
lines as these show that the strength and beauty of his verse are not
entirely de