wever, is important as indicating a
mood of mind--too vaguely open to the influences of the moment for
either love, ambition, or poesy--to which we may well suppose that Keats
was sufficiently prone. The few poems which remain to be mentioned were
all printed posthumously.

There are four addresses to Fanny Brawne, dating perhaps from early till
late in 1819; two of them are irregular lyrics, and two sonnets. The
best of the four is the sonnet, "The day is gone, and all its sweets are
gone," which counts indeed among the better sonnets of Keats. Taken
collectively, all four supply valuable evidence as to the poet's love
affair, confirmatory of what appears in his letters; they exhibit him
quelled by the thought of his mistress and her charms, and jealous of
her mixing in or enjoying the company of others.

Keats wrote some half-hundred of sonnets altogether, some of them among
his very earliest and most trifling performances, others up to his
latest period, including the last of all his compositions.
Notwithstanding his marked growth in love of form, and his ultimate
surprising power of expression--both being qualities peculiarly germane
to this form of verse--his sonnets appear to me to be seldom masterly. A
certain freakishness of disposition, and liability to be led astray by
some point of detail into side-issues, mar the symmetry and
concentration of his work. Perhaps the sonnet on "Chapman's Homer,"
early though it was, remains the best which he produced; it is at any
rate pre-eminent in singleness of thought, illustrated by a definite and
grand image. It has a true opening and a true climax, and a clear link
of inventive association between the thing mentally signified in chief,
and the modes of its concrete presentment. In points of this kind Keats
is seldom equally happy in his other sonnets; sometimes not happy at
all, but distinctly at fault. There is a second Homeric sonnet,
"Standing aloof in giant ignorance" (1818), which contains one line
which has been very highly praised,

"There is a budding morrow in midnight:"

but, regarded as a whole, it is a weakling in comparison with the
Chapman sonnet. The sonnets, "To Sleep" ("O soft embalmer of the still
midnight"), "Why did I laugh to-night?" and "On a Dream" ("As Hermes
once took to his feathers light")--all of them dated in 1819--are
remarkable; the third would indeed almost be excellent were it not for
the inadmissible laxity of an alexandrine last